Looking forward to tomorrow’s locals from Michael Thrasher – politicalbetting.com
Looking forward to tomorrow’s locals from Michael Thrasher – politicalbetting.com
By some margin forecasting this year’s council seat gains and losses in 143 local authorities should be avoided at all costs. With that caveat in mind, let’s have a go.
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Con gain Hartlepool is now shorter than Con Maj 2017. It ain't right.
This is largely because I consider the party defending a seat is the one that was elected in either 2016 (the metropolitan boroughs, some shire districts and unitary councils) or 2017 (the shire counties, a metropolitan borough and some unitary councils). In a lot of cases these councillors have since migrated into being Independents or switched parties. The Press Association allocates these councillors to their new parties and calculate gains and losses accordingly.
This has been mentioned on here before, but I doubt there's anyone on here who would argue against Michael's approach.
•SNP: 50% (-3 compared with our last poll)
•Lab: 22% (+4)
•Con: 20% (nc)
•LD: 6% (nc)
•Grn: 2% (nc)
•Other: 1% (nc) https://twitter.com/KellyIpsosMORI/status/1389911944593817603/photo/1
It feels the total reverse. Apathy towards SKS.
On the one hand, attitudes are certainly far more liberal on gay marriage and what men/women can and should do than even 15 years ago.
On the other hand, some attitudes are more conservative - I remember lots of cynicism about marriage in the early noughties with many young progressives saying they'd go for a civil partnership (or nothing) instead. That's almost entirely gone now, and everyone talks about getting married.
Similarly, many people were saying joining the euro was inevitable and leaving the EU was inconceivable - even I was the proud owner of an EPP umbrella and fountain pen following a tour of the European parliament in 2002.
My girlfriend is 25, from Ashington, and never went to university and neither did many of her friends.
They don't spend their time discussing pronouns socially, obviously — they're not weirdos, but their views on things like self-ID and BLM are incredibly "woke" and would make some of those here on the right blush. They don't discuss them because they're just normal for them and their age group, it seems.
Maybe they're unusual but I would guess not. They spent their formative years on Facebook groups and watching YouTube influencers, both British and American, where these things are completely normalised.
I'm struggling to convince my girlfriend to vote tomorrow, for example.
There will be something for everyone on Friday. Scotland is the most nationally significant election, and the English locals will tell us how the voting coalitions are moving in various parts of the country. I don't expect much new on Labour but it could be interesting to see how they trade with the Greens, and in which seats they are creeping up outside the core Mets.
Watch out for any LD movement in the Shires. If that happens it's as important as Hartlepool in the grand scheme of things.
And he is not Corbyn and that mob.
The reasoning for vote in the by election is different than the reasoning in the other elections around country, and both different than how people would vote in GE tomorrow.
I think tomorrow show nation moving on from Brexit conflict and start of Labour coming back into the picture.
So other than Hartlepool, holding up in Wales and beating SCON to taste the SNPs dust, where else would we see the surge manifest?
Even with the obvious retorts (pandemic, vaccine bounce, Corbyn hangover etc) that seems like a pretty damning indictment of the Opposition parties.
If the "worst" you can be now is a straight cisgender white male, and that's all down to self-ID, why on earth would you identify as one if you could avoid it? It could threaten to disadvantages you in your career, and possibly put you on the defensive socially.
You'd need to shield yourself with some individual intersectionality so you don't get targeted - so I might say instead that I'm non-binary, male was just my birth gender and I'm not wedded to it, and emphasise I had family all over the world.
Of course, it's comestic; I'm still interested in girls, but I'm reframing myself to protect my interests in the context of the times.
It feels like a sea change similar to the change in attitudes 20 or so years ago towards gays - it's not that it comes up in everyday discussion (and nobody every talks about being woke), just a steady underlying assumption. The concept of white privilege and unconscious bias which puzzles some here is seen similarly to climate change - yes, they know some people don't get it, but they can't imagine why as it seems obvious to them.
Not voting Tory is a given among the youngest who express a political opinion, but they don't feel especially pro- any party, except perhaps the Greens, and they generally vote without enthusiasm for the best-placed non-Tory.
Dave Rubin shared a video of a black woman pulled over by a white police officer who chastised her the lady for being on her phone whilst driving. She repeatedly accused him of being a murderer who was endangering her and then told his latino colleague that he was a racist who would 'never be white.' Now it was one (supposedly authentic) video about the police that could have been carefully edited. But such is the case with the individual examples of bad police behaviour that the SJWs rely on for their cause. Now I think we can assume that most young people have seen more of the latter type videos than the former. They would argue it's because they are more in line with the general tenor of events than the former. Is that true? I don't know.
White privilege and unconscious bias are simply sociological theories that some loudly agree with and others vociferously disagree with.
