While I wouldn't deny that there was workplace racism in the NHS internally, it certainly is a common experience for public facing staff.
Son of a colleague of mine once had a patient ask for another doctor as they had a polish surname. Not that it matters, but they were third generation British (which actually has led to the opposite issue, where someone assumed they would know how to speak polish to a patient). I dread to think of how many other examples like that there are.
I am not convinced either of 'build build build' (depending what is meant by that exhortation I suppose) or of the need for a stimulus package. We need to be very careful with both. Hopefully the lessons from Brown's pointless VAT reduction have been noted.
Hey, we are currently mired in scandal about property development. What should we do?
Make a speech about building...
Johnson's bricking it.
I am mortarfied by that pun.
It's cementing my reputation for excellence.
(Am I stretchering a point there?)
As falt goes you're not blameless.
Now if Malcolm pitches in (tee hee) then I can say, 'ta mac'.
I like to think a punning contest on building could be a bond between us all.
I don't think there is much chance of the payment to be larger than the original membership fee, especially if it's only for access to the single market (which everyone has anyway).
The EU is going to have us over the proverbial barrel. £350million a week is cheap compared to the downside cost & we can’t afford the downside cost right now. Without coronavirus it might have been doable, but those costs + the immediate costs of a hard exit from the EU without the border capacity required to process necessary imports+exports?
NB. I’m not saying that they EU will charge us that much, merely that they could do if they chose to & we’d simply have to suck it up. If the capacity was in place to avoid the immediate negative impact we could probably weather a hard Brexit if we had to, but without? Ultimately I don’t think the government will do it & this will get increasingly clear as we get closer to January.
Of course, I could be completely wrong: Cummings and friends will take their accelerationist thesis to it’s natural conclusion & will be trying to engineer total Brexit in order to rip the UK state apart in the chaos that follows. It’s what he’s always wanted after all.
From Cummings POV, the chaos of a cliff-edged Brexit is the point. The real question is: will Johnson & Tory MPs stay in line right up to that cliff-edge and jump off with him?
Workplace racism is a difficult one to gauge as there is a lot of perceived racism that isn't actually. I promoted a white woman ahead of a black guy late last year. Initially there was a lot of worry about it being seen as a racial decision and I got called into HR to explain why on the record in case there was a complaint (which there was) and it simply came down to her work performance being consistently better and I had the numbers to back that up. Race didn't even enter the equation until it was pointed out to me that it may be an issue.
I'm sure that he would respond that he has faced workplace racism because of that decision but in reality it wasn't.
Sorry but that poll cannt be an objective assessment of the situation. Perception is not truth.
For the vast bulk of humanity, perception is reality.
(Actually perception is reality for all of us since we can never experience the world directly)
I really hope Matt will quietly fuck off now he's got no power on the front bench. With Milne, perhaps the worst Labour adviser ever.
The Labour Party is a disgusting cesspit.
As is the conservative party
Won't stop people arguing that their cesspit smells great though.
It'd be so much better if people could say their side is a lesser shade of grey than the other, rather than that one is black or white. The latter is just implausible, the former will be mostly subjective but cases could at least be made.
Anyone who voted for either main party on the grounds of anti-racism is a filthy hypocrite.
I have more respect for those who abstained.
Only one party was institutionally racist and that's the one you wanted to win the election at the time of the last election (even if you say otherwise now). Your attempts of whatabouterism is nonsensical.
I did want Labour to win and I have never said otherwise. But I don't claim to vote for the Tories on grounds of anti-racism, as you do.
Sayeeda Warsi says the Tories have an Islamophobia problem. I know you'll say she's talking nonsense but if I said a Labour Jewish Peer was making up anti-Semitism or exaggerating it, you would call me anti-Semitic (and you would have good grounds to argue as such).
You are without a doubt, the biggest hypocrite on this website - and the most boring to talk to because you are so closed minded. Mostly every other Tory I can talk to and find common ground with on some issues (with some other notable exceptions) but with you, you will defend the Tories and take the CCHQ line regardless of what they do.
Talking to you thus is a waste of my time and I will refrain in future. I can read the Daily Mail and the Telegraph to get an idea of your views and save myself some time. Good day.
While @Philip_Thompson usually takes the party line, he does notably deviate on some issues, BLM for example.
The only Trotskyite who changes their view when the party line changes is @HYUFD as far as I can see. Pretty much everyone else deviates from their party line at times.
Workplace racism is a difficult one to gauge as there is a lot of perceived racism that isn't actually. I promoted a white woman ahead of a black guy late last year. Initially there was a lot of worry about it being seen as a racial decision and I got called into HR to explain why on the record in case there was a complaint (which there was) and it simply came down to her work performance being consistently better and I had the numbers to back that up. Race didn't even enter the equation until it was pointed out to me that it may be an issue.
I'm sure that he would respond that he has faced workplace racism because of that decision but in reality it wasn't.
It's a bit worrying that the complainant thought it must be racism rather than something like performance.
Most people (across the board) rather overestimate their abilities. If you believe (quite possibly wrongly) that you are the best person for the job, it's somewhat natural to try to explain it by something else. And everyone can find something - whether racism, sexism, ageism, or in the case of middle aged white hetrosexual men like myself, reverse discrimination. It's not an attractive truth, but it's not new, surprising, or limited to one group of people.
The fact people overestimate their abilities is supported by quite a bit of research. If you ask a person to rate their talents, charisma, physical attractiveness, driving skill or pretty much anything, they will fairly consistently rate themselves higher than other people will rate them on the same measures. The one group who are very realistic in their assessments are those who are clinically depressed.
That itself is pretty depressing - that the depressed are likely to be more right about their own abilities than anyone else.
But does that mean we then rate ourselves more accurately?
I am not convinced either of 'build build build' (depending what is meant by that exhortation I suppose) or of the need for a stimulus package. We need to be very careful with both. Hopefully the lessons from Brown's pointless VAT reduction have been noted.
Hey, we are currently mired in scandal about property development. What should we do?
Make a speech about building...
Johnson's bricking it.
I am mortarfied by that pun.
It's cementing my reputation for excellence.
(Am I stretchering a point there?)
As falt goes you're not blameless.
Now if Malcolm pitches in (tee hee) then I can say, 'ta mac'.
I like to think a punning contest on building could be a bond between us all.
I may include a straw man
Well, there is an English bond if you want to start there...
I really hope Matt will quietly fuck off now he's got no power on the front bench. With Milne, perhaps the worst Labour adviser ever.
The Labour Party is a disgusting cesspit.
As is the conservative party
Won't stop people arguing that their cesspit smells great though.
It'd be so much better if people could say their side is a lesser shade of grey than the other, rather than that one is black or white. The latter is just implausible, the former will be mostly subjective but cases could at least be made.
I have more respect for those who abstained.
That's what the LDs are traditionally for.
Bastards didn't stand in Cannock Chase.
Which was exasperating because while I was willing to vote Liberal Democrat I wasn't voting Green.
I've never felt the Greens are comparable to other mainstream parties, they are far more radical. I've voted LD in 3 GEs, and I'd not think a suitable alternative would be a Green.
In my case it's more because I felt they don't have anything useful to say on a national level. Their manifesto was arguably less environmentally friendly than Labour's, or even Cameron's 2010 manifesto. So what's the point of voting for them?
I've voted for them for the EU Parliament, which was an irrelevance, and at local level where they have sometimes campaigned smartly on local issues (Although their record in Brighton remains beyond pathetic). But is there a more shrill, useless and irrelevant voice in the Commons than Caroline Lucas?
She's a woman. So she must be 'shrill'.
She achieves a heck of a lot more as a lone voice than most of the make weights on the green benches put together.
Handy word for identifying unconscious misogyny though.
Says somebody who has only dished out abuse to posters since you first started commenting.
Abuse? If anyone has been offended by my posts I sincerely apologise. Not always easy to get the tone right online.
Workplace racism is a difficult one to gauge as there is a lot of perceived racism that isn't actually. I promoted a white woman ahead of a black guy late last year. Initially there was a lot of worry about it being seen as a racial decision and I got called into HR to explain why on the record in case there was a complaint (which there was) and it simply came down to her work performance being consistently better and I had the numbers to back that up. Race didn't even enter the equation until it was pointed out to me that it may be an issue.
I'm sure that he would respond that he has faced workplace racism because of that decision but in reality it wasn't.
It's a bit worrying that the complainant thought it must be racism rather than something like performance.
It's really not, I've been in that situation before as well and as someone who isn't white I wondered whether it played a role in the decision and had an informal sit down with the manager and he explained it was a performance related but later found out the person who got the promotion was the nephew of a VP level manager so I left that job. What I had initially put down to possibly being racism was in fact nepotism.
It's quite possible I misunderstood your post, and the complaint was simply trying to work out why they were overlooked rather than a direct accusation of it being because of racism.
I was accused of making a decision based on race, which I didn't. I'm certain that said person still suspects it was race based despite it being a numbers based decision.
In my own case I didn't make an official complaint but had a chat to find out what the reason actually was and if they had fluffed it then I would have concluded it was a racial discrimination case and quit, but it turned out of be nepotism so I found a new job.
I think, as the Sky polling expert has just said, Boris's recent announcements have been popular as is his optimism and the polling should see a substantial move to him if it succeeds, but less so if it goes wrong
I do not see anyone on thos forum, Scott included, who would disagree with this polling expert
I am here to prove you wrong G, the man is a bumbling useless lying toerag, he could not run a bath. Anyone thinking he is great is severely mentally challenged.
Morning David, thanks for the excellent piece. Interestingly, on our chat group, the US-based Republicans on there are more gloomy about Trump and are saying they are seeing on their Twitter feeds calls saying unless Trump starts being more "true" to form, he won't get their votes in November.
However, I am going to list the 4 points I listed yesterday as to why I think talk of a Biden landslide is taking things too far.
1. State polls are notoriously unreliable - 2016 proved that; 2. There are a lot of DKs / undecided in the national polls - they could be but there is a fair chance of shy Trumpsters; 3. Republican Senate candidates are polling better that Trump. That could be because of a genuine enthusiasm gap but another explanation is that Republicans feel less embarrassed stating they will vote for a Senate candidate than Trump; 4. There has been no signs in the four special Congressional elections since the start of the crisis that Trump has lost the support of white suburban voters and possibly even a swing back from 2018.
Also, what about differences between polls? Biden's lead has been widened by the NYT and Fox polls. But look at the Hill poll that came out today
"The four-point lead for the former vice president is down from 10 percentage points in the same poll from June 1-4. Trump trailed Biden 47-37 in that poll."
Biden's YouGov and NPR leads haven't changed from their previous polls.
I think it is too early to be pushing the landslide csll.
I am not convinced either of 'build build build' (depending what is meant by that exhortation I suppose) or of the need for a stimulus package. We need to be very careful with both. Hopefully the lessons from Brown's pointless VAT reduction have been noted.
Hey, we are currently mired in scandal about property development. What should we do?
Make a speech about building...
Johnson's bricking it.
I am mortarfied by that pun.
It's cementing my reputation for excellence.
(Am I stretchering a point there?)
As falt goes you're not blameless.
Now if Malcolm pitches in (tee hee) then I can say, 'ta mac'.
I like to think a punning contest on building could be a bond between us all.
I may include a straw man
Well, there is an English bond if you want to start there...
I am not attacking Lucas for being a woman or anything else. She is still by far and away one of the best MPs in Parliament.
I say I lost respect for her over Brexit because she's always seemed very sensible to me. And she voted down soft Brexit compromises that would have likely passed with the influence she does/did have.
Workplace racism is a difficult one to gauge as there is a lot of perceived racism that isn't actually. I promoted a white woman ahead of a black guy late last year. Initially there was a lot of worry about it being seen as a racial decision and I got called into HR to explain why on the record in case there was a complaint (which there was) and it simply came down to her work performance being consistently better and I had the numbers to back that up. Race didn't even enter the equation until it was pointed out to me that it may be an issue.
I'm sure that he would respond that he has faced workplace racism because of that decision but in reality it wasn't.
It's a bit worrying that the complainant thought it must be racism rather than something like performance.
Most people (across the board) rather overestimate their abilities. If you believe (quite possibly wrongly) that you are the best person for the job, it's somewhat natural to try to explain it by something else. And everyone can find something - whether racism, sexism, ageism, or in the case of middle aged white hetrosexual men like myself, reverse discrimination. It's not an attractive truth, but it's not new, surprising, or limited to one group of people.
The fact people overestimate their abilities is supported by quite a bit of research. If you ask a person to rate their talents, charisma, physical attractiveness, driving skill or pretty much anything, they will fairly consistently rate themselves higher than other people will rate them on the same measures. The one group who are very realistic in their assessments are those who are clinically depressed.
As part of our annual appraisal process we have anonymous 360 degree peer and patient feedback with self ratings too. Pretty universally people score themselves more modestly than peers or patients, the exception being the rare really poor performer.
Workplace racism is a difficult one to gauge as there is a lot of perceived racism that isn't actually. I promoted a white woman ahead of a black guy late last year. Initially there was a lot of worry about it being seen as a racial decision and I got called into HR to explain why on the record in case there was a complaint (which there was) and it simply came down to her work performance being consistently better and I had the numbers to back that up. Race didn't even enter the equation until it was pointed out to me that it may be an issue.
I'm sure that he would respond that he has faced workplace racism because of that decision but in reality it wasn't.
