My thought is that if return is made voluntary (and I think compulsion would result in mass truancy) it is the most deprived children who are least likely to return.
Maybe as simple as poor people feeling that social advancement through education is not on the cards for their children. Interesting though.
I don't know if families with children headed by a single parent could be another factor causing this reluctance? Clearly covid 19 has terrified many people and it's possible this is more pronounced in women? If so, women make-up most single parents and as such won't be influeced by another parent potentially holding a diverging view about going back to school. Families with children headed by a single parent may also be more adverse to taking any risk of bringing covid 19 into their household given they shoulder sole responsibility for looking after everything?
He's getting lost in the detail. By far the most important thing in that chart is how many parents don't want to send their children back to school. Even the figures for the lowest quintile show a lot of resistance to the idea.
And of course other polls have shown large numbers are reluctant to go to pubs, use public transport or even shop for food.
Yes, some people have been scared shitless. Yet it will slowly dawn on people that the risks if you are under 50 and fit and healthy are vanishingly small.
If you are an entirely self-centred individual who doesn't meet or care about other people, sure.
Most people I know worry about others as much if not more than themselves.
A very harsh post, not like you at all.
I’ve explained several times the risk segmentation model advocated by Dr David Katz.
If oppose it, fine, but don’t immediately assume those that favour it are being selfish.
And I've explained several times (as have others) the risk is not just about getting the virus but passing it on to others.
Continuing to bang on about the risk to the individual without considering the risk to others is like saying its perfectly safe to drive at 60 mph past a school because the car will protect you if you hit a child.
No. That’s not right.
Read up on Dr David Katz’ four-group risk segmentation model. Genuinely, I think you will see the merits of it.
If you want to provide a link then go ahead, but a model is only worthwhile if it includes the risk to yourself, your friends and loved ones you may pass death onto and not just yourself.
If a risk you take kills someone else, perhaps someone you love, then are you OK with that because you don't care about that someone else?
With respect I don't think that either of those links say what you think that they do. The first is a chart showing how high risk categories should be treated. The second is an argument for looking at this more holistically in terms of reducing overall harm, a position I agree with which is why I am anxious that the lockdown be loosened but not let rip.
The points that @philip_Thompson and I were making is not about regulation but about behaviour. His point, with which I agree, is that those who have vulnerable relatives do not think only about their own risk but the risk to others they come into contact with. My point is that fear itself is a not always rational inhibition on behaviour whatever the rules of lock down say at any point in time and that fear of this virus will have material economic consequences even if the government removed all controls tomorrow.
I don't see anything in your links that even touches on those points.
Yes, I agree with that.
However, I wasn't arguing about that. I was arguing for a risk segmentation approach – and that such an approach is not selfish. If you agree with me, great.
What do you mean by a risk segmentation approach? If all you mean is that those who are most at risk need to take the most precautions and conversely those least at risk can take fewer precautions that is no more than a statement of the obvious (subject to the blurring of segments by the contact with grandad issue). Am I missing something?
My thought is that if return is made voluntary (and I think compulsion would result in mass truancy) it is the most deprived children who are least likely to return.
Maybe as simple as poor people feeling that social advancement through education is not on the cards for their children. Interesting though.
I don't know if families with children headed by a single parent could be another factor causing this reluctance? Clearly covid 19 has terrified many people and it's possible this is more pronounced in women? If so, women make-up most single parents and as such won't be influeced by another parent potentially holding a diverging view about going back to school. Families with children headed by a single parent may also be more adverse to taking any risk of bringing covid 19 into their household given they shoulder sole responsibility for looking after everything?
He's getting lost in the detail. By far the most important thing in that chart is how many parents don't want to send their children back to school. Even the figures for the lowest quintile show a lot of resistance to the idea.
And of course other polls have shown large numbers are reluctant to go to pubs, use public transport or even shop for food.
Yes, some people have been scared shitless. Yet it will slowly dawn on people that the risks if you are under 50 and fit and healthy are vanishingly small.
If you are an entirely self-centred individual who doesn't meet or care about other people, sure.
Most people I know worry about others as much if not more than themselves.
A very harsh post, not like you at all.
I’ve explained several times the risk segmentation model advocated by Dr David Katz.
If oppose it, fine, but don’t immediately assume those that favour it are being selfish.
And I've explained several times (as have others) the risk is not just about getting the virus but passing it on to others.
Continuing to bang on about the risk to the individual without considering the risk to others is like saying its perfectly safe to drive at 60 mph past a school because the car will protect you if you hit a child.
No. That’s not right.
Read up on Dr David Katz’ four-group risk segmentation model. Genuinely, I think you will see the merits of it.
If you want to provide a link then go ahead, but a model is only worthwhile if it includes the risk to yourself, your friends and loved ones you may pass death onto and not just yourself.
If a risk you take kills someone else, perhaps someone you love, then are you OK with that because you don't care about that someone else?
OK so lets be practical. Category 2 here - healthcare providers etc - how many people do they make up? How many people work in healthcare or related sectors that help the vulnerable?
As I've said for a while we can't just separate the vulnerable because the vulnerable rely upon the healthy. There are 1.5 million people who work in the NHS and 1.5 million people who work in social care, so that's 3 million people immediately. That's close to 10% of the UK's workforce. Not everyone will be on front line necessarily but its also not counting other first responders. Throw in their relatives they live with and it will be even more.
If you think we can let the virus run wild within the rest of the population without exposing those people its just unbelievable nonsense.
I`m reading these exchanges with interest - please continue!
A pointed comment from President Xi, amid calls for an independent review of the response to the Covid-19 pandemic. He urges a "comprehensive review of the global response to Covid-19, after it has been brought under control..." and adds that it should be "conducted in an objective and impartial way".
i.e. when we have made sure any whistle-blowers over our own handling have been identified and safely disappeared into the labour camp system.
Starmer will take the UK back into the single market, that means free movement which northern Leave voters will still oppose
I think you are fighting the last war.
He is and its funny, but there is a kernal of truth however out-dated. People don't like the other. Foreigners are definitely the other (or in my town the aged parochioal bigots don't like the people who live on the opposite bank of the Tees). "Free Movement" is the socially acceptable alternative to "I don't like foreigners" - no longer racist as the foreigners these days are usually white Eastern European, but still stupid.
HYUFD thinks that Northerners are Stupid. Some are obviously, but instead of saying "free movement" he could take a step back and ask WHY. They don't like the Other because things are tough and someone has to get the blame. We have left the EU. We will impose restrictions on movement (though not when people are infected with the virus aparently). And life for these voters will remain shit because foreigners aren't the reason it is shit. And at that point northerners will go " 'ang on" and patronising southerners like HYUFD won't be able to keep making the same argument without being laughed at by northerners.
It was downward pressure on their wages and pressure on housing and public services from uncontrolled low skilled immigration, particularly from Eastern Europe, which led white working class northerners to vote Leave and for Boris
Indeed. Your problem is that the downward pressure on wages is a result of Tory policies and not foreigners (unless the foreigners suppressed wages whilst still in Romania...) and the pressure on housing and public services is the result of Tory policies and not foreigners. Like I said, you know literally Fuck All about the north or northerners yet still have the arrogance to come on here and patronise us.
What prompted the leave vote started with the deindustrialisation of the 1980s. When Brits went abroad looking for work not the other way round. Decades on with nothing changing, blaming people who arrived 20 years after the downfall of these communities is something your party has been very successful in doing but it doesn't mean its remotely correct. Did Easington nearly end up with a Tory MP because the post-industrial scarred communities were brought to their knees and left to fend for themselves in the 80s? Or because of the guys who set up a hand car wash 20 years later?
Your party benefited. It has some smart politicians up here who know the communities and their issues. Sadly you are not one of those.
A pointed comment from President Xi, amid calls for an independent review of the response to the Covid-19 pandemic. He urges a "comprehensive review of the global response to Covid-19, after it has been brought under control..." and adds that it should be "conducted in an objective and impartial way".
i.e. when we have made sure any whistle-blowers over our own handling have been identified and safely disappeared into the labour camp system.
"when we have made sure any whistle-blowers over our own handling have been identified and safely disappeared into the labour camp system."
hmm, you've miss translated. It should be -
"Once we have ensured that our unique cultural norms have been applied and protected, rather than racist imperialistic Western so-called values."
@Fishing re the graph I posted earlier related to the Con share of the vote. Reading your header again I notice that your calculations relate to the Con share of seats. Apologies for the lapse.
The D-W test for serial correlation brings back memories of a misspent youth. Just an observation about the elections data: it is always a good idea to plot it to get an overall idea about it. And there is a glaring outlier in the longer dataset, namely the elections of 1929 and 1931, which we can see in the upper left of the graph here.
Of course that does not affect the DW calculations for the post WWII periods. But omitting those observations could have a material impact on the rejection or otherwise of the no-serial-correlation null hypothesis. A historian may be able to tell us whether the special conditions at the time would justify leaving those years out - of course the depression must have been a factor.
It reminds me of the excellent link to Berkson's paradox we were treated to at the weekend.
One pedantic point - the variable was seat share, not vote share. But this doesn't affect what you're saying.
You can, of course, omit outliers, but I must admit I hate doing so, unless I'm absolutely convinced that they are due to special conditions unlikely to be repeated. There are few enough observations in this time series anyway. The 1929 election wouldn't have been affected by the Great Depression, which hadn't got going yet (it was in May, the Wall Street Crash was in October).
@Anabobazina looking at your chart again, for the 4 categories I can see all 4 very easily in my family.
I'm category 4, my wife is category 2, my dad is category 3 and my grandparents are category 1. Now how should I act under your proposal? I see only talk about the individual not their loved ones? Since I'm category 4 should I act that way?
Because if I pass do and catch the disease then pass it on to my wife, dad or granddad then I'm not going to feel any better because I'm "low risk".
What Labour fail to comprehend is their voters in the North loathe the London centric approach. Starmer will do nothing to assuage them.
These people are pro Brexit and anti immigration, the antithesis of Starmer
Hence Home Counties and London marginal seats like Wycombe and Chingford and Woodford Green and Chipping Barnet, all Tory even in 1997 and 2001 now are easier Labour targets with smaller Tory majorities than northern Leave seats like Great Grimsby and Bishop Auckland and Penistone and Stocksbridge which only fell to the Tories last year
The latter only fell because of Corbyn. Even if one buys your Brexit hypothesis, trad Labour voters no longer need to vote Tory for that reason. Brexit obsessives will bleat about Starmer wanting to take us back in, but it will fall on deaf ears. My guess is that we will see almost all the trad Labour seats return to Labour. If the Tories do lose the next election, which I consider very possible, the Tories will be out for a generation. It will be some legacy for your mate "Boris".
Starmer will take the UK back into the single market, that means free movement which northern Leave voters will still oppose
I am not sure he will. After the post-pandemic crash and post- no deal crash the single market, and all its trappings will not be so unappealing, particularly if it is packaged and labelled as something else.
He will just take us into the something else, his voting coalition will demand it.
Starmer will take the UK back into the single market, that means free movement which northern Leave voters will still oppose
I think you are fighting the last war.
He is and its funny, but there is a kernal of truth however out-dated. People don't like the other. Foreigners are definitely the other (or in my town the aged parochioal bigots don't like the people who live on the opposite bank of the Tees). "Free Movement" is the socially acceptable alternative to "I don't like foreigners" - no longer racist as the foreigners these days are usually white Eastern European, but still stupid.
HYUFD thinks that Northerners are Stupid. Some are obviously, but instead of saying "free movement" he could take a step back and ask WHY. They don't like the Other because things are tough and someone has to get the blame. We have left the EU. We will impose restrictions on movement (though not when people are infected with the virus aparently). And life for these voters will remain shit because foreigners aren't the reason it is shit. And at that point northerners will go " 'ang on" and patronising southerners like HYUFD won't be able to keep making the same argument without being laughed at by northerners.
It was downward pressure on their wages and pressure on housing and public services from uncontrolled low skilled immigration, particularly from Eastern Europe, which led white working class northerners to vote Leave and for Boris
Indeed. Your problem is that the downward pressure on wages is a result of Tory policies and not foreigners (unless the foreigners suppressed wages whilst still in Romania...) and the pressure on housing and public services is the result of Tory policies and not foreigners. Like I said, you know literally Fuck All about the north or northerners yet still have the arrogance to come on here and patronise us.