I'd add that whilst young people often have a fresh take on the world, and can see things their elders cannot, they're not always "right" about everything - far from it. I had very black and white views when I was young (you're trying to understand the world so you try and fit it into a theory you can subscribe to and understand) and it's only as you get older that you realise through experience how grey everything is, and how there are no theories and everyone has a point.
That's why we have democracy: to take the views of all age groups and backgrounds into account, and figure it out.
She said she was 140% protected now as each one give 70% protection.
Obviously we dont want people to feel like they cannot be open about who they are, or in some bizarre it's ok so long as no one asks and no one tells situation, but voluntary personal questions on things like sexuality or religion people often dont see as an employers business other than avoiding discrimination.
I think the LDs have a good chance of making gains in the shires, not least here in Oxfordshire where we could well see the Conservatives deposed by a rainbow coalition.
I personally don't put "my pronouns" on anything because they are just what society would expect, so why would I bother? To be honest even if someone addressed me as "she" I don't think I'd be bothered either way.
Former Arsenal and Germany keeper Jens Lehmann has been sacked from his role on Hertha Berlin's board after sending a Whatsapp message to pundit Dennis Aogo calling him a "quota black guy".
Aogo, who works for Sky in Germany, posted a screenshot of the message from Lehmann on Instagram and wrote: "Wow you're serious? The message was probably not for me."
Lehman has apologised and said he meant that, as ex-Germany defender Aogo was "very knowledgeable", he had helped increase the "quota".
However, Tennor Holding, the investment group that Lehmann represented on the supervisory board of Bundesliga club Hertha, reportedly said the 51-year-old's "contract will be terminated with immediate effect".
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/56967418
At the end of the last thread there was some fantastic project fear stuff about Scotland and money which is exactly how the No camp will persuade the undecided to vote Yes.
Brexit - which they say is going swimmingly - is the model for where No loses. Apparently Scotland can't afford to vote Yes because what happens to the economy and currency and your pension! To which people will start quoting Brexit back at you. Or perhaps look at Slovakia as an example.
Dissolves the union and splits from its richer neighbour. Initially both use the same currency, then quickly national versions of the same currency, and later the Euro. Slovakia started as the poor neighbour with GDP per capita 20% lower than the Czechs, but after years of faster growth is now drawing level.
Where I'd take umbrage is if I was compelled to put my pronouns on my email signature.
What you've laid out is fine.
If they won't accept non-UK peeps that is fine. If they do, why not have your systems set up to input non-UK addresses?
Similar the way Companies House lets you use the firm's address for the address of directors and company secretaries.
The school leaving age was raised to 16 in 1976. You'd have to be 61 to experience that. But for a long time there was a quirk where you could leave at Easter, before doing any exams and without O Level/CSE/GCSE qualifications. That only stopped in 1998 (though it was pretty rare by then), so you'd have to be 39 to experience that.
The numbers here are about 10 years old, but that's OK- you can just move each cohort along a decade;
http://www.poverty.org.uk/working-age-adults-without-qualifications/
"There is a grand deal to be done with Brussels to keep Scotland in the union. European leaders are no fans of separatism. From Catalonia to Flanders and Transylvania to the Basques, most have separatist movements of their own they are keen to quash. As they did during the 2014 independence campaign, senior EU figures have quietly suggested to our ministers that they are prepared to be very helpful on an independent Scotland’s ambitions to rejoin the EU: a rejection that would kill Sturgeon’s project dead.
But the EU has a price: an agreement to heal the festering sore that is the Northern Ireland Protocol once and for all. It wants the UK to align to a thinned-down book of EU standards on food and agriculture, a move that would slash the need for the lion’s share of disruptive and costly border checks on imports into the province from the British mainland in a stroke. Some ministers in Johnson’s Cabinet also want closer alignment on sanitary and phytosanitary measures (as they’re technically known), and have pressed Brexit negotiator Lord Frost on it. And I understand this is now happening.
Frost and his opposite number in the EU, Commission vice president Maroš Šefčovič, are inching towards agreeing a set of common standards on agri-food. It won’t be called alignment (No10 prefers the terms “equivalence”). It may even involve the option to diverge if the UK feels it must, to avoid the incandescent rage of hardline Brexiteers who insist the UK must never again be beholden to Brussels on anything. But it amounts to the same thing."
https://www.standard.co.uk/comment/no10-scottish-independence-boris-johnson-nicola-sturgeon-b933342.html
Nowadays, it's almost always firstname-lastname.
First chance for Nation to vote Labour since Corbyn and crew moved on. And as HY keeps saying, any swing from last time these stood equates to gain of seats. Overall I think commentators are looking at poll numbers and underestimating how unpopular Boris is.
And it’s getting a bit lazy to repetitively to slag Starmer off now as boring, charisma less, lack of policies, etc - since when have those things been huge liability in politics? Starmer doing okay really as offering a safe place for a vote, especially mid term.
We don’t really expect oppositions to be fizzing with policy this stage of the cycle? One year in Cameron was doing the Vote Blue Go Green Nogging Nog thing.