Sorry but that poll cannt be an objective assessment of the situation. Perception is not truth.
For the vast bulk of humanity, perception is reality.
(Actually perception is reality for all of us since we can never experience the world directly)
Perception may be what we take as reality. but that does not make it truth. Ever heard of a mirage?
I think, as the Sky polling experts has just, said Boris's recent announcements have been popular as is his optimism and the polling should see a substantial move to him if it succeeds, but less so if it goes wrong
I do not see anyone on thos forum, Scott included, who would disagree with this polling expert
He has the same problem as Trump in that regard.
You can't troll reality. The virus doesn't care how clever or witty your speech is.
If there is another spike, BoZo will suffer. If the schools don't open, BoZo will suffer.
And Brexit rumbles on. If Nissan closes, BoZo will struggle to spin that as good news.
If the chunnel shudders to a halt, a cheery speech will not help.
The first consignment of chlorine chicken will not help his numbers.
Au contraire. The first consignment of cheap chicken will help his numbers. A subsequent and associated outbreak of salmonella will however, send them crashing again.
Apart from anything else, how much cheaper can chicken get? You can buy a whole chicken for £3 in most supermarkets. Cheaper than an average pint in a pub. Once you allow for retail profit, marketing, UK distribution etc, the cost of the chicken itself is rock-bottom already. I am not convinced that to the average shopper the price would be any lower with chlorinated chicken.
I really hope Matt will quietly fuck off now he's got no power on the front bench. With Milne, perhaps the worst Labour adviser ever.
The Labour Party is a disgusting cesspit.
As is the conservative party
Won't stop people arguing that their cesspit smells great though.
It'd be so much better if people could say their side is a lesser shade of grey than the other, rather than that one is black or white. The latter is just implausible, the former will be mostly subjective but cases could at least be made.
I have more respect for those who abstained.
That's what the LDs are traditionally for.
Bastards didn't stand in Cannock Chase.
Which was exasperating because while I was willing to vote Liberal Democrat I wasn't voting Green.
I've never felt the Greens are comparable to other mainstream parties, they are far more radical. I've voted LD in 3 GEs, and I'd not think a suitable alternative would be a Green.
In my case it's more because I felt they don't have anything useful to say on a national level. Their manifesto was arguably less environmentally friendly than Labour's, or even Cameron's 2010 manifesto. So what's the point of voting for them?
I've voted for them for the EU Parliament, which was an irrelevance, and at local level where they have sometimes campaigned smartly on local issues (Although their record in Brighton remains beyond pathetic). But is there a more shrill, useless and irrelevant voice in the Commons than Caroline Lucas?
She's a woman. So she must be 'shrill'.
She achieves a heck of a lot more as a lone voice than most of the make weights on the green benches put together.
Handy word for identifying unconscious misogyny though.
Says somebody who has only dished out abuse to posters since you first started commenting.
Abuse? If anyone has been offended by my posts I sincerely apologise. Not always easy to get the tone right online.
Not always easy? Why do you think nobody engages with you? Your tone has *never* been right. What have you actually brought to discussions other than one-line put downs that seem to be mostly personal attacks? Here's a sample of your tone from your 84 posts: 'rant' 'whine' 'nonsense' 'Terry Dicks' 'captain fruitloops' 'go and sit in Farage's front garden' 'narrow-minded bigots.' As far as I can see the only useful thing you ever pointed out is that Croatia isn't a member of the euro.
If you don't want to have to apologise for the tone, try being more constructive. Try offering information or insight. I get things wrong and frequently get up other posters' nostrils (particularly those who don't like puns) but I also sometimes put stuff out that's useful. It's noteworthy that even people who don't agree with me, or even like me, still read my posts, just as I still read theirs.
They WANT those red wall seats. They want them BAD.
Has anyone run the numbers on how many seats would be won back if the million or so Labour voters who sat at home, voted again as they have historically?
I am not attacking Lucas for being a woman or anything else. She is still by far and away one of the best MPs in Parliament.
I say I lost respect for her over Brexit because she's always seemed very sensible to me. And she voted down soft Brexit compromises that would have likely passed with the influence she does/did have.
Your first line encapsulates the problems with identity politics entirely. You should be free to criticise any individual without fear of being seen as sexist or racist. Just because someone is a woman, black, Asian or Jewish it doesn't make it impossible for them to be an arsehole deserving of criticism. When we judge people positively because of their sex or skin colour or background and make assumptions about them it will allow individuals to get away with anything.
Workplace racism is a difficult one to gauge as there is a lot of perceived racism that isn't actually. I promoted a white woman ahead of a black guy late last year. Initially there was a lot of worry about it being seen as a racial decision and I got called into HR to explain why on the record in case there was a complaint (which there was) and it simply came down to her work performance being consistently better and I had the numbers to back that up. Race didn't even enter the equation until it was pointed out to me that it may be an issue.
I'm sure that he would respond that he has faced workplace racism because of that decision but in reality it wasn't.
It's a bit worrying that the complainant thought it must be racism rather than something like performance.
Most people (across the board) rather overestimate their abilities. If you believe (quite possibly wrongly) that you are the best person for the job, it's somewhat natural to try to explain it by something else. And everyone can find something - whether racism, sexism, ageism, or in the case of middle aged white hetrosexual men like myself, reverse discrimination. It's not an attractive truth, but it's not new, surprising, or limited to one group of people.
The fact people overestimate their abilities is supported by quite a bit of research. If you ask a person to rate their talents, charisma, physical attractiveness, driving skill or pretty much anything, they will fairly consistently rate themselves higher than other people will rate them on the same measures. The one group who are very realistic in their assessments are those who are clinically depressed.
That itself is pretty depressing - that the depressed are likely to be more right about their own abilities than anyone else.
But does that mean we then rate ourselves more accurately?
I think that can be true in an absolute sense. If other people on average think you have an IQ of 90 and you think you have an IQ of 120, then it COULD be that other people are wrong, not you, and we could prove that.
But it isn't true for something like physical attractiveness as there is no objective measure of that. So, if we say "average" is 5, I say I'm a 7, but others typically say I'm a 4, I can only really be said to be overestimating my beauty.
And, in either case (whether we go around routinely overestimating ourselves of underestimating others or a bit of both) the result is that we tend to overestimate our relative position when it comes to getting a job etc.
I am not attacking Lucas for being a woman or anything else. She is still by far and away one of the best MPs in Parliament.
I say I lost respect for her over Brexit because she's always seemed very sensible to me. And she voted down soft Brexit compromises that would have likely passed with the influence she does/did have.
Your first line encapsulates the problems with identity politics entirely. You should be free to criticise any individual without fear of being seen as sexist or racist. Just because someone is a woman, black, Asian or Jewish it doesn't make it impossible for them to be an arsehole deserving of criticism. When we judge people positively because of their sex or skin colour or background and make assumptions about them it will allow individuals to get away with anything.
Fair point but that isn't really what I was getting at. I saw others attacking her for reasons that to me could be interpreted as bordering on sexist. But for me, it was purely about the decisions that were made.
I have just as much disdain for Chuka and co who held the balance and voted against EEA/CM2.0 and a Customs Union, which would have passed with their support.
They WANT those red wall seats. They want them BAD.
Has anyone run the numbers on how many seats would be won back if the million or so Labour voters who sat at home, voted again as they have historically?
Like 1997 in reverse really, wasn't it? Blair won a landslide because many tories stayed at home. Johnson ditto.
And its funny because in the end I don;t think their politics are that different.
Coronavirus has propelled the American right to a whole new level of batshit crazy.
A rather generous view.
There was an american chappie who went on a march to protest that Covid did not exist and was a conspiracy against his freedom. Two weeks later he had a piccie posted whilst on a ventilator going "OMG! It is real. There IS a virus"
It is evolution in action. At this rate there will be less far-right, religious nut-jobs in a few months time.
Black people are murdering each other in terrible numbers in US cities. In the UK we have a big problem with knife crime deaths in the same community.
Would you call that 'evolution in action?'
If they indulge in a behaviour that wipes them out as a group then that is what it is. The difference is that the Covid crisis has the potential to affect far more people considerably more quickly, so black-on-black killings may happen at too low a level to wipe out a whole group, but Covid could carry off tens of thousands of evanglical there-is-no-virus believers in a week.
Workplace racism is a difficult one to gauge as there is a lot of perceived racism that isn't actually. I promoted a white woman ahead of a black guy late last year. Initially there was a lot of worry about it being seen as a racial decision and I got called into HR to explain why on the record in case there was a complaint (which there was) and it simply came down to her work performance being consistently better and I had the numbers to back that up. Race didn't even enter the equation until it was pointed out to me that it may be an issue.
I'm sure that he would respond that he has faced workplace racism because of that decision but in reality it wasn't.
Sorry but that poll cannt be an objective assessment of the situation. Perception is not truth.
Who do you think would be alble to give an "objective" assessment of the sitution then? Where would such data come from?
They WANT those red wall seats. They want them BAD.
Has anyone run the numbers on how many seats would be won back if the million or so Labour voters who sat at home, voted again as they have historically?
Like 1997 in reverse really, wasn't it? Blair won a landslide because many tories stayed at home. Johnson ditto.
And its funny because in the end I don;t think their politics are that different.
I meant if the Tory vote stayed the same but the million Labour voters who sat at home voted like they did in the past. I am sure one of the many polling/demographics experts who are far more intelligent than me, can provide some insight.
I think, as the Sky polling expert has just said, Boris's recent announcements have been popular as is his optimism and the polling should see a substantial move to him if it succeeds, but less so if it goes wrong
I do not see anyone on thos forum, Scott included, who would disagree with this polling expert
I am here to prove you wrong G, the man is a bumbling useless lying toerag, he could not run a bath. Anyone thinking he is great is severely mentally challenged.
Assuming anything about everyone on the site is brave, Big G. I agree that people like optimism (and it's an impoirtant point for left-wingers like me prone to focus on problemns rather than solutions), but I think that if it goes wrong there will not just be "less of" a boost but a substantial backlash.
I sincerely hope he's right - none of us are fanatical enough to hope for deaths to prove a point, even among attendees of Trump rallies - but it does seem to me that his liking for optimism and popularity has led him into relaxation of lockdown before it was wise. And once again the tone is not consistent - one moment it's celebrate, freedom at last, next moment it's hang on a moment, don't do anything rash. FFS decide on a message and stick to it.
They WANT those red wall seats. They want them BAD.
Has anyone run the numbers on how many seats would be won back if the million or so Labour voters who sat at home, voted again as they have historically?
Wouldn't that depend on whether the Brexit party voters abstained, or drifted to another party?
Workplace racism is a difficult one to gauge as there is a lot of perceived racism that isn't actually. I promoted a white woman ahead of a black guy late last year. Initially there was a lot of worry about it being seen as a racial decision and I got called into HR to explain why on the record in case there was a complaint (which there was) and it simply came down to her work performance being consistently better and I had the numbers to back that up. Race didn't even enter the equation until it was pointed out to me that it may be an issue.
I'm sure that he would respond that he has faced workplace racism because of that decision but in reality it wasn't.
Sorry but that poll cannt be an objective assessment of the situation. Perception is not truth.
Who do you think would be alble to give an "objective" assessment of the sitution then? Where would such data come from?
That's why we have things like juries, tribunals and elections isn't it?
They WANT those red wall seats. They want them BAD.
Has anyone run the numbers on how many seats would be won back if the million or so Labour voters who sat at home, voted again as they have historically?
Wouldn't that depend on whether the Brexit party voters abstained, or drifted to another party?
Assuming all constants stay the same except Labour has a million more voters.
They WANT those red wall seats. They want them BAD.
Has anyone run the numbers on how many seats would be won back if the million or so Labour voters who sat at home, voted again as they have historically?
Like 1997 in reverse really, wasn't it? Blair won a landslide because many tories stayed at home. Johnson ditto.
And its funny because in the end I don;t think their politics are that different.
Johnson won a landslide because many Tories stayed at home?
They WANT those red wall seats. They want them BAD.
Has anyone run the numbers on how many seats would be won back if the million or so Labour voters who sat at home, voted again as they have historically?
Like 1997 in reverse really, wasn't it? Blair won a landslide because many tories stayed at home. Johnson ditto.
And its funny because in the end I don;t think their politics are that different.
I meant if the Tory vote stayed the same but the million Labour voters who sat at home voted like they did in the past. I am sure one of the many polling/demographics experts who are far more intelligent than me, can provide some insight.
A simple/dumb way to simulate this would be to assume the 1 million voters have the same geographic distribution as the labour voters who actually turned out. Sprinkle these extra voters into each constituency and see what happens. Straightforward with Excel and a few hours.
Coronavirus has propelled the American right to a whole new level of batshit crazy.
I'm sorry but I thought religious views had to be respected.
Or is that respect only confined to.....er......certain religions
When did the American right become a religion?
Most of the attacks in that video were from a point of view of strong christian beliefs - not right wing politics.
The correlation between Evangelicalism and the political right is very strong in US politics. As a liberal Christian, I have no problem with facemasks. As an alternative to CPAP or intubation, facemasks are quite natural. Also commonly worn in biblical times for that matter too!
Coronavirus has propelled the American right to a whole new level of batshit crazy.
A rather generous view.
There was an american chappie who went on a march to protest that Covid did not exist and was a conspiracy against his freedom. Two weeks later he had a piccie posted whilst on a ventilator going "OMG! It is real. There IS a virus"
It is evolution in action. At this rate there will be less far-right, religious nut-jobs in a few months time.