What prompted the leave vote started with the deindustrialisation of the 1980s. When Brits went abroad looking for work not the other way round. Decades on with nothing changing, blaming people who arrived 20 years after the downfall of these communities is something your party has been very successful in doing but it doesn't mean its remotely correct. Did Easington nearly end up with a Tory MP because the post-industrial scarred communities were brought to their knees and left to fend for themselves in the 80s? Or because of the guys who set up a hand car wash 20 years later?
Your party benefited. It has some smart politicians up here who know the communities and their issues. Sadly you are not one of those.
Wrong, it was Blair who refused to impose transition controls on free movement from the new accession countries, unlike say Germany.
Wilson also closed more mines than Thatcher ever did. Manufacturing output rose during Thatcher's premiership
A pointed comment from President Xi, amid calls for an independent review of the response to the Covid-19 pandemic. He urges a "comprehensive review of the global response to Covid-19, after it has been brought under control..." and adds that it should be "conducted in an objective and impartial way".
i.e. when we have made sure any whistle-blowers over our own handling have been identified and safely disappeared into the labour camp system.
Given that neither of the world's two most powerful nations are in the least bit objective or impartial about the pandemic (which is not to morally equate the two countries, just in case I triggered any Sinophobes), the chances of any such enquiry being comprehensive are just about nil.
Children don't need their own bedroom. My own children have bunk beds and are quite happy with it, I see no reason they need their own bedroom. So I'm happy to practice as I preach.
My children also had bunkbeds. Then my son hit puberty and likes to masturbate all the bloody time, so sharing a room with his 8 year old sister wasn't a good idea...
My children aren't that old and are both of the same gender but surely the misnamed "bedroom tax" wouldn't apply there? If one child is aged 10 or more and is of a different gender to their sibling they're not expected to share a room.
No the issue with the Bedroom Tax was that in so many places there literally were no alternative homes to move into. "You have a Spare Bedroom". OK find me a 2 bed house then. "There are only 3 bed houses available. Your fault, you will pay". And that the rules were as usual with recent Tory welfare policies arbitrary and cruel - your child just died? Pay the tax. You have children who don't live with you but need a bedroom for you to have access? Pay the tax. You sleep in separate rooms cos your partner is chronically sick and has lots of medical equipment? Pay the tax.
It is absolutely staggering - but very revealing - that you don't bother to mention, even in passing, the government's motivation for charging people a bit more for extra rooms they no longer need.
Starmer will take the UK back into the single market, that means free movement which northern Leave voters will still oppose
I think you are fighting the last war.
He is and its funny, but there is a kernal of truth however out-dated. People don't like the other. Foreigners are definitely the other (or in my town the aged parochioal bigots don't like the people who live on the opposite bank of the Tees). "Free Movement" is the socially acceptable alternative to "I don't like foreigners" - no longer racist as the foreigners these days are usually white Eastern European, but still stupid.
HYUFD thinks that Northerners are Stupid. Some are obviously, but instead of saying "free movement" he could take a step back and ask WHY. They don't like the Other because things are tough and someone has to get the blame. We have left the EU. We will impose restrictions on movement (though not when people are infected with the virus aparently). And life for these voters will remain shit because foreigners aren't the reason it is shit. And at that point northerners will go " 'ang on" and patronising southerners like HYUFD won't be able to keep making the same argument without being laughed at by northerners.
It was downward pressure on their wages and pressure on housing and public services from uncontrolled low skilled immigration, particularly from Eastern Europe, which led white working class northerners to vote Leave and for Boris
Not quite - it was the perception that uncontrolled low skilled immigration from Eastern Europeans was reducing wages that resulted in northerners voting Leave.
In the vast majority of areas with high leave votes, immigrants are a smaller proportion of the population than elsewhere.
These be facts. We don't welcome their sort in PB Toryland.
I am not sure he will. After the post-pandemic crash and post- no deal crash the single market, and all its trappings will not be so unappealing, particularly if it is packaged and labelled as something else.
He will just take us into the something else, his voting coalition will demand it.
The single market is not going to disappear
By 2024 we will have had a brutal education as a nation about how world trade works. Going into a big trade block for our own protection will appeal in ways that today's "lets tear up every trade deal with everyone" position appeals.
We aren't going to rejoin the EU. But joining the EEA to act as a free trade Bulwark against the feckless Europeans? That can be positively spun. Especially after a few years of 30%+ tariffs and every country proposing a trade deal doing outrageous things like insisting we obey their own trade laws and standards.
Another week and its the end of Ramadan. I don't know how this is going to pan out, given government messaging that people appear to take what they want from.
Boris needs northern wall Leave voters more than he needs the DUP
He lied to both of them
No he didn't. The Irish border solution was based upon the principle of devolution which has long existed and was put up before the General Election.
Fig leaf.
If devolution is a fig leaf why did Tony Blair introduce it? Do you want it to be abolished?
Devolution isn't a fig leaf. But offering this as a valid rationale for Johnson accepting the border that he previously ruled out as unconscionable certainly is.
Boris needs northern wall Leave voters more than he needs the DUP
He lied to both of them
No he didn't. The Irish border solution was based upon the principle of devolution which has long existed and was put up before the General Election.
Fig leaf.
If devolution is a fig leaf why did Tony Blair introduce it? Do you want it to be abolished?
Devolution isn't a fig leaf. But offering this as a valid rationale for Johnson accepting the border that he previously ruled out as unconscionable certainly is.
Its perfectly acceptable. In fact the principle that Stormont could agree to differences from GB was agreed all along.
Boris needs northern wall Leave voters more than he needs the DUP
He lied to both of them
No he didn't. The Irish border solution was based upon the principle of devolution which has long existed and was put up before the General Election.
Fig leaf.
If devolution is a fig leaf why did Tony Blair introduce it? Do you want it to be abolished?
His SoSS said "Devolution will kill Nationalism stone dead".
He was for ever coming out with a load of shit.
'Robertson also likened the efforts of Unionists to keep Scotland tied to the UK with those of Abraham Lincoln's fight against slavery when he stated, "they might look more relevantly at the Civil War where hundreds of thousands of Americans perished in a war to keep the new Union together. To Lincoln and his compatriots the Union was so precious, so important, and its integrity so valuable that rivers of blood would be spilt to keep it together."'
Decades on with nothing changing, blaming people who arrived 20 years after the downfall of these communities is something your party has been very successful in doing but it doesn't mean its remotely correct.
Ironically I think you have given "credit", where it is not due.
None of the three mainstream parties were interested in immigration as an issue. They dismissed people who raised it as bigots, and claimed they couldn't do anything anyway because of the EU.
I am not sure he will. After the post-pandemic crash and post- no deal crash the single market, and all its trappings will not be so unappealing, particularly if it is packaged and labelled as something else.
He will just take us into the something else, his voting coalition will demand it.
The single market is not going to disappear
By 2024 we will have had a brutal education as a nation about how world trade works. Going into a big trade block for our own protection will appeal in ways that today's "lets tear up every trade deal with everyone" position appeals.
We aren't going to rejoin the EU. But joining the EEA to act as a free trade Bulwark against the feckless Europeans? That can be positively spun. Especially after a few years of 30%+ tariffs and every country proposing a trade deal doing outrageous things like insisting we obey their own trade laws and standards.
If the economic upheaval from the Coronavirus ends up with three-quarters of the nation's pubs and football league clubs liquidated then I think the most visible signs of economic distress will not be attributable to Brexit.
For all the damage that Brexit will cause we won't have the simple experiment to prove cause and effect. People will choose to believe what they want to believe and it won't change minds.
By 2024 the country will have gone some way to adjusting to the new Brexit normal and any promise of economic gain from a closer relationship with the EU will feel very hypothetical. It could look like a great big bureaucratic waste of time compared to dealing with the more immediate post-Coronavirus problems. Which would be ironic given the vast bureaucratic waste that implementing Brexit has been and will be, but in terms of anticipating electoral consequences, appearances are more important than realities.
Enforced quarantine measures at the UK border expected to be unveiled this week are to cover arrivals by sea, car and international rail, as well as air, the Guardian understands.
Listening to reportage of the "big return to work". Government had the rail companies increase services and prepare for more people travelling as instructed - but appears to be very quiet as it was last week. This reluctance to resume normal as instructed will be the government's big problem. The row with teachers was largely irrelevant as polls have made it clear that parents aren't going to send their sprogs in when instructed. And it will be the same with work.
As a related aside, this TfL bailout is not good for Sadiq Khan's chances of re-election. Yes fares revenue was down 90% and a decent number of drivers were sick/dying. But the reduction in service provision was branded him putting workers at risk and the massive congestion charge increase is branded as him putting workers at risk...
This "big return to work" is a myth though, surely?
The basic advice of work from home if you can, go to work if you can't, as long as it is safe, has not changed .
I have been working hard with others where I work to get as many of the second category in as possible, we did most of the groundwork by early April. Last week nothing changed. We have as many in as we safely can already, next steps are more radical such as early and late shifts or volunteers for weekend working. The "easing" of the lockdown made no material difference to us at all.
Many many people will WFH even when all this is done. Maybe not full time, but a lot more. Me for one!
The government will need money. It should clearly and obviously cancel HS2 as the last desperate plank of the case for that - "capacity" - has been surely rendered obsolete by the impending work from home revolution.
The current guideline are -
- WFH if possible - If not possible, travel to work on foot. cycle - If not possible, car - if not possible, public transport.
The following is from the YouGov survey the other day:
My IT department in their wisdom have blocked access to that image, sorry, so i can;t see it. I imagine it shows people worrying more than is reasonable? :-)
The D-W test for serial correlation brings back memories of a misspent youth. Just an observation about the elections data: it is always a good idea to plot it to get an overall idea about it. And there is a glaring outlier in the longer dataset, namely the elections of 1929 and 1931, which we can see in the upper left of the graph here.
Of course that does not affect the DW calculations for the post WWII periods. But omitting those observations could have a material impact on the rejection or otherwise of the no-serial-correlation null hypothesis. A historian may be able to tell us whether the special conditions at the time would justify leaving those years out - of course the depression must have been a factor.
It reminds me of the excellent link to Berkson's paradox we were treated to at the weekend.
One pedantic point - the variable was seat share, not vote share. But this doesn't affect what you're saying.
You can, of course, omit outliers, but I must admit I hate doing so, unless I'm absolutely convinced that they are due to special conditions unlikely to be repeated. There are few enough observations in this time series anyway. The 1929 election wouldn't have been affected by the Great Depression, which hadn't got going yet (it was in May, the Wall Street Crash was in October).
You point out that you cannot reject the null of no serial correlation on the basis of the DW statistics. That is like the "not proven" verdict in Scottish law. Not proven does not mean not guilty. Not rejecting the null does not mean accepting the alternative (that there is serial correlation, aka incumbancy).
Thanks Fishing! Fascinating, and for me counter-intuitive (cos of FPTP). (I’d be interested to see this analysis on Scottish seats, although I appreciate that it takes a great deal of time and energy.)
But may I point out one thing you write:
- “Labour has to overturn forbiddingly huge majorities in Tory seats“
Yes, that is true. But Starmer’s real problem is that Labour has to overturn forbiddingly huge majorities in Tory seats AND in SNP seats. That is a much harder task, because the two objectives require mutual contradictory strategy and tactics. As the Liberal Democrats discovered to their cost: in the age of the internet you cannot send vastly different messages out to the electorate in different geographical areas, because anybody anywhere can read, and redistribute, your two-facedness.
But that rather ignores the issue as to how solid - rather than how big - those Tory and SNP majorities are. Most of the SNP seats were safely Labour until 2015 - yet those majorities were easily overturned. Why can that not be reversed? The same point applies to Tory seats in the North and the Midlands which in 2019 produced big Tory majorities. But are seats such as Bassetlaw and Grimsby REALLY safe for the Tories - or was was it simply the coincidence of specific factors at that time? If Tory success in those seats was very largely due to Corbyn and Brexit, how unlikely is it that the disappearance of such factors will bring about a reversion to the status quo ante? It may be worth recalling that those formerly safely Tory seats in Kent, Essex and Hertfordshire which swung sharply to Labour in 1997 and 2001 are now very safely Tory again. The same applies to seats in Havering.
Starmer's rise in the ratings is exceeding the rise in LP polling and I think that this is a hint of the fundamental challenge. LP activists are way out of kilter with majority opinion on woke/PC issues and strongly out of kilter on many economic issues. If Keir Starmer is seen to lead a successful shift to "moderation" (which must be real and very visible) then he will have a good chance of a majority otherwise he will not and LDs or some other centre left party will start gaining support.
Usual caveats need to be squared or cubed in current situation.