My title is Dr and so insurers always ask sex too (maybe they always ask sex* anyway?) but I sometimes get the insurance letters through addressed to "Dr (male) Selebian" and, on one memorable occasion when it was addressed to my wife too "Dr (male) Selebian and Dr (female) Selebian"
*I'll have to check, if they ask for 'gender' I can presumably self-identify as female for a lower premium?
https://www.politico.eu/coronavirus-in-europe/
Starmer is looking like a poor version of Miliband.
But would they automatically label you a homophobe or a racist or a transphobe or whatever if you didn’t adhere to their rather narrow interpretation of what prejudice is, certainly compared to 20 or 30 years ago and I’m not talking followers of our Tommeh or the EDL. Or demand you lose your livelihood for having the wrong views ?
Its the currency version of the Brexit trade argument. "You can't quit the EU without knackering our ability to trade". "Bollocks, we'll trade with other people then and how do all these other countries trade if we won't be able to?"
The detail is irrelevant. The argument is "you are too stupid to have a vote". Which delivered Brexit. I can tell you now what the answer is to the currency debate - "we'll use the pound" where Scotland already issues its own separate banknotes. "Ah but" I hear people who know about economics saying, "that won't work". Except that it has worked for loads of other countries including my Slovakian example.
No will have to make a Positive case for the Union and not fall into lazy and frankly smug arguments about how the Yes side are stupid.
On Medical Malpractice, I imagine that insurers would have a view on whether male and female doctors have similar claims profiles or not, although that would more likely be a reflection of bedside manner rather than skill if they did. I would guess (although I don't know) that MedMal is probably priced on a gender neutral basis, regardless of whether it was affected by the rule change.
https://www.standard.co.uk/comment/no10-scottish-independence-boris-johnson-nicola-sturgeon-b933342.html
It's almost impossible to find a person between 15-20 who self IDs as "straight". Why would you expose yourself like that? Zero Oppression Boxes Ticked, plus you also sound conservative in the most boring way
They all self-ID as "genderqueer, queer, bi-curious, genderfluid" - or whatever. I presume 95% of them are actually straight, as there is no reason gayness or lesbianism should have ten-tupled overnight, as a proportion of society.
And of course the deep irony is that, despite this obsession with sexual identities, they are having much less sex than their parents or maybe grandparents did, at the same age
That night is burned in the psyche of myself and many many Tory activists.
After that, the governing party losing a few hundred council seats in one night doesn't seem that bad.
*very few people in the UK call landladies landlords, barmaids barmen or waitresses waiters.
Basically, the U.K. doesn’t trust the EU not to “evolve” their “standards” in a way that deliberately targets U.K. exports to the EU.
If they can solve that issue, with a classic piece of NI fudge, then we have progress.
Lets asume (inshallah) that the pox is largely in the past by the end of the summer. The political pressure to get on with it will be there - no point being elected with a mandate to do something and then decide not to. Sturgeon will be carried away and a replacement will get on with it.
I don't know about who is straight that identifies as "genderqueer, queer, bi-curious, genderfluid". I think Leon spends more time on Twitter than with young people.
Facebook's independent Oversight Board has ruled in favor of upholding the platform's suspension of former President Donald Trump's account.
https://www.axios.com/facebook-trump-ban-oversight-board-bc239ed4-3b42-4d94-960d-078da5deec3f.html
A curious counter example though is one area where I think things have moved on quite a bit and so shouldn't cause so much argument, but a lot of people still seem determined to assume it is the be all and end all - class.
Edit: and I am also, I think, talking more of females than males. It is still socially more problematic, I guess, for a boy to pose as gay than for a girl to say she's "genderfluid". This is a guess, however
My maths teacher was a legend, he thought us things like averages, statistics, and other similar things using political numbers and cricket scores.
There is therefore an understandable bitterness that the 2016 referendum has resulted in Scotland leaving the EU. Another referendum would be a chance to settle the question of whether that was sufficient for voters to choose Independence or renew the mandate for the Union in the new circumstances created by Brexit.
https://ig.ft.com/coronavirus-vaccine-tracker/?areas=gbr&areas=fra&areas=deu&areas=esp&areas=ita&cumulative=0&populationAdjusted=1
Nothing to worry about, for sure, but do we need to get AZ to put another shilling in the meter?
We aren't (so they say) going to lower food standards, we're going to enhance them. So there is no problem staying aligned / equivalenced to the EU standards. We will have the right to have babies without having the ability to have babies. Huzzah!
Even as a stalking horse candidate he was dire.
Although three more votes for Redwood and Major would have gone.
I've never met an academic who was stuffy about such a thing in truth, but maybe they are only amongst themselves (though I think in america they all get called Professor?)
It would be good to have a trans person on the site. We need that perspective as this debate has become so energetic
https://twitter.com/Caitlyn_Jenner/status/1389569889799610369