Black people are murdering each other in terrible numbers in US cities. In the UK we have a big problem with knife crime deaths in the same community.
Would you call that 'evolution in action?'
If they indulge in a behaviour that wipes them out as a group then that is what it is. The difference is that the Covid crisis has the potential to affect far more people considerably more quickly, so black-on-black killings may happen at too low a level to wipe out a whole group, but Covid could carry off tens of thousands of evanglical there-is-no-virus believers in a week.
It is the scale that really matters.
Not unless those evangelicals were all over 80 with at least two co-morbidities it couldn't.
"Half of UK’s imported Covid-19 infections are from Pakistan
Experts warn that the Government needed to concentrate its resources on screening individuals from 'high risk' countries
More than 65,000 people have travelled to Britain on 190 flights since March 1 from Pakistan, which is reporting 4,000 Covid-19 cases a day, and has seen a new spike in the disease after easing its lockdown measures. Most are thought to have UK passports."
EHRC results should be out quite soon, Starmer has a lot of good will IMHO if he sacks the people that deserve it
I hope sack means "remove the whip" not "remove from Shadow Cabinet".
When will Johnson be sacking Jenrick and removing the Whip from him?
When he engages in a sustained campaign of antisemitism so awful it draws the ire of the EHRC perhaps?
The Tory Party has a massive Islamophobia problem as you well know.
Your views as usual are inconsistent, we know if a Labour MP had been found to be doing what Jenrick has done, you'd be calling for them to lose the Whip.
I know no such thing. Any racists should be expelled from the party.
Criticising Islam, critising the niqab, criticisng misogyny, criticising homophobia is not racism. Any more than criticising paedophile priests is racist. Consistency is not racist.
It can be. Indirect discrimination is when a policy is consistently applied to everyone but particularly affects a group of people because of their protected characteristic. This type of discrimination can sometimes be justified if a policy is “a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim”. This legitimate aim can be something like maintaining a company image or protecting health and safety. Insisting that fruit pickers (as opposed to teachers) speak perfect English, for example, is consistent, but racist as it is a policy that has no legitimate aim - there is no need for fruit pickers to have much more than a basic grasp of English, if that. While criticising homophobia and misogyny in all cases is clearly a legitimate aim, I fail to see how blanket criticism of the niqab is always justified and therefore and not racist.
BTW indirect discrimination also means that provisions impacting Muslims disproportionately impact people of South Asian and Middle Eastern decent, so can be racist as well as islamophobic. Similarly discrimination against Catholics in the UK has often been coded discrimination against Irish people.
The niqab is a misogynistic garment designed to subjugate women and separate them from men so how is it racist to criticise it?
No race demands people wear it. No religion demands people wear it.
It is cultural subjugation and I see nothing racist in condemning misogyny.
They WANT those red wall seats. They want them BAD.
Has anyone run the numbers on how many seats would be won back if the million or so Labour voters who sat at home, voted again as they have historically?
Wouldn't that depend on whether the Brexit party voters abstained, or drifted to another party?
Assuming all constants stay the same except Labour has a million more voters.
Well, I don't think I would ever assume that. It's not physics or maths.
There are many very fluid variables. Certainly getting those former Labour voters who abstained in 2019 is important. But so is peeling off any vote that went to the Tories. Or splitting them from the Brexit party voters, who will be looking for a new home. And working out a policy offering to deal with the ongoing aftermath of the pandemic.
They WANT those red wall seats. They want them BAD.
Has anyone run the numbers on how many seats would be won back if the million or so Labour voters who sat at home, voted again as they have historically?
Wouldn't that depend on whether the Brexit party voters abstained, or drifted to another party?
Assuming all constants stay the same except Labour has a million more voters.
Well, I don't think I would ever assume that. It's not physics or maths.
There are many very fluid variables. Certainly getting those former Labour voters who abstained in 2019 is important. But so is peeling off any vote that went to the Tories. Or splitting them from the Brexit party voters, who will be looking for a new home. And working out a policy offering to deal with the ongoing aftermath of the pandemic.
I just want to see what the election outcome would have been
They WANT those red wall seats. They want them BAD.
Has anyone run the numbers on how many seats would be won back if the million or so Labour voters who sat at home, voted again as they have historically?
Wouldn't that depend on whether the Brexit party voters abstained, or drifted to another party?
Assuming all constants stay the same except Labour has a million more voters.
Well, I don't think I would ever assume that. It's not physics or maths.
There are many very fluid variables. Certainly getting those former Labour voters who abstained in 2019 is important. But so is peeling off any vote that went to the Tories. Or splitting them from the Brexit party voters, who will be looking for a new home. And working out a policy offering to deal with the ongoing aftermath of the pandemic.
The other variable is what would the gains be from Competent Campaign Targeting?
While I'm not in Romford, I'm in Dewsbury Constituency. That went from a 3000ish Labour majority to 1500ish Conservative. The campaign was freepost leaflets and lamp-post signs. That really shouldn't have happened.
Workplace racism is a difficult one to gauge as there is a lot of perceived racism that isn't actually. I promoted a white woman ahead of a black guy late last year. Initially there was a lot of worry about it being seen as a racial decision and I got called into HR to explain why on the record in case there was a complaint (which there was) and it simply came down to her work performance being consistently better and I had the numbers to back that up. Race didn't even enter the equation until it was pointed out to me that it may be an issue.
I'm sure that he would respond that he has faced workplace racism because of that decision but in reality it wasn't.
It's a bit worrying that the complainant thought it must be racism rather than something like performance.
Most people (across the board) rather overestimate their abilities. If you believe (quite possibly wrongly) that you are the best person for the job, it's somewhat natural to try to explain it by something else. And everyone can find something - whether racism, sexism, ageism, or in the case of middle aged white hetrosexual men like myself, reverse discrimination. It's not an attractive truth, but it's not new, surprising, or limited to one group of people.
The fact people overestimate their abilities is supported by quite a bit of research. If you ask a person to rate their talents, charisma, physical attractiveness, driving skill or pretty much anything, they will fairly consistently rate themselves higher than other people will rate them on the same measures. The one group who are very realistic in their assessments are those who are clinically depressed.
That itself is pretty depressing - that the depressed are likely to be more right about their own abilities than anyone else.
I'm not sure it is. Being totally realistic and honest with ourselves would be a disaster, and being utterly unrealistic would be delusional. Psychologically "normal" people get the balance about right, which is being slightly but not dangerously unrealistic. That's basically fine and evolutionarily adaptive.
It's true even for basic perception. We think we're seeing what is happening right now within our field of vision but that's an illusion. We're actually seeing a tiny fraction and making assumptions about the rest based on visual experience. And we tend to have a slightly unrealistic or exaggerated assumptions when presented with salient things. But that's normally a good thing - you can find situations where it isn't, but normally it's a positive.
Thank you for the piece, David, as always an excellent read to start the weekend.
I'm going to offer something different which I think shows the polls aren't as good for Biden as the headline figures suggest.
Taking the latest PBS/Marist poll and comparing it to the 2016 vote and looking at the four "regions" of the US:
In the Northeast which provided 19% of the vote in 2016, Biden leads 62-34 whereas Clinton won the region 55-40 in 2016. That might give Biden a shot at PA and Maine 2 but the Democrats already have a stranglehold on most of the other states.
In the West (21% of the vote in 2016), Biden leads 60-36 compared to 55-39 last time. Biden might win Arizona but all he is doing is piling up votes where he doesn't need them in California.
In the South (37% of the vote in 2016), Trump leads 49-45 whereas he won the region 52-44 in 2016 so the position is little changed with Biden so the question is whether Biden is making any headway in Georgia or Florida or is Trump piling up votes in Kentucky, Tennessee and Mississippi to name but three.
Finally, to the battleground, the Midwest which contributed 23% of the vote last time and which Trump won 49-45. Currently he is up 52-45 so he has improved his position on 2016.
So my reading is Trump's position is far stronger than the headline numbers suggest. Biden is piling up votes where he doesn't need them (the Northeast and the West) but not picking them up where he does in the Midwest and South.
This election is far from over.
I think Trump will lose but not by a landslide. Based on the state polls and Betfair odds by state, my best guess is that Trump will get 220 EC plus or minus a chunk. PP are offering 7/2 for Trump to get 200-250 EC. I think that is excellent value.
Workplace racism is a difficult one to gauge as there is a lot of perceived racism that isn't actually. I promoted a white woman ahead of a black guy late last year. Initially there was a lot of worry about it being seen as a racial decision and I got called into HR to explain why on the record in case there was a complaint (which there was) and it simply came down to her work performance being consistently better and I had the numbers to back that up. Race didn't even enter the equation until it was pointed out to me that it may be an issue.
I'm sure that he would respond that he has faced workplace racism because of that decision but in reality it wasn't.
Sorry but that poll cannt be an objective assessment of the situation. Perception is not truth.
Who do you think would be alble to give an "objective" assessment of the sitution then? Where would such data come from?
That's why we have things like juries, tribunals and elections isn't it?
Not really, no. Over half tribunal claims are settled through a COT3 or a settlement agreement that will usually contain a confidentiality clause. Further, there are many reasons other reasons why matters don't get to a court or tribunal (legal cost, lack of evidence, the burden of being cross examined by a hostile barrister) not least the fact that "racism" per se is not a criminal or a civil offence. Also, on occasion, courts and tribunals have been known to come to the wrong decision - shcocking as that is.
The idea that elections are the final arbiter of what is or is not an individual racist act is farcical.
They WANT those red wall seats. They want them BAD.
Has anyone run the numbers on how many seats would be won back if the million or so Labour voters who sat at home, voted again as they have historically?
Wouldn't that depend on whether the Brexit party voters abstained, or drifted to another party?
Assuming all constants stay the same except Labour has a million more voters.
That seems to be similar to Conservative thought processes between 1997 and 2001.
It should also be noted that Labour got a lot more votes in 2019 than it did in 2015 or 2010.
You might also consider how many votes Labour would lose without, for example, a pledge to scrap tuition fees.
Its fashionable now to demonise Corbyn but he was able to attract many voters as well as repel others.
They WANT those red wall seats. They want them BAD.
Has anyone run the numbers on how many seats would be won back if the million or so Labour voters who sat at home, voted again as they have historically?
Wouldn't that depend on whether the Brexit party voters abstained, or drifted to another party?
Assuming all constants stay the same except Labour has a million more voters.
Well, I don't think I would ever assume that. It's not physics or maths.
There are many very fluid variables. Certainly getting those former Labour voters who abstained in 2019 is important. But so is peeling off any vote that went to the Tories. Or splitting them from the Brexit party voters, who will be looking for a new home. And working out a policy offering to deal with the ongoing aftermath of the pandemic.
I just want to see what the election outcome would have been
I don't think it's possible to model that, because it's too crude an assumption.
Further considerations:
1) What seats were they in? 2) Why did they not vote? 3) To what extent would they have voted 'habitually'? Might some of them have claimed to vote Labour but voted BRexit, or Tory, or Green?
But let's assume that half of them were in seats Labour lost, distributed equally, and that they all voted Labour and that they didn't vote because they expected Labour to win. That gives an extra 1,100 votes (roughly) per seat.
On that basis, the following seats would have gone red:
Bury North Kensington Bury South Bolton NE High Peak Gedling Heywood and Middleton Blyth Valley Stoke on Trent Central Delyn
And two more would have been extremely close toss-ups: NW Durham Bridgend.
So the answer would seem to be - not a lot.
Of course, my own assumptions are pretty crude. But the sheer scale of the defeat means it can't be put down to abstentions alone. There must have been a lot of direct switching.
EHRC results should be out quite soon, Starmer has a lot of good will IMHO if he sacks the people that deserve it
I hope sack means "remove the whip" not "remove from Shadow Cabinet".
When will Johnson be sacking Jenrick and removing the Whip from him?
When he engages in a sustained campaign of antisemitism so awful it draws the ire of the EHRC perhaps?
The Tory Party has a massive Islamophobia problem as you well know.
Your views as usual are inconsistent, we know if a Labour MP had been found to be doing what Jenrick has done, you'd be calling for them to lose the Whip.
I know no such thing. Any racists should be expelled from the party.
Criticising Islam, critising the niqab, criticisng misogyny, criticising homophobia is not racism. Any more than criticising paedophile priests is racist. Consistency is not racist.
It can be. Indirect discrimination is when a policy is consistently applied to everyone but particularly affects a group of people because of their protected characteristic. This type of discrimination can sometimes be justified if a policy is “a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim”. This legitimate aim can be something like maintaining a company image or protecting health and safety. Insisting that fruit pickers (as opposed to teachers) speak perfect English, for example, is consistent, but racist as it is a policy that has no legitimate aim - there is no need for fruit pickers to have much more than a basic grasp of English, if that. While criticising homophobia and misogyny in all cases is clearly a legitimate aim, I fail to see how blanket criticism of the niqab is always justified and therefore and not racist.
BTW indirect discrimination also means that provisions impacting Muslims disproportionately impact people of South Asian and Middle Eastern decent, so can be racist as well as islamophobic. Similarly discrimination against Catholics in the UK has often been coded discrimination against Irish people.
The niqab is a misogynistic garment designed to subjugate women and separate them from men so how is it racist to criticise it?
No race demands people wear it. No religion demands people wear it.