LP activists have always been out of line with majority opinion on a whole range of issues - as indeed all political activists tend to be, it's what makes them political activists. Do you think the average working class voter in the 1960s wanted to end hanging or decriminalise homosexuality? I don't have the survey evidence to hand but I doubt it. I also doubt that most people are as exercised by "political correctness" or "wokeness" as right wing activists are.
I think they are. Non-economic political / cultural issues were the most important factors in the fall of the Red Wall. It may have been summarised as dislike of Corbyn but the dislike was based on political differences.
I agree and this is a problem. Because if the party changes its core values to win back these people it will alienate many others. For example, I would be none too impressed. As it happens I am probably safe for Labour but plenty of others might be tempted by Green or Lib Dem or no show.
Off topic, this is quite funny even if you're a Unionists (or should be). Not so funny is what a cracking team it was which we're never likely to get close to again.
I am not sure he will. After the post-pandemic crash and post- no deal crash the single market, and all its trappings will not be so unappealing, particularly if it is packaged and labelled as something else.
He will just take us into the something else, his voting coalition will demand it.
The single market is not going to disappear
By 2024 we will have had a brutal education as a nation about how world trade works. Going into a big trade block for our own protection will appeal in ways that today's "lets tear up every trade deal with everyone" position appeals.
We aren't going to rejoin the EU. But joining the EEA to act as a free trade Bulwark against the feckless Europeans? That can be positively spun. Especially after a few years of 30%+ tariffs and every country proposing a trade deal doing outrageous things like insisting we obey their own trade laws and standards.
I rather suspect the education we get will be quite the opposite!
As the EU looks set for years more wrangling and arguing between the wealthy north and poorly south, with bailouts and malaise ongoing in Europe we will see them and think "thank goodness that is not us".
Your side have been saying we'll be worse off than the Europeans since I was a child. I grew up reading articles about how because the UK wasn't joining the Euro the UK was going to suffer. I became an adult early in Tony Blair's governance and did my thesis on whether Britain should join the Euro. These debates are not new yet for every decade this century so far the UK has done better than the Eurozone - and the next few years look set to be the same.
If in 2024 the UK is growing while the Eurozone is still stuck in a quagmire with arguments between struggling Italy/Spain and rich Netherland/Germany then why would the public want to touch that with a ten foot bargepole?
Boris needs northern wall Leave voters more than he needs the DUP
He lied to both of them
No he didn't. The Irish border solution was based upon the principle of devolution which has long existed and was put up before the General Election.
Fig leaf.
If devolution is a fig leaf why did Tony Blair introduce it? Do you want it to be abolished?
Devolution isn't a fig leaf. But offering this as a valid rationale for Johnson accepting the border that he previously ruled out as unconscionable certainly is.
Its perfectly acceptable. In fact the principle that Stormont could agree to differences from GB was agreed all along.
If it was agreed all along why did Johnson say it was unacceptable?
Starmer's rise in the ratings is exceeding the rise in LP polling and I think that this is a hint of the fundamental challenge. LP activists are way out of kilter with majority opinion on woke/PC issues and strongly out of kilter on many economic issues. If Keir Starmer is seen to lead a successful shift to "moderation" (which must be real and very visible) then he will have a good chance of a majority otherwise he will not and LDs or some other centre left party will start gaining support.
Usual caveats need to be squared or cubed in current situation.
LP activists have always been out of line with majority opinion on a whole range of issues - as indeed all political activists tend to be, it's what makes them political activists. Do you think the average working class voter in the 1960s wanted to end hanging or decriminalise homosexuality? I don't have the survey evidence to hand but I doubt it. I also doubt that most people are as exercised by "political correctness" or "wokeness" as right wing activists are.
When wokeness expresses itself - as it so often does these days - as contempt for Britain and the values of the average citizen, then you can be damned sure that people are exercised by it and vote accordingly.
He is and its funny, but there is a kernal of truth however out-dated. People don't like the other. Foreigners are definitely the other (or in my town the aged parochioal bigots don't like the people who live on the opposite bank of the Tees). "Free Movement" is the socially acceptable alternative to "I don't like foreigners" - no longer racist as the foreigners these days are usually white Eastern European, but still stupid.
Not quite - it was the perception that uncontrolled low skilled immigration from Eastern Europeans was reducing wages that resulted in northerners voting Leave.
In the vast majority of areas with high leave votes, immigrants are a smaller proportion of the population than elsewhere.
The concept of "The Other" in the first quote explains the second quote.
In areas where there is high immigration, the immigrants are much less "Other"
Children don't need their own bedroom. My own children have bunk beds and are quite happy with it, I see no reason they need their own bedroom. So I'm happy to practice as I preach.
My children also had bunkbeds. Then my son hit puberty and likes to masturbate all the bloody time, so sharing a room with his 8 year old sister wasn't a good idea...
My children aren't that old and are both of the same gender but surely the misnamed "bedroom tax" wouldn't apply there? If one child is aged 10 or more and is of a different gender to their sibling they're not expected to share a room.
No the issue with the Bedroom Tax was that in so many places there literally were no alternative homes to move into. "You have a Spare Bedroom". OK find me a 2 bed house then. "There are only 3 bed houses available. Your fault, you will pay". And that the rules were as usual with recent Tory welfare policies arbitrary and cruel - your child just died? Pay the tax. You have children who don't live with you but need a bedroom for you to have access? Pay the tax. You sleep in separate rooms cos your partner is chronically sick and has lots of medical equipment? Pay the tax.
It is absolutely staggering - but very revealing - that you don't bother to mention, even in passing, the government's motivation for charging people a bit more for extra rooms they no longer need.
Any drop in commuting doesn't impact long distance rail travel - [HS2 is] a different market. How many people actually commute from Birmingham or beyond to London every day?
I thought the HS2 spin now was that it was about "network capacity"?
People will have more meetings over Teams and Zoom and that.
They will travel less. I fully expect to travel less to France and Germany for work, but the meetings will still happen now that people can see how well it works.
People will have much less need to travel from Birmingham to london and vice versa, it is surely undeniable. HS2 is the Amstrad Emailer of travel solutions
Children don't need their own bedroom. My own children have bunk beds and are quite happy with it, I see no reason they need their own bedroom. So I'm happy to practice as I preach.
My children also had bunkbeds. Then my son hit puberty and likes to masturbate all the bloody time, so sharing a room with his 8 year old sister wasn't a good idea...
My children aren't that old and are both of the same gender but surely the misnamed "bedroom tax" wouldn't apply there? If one child is aged 10 or more and is of a different gender to their sibling they're not expected to share a room.
No the issue with the Bedroom Tax was that in so many places there literally were no alternative homes to move into. "You have a Spare Bedroom". OK find me a 2 bed house then. "There are only 3 bed houses available. Your fault, you will pay". And that the rules were as usual with recent Tory welfare policies arbitrary and cruel - your child just died? Pay the tax. You have children who don't live with you but need a bedroom for you to have access? Pay the tax. You sleep in separate rooms cos your partner is chronically sick and has lots of medical equipment? Pay the tax.
It is absolutely staggering - but very revealing - that you don't bother to mention, even in passing, the government's motivation for charging people a bit more for extra rooms they no longer need.
Boris needs northern wall Leave voters more than he needs the DUP
He lied to both of them
No he didn't. The Irish border solution was based upon the principle of devolution which has long existed and was put up before the General Election.
Fig leaf.
If devolution is a fig leaf why did Tony Blair introduce it? Do you want it to be abolished?
Devolution isn't a fig leaf. But offering this as a valid rationale for Johnson accepting the border that he previously ruled out as unconscionable certainly is.
Its perfectly acceptable. In fact the principle that Stormont could agree to differences from GB was agreed all along.
If it was agreed all along why did Johnson say it was unacceptable?
Because May was looking to impose the backstop without Stormont getting a say or a way out of it. That was unacceptable.
Boris fixed that. He agreed a new arrangement and Stormont can vote to end those arrangements if they're not happy with them.
It's a good question. Coming out of the lockdown way behind the timetable followed by just about every other European country will be the equivalent of shouting from the rooftops that our government really messed up its response. For a government anxious to maintain the fiction that international comparisons can't be drawn, its a very clear comparison and one that (unlike abstract statistics) really impacts on peoples lives.
So, regardless of the economic impact, the government is under immense political pressure to come out of lockdown as early as it dare. They may be lucky, but taking risks for political reasons is not acceptable. Yet we have a PM who is clearly a chancer. That's why we have every reason to be sceptical as to whether to believe them when they claim that (for example) schools can safely go back, at least until they are transparent in publishing the full scientific evidence they are acting on and in sufficient detail for it to be subject to peer review by scientists not under pressure to give the answers that ministers want to hear.
Pubs reopen early. Loads not viable due to lack of customers as people perceive it's not safe. Dan Hodges asks "Have the British people lost their bottle" in another furious Telegraph column.
I think if pubs with beer gardens reopen down here they will be busy. Maybe it's different up north where the weather is crap, dunno.
That is on a par with the sun will rise tomorrow as a safe prediction! Pub beer gardens will be maxed out and pubs could charge a tenner a pint
Children don't need their own bedroom. My own children have bunk beds and are quite happy with it, I see no reason they need their own bedroom. So I'm happy to practice as I preach.
My children also had bunkbeds. Then my son hit puberty and likes to masturbate all the bloody time, so sharing a room with his 8 year old sister wasn't a good idea...
My children aren't that old and are both of the same gender but surely the misnamed "bedroom tax" wouldn't apply there? If one child is aged 10 or more and is of a different gender to their sibling they're not expected to share a room.
No the issue with the Bedroom Tax was that in so many places there literally were no alternative homes to move into. "You have a Spare Bedroom". OK find me a 2 bed house then. "There are only 3 bed houses available. Your fault, you will pay". And that the rules were as usual with recent Tory welfare policies arbitrary and cruel - your child just died? Pay the tax. You have children who don't live with you but need a bedroom for you to have access? Pay the tax. You sleep in separate rooms cos your partner is chronically sick and has lots of medical equipment? Pay the tax.
It is absolutely staggering - but very revealing - that you don't bother to mention, even in passing, the government's motivation for charging people a bit more for extra rooms they no longer need.
We can rectify that.
It was to ensure that the costs of the City crash and bailout were loaded onto those with the broadest shoulders - people on benefits.
I am not sure he will. After the post-pandemic crash and post- no deal crash the single market, and all its trappings will not be so unappealing, particularly if it is packaged and labelled as something else.
He will just take us into the something else, his voting coalition will demand it.
The single market is not going to disappear
By 2024 we will have had a brutal education as a nation about how world trade works. Going into a big trade block for our own protection will appeal in ways that today's "lets tear up every trade deal with everyone" position appeals.
We aren't going to rejoin the EU. But joining the EEA to act as a free trade Bulwark against the feckless Europeans? That can be positively spun. Especially after a few years of 30%+ tariffs and every country proposing a trade deal doing outrageous things like insisting we obey their own trade laws and standards.
I rather suspect the education we get will be quite the opposite!
As the EU looks set for years more wrangling and arguing between the wealthy north and poorly south, with bailouts and malaise ongoing in Europe we will see them and think "thank goodness that is not us".
Your side have been saying we'll be worse off than the Europeans since I was a child. I grew up reading articles about how because the UK wasn't joining the Euro the UK was going to suffer. I became an adult early in Tony Blair's governance and did my thesis on whether Britain should join the Euro. These debates are not new yet for every decade this century so far the UK has done better than the Eurozone - and the next few years look set to be the same.
If in 2024 the UK is growing while the Eurozone is still stuck in a quagmire with arguments between struggling Italy/Spain and rich Netherland/Germany then why would the public want to touch that with a ten foot bargepole?
Problem is that I made a point about how no trade deals with anyone will work and you tried to prove me wrong by talking about the EU. We have left the EU. How the EU does will have little impact over our experience of trying to exclusively use WTO whilst avoiding what that means (via GATT24) despite the head of the WTO saying we're talking bollocks about how the WTO works.
The very basis of the "no deal go WTO" strategy is based on a fundamental ignorance of how the WTO works according to the head of the WTO. Perhaps we will be surprised and discover that Iain Duncan Smith is right about how the WTO works and the man running the WTO is wrong about how the WTO works. Perhaps not...
Children don't need their own bedroom. My own children have bunk beds and are quite happy with it, I see no reason they need their own bedroom. So I'm happy to practice as I preach.
My children also had bunkbeds. Then my son hit puberty and likes to masturbate all the bloody time, so sharing a room with his 8 year old sister wasn't a good idea...