It is cultural subjugation and I see nothing racist in condemning misogyny.
Maybe, but the problem is that when Boris Johnson compares the niqab and burqa to bankrobbers and letter boxes it gives licence to racists, not to those who are against the subjugation of women, to publicly mock and intimidate Muslim women who choose to dress in this way. Which is, indeed, what happened after Boris's famous article. It wasn't feminists taking the piss out of those wearing niqabs, or tearing them off on the street, was it? It was actually racist misogynists. Words have power and should be used with care.
Workplace racism is a difficult one to gauge as there is a lot of perceived racism that isn't actually. I promoted a white woman ahead of a black guy late last year. Initially there was a lot of worry about it being seen as a racial decision and I got called into HR to explain why on the record in case there was a complaint (which there was) and it simply came down to her work performance being consistently better and I had the numbers to back that up. Race didn't even enter the equation until it was pointed out to me that it may be an issue.
I'm sure that he would respond that he has faced workplace racism because of that decision but in reality it wasn't.
It's a bit worrying that the complainant thought it must be racism rather than something like performance.
Most people (across the board) rather overestimate their abilities. If you believe (quite possibly wrongly) that you are the best person for the job, it's somewhat natural to try to explain it by something else. And everyone can find something - whether racism, sexism, ageism, or in the case of middle aged white hetrosexual men like myself, reverse discrimination. It's not an attractive truth, but it's not new, surprising, or limited to one group of people.
The fact people overestimate their abilities is supported by quite a bit of research. If you ask a person to rate their talents, charisma, physical attractiveness, driving skill or pretty much anything, they will fairly consistently rate themselves higher than other people will rate them on the same measures. The one group who are very realistic in their assessments are those who are clinically depressed.
That itself is pretty depressing - that the depressed are likely to be more right about their own abilities than anyone else.
I'm not sure it is. Being totally realistic and honest with ourselves would be a disaster, and being utterly unrealistic would be delusional. Psychologically "normal" people get the balance about right, which is being slightly but not dangerously unrealistic. That's basically fine and evolutionarily adaptive. .
That's what I find depressing, that we need (and I don't doubt it) to be slightly unreaslitic, in general, to fuction.
They WANT those red wall seats. They want them BAD.
Has anyone run the numbers on how many seats would be won back if the million or so Labour voters who sat at home, voted again as they have historically?
Wouldn't that depend on whether the Brexit party voters abstained, or drifted to another party?
Assuming all constants stay the same except Labour has a million more voters.
Well, I don't think I would ever assume that. It's not physics or maths.
There are many very fluid variables. Certainly getting those former Labour voters who abstained in 2019 is important. But so is peeling off any vote that went to the Tories. Or splitting them from the Brexit party voters, who will be looking for a new home. And working out a policy offering to deal with the ongoing aftermath of the pandemic.
I just want to see what the election outcome would have been
I've run it up in Excel.
If you add a million (approx 10% more) vote to Labour, in proportion to the votes they actually received, then Labour would have won 22 more seats:
Birmingham, Northfield Blyth Valley Bolton North East Bridgend Burnley Bury North Bury South Chingford and Woodford Green Chipping Barnet Clwyd South Delyn Dewsbury Gedling Heywood and Middleton High Peak Keighley Kensington Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath North West Durham Stoke-On-Trent Central Warrington South Wolverhampton South West
They WANT those red wall seats. They want them BAD.
Has anyone run the numbers on how many seats would be won back if the million or so Labour voters who sat at home, voted again as they have historically?
Wouldn't that depend on whether the Brexit party voters abstained, or drifted to another party?
Assuming all constants stay the same except Labour has a million more voters.
Well, I don't think I would ever assume that. It's not physics or maths.
There are many very fluid variables. Certainly getting those former Labour voters who abstained in 2019 is important. But so is peeling off any vote that went to the Tories. Or splitting them from the Brexit party voters, who will be looking for a new home. And working out a policy offering to deal with the ongoing aftermath of the pandemic.
I just want to see what the election outcome would have been
I've run it up in Excel.
If you add a million (approx 10% more) vote to Labour, in proportion to the votes they actually received, then Labour would have won 22 more seats:
Birmingham, Northfield Blyth Valley Bolton North East Bridgend Burnley Bury North Bury South Chingford and Woodford Green Chipping Barnet Clwyd South Delyn Dewsbury Gedling Heywood and Middleton High Peak Keighley Kensington Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath North West Durham Stoke-On-Trent Central Warrington South Wolverhampton South West
They WANT those red wall seats. They want them BAD.
Has anyone run the numbers on how many seats would be won back if the million or so Labour voters who sat at home, voted again as they have historically?
Wouldn't that depend on whether the Brexit party voters abstained, or drifted to another party?
Assuming all constants stay the same except Labour has a million more voters.
Well, I don't think I would ever assume that. It's not physics or maths.
There are many very fluid variables. Certainly getting those former Labour voters who abstained in 2019 is important. But so is peeling off any vote that went to the Tories. Or splitting them from the Brexit party voters, who will be looking for a new home. And working out a policy offering to deal with the ongoing aftermath of the pandemic.
The other variable is what would the gains be from Competent Campaign Targeting?
While I'm not in Romford, I'm in Dewsbury Constituency. That went from a 3000ish Labour majority to 1500ish Conservative. The campaign was freepost leaflets and lamp-post signs. That really shouldn't have happened.
As I recall Ruth Smeeth in Stoke on Trent North was furious that activists were sent to the Tory held Stoke on Trent South, when she and Gary Snell in SoT Central were fighting to keep their seats.
They WANT those red wall seats. They want them BAD.
Has anyone run the numbers on how many seats would be won back if the million or so Labour voters who sat at home, voted again as they have historically?
Wouldn't that depend on whether the Brexit party voters abstained, or drifted to another party?
Assuming all constants stay the same except Labour has a million more voters.
Well, I don't think I would ever assume that. It's not physics or maths.
There are many very fluid variables. Certainly getting those former Labour voters who abstained in 2019 is important. But so is peeling off any vote that went to the Tories. Or splitting them from the Brexit party voters, who will be looking for a new home. And working out a policy offering to deal with the ongoing aftermath of the pandemic.
I just want to see what the election outcome would have been
I've run it up in Excel.
If you add a million (approx 10% more) vote to Labour, in proportion to the votes they actually received, then Labour would have won 22 more seats:
Birmingham, Northfield Blyth Valley Bolton North East Bridgend Burnley Bury North Bury South Chingford and Woodford Green Chipping Barnet Clwyd South Delyn Dewsbury Gedling Heywood and Middleton High Peak Keighley Kensington Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath North West Durham Stoke-On-Trent Central Warrington South Wolverhampton South West
EHRC results should be out quite soon, Starmer has a lot of good will IMHO if he sacks the people that deserve it
I hope sack means "remove the whip" not "remove from Shadow Cabinet".
When will Johnson be sacking Jenrick and removing the Whip from him?
When he engages in a sustained campaign of antisemitism so awful it draws the ire of the EHRC perhaps?
The Tory Party has a massive Islamophobia problem as you well know.
Your views as usual are inconsistent, we know if a Labour MP had been found to be doing what Jenrick has done, you'd be calling for them to lose the Whip.
I know no such thing. Any racists should be expelled from the party.
Criticising Islam, critising the niqab, criticisng misogyny, criticising homophobia is not racism. Any more than criticising paedophile priests is racist. Consistency is not racist.
It can be. Indirect discrimination is when a policy is consistently applied to everyone but particularly affects a group of people because of their protected characteristic. This type of discrimination can sometimes be justified if a policy is “a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim”. This legitimate aim can be something like maintaining a company image or protecting health and safety. Insisting that fruit pickers (as opposed to teachers) speak perfect English, for example, is consistent, but racist as it is a policy that has no legitimate aim - there is no need for fruit pickers to have much more than a basic grasp of English, if that. While criticising homophobia and misogyny in all cases is clearly a legitimate aim, I fail to see how blanket criticism of the niqab is always justified and therefore and not racist.
BTW indirect discrimination also means that provisions impacting Muslims disproportionately impact people of South Asian and Middle Eastern decent, so can be racist as well as islamophobic. Similarly discrimination against Catholics in the UK has often been coded discrimination against Irish people.
The niqab is a misogynistic garment designed to subjugate women and separate them from men so how is it racist to criticise it?
No race demands people wear it. No religion demands people wear it.
It is cultural subjugation and I see nothing racist in condemning misogyny.
Maybe, but the problem is that when Boris Johnson compares the niqab and burqa to bankrobbers and letter boxes it gives licence to racists, not to those who are against the subjugation of women, to publicly mock and intimidate Muslim women who choose to dress in this way. Which is, indeed, what happened after Boris's famous article. It wasn't feminists taking the piss out of those wearing niqabs, or tearing them off on the street, was it? It was actually racist misogynists. Words have power and should be used with care.
Racists were racists before that article and nothing changed after that article.
People have taken the piss out of niqabs for as long as they've been on the street and hopefully one day they won't be on the street anymore but until then the women subjugated into wearing them should be respected and pitied.
They WANT those red wall seats. They want them BAD.
Has anyone run the numbers on how many seats would be won back if the million or so Labour voters who sat at home, voted again as they have historically?
Wouldn't that depend on whether the Brexit party voters abstained, or drifted to another party?
Assuming all constants stay the same except Labour has a million more voters.
Well, I don't think I would ever assume that. It's not physics or maths.
There are many very fluid variables. Certainly getting those former Labour voters who abstained in 2019 is important. But so is peeling off any vote that went to the Tories. Or splitting them from the Brexit party voters, who will be looking for a new home. And working out a policy offering to deal with the ongoing aftermath of the pandemic.
I just want to see what the election outcome would have been
I've run it up in Excel.
If you add a million (approx 10% more) vote to Labour, in proportion to the votes they actually received, then Labour would have won 22 more seats:
Birmingham, Northfield Blyth Valley Bolton North East Bridgend Burnley Bury North Bury South Chingford and Woodford Green Chipping Barnet Clwyd South Delyn Dewsbury Gedling Heywood and Middleton High Peak Keighley Kensington Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath North West Durham Stoke-On-Trent Central Warrington South Wolverhampton South West
They WANT those red wall seats. They want them BAD.
Has anyone run the numbers on how many seats would be won back if the million or so Labour voters who sat at home, voted again as they have historically?
Wouldn't that depend on whether the Brexit party voters abstained, or drifted to another party?
Assuming all constants stay the same except Labour has a million more voters.
Well, I don't think I would ever assume that. It's not physics or maths.
There are many very fluid variables. Certainly getting those former Labour voters who abstained in 2019 is important. But so is peeling off any vote that went to the Tories. Or splitting them from the Brexit party voters, who will be looking for a new home. And working out a policy offering to deal with the ongoing aftermath of the pandemic.
I just want to see what the election outcome would have been
I've run it up in Excel.
If you add a million (approx 10% more) vote to Labour, in proportion to the votes they actually received, then Labour would have won 22 more seats:
Birmingham, Northfield Blyth Valley Bolton North East Bridgend Burnley Bury North Bury South Chingford and Woodford Green Chipping Barnet Clwyd South Delyn Dewsbury Gedling Heywood and Middleton High Peak Keighley Kensington Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath North West Durham Stoke-On-Trent Central Warrington South Wolverhampton South West
Boris would still have had a working majority.
Interesting to see that on that model IDS gets the chop.
Morning David, thanks for the excellent piece. Interestingly, on our chat group, the US-based Republicans on there are more gloomy about Trump and are saying they are seeing on their Twitter feeds calls saying unless Trump starts being more "true" to form, he won't get their votes in November.
However, I am going to list the 4 points I listed yesterday as to why I think talk of a Biden landslide is taking things too far.
1. State polls are notoriously unreliable - 2016 proved that; 2. There are a lot of DKs / undecided in the national polls - they could be but there is a fair chance of shy Trumpsters; 3. Republican Senate candidates are polling better that Trump. That could be because of a genuine enthusiasm gap but another explanation is that Republicans feel less embarrassed stating they will vote for a Senate candidate than Trump; 4. There has been no signs in the four special Congressional elections since the start of the crisis that Trump has lost the support of white suburban voters and possibly even a swing back from 2018.
Also, what about differences between polls? Biden's lead has been widened by the NYT and Fox polls. But look at the Hill poll that came out today
"The four-point lead for the former vice president is down from 10 percentage points in the same poll from June 1-4. Trump trailed Biden 47-37 in that poll."
Biden's YouGov and NPR leads haven't changed from their previous polls.
I think it is too early to be pushing the landslide csll.
You are inclined to highlight every shred of evidence that favours Trump and ignores any that doesn't. It is informative but I honestly wouldn't use it as a basis for betting.
The idea that because the polls got it wrong in 2016 they will again sounds exactly like the Corbynista rallying cry in the run up to last December. The RCP averages are more useful than cherry-picking individual polls.
Looking at the Special elections, the turnouts were low and again it sounds like those that tell us all the polls are wrong because the LDs have just had a 20% swing in a by-election somewhere or other.
Trump lost the vote in 2016 but was very fortunate in the way the votes panned out in each state. He would be fortunate to repeat that trick.
The question I ask myself is who is going to vote for Trump this year who didn't in 2016?
It's pretty clear that Biden is clearly ahead right now but most of us accept that things could change over the next four months.
I really hope Matt will quietly fuck off now he's got no power on the front bench. With Milne, perhaps the worst Labour adviser ever.
The Labour Party is a disgusting cesspit.
As is the conservative party
Won't stop people arguing that their cesspit smells great though.
It'd be so much better if people could say their side is a lesser shade of grey than the other, rather than that one is black or white. The latter is just implausible, the former will be mostly subjective but cases could at least be made.
I have more respect for those who abstained.
That's what the LDs are traditionally for.
Bastards didn't stand in Cannock Chase.
Which was exasperating because while I was willing to vote Liberal Democrat I wasn't voting Green.
I've never felt the Greens are comparable to other mainstream parties, they are far more radical. I've voted LD in 3 GEs, and I'd not think a suitable alternative would be a Green.
In my case it's more because I felt they don't have anything useful to say on a national level. Their manifesto was arguably less environmentally friendly than Labour's, or even Cameron's 2010 manifesto. So what's the point of voting for them?
I've voted for them for the EU Parliament, which was an irrelevance, and at local level where they have sometimes campaigned smartly on local issues (Although their record in Brighton remains beyond pathetic). But is there a more shrill, useless and irrelevant voice in the Commons than Caroline Lucas?
She's a woman. So she must be 'shrill'.
She achieves a heck of a lot more as a lone voice than most of the make weights on the green benches put together.
Handy word for identifying unconscious misogyny though.
Says somebody who has only dished out abuse to posters since you first started commenting.
Abuse? If anyone has been offended by my posts I sincerely apologise. Not always easy to get the tone right online.
Not always easy? Why do you think nobody engages with you? Your tone has *never* been right. What have you actually brought to discussions other than one-line put downs that seem to be mostly personal attacks? Here's a sample of your tone from your 84 posts: 'rant' 'whine' 'nonsense' 'Terry Dicks' 'captain fruitloops' 'go and sit in Farage's front garden' 'narrow-minded bigots.' As far as I can see the only useful thing you ever pointed out is that Croatia isn't a member of the euro.
If you don't want to have to apologise for the tone, try being more constructive. Try offering information or insight. I get things wrong and frequently get up other posters' nostrils (particularly those who don't like puns) but I also sometimes put stuff out that's useful. It's noteworthy that even people who don't agree with me, or even like me, still read my posts, just as I still read theirs.
Fair enough, feedback is always appreciated. Although a bit puzzled about what is inappropriate about a reference to Terry Dicks who died recently and was never ashamed to be out-spoken.
EHRC results should be out quite soon, Starmer has a lot of good will IMHO if he sacks the people that deserve it
I hope sack means "remove the whip" not "remove from Shadow Cabinet".
When will Johnson be sacking Jenrick and removing the Whip from him?
When he engages in a sustained campaign of antisemitism so awful it draws the ire of the EHRC perhaps?
The Tory Party has a massive Islamophobia problem as you well know.
Your views as usual are inconsistent, we know if a Labour MP had been found to be doing what Jenrick has done, you'd be calling for them to lose the Whip.
I know no such thing. Any racists should be expelled from the party.
Criticising Islam, critising the niqab, criticisng misogyny, criticising homophobia is not racism. Any more than criticising paedophile priests is racist. Consistency is not racist.
It can be. Indirect discrimination is when a policy is consistently applied to everyone but particularly affects a group of people because of their protected characteristic. This type of discrimination can sometimes be justified if a policy is “a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim”. This legitimate aim can be something like maintaining a company image or protecting health and safety. Insisting that fruit pickers (as opposed to teachers) speak perfect English, for example, is consistent, but racist as it is a policy that has no legitimate aim - there is no need for fruit pickers to have much more than a basic grasp of English, if that. While criticising homophobia and misogyny in all cases is clearly a legitimate aim, I fail to see how blanket criticism of the niqab is always justified and therefore and not racist.
BTW indirect discrimination also means that provisions impacting Muslims disproportionately impact people of South Asian and Middle Eastern decent, so can be racist as well as islamophobic. Similarly discrimination against Catholics in the UK has often been coded discrimination against Irish people.
The niqab is a misogynistic garment designed to subjugate women and separate them from men so how is it racist to criticise it?
No race demands people wear it. No religion demands people wear it.
It is cultural subjugation and I see nothing racist in condemning misogyny.
Lots of white men on here today chiming in. Maybe we should ask someone who actually wears one about it?
They WANT those red wall seats. They want them BAD.
Has anyone run the numbers on how many seats would be won back if the million or so Labour voters who sat at home, voted again as they have historically?
Wouldn't that depend on whether the Brexit party voters abstained, or drifted to another party?
Assuming all constants stay the same except Labour has a million more voters.
Well, I don't think I would ever assume that. It's not physics or maths.
There are many very fluid variables. Certainly getting those former Labour voters who abstained in 2019 is important. But so is peeling off any vote that went to the Tories. Or splitting them from the Brexit party voters, who will be looking for a new home. And working out a policy offering to deal with the ongoing aftermath of the pandemic.
I just want to see what the election outcome would have been
I've run it up in Excel.
If you add a million (approx 10% more) vote to Labour, in proportion to the votes they actually received, then Labour would have won 22 more seats:
Birmingham, Northfield Blyth Valley Bolton North East Bridgend Burnley Bury North Bury South Chingford and Woodford Green Chipping Barnet Clwyd South Delyn Dewsbury Gedling Heywood and Middleton High Peak Keighley Kensington Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath North West Durham Stoke-On-Trent Central Warrington South Wolverhampton South West
Boris would still have had a working majority.
That makes the assumption it would be a net gain in 1m votes, it doesn't take into account the cost of winning those additional votes. To gain those 1m votes Labour would lose votes from other parts of the coalition.
They WANT those red wall seats. They want them BAD.
Has anyone run the numbers on how many seats would be won back if the million or so Labour voters who sat at home, voted again as they have historically?
Wouldn't that depend on whether the Brexit party voters abstained, or drifted to another party?
Assuming all constants stay the same except Labour has a million more voters.
Well, I don't think I would ever assume that. It's not physics or maths.
There are many very fluid variables. Certainly getting those former Labour voters who abstained in 2019 is important. But so is peeling off any vote that went to the Tories. Or splitting them from the Brexit party voters, who will be looking for a new home. And working out a policy offering to deal with the ongoing aftermath of the pandemic.
I just want to see what the election outcome would have been
I've run it up in Excel.
If you add a million (approx 10% more) vote to Labour, in proportion to the votes they actually received, then Labour would have won 22 more seats:
Birmingham, Northfield Blyth Valley Bolton North East Bridgend Burnley Bury North Bury South Chingford and Woodford Green Chipping Barnet Clwyd South Delyn Dewsbury Gedling Heywood and Middleton High Peak Keighley Kensington Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath North West Durham Stoke-On-Trent Central Warrington South Wolverhampton South West
Boris would still have had a working majority.
Interesting to see that on that model IDS gets the chop.
It was a high turnout in the seat in 2019, so I think it's a bit of a poor candidate for an additional 2,100 Labour voters sitting at home. But's that's the model.
Labour would have needed 2 million more voters otherwise sitting at home to prevent Boris' majority.
Remember folks, taking votes off your opponent count double...
I really hope Matt will quietly fuck off now he's got no power on the front bench. With Milne, perhaps the worst Labour adviser ever.
The Labour Party is a disgusting cesspit.
As is the conservative party
Won't stop people arguing that their cesspit smells great though.
It'd be so much better if people could say their side is a lesser shade of grey than the other, rather than that one is black or white. The latter is just implausible, the former will be mostly subjective but cases could at least be made.
I have more respect for those who abstained.
That's what the LDs are traditionally for.
Bastards didn't stand in Cannock Chase.
Which was exasperating because while I was willing to vote Liberal Democrat I wasn't voting Green.
I've never felt the Greens are comparable to other mainstream parties, they are far more radical. I've voted LD in 3 GEs, and I'd not think a suitable alternative would be a Green.
In my case it's more because I felt they don't have anything useful to say on a national level. Their manifesto was arguably less environmentally friendly than Labour's, or even Cameron's 2010 manifesto. So what's the point of voting for them?
I've voted for them for the EU Parliament, which was an irrelevance, and at local level where they have sometimes campaigned smartly on local issues (Although their record in Brighton remains beyond pathetic). But is there a more shrill, useless and irrelevant voice in the Commons than Caroline Lucas?
She's a woman. So she must be 'shrill'.
She achieves a heck of a lot more as a lone voice than most of the make weights on the green benches put together.
Handy word for identifying unconscious misogyny though.
Says somebody who has only dished out abuse to posters since you first started commenting.
Abuse? If anyone has been offended by my posts I sincerely apologise. Not always easy to get the tone right online.
Not always easy? Why do you think nobody engages with you? Your tone has *never* been right. What have you actually brought to discussions other than one-line put downs that seem to be mostly personal attacks? Here's a sample of your tone from your 84 posts: 'rant' 'whine' 'nonsense' 'Terry Dicks' 'captain fruitloops' 'go and sit in Farage's front garden' 'narrow-minded bigots.' As far as I can see the only useful thing you ever pointed out is that Croatia isn't a member of the euro.
If you don't want to have to apologise for the tone, try being more constructive. Try offering information or insight. I get things wrong and frequently get up other posters' nostrils (particularly those who don't like puns) but I also sometimes put stuff out that's useful. It's noteworthy that even people who don't agree with me, or even like me, still read my posts, just as I still read theirs.
Fair enough, feedback is always appreciated. Although a bit puzzled about what is inappropriate about a reference to Terry Dicks who died recently and was never ashamed to be out-spoken.
It was your repeated comparisons of others to him using his name and views as a term of abuse that was inappropriate. And I might add, could ironically be considered ableist given his condition.
You want to engage with others? Fine. Write something worth reading and people will engage with them. Make abusive or dishonest remarks, as you did to me and have done to many others, and people will either ignore you or slap you down.
Believe me, I have wanted to say that to you for a while.
They WANT those red wall seats. They want them BAD.
Has anyone run the numbers on how many seats would be won back if the million or so Labour voters who sat at home, voted again as they have historically?
Wouldn't that depend on whether the Brexit party voters abstained, or drifted to another party?
Assuming all constants stay the same except Labour has a million more voters.
Well, I don't think I would ever assume that. It's not physics or maths.
There are many very fluid variables. Certainly getting those former Labour voters who abstained in 2019 is important. But so is peeling off any vote that went to the Tories. Or splitting them from the Brexit party voters, who will be looking for a new home. And working out a policy offering to deal with the ongoing aftermath of the pandemic.
I just want to see what the election outcome would have been
I've run it up in Excel.
If you add a million (approx 10% more) vote to Labour, in proportion to the votes they actually received, then Labour would have won 22 more seats:
Birmingham, Northfield Blyth Valley Bolton North East Bridgend Burnley Bury North Bury South Chingford and Woodford Green Chipping Barnet Clwyd South Delyn Dewsbury Gedling Heywood and Middleton High Peak Keighley Kensington Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath North West Durham Stoke-On-Trent Central Warrington South Wolverhampton South West
Boris would still have had a working majority.
That makes the assumption it would be a net gain in 1m votes, it doesn't take into account the cost of winning those additional votes. To gain those 1m votes Labour would lose votes from other parts of the coalition.
Yeah, it definitely is way oversimplified.
Interestingly if you add two million votes it is still a Con majority (barely)
EHRC results should be out quite soon, Starmer has a lot of good will IMHO if he sacks the people that deserve it
I hope sack means "remove the whip" not "remove from Shadow Cabinet".
When will Johnson be sacking Jenrick and removing the Whip from him?
When he engages in a sustained campaign of antisemitism so awful it draws the ire of the EHRC perhaps?
The Tory Party has a massive Islamophobia problem as you well know.
Your views as usual are inconsistent, we know if a Labour MP had been found to be doing what Jenrick has done, you'd be calling for them to lose the Whip.
I know no such thing. Any racists should be expelled from the party.
Criticising Islam, critising the niqab, criticisng misogyny, criticising homophobia is not racism. Any more than criticising paedophile priests is racist. Consistency is not racist.
It can be. Indirect discrimination is when a policy is consistently applied to everyone but particularly affects a group of people because of their protected characteristic. This type of discrimination can sometimes be justified if a policy is “a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim”. This legitimate aim can be something like maintaining a company image or protecting health and safety. Insisting that fruit pickers (as opposed to teachers) speak perfect English, for example, is consistent, but racist as it is a policy that has no legitimate aim - there is no need for fruit pickers to have much more than a basic grasp of English, if that. While criticising homophobia and misogyny in all cases is clearly a legitimate aim, I fail to see how blanket criticism of the niqab is always justified and therefore and not racist.
BTW indirect discrimination also means that provisions impacting Muslims disproportionately impact people of South Asian and Middle Eastern decent, so can be racist as well as islamophobic. Similarly discrimination against Catholics in the UK has often been coded discrimination against Irish people.
The niqab is a misogynistic garment designed to subjugate women and separate them from men so how is it racist to criticise it?
No race demands people wear it. No religion demands people wear it.
It is cultural subjugation and I see nothing racist in condemning misogyny.
Lots of white men on here today chiming in. Maybe we should ask someone who actually wears one about it?
EHRC results should be out quite soon, Starmer has a lot of good will IMHO if he sacks the people that deserve it
I hope sack means "remove the whip" not "remove from Shadow Cabinet".
When will Johnson be sacking Jenrick and removing the Whip from him?