My children aren't that old and are both of the same gender but surely the misnamed "bedroom tax" wouldn't apply there? If one child is aged 10 or more and is of a different gender to their sibling they're not expected to share a room.
No the issue with the Bedroom Tax was that in so many places there literally were no alternative homes to move into. "You have a Spare Bedroom". OK find me a 2 bed house then. "There are only 3 bed houses available. Your fault, you will pay". And that the rules were as usual with recent Tory welfare policies arbitrary and cruel - your child just died? Pay the tax. You have children who don't live with you but need a bedroom for you to have access? Pay the tax. You sleep in separate rooms cos your partner is chronically sick and has lots of medical equipment? Pay the tax.
It is absolutely staggering - but very revealing - that you don't bother to mention, even in passing, the government's motivation for charging people a bit more for extra rooms they no longer need.
We can rectify that.
It was to ensure that the costs of the City crash and bailout were loaded onto those with the broadest shoulders - people on benefits.
How much was being spent on a "City crash and bailout" by the Tories?
The D-W test for serial correlation brings back memories of a misspent youth. Just an observation about the elections data: it is always a good idea to plot it to get an overall idea about it. And there is a glaring outlier in the longer dataset, namely the elections of 1929 and 1931, which we can see in the upper left of the graph here.
Of course that does not affect the DW calculations for the post WWII periods. But omitting those observations could have a material impact on the rejection or otherwise of the no-serial-correlation null hypothesis. A historian may be able to tell us whether the special conditions at the time would justify leaving those years out - of course the depression must have been a factor.
It reminds me of the excellent link to Berkson's paradox we were treated to at the weekend.
One pedantic point - the variable was seat share, not vote share. But this doesn't affect what you're saying.
You can, of course, omit outliers, but I must admit I hate doing so, unless I'm absolutely convinced that they are due to special conditions unlikely to be repeated. There are few enough observations in this time series anyway. The 1929 election wouldn't have been affected by the Great Depression, which hadn't got going yet (it was in May, the Wall Street Crash was in October).
Indeed. And the danger in omitting outliers due to special circumstances is that you can create special circumstances for almost any election.
2019, of course, was the Brexit election. We can omit it because that's not a variable that's going to repeat. 2017 was the Election That The Tories Blew. The one that May seemed to take every possible opportunity to hand votes to Labour. Obviously, they'll have learned from that and we can't expect any future election to be as perfectly pushed towards Labour (as 2019 showed). 2015 happened in the wake of the first peacetime Coalition since the Thirties. We can't possibly take any lessons from that for "normal" elections. 2010 happened in the aftermath of the Great Financial Crash. If 1931 can't be taken as relevant, certainly neither can 2010.
So, in the post 1997 landscape, only '97, '01, and '05 can count as relevant. from which we can conclude that the natural state of things is a strong working Labour majority...
(For the avoidance of doubt, I certainly don't believe this. The main point is that when you start discarding data as not relevant for special circumstances, you've got to be damn sure of it and it's incredibly easy to discard almost any data)
Fortunately for them and unfortunately for us, the Germans have a far more competent government in place dealing with this. There is a very good chance that anything we try to do to copy Germany will be cocked up somewhere along the way.
Children don't need their own bedroom. My own children have bunk beds and are quite happy with it, I see no reason they need their own bedroom. So I'm happy to practice as I preach.
My children also had bunkbeds. Then my son hit puberty and likes to masturbate all the bloody time, so sharing a room with his 8 year old sister wasn't a good idea...
My children aren't that old and are both of the same gender but surely the misnamed "bedroom tax" wouldn't apply there? If one child is aged 10 or more and is of a different gender to their sibling they're not expected to share a room.
No the issue with the Bedroom Tax was that in so many places there literally were no alternative homes to move into. "You have a Spare Bedroom". OK find me a 2 bed house then. "There are only 3 bed houses available. Your fault, you will pay". And that the rules were as usual with recent Tory welfare policies arbitrary and cruel - your child just died? Pay the tax. You have children who don't live with you but need a bedroom for you to have access? Pay the tax. You sleep in separate rooms cos your partner is chronically sick and has lots of medical equipment? Pay the tax.
It is absolutely staggering - but very revealing - that you don't bother to mention, even in passing, the government's motivation for charging people a bit more for extra rooms they no longer need.
I thought "to fuck over the poor" was a given.
Well, quite.
Go on then. You have a town where the social housing stock is 3 bed semis. There are a very small number of 1 or 2 bed flats, far fewer than the people occupying a 3 bed with a "spare bedroom". Taking money off them for the crime of being unable to downsize is done because (a) you care about them or (b) fuck them?
I am not sure he will. After the post-pandemic crash and post- no deal crash the single market, and all its trappings will not be so unappealing, particularly if it is packaged and labelled as something else.
He will just take us into the something else, his voting coalition will demand it.
The single market is not going to disappear
By 2024 we will have had a brutal education as a nation about how world trade works. Going into a big trade block for our own protection will appeal in ways that today's "lets tear up every trade deal with everyone" position appeals.
We aren't going to rejoin the EU. But joining the EEA to act as a free trade Bulwark against the feckless Europeans? That can be positively spun. Especially after a few years of 30%+ tariffs and every country proposing a trade deal doing outrageous things like insisting we obey their own trade laws and standards.
I rather suspect the education we get will be quite the opposite!
As the EU looks set for years more wrangling and arguing between the wealthy north and poorly south, with bailouts and malaise ongoing in Europe we will see them and think "thank goodness that is not us".
Your side have been saying we'll be worse off than the Europeans since I was a child. I grew up reading articles about how because the UK wasn't joining the Euro the UK was going to suffer. I became an adult early in Tony Blair's governance and did my thesis on whether Britain should join the Euro. These debates are not new yet for every decade this century so far the UK has done better than the Eurozone - and the next few years look set to be the same.
If in 2024 the UK is growing while the Eurozone is still stuck in a quagmire with arguments between struggling Italy/Spain and rich Netherland/Germany then why would the public want to touch that with a ten foot bargepole?
Problem is that I made a point about how no trade deals with anyone will work and you tried to prove me wrong by talking about the EU. We have left the EU. How the EU does will have little impact over our experience of trying to exclusively use WTO whilst avoiding what that means (via GATT24) despite the head of the WTO saying we're talking bollocks about how the WTO works.
The very basis of the "no deal go WTO" strategy is based on a fundamental ignorance of how the WTO works according to the head of the WTO. Perhaps we will be surprised and discover that Iain Duncan Smith is right about how the WTO works and the man running the WTO is wrong about how the WTO works. Perhaps not...
I'm speaking about the EU because that's our neighbour that people will see on the news.
If the UK economy is growing and the Eurozone is mired in malaise do you think the public are going to want to move closer back to Europe?
Boris needs northern wall Leave voters more than he needs the DUP
He lied to both of them
No he didn't. The Irish border solution was based upon the principle of devolution which has long existed and was put up before the General Election.
Fig leaf.
If devolution is a fig leaf why did Tony Blair introduce it? Do you want it to be abolished?
Devolution isn't a fig leaf. But offering this as a valid rationale for Johnson accepting the border that he previously ruled out as unconscionable certainly is.
Its perfectly acceptable. In fact the principle that Stormont could agree to differences from GB was agreed all along.
If it was agreed all along why did Johnson say it was unacceptable?
Because May was looking to impose the backstop without Stormont getting a say or a way out of it. That was unacceptable.
Boris fixed that. He agreed a new arrangement and Stormont can vote to end those arrangements if they're not happy with them.
Any other question?
Only the same one -
Why did Johnson he would 'never never never' accept a border in the Irish Sea?
The big unknown or the next election is, what will happen to the Brexit Party vote?
Most of it seems to have come from Labour. If that is so, it cost them a great many seats - e.g. Blyth Valley, Durham North West, Delyn. So if it goes back, they should have a decent shout of regaining many of them.
However, another way of looking at it is that in 38 seats, the Brexit Party vote was larger than the Labour majority. So if Nigel Farage had not been a dimwitted egomaniac, the Tories might have picked up Doncaster North, Normanton, Alyn and Deeside, Torfaen, both seats in Newport and all seats in Coventry if Leave voters had coalesced around them. So if that Brexit vote shifted to the Tories, Starmer’s task is even harder.
Therefore, I am reluctant to make firm predictions about the next election. Starmer could win, or force a draw, but he needs the dice to fall correctly. We could see considerable churn in both votes and seats - I could see Labour gaining Cheltenham (repeat Cheltenham) and falling further in Wales, for example, under his leadership.
Where the Brexit vote came from and where it would have gone otherwise is interesting.
I suspect it varies around the country.
In some places - Hartlepool and the Yorkshire mining constituencies I think it damaged the Conservatives, in other places it might have damaged Labour.
I will say that I've never seen such an expansive campaign as what TBP did in South Yorkshire - activists infesting town centres, masses of leaflets and even cars with speakers crawling through residential areas.
BTW there's no chance Labour will win Cheltenham - they lost their deposit there in 2019:
It is not so many years ago that Labour lost its deposit in Enfield Southgate and Hove - yet both are now comfortably Labour.In 1966 Labour came within 3000 votes of taking Cheltenham - though there was no Liberal that year.
Boris needs northern wall Leave voters more than he needs the DUP
He lied to both of them
No he didn't. The Irish border solution was based upon the principle of devolution which has long existed and was put up before the General Election.
Fig leaf.
If devolution is a fig leaf why did Tony Blair introduce it? Do you want it to be abolished?
Devolution isn't a fig leaf. But offering this as a valid rationale for Johnson accepting the border that he previously ruled out as unconscionable certainly is.
Its perfectly acceptable. In fact the principle that Stormont could agree to differences from GB was agreed all along.
If it was agreed all along why did Johnson say it was unacceptable?
Because May was looking to impose the backstop without Stormont getting a say or a way out of it. That was unacceptable.
Boris fixed that. He agreed a new arrangement and Stormont can vote to end those arrangements if they're not happy with them.
Any other question?
Only the same one -
Why did Johnson he would 'never never never' accept a border in the Irish Sea?
Because he wouldn't accept it.
Instead he got a border between the UK as a whole and the EU, but with special devolved arrangements for NI that Stormont can end if they don't like it.
Boris needs northern wall Leave voters more than he needs the DUP
He lied to both of them
No he didn't. The Irish border solution was based upon the principle of devolution which has long existed and was put up before the General Election.
Fig leaf.
If devolution is a fig leaf why did Tony Blair introduce it? Do you want it to be abolished?
Devolution isn't a fig leaf. But offering this as a valid rationale for Johnson accepting the border that he previously ruled out as unconscionable certainly is.
Its perfectly acceptable. In fact the principle that Stormont could agree to differences from GB was agreed all along.
If it was agreed all along why did Johnson say it was unacceptable?
Because May was looking to impose the backstop without Stormont getting a say or a way out of it. That was unacceptable.
Boris fixed that. He agreed a new arrangement and Stormont can vote to end those arrangements if they're not happy with them.
Any other question?
Only the same one -
Why did Johnson he would 'never never never' accept a border in the Irish Sea?
'Cos he thought it sounded good ?
(Or perhaps just taking the piss out of the late Ian Paisley - though he missed out a 'never'.)
Boris needs northern wall Leave voters more than he needs the DUP
He lied to both of them
No he didn't. The Irish border solution was based upon the principle of devolution which has long existed and was put up before the General Election.
Fig leaf.
If devolution is a fig leaf why did Tony Blair introduce it? Do you want it to be abolished?
Devolution isn't a fig leaf. But offering this as a valid rationale for Johnson accepting the border that he previously ruled out as unconscionable certainly is.
Its perfectly acceptable. In fact the principle that Stormont could agree to differences from GB was agreed all along.
If it was agreed all along why did Johnson say it was unacceptable?
Because May was looking to impose the backstop without Stormont getting a say or a way out of it. That was unacceptable.
Boris fixed that. He agreed a new arrangement and Stormont can vote to end those arrangements if they're not happy with them.
Any other question?
Only the same one -
Why did Johnson he would 'never never never' accept a border in the Irish Sea?
Because he wouldn't accept it.
Instead he got a border between the UK as a whole and the EU, but with special devolved arrangements for NI that Stormont can end if they don't like it.
How do they end it and what are the consequences of them doing so?
The D-W test for serial correlation brings back memories of a misspent youth. Just an observation about the elections data: it is always a good idea to plot it to get an overall idea about it. And there is a glaring outlier in the longer dataset, namely the elections of 1929 and 1931, which we can see in the upper left of the graph here.