When he engages in a sustained campaign of antisemitism so awful it draws the ire of the EHRC perhaps?
The Tory Party has a massive Islamophobia problem as you well know.
Your views as usual are inconsistent, we know if a Labour MP had been found to be doing what Jenrick has done, you'd be calling for them to lose the Whip.
I know no such thing. Any racists should be expelled from the party.
Criticising Islam, critising the niqab, criticisng misogyny, criticising homophobia is not racism. Any more than criticising paedophile priests is racist. Consistency is not racist.
It can be. Indirect discrimination is when a policy is consistently applied to everyone but particularly affects a group of people because of their protected characteristic. This type of discrimination can sometimes be justified if a policy is “a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim”. This legitimate aim can be something like maintaining a company image or protecting health and safety. Insisting that fruit pickers (as opposed to teachers) speak perfect English, for example, is consistent, but racist as it is a policy that has no legitimate aim - there is no need for fruit pickers to have much more than a basic grasp of English, if that. While criticising homophobia and misogyny in all cases is clearly a legitimate aim, I fail to see how blanket criticism of the niqab is always justified and therefore and not racist.
BTW indirect discrimination also means that provisions impacting Muslims disproportionately impact people of South Asian and Middle Eastern decent, so can be racist as well as islamophobic. Similarly discrimination against Catholics in the UK has often been coded discrimination against Irish people.
The niqab is a misogynistic garment designed to subjugate women and separate them from men so how is it racist to criticise it?
No race demands people wear it. No religion demands people wear it.
It is cultural subjugation and I see nothing racist in condemning misogyny.
Lots of white men on here today chiming in. Maybe we should ask someone who actually wears one about it?
They WANT those red wall seats. They want them BAD.
Has anyone run the numbers on how many seats would be won back if the million or so Labour voters who sat at home, voted again as they have historically?
Wouldn't that depend on whether the Brexit party voters abstained, or drifted to another party?
Assuming all constants stay the same except Labour has a million more voters.
Well, I don't think I would ever assume that. It's not physics or maths.
There are many very fluid variables. Certainly getting those former Labour voters who abstained in 2019 is important. But so is peeling off any vote that went to the Tories. Or splitting them from the Brexit party voters, who will be looking for a new home. And working out a policy offering to deal with the ongoing aftermath of the pandemic.
I just want to see what the election outcome would have been
I've run it up in Excel.
If you add a million (approx 10% more) vote to Labour, in proportion to the votes they actually received, then Labour would have won 22 more seats:
Birmingham, Northfield Blyth Valley Bolton North East Bridgend Burnley Bury North Bury South Chingford and Woodford Green Chipping Barnet Clwyd South Delyn Dewsbury Gedling Heywood and Middleton High Peak Keighley Kensington Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath North West Durham Stoke-On-Trent Central Warrington South Wolverhampton South West
Boris would still have had a working majority.
That makes the assumption it would be a net gain in 1m votes, it doesn't take into account the cost of winning those additional votes. To gain those 1m votes Labour would lose votes from other parts of the coalition.
It strictly assumes that the Labour voters would otherwise not have voted, yes. Only Chingford and Wood Green looks improbable that they actually existing though.
The million-odd votes they lost though are disproportionately in "Red wall" seats.
Anyway this is silly, Corbyn may be gone but the reasons those voters are drifting long-term from Labour have not, and that is unlikely to change under Starmer.
I really hope Matt will quietly fuck off now he's got no power on the front bench. With Milne, perhaps the worst Labour adviser ever.
The Labour Party is a disgusting cesspit.
As is the conservative party
Won't stop people arguing that their cesspit smells great though.
It'd be so much better if people could say their side is a lesser shade of grey than the other, rather than that one is black or white. The latter is just implausible, the former will be mostly subjective but cases could at least be made.
I have more respect for those who abstained.
That's what the LDs are traditionally for.
Bastards didn't stand in Cannock Chase.
Which was exasperating because while I was willing to vote Liberal Democrat I wasn't voting Green.
I've never felt the Greens are comparable to other mainstream parties, they are far more radical. I've voted LD in 3 GEs, and I'd not think a suitable alternative would be a Green.
In my case it's more because I felt they don't have anything useful to say on a national level. Their manifesto was arguably less environmentally friendly than Labour's, or even Cameron's 2010 manifesto. So what's the point of voting for them?
I've voted for them for the EU Parliament, which was an irrelevance, and at local level where they have sometimes campaigned smartly on local issues (Although their record in Brighton remains beyond pathetic). But is there a more shrill, useless and irrelevant voice in the Commons than Caroline Lucas?
She's a woman. So she must be 'shrill'.
She achieves a heck of a lot more as a lone voice than most of the make weights on the green benches put together.
Handy word for identifying unconscious misogyny though.
Says somebody who has only dished out abuse to posters since you first started commenting.
Abuse? If anyone has been offended by my posts I sincerely apologise. Not always easy to get the tone right online.
Not always easy? Why do you think nobody engages with you? Your tone has *never* been right. What have you actually brought to discussions other than one-line put downs that seem to be mostly personal attacks? Here's a sample of your tone from your 84 posts: 'rant' 'whine' 'nonsense' 'Terry Dicks' 'captain fruitloops' 'go and sit in Farage's front garden' 'narrow-minded bigots.' As far as I can see the only useful thing you ever pointed out is that Croatia isn't a member of the euro.
If you don't want to have to apologise for the tone, try being more constructive. Try offering information or insight. I get things wrong and frequently get up other posters' nostrils (particularly those who don't like puns) but I also sometimes put stuff out that's useful. It's noteworthy that even people who don't agree with me, or even like me, still read my posts, just as I still read theirs.
Fair enough, feedback is always appreciated. Although a bit puzzled about what is inappropriate about a reference to Terry Dicks who died recently and was never ashamed to be out-spoken.
My particular beef with Terry Dicks was his assertion that Mandela should have been executed. Maybe he had a softer side, but I never saw it.
I wonder if Trump could be like the 2015 Liberal Democrats.
Everyone sees what the polls says but nobody can quite believe that its actually going to happen. The seat range of 10-19 was punted as a long shot bet for a disastrous night for the Lib Dems based upon the polls . . . but in the end it was a losing bet though not as everyone expected it would lose because they got more than 19. They managed to do even worse than the longshot failure punted.
I wonder if Trump could surprise even more on the downside than we're thinking.
Not everyone, @Neil still owes me for the LD vs UKIP voteshare bet
They WANT those red wall seats. They want them BAD.
Has anyone run the numbers on how many seats would be won back if the million or so Labour voters who sat at home, voted again as they have historically?
Wouldn't that depend on whether the Brexit party voters abstained, or drifted to another party?
Assuming all constants stay the same except Labour has a million more voters.
Well, I don't think I would ever assume that. It's not physics or maths.
There are many very fluid variables. Certainly getting those former Labour voters who abstained in 2019 is important. But so is peeling off any vote that went to the Tories. Or splitting them from the Brexit party voters, who will be looking for a new home. And working out a policy offering to deal with the ongoing aftermath of the pandemic.
I just want to see what the election outcome would have been
I've run it up in Excel.
If you add a million (approx 10% more) vote to Labour, in proportion to the votes they actually received, then Labour would have won 22 more seats:
Birmingham, Northfield Blyth Valley Bolton North East Bridgend Burnley Bury North Bury South Chingford and Woodford Green Chipping Barnet Clwyd South Delyn Dewsbury Gedling Heywood and Middleton High Peak Keighley Kensington Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath North West Durham Stoke-On-Trent Central Warrington South Wolverhampton South West
Boris would still have had a working majority.
Interesting to see that on that model IDS gets the chop.
I'm not sure there is any evidence of high numbers of Labour voters abstaining in Chingford in 2019.
That said Chingford is trending leftwards generally.
Though there must be a significant chance that IDS stands down in any case.
Coronavirus has propelled the American right to a whole new level of batshit crazy.
I'm sorry but I thought religious views had to be respected.
Or is that respect only confined to.....er......certain religions
When did the American right become a religion?
Most of the attacks in that video were from a point of view of strong christian beliefs - not right wing politics.
How do you know they were Christian? A lot of it was Old Testament stuff.
Not many atheists, jews, muslims, hindus or buddhists quote the King James Bible...
Richard Dawkins does.
Admittedly I've often wondered if he's actually a fundie Christian trying to make atheists look silly, but he has always said he considers the Bible a great work of literature.
I think, as the Sky polling experts has just, said Boris's recent announcements have been popular as is his optimism and the polling should see a substantial move to him if it succeeds, but less so if it goes wrong
I do not see anyone on thos forum, Scott included, who would disagree with this polling expert
He has the same problem as Trump in that regard.
You can't troll reality. The virus doesn't care how clever or witty your speech is.
If there is another spike, BoZo will suffer. If the schools don't open, BoZo will suffer.
And Brexit rumbles on. If Nissan closes, BoZo will struggle to spin that as good news.
If the chunnel shudders to a halt, a cheery speech will not help.
The first consignment of chlorine chicken will not help his numbers.
Au contraire. The first consignment of cheap chicken will help his numbers. A subsequent and associated outbreak of salmonella will however, send them crashing again.
Apart from anything else, how much cheaper can chicken get? You can buy a whole chicken for £3 in most supermarkets. Cheaper than an average pint in a pub. Once you allow for retail profit, marketing, UK distribution etc, the cost of the chicken itself is rock-bottom already. I am not convinced that to the average shopper the price would be any lower with chlorinated chicken.
EHRC results should be out quite soon, Starmer has a lot of good will IMHO if he sacks the people that deserve it
I hope sack means "remove the whip" not "remove from Shadow Cabinet".
When will Johnson be sacking Jenrick and removing the Whip from him?
When he engages in a sustained campaign of antisemitism so awful it draws the ire of the EHRC perhaps?
The Tory Party has a massive Islamophobia problem as you well know.
Your views as usual are inconsistent, we know if a Labour MP had been found to be doing what Jenrick has done, you'd be calling for them to lose the Whip.
I know no such thing. Any racists should be expelled from the party.
Criticising Islam, critising the niqab, criticisng misogyny, criticising homophobia is not racism. Any more than criticising paedophile priests is racist. Consistency is not racist.
It can be. Indirect discrimination is when a policy is consistently applied to everyone but particularly affects a group of people because of their protected characteristic. This type of discrimination can sometimes be justified if a policy is “a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim”. This legitimate aim can be something like maintaining a company image or protecting health and safety. Insisting that fruit pickers (as opposed to teachers) speak perfect English, for example, is consistent, but racist as it is a policy that has no legitimate aim - there is no need for fruit pickers to have much more than a basic grasp of English, if that. While criticising homophobia and misogyny in all cases is clearly a legitimate aim, I fail to see how blanket criticism of the niqab is always justified and therefore and not racist.
BTW indirect discrimination also means that provisions impacting Muslims disproportionately impact people of South Asian and Middle Eastern decent, so can be racist as well as islamophobic. Similarly discrimination against Catholics in the UK has often been coded discrimination against Irish people.
The niqab is a misogynistic garment designed to subjugate women and separate them from men so how is it racist to criticise it?
No race demands people wear it. No religion demands people wear it.
It is cultural subjugation and I see nothing racist in condemning misogyny.
Maybe, but the problem is that when Boris Johnson compares the niqab and burqa to bankrobbers and letter boxes it gives licence to racists, not to those who are against the subjugation of women, to publicly mock and intimidate Muslim women who choose to dress in this way. Which is, indeed, what happened after Boris's famous article. It wasn't feminists taking the piss out of those wearing niqabs, or tearing them off on the street, was it? It was actually racist misogynists. Words have power and should be used with care.
Racists were racists before that article and nothing changed after that article.
People have taken the piss out of niqabs for as long as they've been on the street and hopefully one day they won't be on the street anymore but until then the women subjugated into wearing them should be respected and pitied.
Not surprisingly, you've missed the point. And there was indeed a spike in such incidents after Boris's article and the furore around it.
More generally, you need to accept that some Muslim women choose to wear the niqab/burqa and see their choice as quite the opposite of subjugation - freedom from the gaze of men, for some. They would regard your "pity" for them as highly offensive.
EHRC results should be out quite soon, Starmer has a lot of good will IMHO if he sacks the people that deserve it
I hope sack means "remove the whip" not "remove from Shadow Cabinet".
When will Johnson be sacking Jenrick and removing the Whip from him?
When he engages in a sustained campaign of antisemitism so awful it draws the ire of the EHRC perhaps?
The Tory Party has a massive Islamophobia problem as you well know.
Your views as usual are inconsistent, we know if a Labour MP had been found to be doing what Jenrick has done, you'd be calling for them to lose the Whip.
I know no such thing. Any racists should be expelled from the party.
Criticising Islam, critising the niqab, criticisng misogyny, criticising homophobia is not racism. Any more than criticising paedophile priests is racist. Consistency is not racist.
It can be. Indirect discrimination is when a policy is consistently applied to everyone but particularly affects a group of people because of their protected characteristic. This type of discrimination can sometimes be justified if a policy is “a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim”. This legitimate aim can be something like maintaining a company image or protecting health and safety. Insisting that fruit pickers (as opposed to teachers) speak perfect English, for example, is consistent, but racist as it is a policy that has no legitimate aim - there is no need for fruit pickers to have much more than a basic grasp of English, if that. While criticising homophobia and misogyny in all cases is clearly a legitimate aim, I fail to see how blanket criticism of the niqab is always justified and therefore and not racist.