Of course that does not affect the DW calculations for the post WWII periods. But omitting those observations could have a material impact on the rejection or otherwise of the no-serial-correlation null hypothesis. A historian may be able to tell us whether the special conditions at the time would justify leaving those years out - of course the depression must have been a factor.
It reminds me of the excellent link to Berkson's paradox we were treated to at the weekend.
One pedantic point - the variable was seat share, not vote share. But this doesn't affect what you're saying.
You can, of course, omit outliers, but I must admit I hate doing so, unless I'm absolutely convinced that they are due to special conditions unlikely to be repeated. There are few enough observations in this time series anyway. The 1929 election wouldn't have been affected by the Great Depression, which hadn't got going yet (it was in May, the Wall Street Crash was in October).
You point out that you cannot reject the null of no serial correlation on the basis of the DW statistics. That is like the "not proven" verdict in Scottish law. Not proven does not mean not guilty. Not rejecting the null does not mean accepting the alternative (that there is serial correlation, aka incumbancy).
You are right. But this does not mean you ignore the analysis. Informally it would be reasonable to conclude that if there is any autocorrelation then it is smaller than many people think, and you would be quite foolish to bet on tha assumption that there is autocorrelation (in the number of conservative seats).
Children don't need their own bedroom. My own children have bunk beds and are quite happy with it, I see no reason they need their own bedroom. So I'm happy to practice as I preach.
My children also had bunkbeds. Then my son hit puberty and likes to masturbate all the bloody time, so sharing a room with his 8 year old sister wasn't a good idea...
My children aren't that old and are both of the same gender but surely the misnamed "bedroom tax" wouldn't apply there? If one child is aged 10 or more and is of a different gender to their sibling they're not expected to share a room.
No the issue with the Bedroom Tax was that in so many places there literally were no alternative homes to move into. "You have a Spare Bedroom". OK find me a 2 bed house then. "There are only 3 bed houses available. Your fault, you will pay". And that the rules were as usual with recent Tory welfare policies arbitrary and cruel - your child just died? Pay the tax. You have children who don't live with you but need a bedroom for you to have access? Pay the tax. You sleep in separate rooms cos your partner is chronically sick and has lots of medical equipment? Pay the tax.
It is absolutely staggering - but very revealing - that you don't bother to mention, even in passing, the government's motivation for charging people a bit more for extra rooms they no longer need.
We can rectify that.
It was to ensure that the costs of the City crash and bailout were loaded onto those with the broadest shoulders - people on benefits.
How much was being spent on a "City crash and bailout" by the Tories?
Don't be so literal, Philip.
We're talking about the consequent fiscal hole that George and David were busting a gut to fill - by slashing benefits.
Your lack of understanding of some basic realities is embarrassing. Come here, ask a local to show you the places where manufacturing output rose under Thatcher. It wasn't any of the towns you claim to know about. Locally to me Thatcher did her famous walk in the wilderness. Did the Head Wrightsons Steelworks have (a) higher output or (b) lower output when it was a steelworks and not a business park of half-let offices? How about the pit towns across the Durham coalfield where industrial jobs have 20 years later been replaced by warehouses.
How did the removal of manufacturing output and their replacement with rubble and eventually warehouses have anything to do with changes to transition controls 20 years years later?
It was to ensure that the costs of the City crash and bailout were loaded onto those with the broadest shoulders - people on benefits.
Yeah, sure. The fact that families with children were not able to get accommodation at the same time that taxpayers (many of whom were themselves without spare bedrooms) were subsidising people in the same area to have more accommodation than they needed doesn't need to be mentioned, even in passing, by the left.
I am not sure he will. After the post-pandemic crash and post- no deal crash the single market, and all its trappings will not be so unappealing, particularly if it is packaged and labelled as something else.
He will just take us into the something else, his voting coalition will demand it.
The single market is not going to disappear
By 2024 we will have had a brutal education as a nation about how world trade works. Going into a big trade block for our own protection will appeal in ways that today's "lets tear up every trade deal with everyone" position appeals.
We aren't going to rejoin the EU. But joining the EEA to act as a free trade Bulwark against the feckless Europeans? That can be positively spun. Especially after a few years of 30%+ tariffs and every country proposing a trade deal doing outrageous things like insisting we obey their own trade laws and standards.
I rather suspect the education we get will be quite the opposite!
As the EU looks set for years more wrangling and arguing between the wealthy north and poorly south, with bailouts and malaise ongoing in Europe we will see them and think "thank goodness that is not us".
Your side have been saying we'll be worse off than the Europeans since I was a child. I grew up reading articles about how because the UK wasn't joining the Euro the UK was going to suffer. I became an adult early in Tony Blair's governance and did my thesis on whether Britain should join the Euro. These debates are not new yet for every decade this century so far the UK has done better than the Eurozone - and the next few years look set to be the same.
If in 2024 the UK is growing while the Eurozone is still stuck in a quagmire with arguments between struggling Italy/Spain and rich Netherland/Germany then why would the public want to touch that with a ten foot bargepole?
Problem is that I made a point about how no trade deals with anyone will work and you tried to prove me wrong by talking about the EU. We have left the EU. How the EU does will have little impact over our experience of trying to exclusively use WTO whilst avoiding what that means (via GATT24) despite the head of the WTO saying we're talking bollocks about how the WTO works.
The very basis of the "no deal go WTO" strategy is based on a fundamental ignorance of how the WTO works according to the head of the WTO. Perhaps we will be surprised and discover that Iain Duncan Smith is right about how the WTO works and the man running the WTO is wrong about how the WTO works. Perhaps not...
I'm speaking about the EU because that's our neighbour that people will see on the news.
If the UK economy is growing and the Eurozone is mired in malaise do you think the public are going to want to move closer back to Europe?
If the UK economy is growing it will be vs the pit the virus is making us all slide into. 30%+ tariffs and swathes of red tape will make us grow faster or slower than if we didn't have said tariffs and red tape?
It was to ensure that the costs of the City crash and bailout were loaded onto those with the broadest shoulders - people on benefits.
Yeah, sure. The fact that families with children were not able to get accommodation at the same time that taxpayers (many of whom were themselves without spare bedrooms) were subsidising people in the same area to have more accommodation than they needed doesn't need to be mentioned, even in passing, by the left.
Has there ever been a cost/benefit analysis of the policy since its inception ?
Boris needs northern wall Leave voters more than he needs the DUP
He lied to both of them
No he didn't. The Irish border solution was based upon the principle of devolution which has long existed and was put up before the General Election.
Fig leaf.
If devolution is a fig leaf why did Tony Blair introduce it? Do you want it to be abolished?
Devolution isn't a fig leaf. But offering this as a valid rationale for Johnson accepting the border that he previously ruled out as unconscionable certainly is.
Its perfectly acceptable. In fact the principle that Stormont could agree to differences from GB was agreed all along.
If it was agreed all along why did Johnson say it was unacceptable?
Because May was looking to impose the backstop without Stormont getting a say or a way out of it. That was unacceptable.
Boris fixed that. He agreed a new arrangement and Stormont can vote to end those arrangements if they're not happy with them.
Any other question?
Only the same one -
Why did Johnson he would 'never never never' accept a border in the Irish Sea?
Because he wouldn't accept it.
Instead he got a border between the UK as a whole and the EU, but with special devolved arrangements for NI that Stormont can end if they don't like it.
Special devolved arrangements that operate as a border down the Irish Sea. With paperwork to be sent to the government which instead of him throwing in the bin his customs officials will be processing.
Personally I think a border inside our country is a Bad Thing. Apparently if you support the unionist party its a Good Thing.
Go on then. You have a town where the social housing stock is 3 bed semis. There are a very small number of 1 or 2 bed flats, far fewer than the people occupying a 3 bed with a "spare bedroom". Taking money off them for the crime of being unable to downsize is done because (a) you care about them or (b) fuck them?
Are you suggesting that the families with four children should be put into the 1-bedroom flats so that those whose children have grown up and left home can continue to occupy the 3-bedroom house at a rate subsidised by taxpayers?
Seamless how we've gone from "Sweden is trending strongly downward" to "you can't compare Sweden with the rest of the world".
Anyone holding up Sweden as a model to follow for economic reasons also tends to gloss over the fact that economically, it doesn't seem that great a route.
In short, while they might be following a slightly better route for themselves (dependent on whether or not they successfully protect their older population, or avoid a second wave in autumn, or no vaccine is ever found and they find the way to adjust to long-term running under some restrictions), not only is it inapplicable to a country as densely populated and interconnected as the UK, and it doesn't give a significantly better economic outcome. The fundamental problem is the coronavirus, which doesn't go away under that route, either.
Seems like a reasonable analysis. Theres a bit of over comparison going on.
Boris needs northern wall Leave voters more than he needs the DUP
He lied to both of them
No he didn't. The Irish border solution was based upon the principle of devolution which has long existed and was put up before the General Election.
Fig leaf.
If devolution is a fig leaf why did Tony Blair introduce it? Do you want it to be abolished?
Devolution isn't a fig leaf. But offering this as a valid rationale for Johnson accepting the border that he previously ruled out as unconscionable certainly is.
Its perfectly acceptable. In fact the principle that Stormont could agree to differences from GB was agreed all along.
If it was agreed all along why did Johnson say it was unacceptable?
Because May was looking to impose the backstop without Stormont getting a say or a way out of it. That was unacceptable.
Boris fixed that. He agreed a new arrangement and Stormont can vote to end those arrangements if they're not happy with them.
Any other question?
Only the same one -
Why did Johnson he would 'never never never' accept a border in the Irish Sea?
Because he wouldn't accept it.
Instead he got a border between the UK as a whole and the EU, but with special devolved arrangements for NI that Stormont can end if they don't like it.
Special devolved arrangements that operate as a border down the Irish Sea. With paperwork to be sent to the government which instead of him throwing in the bin his customs officials will be processing.
Personally I think a border inside our country is a Bad Thing. Apparently if you support the unionist party its a Good Thing.
I'm not a unionist but if it's what our devolved administrations vote for so be it. Why support devolution if you're against borders?
Starmer's rise in the ratings is exceeding the rise in LP polling and I think that this is a hint of the fundamental challenge. LP activists are way out of kilter with majority opinion on woke/PC issues and strongly out of kilter on many economic issues. If Keir Starmer is seen to lead a successful shift to "moderation" (which must be real and very visible) then he will have a good chance of a majority otherwise he will not and LDs or some other centre left party will start gaining support.
Usual caveats need to be squared or cubed in current situation.
LP activists have always been out of line with majority opinion on a whole range of issues - as indeed all political activists tend to be, it's what makes them political activists. Do you think the average working class voter in the 1960s wanted to end hanging or decriminalise homosexuality? I don't have the survey evidence to hand but I doubt it. I also doubt that most people are as exercised by "political correctness" or "wokeness" as right wing activists are.
When wokeness expresses itself - as it so often does these days - as contempt for Britain and the values of the average citizen, then you can be damned sure that people are exercised by it and vote accordingly.
So the Tories are set to lose the next election? Right.....
The D-W test for serial correlation brings back memories of a misspent youth. Just an observation about the elections data: it is always a good idea to plot it to get an overall idea about it. And there is a glaring outlier in the longer dataset, namely the elections of 1929 and 1931, which we can see in the upper left of the graph here.
Of course that does not affect the DW calculations for the post WWII periods. But omitting those observations could have a material impact on the rejection or otherwise of the no-serial-correlation null hypothesis. A historian may be able to tell us whether the special conditions at the time would justify leaving those years out - of course the depression must have been a factor.
It reminds me of the excellent link to Berkson's paradox we were treated to at the weekend.
One pedantic point - the variable was seat share, not vote share. But this doesn't affect what you're saying.
You can, of course, omit outliers, but I must admit I hate doing so, unless I'm absolutely convinced that they are due to special conditions unlikely to be repeated. There are few enough observations in this time series anyway. The 1929 election wouldn't have been affected by the Great Depression, which hadn't got going yet (it was in May, the Wall Street Crash was in October).
Indeed. And the danger in omitting outliers due to special circumstances is that you can create special circumstances for almost any election.
2019, of course, was the Brexit election. We can omit it because that's not a variable that's going to repeat. 2017 was the Election That The Tories Blew. The one that May seemed to take every possible opportunity to hand votes to Labour. Obviously, they'll have learned from that and we can't expect any future election to be as perfectly pushed towards Labour (as 2019 showed). 2015 happened in the wake of the first peacetime Coalition since the Thirties. We can't possibly take any lessons from that for "normal" elections. 2010 happened in the aftermath of the Great Financial Crash. If 1931 can't be taken as relevant, certainly neither can 2010.