BTW indirect discrimination also means that provisions impacting Muslims disproportionately impact people of South Asian and Middle Eastern decent, so can be racist as well as islamophobic. Similarly discrimination against Catholics in the UK has often been coded discrimination against Irish people.
The niqab is a misogynistic garment designed to subjugate women and separate them from men so how is it racist to criticise it?
No race demands people wear it. No religion demands people wear it.
It is cultural subjugation and I see nothing racist in condemning misogyny.
Lots of white men on here today chiming in. Maybe we should ask someone who actually wears one about it?
They WANT those red wall seats. They want them BAD.
Has anyone run the numbers on how many seats would be won back if the million or so Labour voters who sat at home, voted again as they have historically?
Wouldn't that depend on whether the Brexit party voters abstained, or drifted to another party?
Assuming all constants stay the same except Labour has a million more voters.
Well, I don't think I would ever assume that. It's not physics or maths.
There are many very fluid variables. Certainly getting those former Labour voters who abstained in 2019 is important. But so is peeling off any vote that went to the Tories. Or splitting them from the Brexit party voters, who will be looking for a new home. And working out a policy offering to deal with the ongoing aftermath of the pandemic.
I just want to see what the election outcome would have been
I've run it up in Excel.
If you add a million (approx 10% more) vote to Labour, in proportion to the votes they actually received, then Labour would have won 22 more seats:
Birmingham, Northfield Blyth Valley Bolton North East Bridgend Burnley Bury North Bury South Chingford and Woodford Green Chipping Barnet Clwyd South Delyn Dewsbury Gedling Heywood and Middleton High Peak Keighley Kensington Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath North West Durham Stoke-On-Trent Central Warrington South Wolverhampton South West
Boris would still have had a working majority.
Another 2 million and they would still not have won Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath
They WANT those red wall seats. They want them BAD.
Has anyone run the numbers on how many seats would be won back if the million or so Labour voters who sat at home, voted again as they have historically?
Wouldn't that depend on whether the Brexit party voters abstained, or drifted to another party?
Assuming all constants stay the same except Labour has a million more voters.
Well, I don't think I would ever assume that. It's not physics or maths.
There are many very fluid variables. Certainly getting those former Labour voters who abstained in 2019 is important. But so is peeling off any vote that went to the Tories. Or splitting them from the Brexit party voters, who will be looking for a new home. And working out a policy offering to deal with the ongoing aftermath of the pandemic.
I just want to see what the election outcome would have been
I've run it up in Excel.
If you add a million (approx 10% more) vote to Labour, in proportion to the votes they actually received, then Labour would have won 22 more seats:
Birmingham, Northfield Blyth Valley Bolton North East Bridgend Burnley Bury North Bury South Chingford and Woodford Green Chipping Barnet Clwyd South Delyn Dewsbury Gedling Heywood and Middleton High Peak Keighley Kensington Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath North West Durham Stoke-On-Trent Central Warrington South Wolverhampton South West
Boris would still have had a working majority.
Another 2 million and they would still not have won Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath
The SNP had a majority of 2 million in Kirkcaldy and Cowndenbeath?
Who was their election agent? Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?
They WANT those red wall seats. They want them BAD.
Has anyone run the numbers on how many seats would be won back if the million or so Labour voters who sat at home, voted again as they have historically?
Wouldn't that depend on whether the Brexit party voters abstained, or drifted to another party?
Assuming all constants stay the same except Labour has a million more voters.
Well, I don't think I would ever assume that. It's not physics or maths.
There are many very fluid variables. Certainly getting those former Labour voters who abstained in 2019 is important. But so is peeling off any vote that went to the Tories. Or splitting them from the Brexit party voters, who will be looking for a new home. And working out a policy offering to deal with the ongoing aftermath of the pandemic.
I just want to see what the election outcome would have been
I've run it up in Excel.
If you add a million (approx 10% more) vote to Labour, in proportion to the votes they actually received, then Labour would have won 22 more seats:
Birmingham, Northfield Blyth Valley Bolton North East Bridgend Burnley Bury North Bury South Chingford and Woodford Green Chipping Barnet Clwyd South Delyn Dewsbury Gedling Heywood and Middleton High Peak Keighley Kensington Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath North West Durham Stoke-On-Trent Central Warrington South Wolverhampton South West
Boris would still have had a working majority.
Interesting to see that on that model IDS gets the chop.
I just hope I survive long enough to witness what would be a truly joyous event.
"Thousands of people in the UK are unable to access their money owing to the fallout from the scandal to hit payments firm Wirecard. The UK licence of Wirecard Card Solutions has been frozen by the regulator after its German parent company filed for insolvency.
It means people are temporarily unable to access cash held with financial apps in the UK using Wirecard technology. Some have spoken of their frustration, but their money should be safe.
Wirecard Card Solutions serves prepaid cards, such as the U Account, which marketed itself as an alternative to a bank which helped people to budget and avoid hefty overdraft fees. "This is a massive issue for many customers who rely on the money placed in their U account for everyday essentials including the ability to pay rent and buy food," one customer told the BBC."
EHRC results should be out quite soon, Starmer has a lot of good will IMHO if he sacks the people that deserve it
I hope sack means "remove the whip" not "remove from Shadow Cabinet".
When will Johnson be sacking Jenrick and removing the Whip from him?
When he engages in a sustained campaign of antisemitism so awful it draws the ire of the EHRC perhaps?
The Tory Party has a massive Islamophobia problem as you well know.
Your views as usual are inconsistent, we know if a Labour MP had been found to be doing what Jenrick has done, you'd be calling for them to lose the Whip.
I know no such thing. Any racists should be expelled from the party.
Criticising Islam, critising the niqab, criticisng misogyny, criticising homophobia is not racism. Any more than criticising paedophile priests is racist. Consistency is not racist.
It can be. Indirect discrimination is when a policy is consistently applied to everyone but particularly affects a group of people because of their protected characteristic. This type of discrimination can sometimes be justified if a policy is “a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim”. This legitimate aim can be something like maintaining a company image or protecting health and safety. Insisting that fruit pickers (as opposed to teachers) speak perfect English, for example, is consistent, but racist as it is a policy that has no legitimate aim - there is no need for fruit pickers to have much more than a basic grasp of English, if that. While criticising homophobia and misogyny in all cases is clearly a legitimate aim, I fail to see how blanket criticism of the niqab is always justified and therefore and not racist.
BTW indirect discrimination also means that provisions impacting Muslims disproportionately impact people of South Asian and Middle Eastern decent, so can be racist as well as islamophobic. Similarly discrimination against Catholics in the UK has often been coded discrimination against Irish people.
The niqab is a misogynistic garment designed to subjugate women and separate them from men so how is it racist to criticise it?
No race demands people wear it. No religion demands people wear it.
It is cultural subjugation and I see nothing racist in condemning misogyny.
Lots of white men on here today chiming in. Maybe we should ask someone who actually wears one about it?
I think, as the Sky polling experts has just, said Boris's recent announcements have been popular as is his optimism and the polling should see a substantial move to him if it succeeds, but less so if it goes wrong
I do not see anyone on thos forum, Scott included, who would disagree with this polling expert
He has the same problem as Trump in that regard.
You can't troll reality. The virus doesn't care how clever or witty your speech is.
If there is another spike, BoZo will suffer. If the schools don't open, BoZo will suffer.
And Brexit rumbles on. If Nissan closes, BoZo will struggle to spin that as good news.
If the chunnel shudders to a halt, a cheery speech will not help.
The first consignment of chlorine chicken will not help his numbers.
Au contraire. The first consignment of cheap chicken will help his numbers. A subsequent and associated outbreak of salmonella will however, send them crashing again.
Apart from anything else, how much cheaper can chicken get? You can buy a whole chicken for £3 in most supermarkets. Cheaper than an average pint in a pub. Once you allow for retail profit, marketing, UK distribution etc, the cost of the chicken itself is rock-bottom already. I am not convinced that to the average shopper the price would be any lower with chlorinated chicken.
Coronavirus has propelled the American right to a whole new level of batshit crazy.
I'm sorry but I thought religious views had to be respected.
Or is that respect only confined to.....er......certain religions
When did the American right become a religion?
Most of the attacks in that video were from a point of view of strong christian beliefs - not right wing politics.
How do you know they were Christian? A lot of it was Old Testament stuff.
Not many atheists, jews, muslims, hindus or buddhists quote the King James Bible...
Richard Dawkins does.
Admittedly I've often wondered if he's actually a fundie Christian trying to make atheists look silly, but he has always said he considers the Bible a great work of literature.
That is true enough, but I think his other views about its content come across clearly enough
He does make statements from time to time that, to me at least, seem to verge on eugenics.
It seems to be the 2017 manifesto with the foreign policy aims of Ed mixed with the relative unity of Blair with the robustness of Brown
We can't know, because he's come to the leadership in the middle of a huge crisis. There's very little scope for him to develop policy at this moment as it may be obsolete in five months. One of Cameron's problems was that having come up with a policy mix ('share the proceeds of growth') he was left floundering when the bad times hit and he needed to change it all.
What does Starmer need to do, therefore?
1) Provide a clear, consistent break with Corbyn, as Corbyn was a key part of the problem.
2) Draw a line under the saga of Labour's Brexit policy (which let it not be forgotten, he was directly responsible for)
3) Provide probing, intelligent opposition to make sure the government is held to account.
4) Make sure he cannot be accused of making political capital out of the worst public health crisis in a hundred years
5) Keep current Labour voters on board while ensuring he can reach out to non-voters.
6) Look, sound and behave like a plausible Prime Minister - calm, dignified, unruffled and sensible.
So how's he done so far?
1) Long Bailey. Antisemitism. Praise for the Armed Forces. Mentions of national pride. Job done.
2) We've left. End of conversation. Job also done.
3) Performances in PMQs and with the media have generally been impressive. Johnson has been forced to get better quick (although he has) and the media are giving him a fair hearing. Comments are sensible and measured. Most people will have agreed with his assessments of Cummings and Jenrick, but he did not call for their resignation.
4) Has offered to help the government, and supported many key measures. Admittedly, the offers have not been gratefully received, but he's doing the right thing and I think people appreciate that. He (and Sturgeon for the matter of that) were pitch perfect in their response to the news of Johnson's illness.
5) Knelt for BLM protests, but condemned the statue toppling by saying there is a right way and a wrong way to protest (at the same time noting he would personally prefer the statue to have been moved).
6) The rest feed into this.
He's still behind Johnson on leader ratings. No shit, he's not the PM and Johnson is. The incumbent always has an advantage. But he's narrowed the gap substantially and if he continues like this, people will be willing to give him a hearing. That's all he can do.
So far, so impressive. Again, not to say he will win - formidable barriers face him - but he is what Labour so desperately needed after Corbyn.
Fair analysis. He's been steady, had some good moments, and has not pushed too far.
He's not behind on leader ratings is he?
Let's see what Labours policy on FOM is at the next GE. If he concedes that poorly paid Brits fighting over crumbs from the captains table with poorly paid Eastern Europeans is not the recipe for happiness among the lower orders then he might win back some votes that his attempt at Brexit blocking lost the party.
If he starts banging on Brits who are poorly paid, with insecure jobs losing the freedom to live, love and laugh in Bulgaria, Lithuania, etc, he might as well quit now.
"Thousands of people in the UK are unable to access their money owing to the fallout from the scandal to hit payments firm Wirecard. The UK licence of Wirecard Card Solutions has been frozen by the regulator after its German parent company filed for insolvency.
It means people are temporarily unable to access cash held with financial apps in the UK using Wirecard technology. Some have spoken of their frustration, but their money should be safe.
Wirecard Card Solutions serves prepaid cards, such as the U Account, which marketed itself as an alternative to a bank which helped people to budget and avoid hefty overdraft fees. "This is a massive issue for many customers who rely on the money placed in their U account for everyday essentials including the ability to pay rent and buy food," one customer told the BBC."
Not totally sure that in and of itself is incompetence. If a bank here was declared insolvent, it would have to suspend trading and nobody could access the money in their accounts.
Perhaps a more pertinent question when it comes to their incompetence is, as @Cyclefree has been saying for ages, how they let this total riot go on so long.
Morning David, thanks for the excellent piece. Interestingly, on our chat group, the US-based Republicans on there are more gloomy about Trump and are saying they are seeing on their Twitter feeds calls saying unless Trump starts being more "true" to form, he won't get their votes in November.
However, I am going to list the 4 points I listed yesterday as to why I think talk of a Biden landslide is taking things too far.
1. State polls are notoriously unreliable - 2016 proved that; 2. There are a lot of DKs / undecided in the national polls - they could be but there is a fair chance of shy Trumpsters; 3. Republican Senate candidates are polling better that Trump. That could be because of a genuine enthusiasm gap but another explanation is that Republicans feel less embarrassed stating they will vote for a Senate candidate than Trump; 4. There has been no signs in the four special Congressional elections since the start of the crisis that Trump has lost the support of white suburban voters and possibly even a swing back from 2018.
Also, what about differences between polls? Biden's lead has been widened by the NYT and Fox polls. But look at the Hill poll that came out today
"The four-point lead for the former vice president is down from 10 percentage points in the same poll from June 1-4. Trump trailed Biden 47-37 in that poll."
Biden's YouGov and NPR leads haven't changed from their previous polls.
I think it is too early to be pushing the landslide csll.
But you are making the classic non-gamblers mistake. The article did not say that a landslide is probable, but that odds of 6:1 are value.
I think, as the Sky polling experts has just, said Boris's recent announcements have been popular as is his optimism and the polling should see a substantial move to him if it succeeds, but less so if it goes wrong
I do not see anyone on thos forum, Scott included, who would disagree with this polling expert
He has the same problem as Trump in that regard.
You can't troll reality. The virus doesn't care how clever or witty your speech is.
If there is another spike, BoZo will suffer. If the schools don't open, BoZo will suffer.
And Brexit rumbles on. If Nissan closes, BoZo will struggle to spin that as good news.
If the chunnel shudders to a halt, a cheery speech will not help.
The first consignment of chlorine chicken will not help his numbers.
Au contraire. The first consignment of cheap chicken will help his numbers. A subsequent and associated outbreak of salmonella will however, send them crashing again.
Apart from anything else, how much cheaper can chicken get? You can buy a whole chicken for £3 in most supermarkets. Cheaper than an average pint in a pub. Once you allow for retail profit, marketing, UK distribution etc, the cost of the chicken itself is rock-bottom already. I am not convinced that to the average shopper the price would be any lower with chlorinated chicken.
If we limit ourselves to the Midlands, NW, NE, Yorks and the Humber, and Wales - effectively including the red wall, Labour only won 2.4m votes. Suggesting there were a million people at home seems optmistic.
However, Corbyn would have needed 750,000 additional votes from stay at hom voters to erase BoJo's majority via this route.
Which really only tells us what we knew already, which is that many Labour voters din't stay at home. They voted Tory.
"Thousands of people in the UK are unable to access their money owing to the fallout from the scandal to hit payments firm Wirecard. The UK licence of Wirecard Card Solutions has been frozen by the regulator after its German parent company filed for insolvency.
It means people are temporarily unable to access cash held with financial apps in the UK using Wirecard technology. Some have spoken of their frustration, but their money should be safe.
Wirecard Card Solutions serves prepaid cards, such as the U Account, which marketed itself as an alternative to a bank which helped people to budget and avoid hefty overdraft fees. "This is a massive issue for many customers who rely on the money placed in their U account for everyday essentials including the ability to pay rent and buy food," one customer told the BBC."
Not totally sure that in and of itself is incompetence. If a bank here was declared insolvent, it would have to suspend trading and nobody could access the money in their accounts.
Perhaps a more pertinent question when it comes to their incompetence is, as @Cyclefree has been saying for ages, how they let this total riot go on so long.
Given that they also regulate Deutsche Bank do you need to ask ?
Comments
Of course, I could be completely wrong: Cummings and friends will take their accelerationist thesis to it’s natural conclusion & will be trying to engineer total Brexit in order to rip the UK state apart in the chaos that follows. It’s what he’s always wanted after all.
From Cummings POV, the chaos of a cliff-edged Brexit is the point. The real question is: will Johnson & Tory MPs stay in line right up to that cliff-edge and jump off with him?
(Actually perception is reality for all of us since we can never experience the world directly)
In my own case I didn't make an official complaint but had a chat to find out what the reason actually was and if they had fluffed it then I would have concluded it was a racial discrimination case and quit, but it turned out of be nepotism so I found a new job.
Or is that respect only confined to.....er......certain religions
However, I am going to list the 4 points I listed yesterday as to why I think talk of a Biden landslide is taking things too far.
1. State polls are notoriously unreliable - 2016 proved that;
2. There are a lot of DKs / undecided in the national polls - they could be but there is a fair chance of shy Trumpsters;
3. Republican Senate candidates are polling better that Trump. That could be because of a genuine enthusiasm gap but another explanation is that Republicans feel less embarrassed stating they will vote for a Senate candidate than Trump;
4. There has been no signs in the four special Congressional elections since the start of the crisis that Trump has lost the support of white suburban voters and possibly even a swing back from 2018.
Also, what about differences between polls? Biden's lead has been widened by the NYT and Fox polls. But look at the Hill poll that came out today
"Poll: Biden's 2020 lead narrows" - https://thehill.com/hilltv/what-americas-thinking/504724-poll-bidens-2020-lead-narrows
"The four-point lead for the former vice president is down from 10 percentage points in the same poll from June 1-4. Trump trailed Biden 47-37 in that poll."
Biden's YouGov and NPR leads haven't changed from their previous polls.
I think it is too early to be pushing the landslide csll.
I say I lost respect for her over Brexit because she's always seemed very sensible to me. And she voted down soft Brexit compromises that would have likely passed with the influence she does/did have.
This is certainly not a Corbynism tribute act.
If you don't want to have to apologise for the tone, try being more constructive. Try offering information or insight. I get things wrong and frequently get up other posters' nostrils (particularly those who don't like puns) but I also sometimes put stuff out that's useful. It's noteworthy that even people who don't agree with me, or even like me, still read my posts, just as I still read theirs.
But it isn't true for something like physical attractiveness as there is no objective measure of that. So, if we say "average" is 5, I say I'm a 7, but others typically say I'm a 4, I can only really be said to be overestimating my beauty.
And, in either case (whether we go around routinely overestimating ourselves of underestimating others or a bit of both) the result is that we tend to overestimate our relative position when it comes to getting a job etc.
I have just as much disdain for Chuka and co who held the balance and voted against EEA/CM2.0 and a Customs Union, which would have passed with their support.
And its funny because in the end I don;t think their politics are that different.
It is the scale that really matters.
I sincerely hope he's right - none of us are fanatical enough to hope for deaths to prove a point, even among attendees of Trump rallies - but it does seem to me that his liking for optimism and popularity has led him into relaxation of lockdown before it was wise. And once again the tone is not consistent - one moment it's celebrate, freedom at last, next moment it's hang on a moment, don't do anything rash. FFS decide on a message and stick to it.
Knives and guns are much more reliable.
Experts warn that the Government needed to concentrate its resources on screening individuals from 'high risk' countries
More than 65,000 people have travelled to Britain on 190 flights since March 1 from Pakistan, which is reporting 4,000 Covid-19 cases a day, and has seen a new spike in the disease after easing its lockdown measures. Most are thought to have UK passports."
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/26/exclusive-half-uks-imported-covid-19-infections-pakistan/
No race demands people wear it.
No religion demands people wear it.
It is cultural subjugation and I see nothing racist in condemning misogyny.
There are many very fluid variables. Certainly getting those former Labour voters who abstained in 2019 is important. But so is peeling off any vote that went to the Tories. Or splitting them from the Brexit party voters, who will be looking for a new home. And working out a policy offering to deal with the ongoing aftermath of the pandemic.
I don't believe all religious views should be respected by any means.
No need to be coy about your prejudice towards "er... certain religions" it's fairly obvious what your views are.
Christianity, Islam or any other nonsense. Happy to treat it all the same.
The American Christian right is batshit crazy.
While I'm not in Romford, I'm in Dewsbury Constituency. That went from a 3000ish Labour majority to 1500ish Conservative. The campaign was freepost leaflets and lamp-post signs. That really shouldn't have happened.
It's true even for basic perception. We think we're seeing what is happening right now within our field of vision but that's an illusion. We're actually seeing a tiny fraction and making assumptions about the rest based on visual experience. And we tend to have a slightly unrealistic or exaggerated assumptions when presented with salient things. But that's normally a good thing - you can find situations where it isn't, but normally it's a positive.
PP are offering 7/2 for Trump to get 200-250 EC. I think that is excellent value.
The idea that elections are the final arbiter of what is or is not an individual racist act is farcical.
It should also be noted that Labour got a lot more votes in 2019 than it did in 2015 or 2010.
You might also consider how many votes Labour would lose without, for example, a pledge to scrap tuition fees.
Its fashionable now to demonise Corbyn but he was able to attract many voters as well as repel others.
Adding a million votes in proportion to the current vote distribution gives:
Con 344 (-21)
Lab 224 (+22)
Further considerations:
1) What seats were they in?
2) Why did they not vote?
3) To what extent would they have voted 'habitually'? Might some of them have claimed to vote Labour but voted BRexit, or Tory, or Green?
But let's assume that half of them were in seats Labour lost, distributed equally, and that they all voted Labour and that they didn't vote because they expected Labour to win. That gives an extra 1,100 votes (roughly) per seat.
On that basis, the following seats would have gone red:
Bury North
Kensington
Bury South
Bolton NE
High Peak
Gedling
Heywood and Middleton
Blyth Valley
Stoke on Trent Central
Delyn
And two more would have been extremely close toss-ups:
NW Durham
Bridgend.
So the answer would seem to be - not a lot.
Of course, my own assumptions are pretty crude. But the sheer scale of the defeat means it can't be put down to abstentions alone. There must have been a lot of direct switching.
If you add a million (approx 10% more) vote to Labour, in proportion to the votes they actually received, then Labour would have won 22 more seats:
Birmingham, Northfield
Blyth Valley
Bolton North East
Bridgend
Burnley
Bury North
Bury South
Chingford and Woodford Green
Chipping Barnet
Clwyd South
Delyn
Dewsbury
Gedling
Heywood and Middleton
High Peak
Keighley
Kensington
Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath
North West Durham
Stoke-On-Trent Central
Warrington South
Wolverhampton South West
Boris would still have had a working majority.
Ridiculous thing to have done.
People have taken the piss out of niqabs for as long as they've been on the street and hopefully one day they won't be on the street anymore but until then the women subjugated into wearing them should be respected and pitied.
You are inclined to highlight every shred of evidence that favours Trump and ignores any that doesn't. It is informative but I honestly wouldn't use it as a basis for betting.
The idea that because the polls got it wrong in 2016 they will again sounds exactly like the Corbynista rallying cry in the run up to last December. The RCP averages are more useful than cherry-picking individual polls.
Looking at the Special elections, the turnouts were low and again it sounds like those that tell us all the polls are wrong because the LDs have just had a 20% swing in a by-election somewhere or other.
Trump lost the vote in 2016 but was very fortunate in the way the votes panned out in each state. He would be fortunate to repeat that trick.
The question I ask myself is who is going to vote for Trump this year who didn't in 2016?
It's pretty clear that Biden is clearly ahead right now but most of us accept that things could change over the next four months.
https://twitter.com/_sagnikbasu/status/1276682947895197697?s=21
What a talent! what a gift!
So glad you are sharing it with the world on here!
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/i-wear-the-niqab-let-me-speak-on-my-own-behalf-8824243.html
Labour would have needed 2 million more voters otherwise sitting at home to prevent Boris' majority.
Remember folks, taking votes off your opponent count double...
You want to engage with others? Fine. Write something worth reading and people will engage with them. Make abusive or dishonest remarks, as you did to me and have done to many others, and people will either ignore you or slap you down.
Believe me, I have wanted to say that to you for a while.
Interestingly if you add two million votes it is still a Con majority (barely)
Lab 242 (+40)
Con 327 (-38)
Stockholm Syndrome isn't a reason to stop opposing kidnappings. Opposing misogyny is right even if some women are happy to be oppressed.
Anyway this is silly, Corbyn may be gone but the reasons those voters are drifting long-term from Labour have not, and that is unlikely to change under Starmer.
Knock Knock!
That said Chingford is trending leftwards generally.
Though there must be a significant chance that IDS stands down in any case.
Admittedly I've often wondered if he's actually a fundie Christian trying to make atheists look silly, but he has always said he considers the Bible a great work of literature.
More generally, you need to accept that some Muslim women choose to wear the niqab/burqa and see their choice as quite the opposite of subjugation - freedom from the gaze of men, for some. They would regard your "pity" for them as highly offensive.
Who was their election agent? Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-53198409
"Thousands of people in the UK are unable to access their money owing to the fallout from the scandal to hit payments firm Wirecard. The UK licence of Wirecard Card Solutions has been frozen by the regulator after its German parent company filed for insolvency.
It means people are temporarily unable to access cash held with financial apps in the UK using Wirecard technology. Some have spoken of their frustration, but their money should be safe.
Wirecard Card Solutions serves prepaid cards, such as the U Account, which marketed itself as an alternative to a bank which helped people to budget and avoid hefty overdraft fees. "This is a massive issue for many customers who rely on the money placed in their U account for everyday essentials including the ability to pay rent and buy food," one customer told the BBC."
"Lots of men here saying women should have a vote, why not listen to this woman explain why she doesn't." ~ Late 19th century DougSeal.
I can say from personal experience that vegan bacon is neither.
He does make statements from time to time that, to me at least, seem to verge on eugenics.
Let's see what Labours policy on FOM is at the next GE. If he concedes that poorly paid Brits fighting over crumbs from the captains table with poorly paid Eastern Europeans is not the recipe for happiness among the lower orders then he might win back some votes that his attempt at Brexit blocking lost the party.
If he starts banging on Brits who are poorly paid, with insecure jobs losing the freedom to live, love and laugh in Bulgaria, Lithuania, etc, he might as well quit now.
Perhaps a more pertinent question when it comes to their incompetence is, as @Cyclefree has been saying for ages, how they let this total riot go on so long.
Being quite small (about seven) and not understanding, I asked if all vegetarians tasted this horrible.
However, Corbyn would have needed 750,000 additional votes from stay at hom voters to erase BoJo's majority via this route.
Which really only tells us what we knew already, which is that many Labour voters din't stay at home. They voted Tory.