So, in the post 1997 landscape, only '97, '01, and '05 can count as relevant. from which we can conclude that the natural state of things is a strong working Labour majority...
(For the avoidance of doubt, I certainly don't believe this. The main point is that when you start discarding data as not relevant for special circumstances, you've got to be damn sure of it and it's incredibly easy to discard almost any data)
Btw the proper way to deal with outliers in statistical models is to downweight them, so that you are not throwing the data away but the results are skewed less by one or two questionable points. Of course this introduces the next question, "by how much do I downweight the outliers?"
The big unknown or the next election is, what will happen to the Brexit Party vote?
Most of it seems to have come from Labour. If that is so, it cost them a great many seats - e.g. Blyth Valley, Durham North West, Delyn. So if it goes back, they should have a decent shout of regaining many of them.
However, another way of looking at it is that in 38 seats, the Brexit Party vote was larger than the Labour majority. So if Nigel Farage had not been a dimwitted egomaniac, the Tories might have picked up Doncaster North, Normanton, Alyn and Deeside, Torfaen, both seats in Newport and all seats in Coventry if Leave voters had coalesced around them. So if that Brexit vote shifted to the Tories, Starmer’s task is even harder.
Therefore, I am reluctant to make firm predictions about the next election. Starmer could win, or force a draw, but he needs the dice to fall correctly. We could see considerable churn in both votes and seats - I could see Labour gaining Cheltenham (repeat Cheltenham) and falling further in Wales, for example, under his leadership.
Where the Brexit vote came from and where it would have gone otherwise is interesting.
I suspect it varies around the country.
In some places - Hartlepool and the Yorkshire mining constituencies I think it damaged the Conservatives, in other places it might have damaged Labour.
I will say that I've never seen such an expansive campaign as what TBP did in South Yorkshire - activists infesting town centres, masses of leaflets and even cars with speakers crawling through residential areas.
BTW there's no chance Labour will win Cheltenham - they lost their deposit there in 2019:
It is not so many years ago that Labour lost its deposit in Enfield Southgate and Hove - yet both are now comfortably Labour.In 1966 Labour came within 3000 votes of taking Cheltenham - though there was no Liberal that year.
Can you be a bit more specific on when it was that 'that Labour lost its deposit in Enfield Southgate and Hove'?
The D-W test for serial correlation brings back memories of a misspent youth. Just an observation about the elections data: it is always a good idea to plot it to get an overall idea about it. And there is a glaring outlier in the longer dataset, namely the elections of 1929 and 1931, which we can see in the upper left of the graph here.
Of course that does not affect the DW calculations for the post WWII periods. But omitting those observations could have a material impact on the rejection or otherwise of the no-serial-correlation null hypothesis. A historian may be able to tell us whether the special conditions at the time would justify leaving those years out - of course the depression must have been a factor.
It reminds me of the excellent link to Berkson's paradox we were treated to at the weekend.
One pedantic point - the variable was seat share, not vote share. But this doesn't affect what you're saying.
You can, of course, omit outliers, but I must admit I hate doing so, unless I'm absolutely convinced that they are due to special conditions unlikely to be repeated. There are few enough observations in this time series anyway. The 1929 election wouldn't have been affected by the Great Depression, which hadn't got going yet (it was in May, the Wall Street Crash was in October).
You point out that you cannot reject the null of no serial correlation on the basis of the DW statistics. That is like the "not proven" verdict in Scottish law. Not proven does not mean not guilty. Not rejecting the null does not mean accepting the alternative (that there is serial correlation, aka incumbancy).
You are right. But this does not mean you ignore the analysis. Informally it would be reasonable to conclude that if there is any autocorrelation then it is smaller than many people think, and you would be quite foolish to bet on tha assumption that there is autocorrelation (in the number of conservative seats).
Yes, I think that's a very good way of putting it.
I am not sure he will. After the post-pandemic crash and post- no deal crash the single market, and all its trappings will not be so unappealing, particularly if it is packaged and labelled as something else.
He will just take us into the something else, his voting coalition will demand it.
The single market is not going to disappear
By 2024 we will have had a brutal education as a nation about how world trade works. Going into a big trade block for our own protection will appeal in ways that today's "lets tear up every trade deal with everyone" position appeals.
We aren't going to rejoin the EU. But joining the EEA to act as a free trade Bulwark against the feckless Europeans? That can be positively spun. Especially after a few years of 30%+ tariffs and every country proposing a trade deal doing outrageous things like insisting we obey their own trade laws and standards.
I rather suspect the education we get will be quite the opposite!
As the EU looks set for years more wrangling and arguing between the wealthy north and poorly south, with bailouts and malaise ongoing in Europe we will see them and think "thank goodness that is not us".
Your side have been saying we'll be worse off than the Europeans since I was a child. I grew up reading articles about how because the UK wasn't joining the Euro the UK was going to suffer. I became an adult early in Tony Blair's governance and did my thesis on whether Britain should join the Euro. These debates are not new yet for every decade this century so far the UK has done better than the Eurozone - and the next few years look set to be the same.
If in 2024 the UK is growing while the Eurozone is still stuck in a quagmire with arguments between struggling Italy/Spain and rich Netherland/Germany then why would the public want to touch that with a ten foot bargepole?
Problem is that I made a point about how no trade deals with anyone will work and you tried to prove me wrong by talking about the EU. We have left the EU. How the EU does will have little impact over our experience of trying to exclusively use WTO whilst avoiding what that means (via GATT24) despite the head of the WTO saying we're talking bollocks about how the WTO works.
The very basis of the "no deal go WTO" strategy is based on a fundamental ignorance of how the WTO works according to the head of the WTO. Perhaps we will be surprised and discover that Iain Duncan Smith is right about how the WTO works and the man running the WTO is wrong about how the WTO works. Perhaps not...
I'm speaking about the EU because that's our neighbour that people will see on the news.
If the UK economy is growing and the Eurozone is mired in malaise do you think the public are going to want to move closer back to Europe?
If the UK economy is growing it will be vs the pit the virus is making us all slide into. 30%+ tariffs and swathes of red tape will make us grow faster or slower than if we didn't have said tariffs and red tape?
Well we can compare directly with the Eurozone.
So long as we have a Tory government I think local control, long regulations and a free floating currency and local Central Bank will enable us to grow faster than the Eurozone.
It was to ensure that the costs of the City crash and bailout were loaded onto those with the broadest shoulders - people on benefits.
Yeah, sure. The fact that families with children were not able to get accommodation at the same time that taxpayers (many of whom were themselves without spare bedrooms) were subsidising people in the same area to have more accommodation than they needed doesn't need to be mentioned, even in passing, by the left.
Has there ever been a cost/benefit analysis of the policy since its inception ?
I don't know, but no-one ever attacks it on the basis that it isn't terribly effective, they attack on the basis that it shows the the evil Tories deliberately wanted to screw over the poor. Perhaps if they started by acknowledging the entirely good intentions behind the policy, we might then be able to move on to a sensible discussion of effectiveness. That would be a great step forward, in this and in other political controversies.
Interesting and surprising piece. Over time the advantages given to incumbency seem to have increased as the public money that flows to MPs have increased giving them offices in the constituency, full time paid staff working for them on constituency issues and the ability to sustain a campaign team almost indefinitely. This possibly reached a peak in the Blair years with his £10k bung to sitting MPs which the Coalition removed but it is still much more significant than it was in earlier times.
We also see and recognise a first time incumbency bonus for MPs driven partly by this funding but also harder working MPs aware that they have only just gained the seat and need to consolidate. Many Tory MPs are in that position now with seats in previously alien territory. The incumbency bonus can be looked at another way. Since 1979 (41 years depressingly) there have been 2.5 changes in government (allowing for the Coalition). If Fishing was right surely we would see more changes of government than that?
Finally the point was made recently by TSE, IIRC, that 1970 was the only election in modern times where a clear majority for one party was replaced by a clear majority for another. Again, if Fishing was right surely this would be happening as often as not.
I am not qualified to challenge the statistical analysis but the results suggest to me that the Tories with a majority of 80 are pretty much nailed on to win most seats next time out. They may return to minority status, as in the May period, but I do not believe Labour will be the largest party.
The evidence of first term incumbency was there as far back as the 1959 Parliament in that quite a few of the seats picked up by the Tories in that year were retained in 1964 - Brierley Hill - Lowestoft - Uxbridge - Reading - Rugby - Bristol NW - Bristol NE. Again in 1970 Labour managed to hang on to quite a few seats gained in 1966 - Plymouth Sutton - Portsmouth West - Rugby - Brentford & Chiswick - Lambeth Norwood - Berwick & East Lothian - Eton & Slugh - Smethwick. Also worth recalling that not only was Wilson's majority of 97 from 1966 overturned in 1970, but so also was Macmillan's 101 majority from 1959.
Go on then. You have a town where the social housing stock is 3 bed semis. There are a very small number of 1 or 2 bed flats, far fewer than the people occupying a 3 bed with a "spare bedroom". Taking money off them for the crime of being unable to downsize is done because (a) you care about them or (b) fuck them?
Are you suggesting that the families with four children should be put into the 1-bedroom flats so that those whose children have grown up and left home can continue to occupy the 3-bedroom house at a rate subsidised by taxpayers?
No what he's suggesting is that a lot of people are getting the LHA for a 2 bedroom property but can only rent 3 bedroom properties as that is all that is available.
Boris needs northern wall Leave voters more than he needs the DUP
He lied to both of them
No he didn't. The Irish border solution was based upon the principle of devolution which has long existed and was put up before the General Election.
Fig leaf.
If devolution is a fig leaf why did Tony Blair introduce it? Do you want it to be abolished?
Devolution isn't a fig leaf. But offering this as a valid rationale for Johnson accepting the border that he previously ruled out as unconscionable certainly is.
Its perfectly acceptable. In fact the principle that Stormont could agree to differences from GB was agreed all along.
If it was agreed all along why did Johnson say it was unacceptable?
Because May was looking to impose the backstop without Stormont getting a say or a way out of it. That was unacceptable.
Boris fixed that. He agreed a new arrangement and Stormont can vote to end those arrangements if they're not happy with them.
Any other question?
Only the same one -
Why did Johnson he would 'never never never' accept a border in the Irish Sea?
Because he wouldn't accept it.
Instead he got a border between the UK as a whole and the EU, but with special devolved arrangements for NI that Stormont can end if they don't like it.
He said he would never accept it. There were no caveats. Indeed he got a standing ovation for the strength and resolution of his rhetoric on this issue. Which is exactly what it proved to be.
You need to accept this in your heart and mind even if you can't do so in an internet conversation with me.
It was to ensure that the costs of the City crash and bailout were loaded onto those with the broadest shoulders - people on benefits.
Yeah, sure. The fact that families with children were not able to get accommodation at the same time that taxpayers (many of whom were themselves without spare bedrooms) were subsidising people in the same area to have more accommodation than they needed doesn't need to be mentioned, even in passing, by the left.
Has there ever been a cost/benefit analysis of the policy since its inception ?
I don't know, but no-one ever attacks it on the basis that it isn't terribly effective, they attack on the basis that it shows the the evil Tories deliberately wanted to screw over the poor. Perhaps if they started by acknowledging the entirely good intentions behind the policy, we might then be able to move on to a sensible discussion of effectiveness. That would be a great step forward, in this and in other political controversies.
If you reduce the political debate to a boring, sensible conversation about which percentage of GDP we should spend on what, where's the fun? No place for the hate, the spittle throwing rants, the posturing on twitter?
The number of people helped per pound spent might go up. But that is completely irrelevant.
I am not sure he will. After the post-pandemic crash and post- no deal crash the single market, and all its trappings will not be so unappealing, particularly if it is packaged and labelled as something else.
He will just take us into the something else, his voting coalition will demand it.
The single market is not going to disappear
By 2024 we will have had a brutal education as a nation about how world trade works. Going into a big trade block for our own protection will appeal in ways that today's "lets tear up every trade deal with everyone" position appeals.
We aren't going to rejoin the EU. But joining the EEA to act as a free trade Bulwark against the feckless Europeans? That can be positively spun. Especially after a few years of 30%+ tariffs and every country proposing a trade deal doing outrageous things like insisting we obey their own trade laws and standards.
I rather suspect the education we get will be quite the opposite!
As the EU looks set for years more wrangling and arguing between the wealthy north and poorly south, with bailouts and malaise ongoing in Europe we will see them and think "thank goodness that is not us".
Your side have been saying we'll be worse off than the Europeans since I was a child. I grew up reading articles about how because the UK wasn't joining the Euro the UK was going to suffer. I became an adult early in Tony Blair's governance and did my thesis on whether Britain should join the Euro. These debates are not new yet for every decade this century so far the UK has done better than the Eurozone - and the next few years look set to be the same.
If in 2024 the UK is growing while the Eurozone is still stuck in a quagmire with arguments between struggling Italy/Spain and rich Netherland/Germany then why would the public want to touch that with a ten foot bargepole?
Problem is that I made a point about how no trade deals with anyone will work and you tried to prove me wrong by talking about the EU. We have left the EU. How the EU does will have little impact over our experience of trying to exclusively use WTO whilst avoiding what that means (via GATT24) despite the head of the WTO saying we're talking bollocks about how the WTO works.
The very basis of the "no deal go WTO" strategy is based on a fundamental ignorance of how the WTO works according to the head of the WTO. Perhaps we will be surprised and discover that Iain Duncan Smith is right about how the WTO works and the man running the WTO is wrong about how the WTO works. Perhaps not...
No Brexiteer is ever willing to discuss the detail of what WTO trade means and will mean for the UK in the future. Mostly because they dont know, and the few who do understand its better for the cause not to mention it.
Locally to me Thatcher did her famous walk in the wilderness. Did the Head Wrightsons Steelworks have (a) higher output or (b) lower output when it was a steelworks and not a business park of half-let offices?
Given that by definition we didn't need the steelworks (or they would have stayed open), worthwhile output cannot be lower now.
I am pro-manufacturing, but there is little that could have been done to stop the structural changes of the 1970s and 80s.
Looking forward rather than clinging to a failing past has to be the better option.
Go on then. You have a town where the social housing stock is 3 bed semis. There are a very small number of 1 or 2 bed flats, far fewer than the people occupying a 3 bed with a "spare bedroom". Taking money off them for the crime of being unable to downsize is done because (a) you care about them or (b) fuck them?
Are you suggesting that the families with four children should be put into the 1-bedroom flats so that those whose children have grown up and left home can continue to occupy the 3-bedroom house at a rate subsidised by taxpayers?
No, I'm suggesting that its yet another policy designed to punish people with no options. The solution is to build more social housing, where Housing Associations commission builders to build the kind of homes that people need as opposed to the kind of homes that turn the highest profit for the builders.
I hope that the virus changing how people live will mean a changing to planning and housing policies. The space to live and work at home vs a rabbit hutch at silly prices because its close to the train station.
It was to ensure that the costs of the City crash and bailout were loaded onto those with the broadest shoulders - people on benefits.
Yeah, sure. The fact that families with children were not able to get accommodation at the same time that taxpayers (many of whom were themselves without spare bedrooms) were subsidising people in the same area to have more accommodation than they needed doesn't need to be mentioned, even in passing, by the left.
Has there ever been a cost/benefit analysis of the policy since its inception ?
I don't know, but no-one ever attacks it on the basis that it isn't terribly effective, they attack on the basis that it shows the the evil Tories deliberately wanted to screw over the poor. Perhaps if they started by acknowledging the entirely good intentions behind the policy, we might then be able to move on to a sensible discussion of effectiveness. That would be a great step forward, in this and in other political controversies.
'Instead of doctors, they send police to kill us': locked-down Rio faces deadly raids
Maria Diva do Nascimento was worried as she set off for her job at one of Rio de Janeiro’s biggest hospitals wearing a face mask she hoped would keep her alive.
It had been two days since she had heard from her son Allyson, a 20-year-old drug trafficker whose job made social isolation impossible.
The big unknown or the next election is, what will happen to the Brexit Party vote?
Most of it seems to have come from Labour. If that is so, it cost them a great many seats - e.g. Blyth Valley, Durham North West, Delyn. So if it goes back, they should have a decent shout of regaining many of them.
However, another way of looking at it is that in 38 seats, the Brexit Party vote was larger than the Labour majority. So if Nigel Farage had not been a dimwitted egomaniac, the Tories might have picked up Doncaster North, Normanton, Alyn and Deeside, Torfaen, both seats in Newport and all seats in Coventry if Leave voters had coalesced around them. So if that Brexit vote shifted to the Tories, Starmer’s task is even harder.
Therefore, I am reluctant to make firm predictions about the next election. Starmer could win, or force a draw, but he needs the dice to fall correctly. We could see considerable churn in both votes and seats - I could see Labour gaining Cheltenham (repeat Cheltenham) and falling further in Wales, for example, under his leadership.
Where the Brexit vote came from and where it would have gone otherwise is interesting.
I suspect it varies around the country.
In some places - Hartlepool and the Yorkshire mining constituencies I think it damaged the Conservatives, in other places it might have damaged Labour.
I will say that I've never seen such an expansive campaign as what TBP did in South Yorkshire - activists infesting town centres, masses of leaflets and even cars with speakers crawling through residential areas.
BTW there's no chance Labour will win Cheltenham - they lost their deposit there in 2019:
It is not so many years ago that Labour lost its deposit in Enfield Southgate and Hove - yet both are now comfortably Labour.In 1966 Labour came within 3000 votes of taking Cheltenham - though there was no Liberal that year.
Can you be a bit more specific on when it was that 'that Labour lost its deposit in Enfield Southgate and Hove'?
Labour lost its deposit at the Enfield Southgate by election held in December 1984 following the death of Anthony Berry in the Brighton bombing outrage. Portillo was elected as the new MP. There was also a by election at Hove in November 1973 when Tim Sainsbury was first elected. In both cases the Deposit threshold was still 12.5% - rather than the 5% we have seen since the mid-1980s.
Boris needs northern wall Leave voters more than he needs the DUP
He lied to both of them
No he didn't. The Irish border solution was based upon the principle of devolution which has long existed and was put up before the General Election.
Fig leaf.
If devolution is a fig leaf why did Tony Blair introduce it? Do you want it to be abolished?
Devolution isn't a fig leaf. But offering this as a valid rationale for Johnson accepting the border that he previously ruled out as unconscionable certainly is.
Its perfectly acceptable. In fact the principle that Stormont could agree to differences from GB was agreed all along.
If it was agreed all along why did Johnson say it was unacceptable?
Because May was looking to impose the backstop without Stormont getting a say or a way out of it. That was unacceptable.
Boris fixed that. He agreed a new arrangement and Stormont can vote to end those arrangements if they're not happy with them.
Any other question?
Only the same one -
Why did Johnson he would 'never never never' accept a border in the Irish Sea?
Because he wouldn't accept it.
Instead he got a border between the UK as a whole and the EU, but with special devolved arrangements for NI that Stormont can end if they don't like it.
He said he would never accept it. There were no caveats. Indeed he got a standing ovation for the strength and resolution of his rhetoric on this issue. Which is exactly what it proved to be.
You need to accept this in your heart and mind even if you can't do so in an internet conversation with me.
He didn't accept it. It never happened.
Trying to pretend devolved arrangements are a border is absurd.
I am not sure he will. After the post-pandemic crash and post- no deal crash the single market, and all its trappings will not be so unappealing, particularly if it is packaged and labelled as something else.
He will just take us into the something else, his voting coalition will demand it.
The single market is not going to disappear
By 2024 we will have had a brutal education as a nation about how world trade works. Going into a big trade block for our own protection will appeal in ways that today's "lets tear up every trade deal with everyone" position appeals.
We aren't going to rejoin the EU. But joining the EEA to act as a free trade Bulwark against the feckless Europeans? That can be positively spun. Especially after a few years of 30%+ tariffs and every country proposing a trade deal doing outrageous things like insisting we obey their own trade laws and standards.
I rather suspect the education we get will be quite the opposite!
As the EU looks set for years more wrangling and arguing between the wealthy north and poorly south, with bailouts and malaise ongoing in Europe we will see them and think "thank goodness that is not us".
Your side have been saying we'll be worse off than the Europeans since I was a child. I grew up reading articles about how because the UK wasn't joining the Euro the UK was going to suffer. I became an adult early in Tony Blair's governance and did my thesis on whether Britain should join the Euro. These debates are not new yet for every decade this century so far the UK has done better than the Eurozone - and the next few years look set to be the same.
If in 2024 the UK is growing while the Eurozone is still stuck in a quagmire with arguments between struggling Italy/Spain and rich Netherland/Germany then why would the public want to touch that with a ten foot bargepole?
Problem is that I made a point about how no trade deals with anyone will work and you tried to prove me wrong by talking about the EU. We have left the EU. How the EU does will have little impact over our experience of trying to exclusively use WTO whilst avoiding what that means (via GATT24) despite the head of the WTO saying we're talking bollocks about how the WTO works.
The very basis of the "no deal go WTO" strategy is based on a fundamental ignorance of how the WTO works according to the head of the WTO. Perhaps we will be surprised and discover that Iain Duncan Smith is right about how the WTO works and the man running the WTO is wrong about how the WTO works. Perhaps not...
I'm speaking about the EU because that's our neighbour that people will see on the news.
If the UK economy is growing and the Eurozone is mired in malaise do you think the public are going to want to move closer back to Europe?
If the UK economy is growing it will be vs the pit the virus is making us all slide into. 30%+ tariffs and swathes of red tape will make us grow faster or slower than if we didn't have said tariffs and red tape?
Well we can compare directly with the Eurozone.
So long as we have a Tory government I think local control, long regulations and a free floating currency and local Central Bank will enable us to grow faster than the Eurozone.
What impact do you see swathes of red tape and large tariffs having?
Boris needs northern wall Leave voters more than he needs the DUP
He lied to both of them
No he didn't. The Irish border solution was based upon the principle of devolution which has long existed and was put up before the General Election.
Fig leaf.
If devolution is a fig leaf why did Tony Blair introduce it? Do you want it to be abolished?
Devolution isn't a fig leaf. But offering this as a valid rationale for Johnson accepting the border that he previously ruled out as unconscionable certainly is.
Its perfectly acceptable. In fact the principle that Stormont could agree to differences from GB was agreed all along.
If it was agreed all along why did Johnson say it was unacceptable?
Because May was looking to impose the backstop without Stormont getting a say or a way out of it. That was unacceptable.
Boris fixed that. He agreed a new arrangement and Stormont can vote to end those arrangements if they're not happy with them.
Any other question?
Only the same one -
Why did Johnson he would 'never never never' accept a border in the Irish Sea?
'Cos he thought it sounded good ?
(Or perhaps just taking the piss out of the late Ian Paisley - though he missed out a 'never'.)
That was one of the great speeches - Paisley's, I mean, not Johnson's.
I remember how he used to be able to get huge numbers onto the streets of NI back then. Very visceral.
It was to ensure that the costs of the City crash and bailout were loaded onto those with the broadest shoulders - people on benefits.
Yeah, sure. The fact that families with children were not able to get accommodation at the same time that taxpayers (many of whom were themselves without spare bedrooms) were subsidising people in the same area to have more accommodation than they needed doesn't need to be mentioned, even in passing, by the left.
Has there ever been a cost/benefit analysis of the policy since its inception ?
I don't know, but no-one ever attacks it on the basis that it isn't terribly effective, they attack on the basis that it shows the the evil Tories deliberately wanted to screw over the poor. Perhaps if they started by acknowledging the entirely good intentions behind the policy, we might then be able to move on to a sensible discussion of effectiveness. That would be a great step forward, in this and in other political controversies.
Which is why I asked the question. The immediate costs are obvious; no one, as far as I'm aware, has demonstrated the actual benefits achieved.
I am unconvinced by the policy, which I see as an example of Tory-virtue signalling, but I'm open to evidence.
It was to ensure that the costs of the City crash and bailout were loaded onto those with the broadest shoulders - people on benefits.
Yeah, sure. The fact that families with children were not able to get accommodation at the same time that taxpayers (many of whom were themselves without spare bedrooms) were subsidising people in the same area to have more accommodation than they needed doesn't need to be mentioned, even in passing, by the left.
You believe the measure was driven by fairness more than by deficit reduction?
Boris needs northern wall Leave voters more than he needs the DUP
He lied to both of them
No he didn't. The Irish border solution was based upon the principle of devolution which has long existed and was put up before the General Election.
Fig leaf.
If devolution is a fig leaf why did Tony Blair introduce it? Do you want it to be abolished?
Devolution isn't a fig leaf. But offering this as a valid rationale for Johnson accepting the border that he previously ruled out as unconscionable certainly is.
Its perfectly acceptable. In fact the principle that Stormont could agree to differences from GB was agreed all along.
If it was agreed all along why did Johnson say it was unacceptable?
Because May was looking to impose the backstop without Stormont getting a say or a way out of it. That was unacceptable.
Boris fixed that. He agreed a new arrangement and Stormont can vote to end those arrangements if they're not happy with them.
Any other question?
Only the same one -
Why did Johnson he would 'never never never' accept a border in the Irish Sea?
Because he wouldn't accept it.
Instead he got a border between the UK as a whole and the EU, but with special devolved arrangements for NI that Stormont can end if they don't like it.
He said he would never accept it. There were no caveats. Indeed he got a standing ovation for the strength and resolution of his rhetoric on this issue. Which is exactly what it proved to be.
You need to accept this in your heart and mind even if you can't do so in an internet conversation with me.
The difficulty lies in that PT is one of the few Brexiteers where from there 2018/early 2019 position the final deal was better than Mays deal, so for him it is an improvement. On the positions the PM and nearly all the cabinet laid out before they were in power, the final deal is a surrender compared to Mays deal.
Children don't need their own bedroom. My own children have bunk beds and are quite happy with it, I see no reason they need their own bedroom. So I'm happy to practice as I preach.
My children also had bunkbeds. Then my son hit puberty and likes to masturbate all the bloody time, so sharing a room with his 8 year old sister wasn't a good idea...
My children aren't that old and are both of the same gender but surely the misnamed "bedroom tax" wouldn't apply there? If one child is aged 10 or more and is of a different gender to their sibling they're not expected to share a room.
No the issue with the Bedroom Tax was that in so many places there literally were no alternative homes to move into. "You have a Spare Bedroom". OK find me a 2 bed house then. "There are only 3 bed houses available. Your fault, you will pay". And that the rules were as usual with recent Tory welfare policies arbitrary and cruel - your child just died? Pay the tax. You have children who don't live with you but need a bedroom for you to have access? Pay the tax. You sleep in separate rooms cos your partner is chronically sick and has lots of medical equipment? Pay the tax.
It is absolutely staggering - but very revealing - that you don't bother to mention, even in passing, the government's motivation for charging people a bit more for extra rooms they no longer need.
We can rectify that.
It was to ensure that the costs of the City crash and bailout were loaded onto those with the broadest shoulders - people on benefits.
How much was being spent on a "City crash and bailout" by the Tories?
Don't be so literal, Philip.
We're talking about the consequent fiscal hole that George and David were busting a gut to fill - by slashing benefits.
Don't be so literal meaning don't use facts?
Fine you can use lies and myths like the City was being bailed out in 2010 causing the deficit of 2010 . . . But just know what you are saying is "literally" not true.
Comments
i.e. when we have made sure any whistle-blowers over our own handling have been identified and safely disappeared into the labour camp system.
What prompted the leave vote started with the deindustrialisation of the 1980s. When Brits went abroad looking for work not the other way round. Decades on with nothing changing, blaming people who arrived 20 years after the downfall of these communities is something your party has been very successful in doing but it doesn't mean its remotely correct. Did Easington nearly end up with a Tory MP because the post-industrial scarred communities were brought to their knees and left to fend for themselves in the 80s? Or because of the guys who set up a hand car wash 20 years later?
Your party benefited. It has some smart politicians up here who know the communities and their issues. Sadly you are not one of those.
hmm, you've miss translated. It should be -
"Once we have ensured that our unique cultural norms have been applied and protected, rather than racist imperialistic Western so-called values."
You can, of course, omit outliers, but I must admit I hate doing so, unless I'm absolutely convinced that they are due to special conditions unlikely to be repeated. There are few enough observations in this time series anyway. The 1929 election wouldn't have been affected by the Great Depression, which hadn't got going yet (it was in May, the Wall Street Crash was in October).
I'm category 4, my wife is category 2, my dad is category 3 and my grandparents are category 1. Now how should I act under your proposal? I see only talk about the individual not their loved ones? Since I'm category 4 should I act that way?
Because if I pass do and catch the disease then pass it on to my wife, dad or granddad then I'm not going to feel any better because I'm "low risk".
The single market is not going to disappear
Wilson also closed more mines than Thatcher ever did. Manufacturing output rose during Thatcher's premiership
https://www.conservativehome.com/leftwatch/2013/04/wilson-closed-more-coal-mines-than-thatcher.html
We aren't going to rejoin the EU. But joining the EEA to act as a free trade Bulwark against the feckless Europeans? That can be positively spun. Especially after a few years of 30%+ tariffs and every country proposing a trade deal doing outrageous things like insisting we obey their own trade laws and standards.
OXIS Energy and CODEMGE sign lease agreement with Mercedes Benz Brazil to build world’s first Li-S manufacturing plant
https://oxisenergy.com/wp-content-uploads-2020-05-oxis-mbb-final-pressor-pdf-pdf/
A commercially viable lithium/sulphur battery would be very interesting indeed.
He has become increasingly frustrated at what he sees as people ignoring social distancing rules.
"If you look down Stratford Road, you would not think there was a pandemic.
"We try to keep people apart, but they don't listen. They think you're trying to be in command, but it's about safety."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-52589775
Another week and its the end of Ramadan. I don't know how this is going to pan out, given government messaging that people appear to take what they want from.
https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1262190840354672647
The Koreans contact traced to four degrees of separation:
https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1262192164689399808
'Robertson also likened the efforts of Unionists to keep Scotland tied to the UK with those of Abraham Lincoln's fight against slavery when he stated, "they might look more relevantly at the Civil War where hundreds of thousands of Americans perished in a war to keep the new Union together. To Lincoln and his compatriots the Union was so precious, so important, and its integrity so valuable that rivers of blood would be spilt to keep it together."'
None of the three mainstream parties were interested in immigration as an issue. They dismissed people who raised it as bigots, and claimed they couldn't do anything anyway because of the EU.
Ignoring voters is not a long-term solution.
For all the damage that Brexit will cause we won't have the simple experiment to prove cause and effect. People will choose to believe what they want to believe and it won't change minds.
By 2024 the country will have gone some way to adjusting to the new Brexit normal and any promise of economic gain from a closer relationship with the EU will feel very hypothetical. It could look like a great big bureaucratic waste of time compared to dealing with the more immediate post-Coronavirus problems. Which would be ironic given the vast bureaucratic waste that implementing Brexit has been and will be, but in terms of anticipating electoral consequences, appearances are more important than realities.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/18/two-week-quarantine-uk-airport-arrivals-rail-sea
The same point applies to Tory seats in the North and the Midlands which in 2019 produced big Tory majorities. But are seats such as Bassetlaw and Grimsby REALLY safe for the Tories - or was was it simply the coincidence of specific factors at that time? If Tory success in those seats was very largely due to Corbyn and Brexit, how unlikely is it that the disappearance of such factors will bring about a reversion to the status quo ante? It may be worth recalling that those formerly safely Tory seats in Kent, Essex and Hertfordshire which swung sharply to Labour in 1997 and 2001 are now very safely Tory again. The same applies to seats in Havering.
https://twitter.com/indyscotnews/status/1262089941623934976?s=20
As the EU looks set for years more wrangling and arguing between the wealthy north and poorly south, with bailouts and malaise ongoing in Europe we will see them and think "thank goodness that is not us".
Your side have been saying we'll be worse off than the Europeans since I was a child. I grew up reading articles about how because the UK wasn't joining the Euro the UK was going to suffer. I became an adult early in Tony Blair's governance and did my thesis on whether Britain should join the Euro. These debates are not new yet for every decade this century so far the UK has done better than the Eurozone - and the next few years look set to be the same.
If in 2024 the UK is growing while the Eurozone is still stuck in a quagmire with arguments between struggling Italy/Spain and rich Netherland/Germany then why would the public want to touch that with a ten foot bargepole?
In areas where there is high immigration, the immigrants are much less "Other"
They will travel less. I fully expect to travel less to France and Germany for work, but the meetings will still happen now that people can see how well it works.
People will have much less need to travel from Birmingham to london and vice versa, it is surely undeniable. HS2 is the Amstrad Emailer of travel solutions
Boris fixed that. He agreed a new arrangement and Stormont can vote to end those arrangements if they're not happy with them.
Any other question?
https://twitter.com/LordAshcroft/status/1262085956359852032?s=20
It was to ensure that the costs of the City crash and bailout were loaded onto those with the broadest shoulders - people on benefits.
90% lol reaction amongst my acquaintances...but we are blessed with common sense perhaps :-)
The very basis of the "no deal go WTO" strategy is based on a fundamental ignorance of how the WTO works according to the head of the WTO. Perhaps we will be surprised and discover that Iain Duncan Smith is right about how the WTO works and the man running the WTO is wrong about how the WTO works. Perhaps not...
And the danger in omitting outliers due to special circumstances is that you can create special circumstances for almost any election.
2019, of course, was the Brexit election. We can omit it because that's not a variable that's going to repeat.
2017 was the Election That The Tories Blew. The one that May seemed to take every possible opportunity to hand votes to Labour. Obviously, they'll have learned from that and we can't expect any future election to be as perfectly pushed towards Labour (as 2019 showed).
2015 happened in the wake of the first peacetime Coalition since the Thirties. We can't possibly take any lessons from that for "normal" elections.
2010 happened in the aftermath of the Great Financial Crash. If 1931 can't be taken as relevant, certainly neither can 2010.
So, in the post 1997 landscape, only '97, '01, and '05 can count as relevant. from which we can conclude that the natural state of things is a strong working Labour majority...
(For the avoidance of doubt, I certainly don't believe this. The main point is that when you start discarding data as not relevant for special circumstances, you've got to be damn sure of it and it's incredibly easy to discard almost any data)
If the UK economy is growing and the Eurozone is mired in malaise do you think the public are going to want to move closer back to Europe?
Why did Johnson he would 'never never never' accept a border in the Irish Sea?
Instead he got a border between the UK as a whole and the EU, but with special devolved arrangements for NI that Stormont can end if they don't like it.
(Or perhaps just taking the piss out of the late Ian Paisley - though he missed out a 'never'.)
Eric Trump claims coronavirus is Democratic hoax, will ‘magically’ vanish after 2020 election
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/05/17/eric-trump-coronavirus/
We're talking about the consequent fiscal hole that George and David were busting a gut to fill - by slashing benefits.
How did the removal of manufacturing output and their replacement with rubble and eventually warehouses have anything to do with changes to transition controls 20 years years later?
Personally I think a border inside our country is a Bad Thing. Apparently if you support the unionist party its a Good Thing.
Btw the proper way to deal with outliers in statistical models is to downweight them, so that you are not throwing the data away but the results are skewed less by one or two questionable points. Of course this introduces the next question, "by how much do I downweight the outliers?"
https://twitter.com/TheScotsman/status/1262344647466201091?s=20
So long as we have a Tory government I think local control, long regulations and a free floating currency and local Central Bank will enable us to grow faster than the Eurozone.
Also worth recalling that not only was Wilson's majority of 97 from 1966 overturned in 1970, but so also was Macmillan's 101 majority from 1959.
You need to accept this in your heart and mind even if you can't do so in an internet conversation with me.
Though unless the media requested to be lobotomised and castrated voluntarily their status invokes pity in me now. Poor devils.
The number of people helped per pound spent might go up. But that is completely irrelevant.
I am pro-manufacturing, but there is little that could have been done to stop the structural changes of the 1970s and 80s.
Looking forward rather than clinging to a failing past has to be the better option.
I hope that the virus changing how people live will mean a changing to planning and housing policies. The space to live and work at home vs a rabbit hutch at silly prices because its close to the train station.
Maria Diva do Nascimento was worried as she set off for her job at one of Rio de Janeiro’s biggest hospitals wearing a face mask she hoped would keep her alive.
It had been two days since she had heard from her son Allyson, a 20-year-old drug trafficker whose job made social isolation impossible.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/18/rio-de-janeiro-police-raid-coronavirus
There was also a by election at Hove in November 1973 when Tim Sainsbury was first elected. In both cases the Deposit threshold was still 12.5% - rather than the 5% we have seen since the mid-1980s.
Trying to pretend devolved arrangements are a border is absurd.
I remember how he used to be able to get huge numbers onto the streets of NI back then. Very visceral.
I am unconvinced by the policy, which I see as an example of Tory-virtue signalling, but I'm open to evidence.
Fine you can use lies and myths like the City was being bailed out in 2010 causing the deficit of 2010 . . . But just know what you are saying is "literally" not true.
I'd rather deal with literal facts.
https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/8/20-0633_article
Which even describes the popularity of 'Latin rhythms'.