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YouGov/Times “Blue Wall” poll finds six point CON to LAB swing since GE2019 – politicalbetting.com

SystemSystem Posts: 11,002
edited July 2021 in General
imageYouGov/Times “Blue Wall” poll finds six point CON to LAB swing since GE2019 – politicalbetting.com

As has been widely reported there’s a YouGov/S Times poll of “blue wall” seats to see the change since GE2019. The outcome is not good for the Tories and suggests that it might be challenging holding on to them and red wall ones at the same time. With the Tories dropping 8% and LAB going up by 4% that equates to a CON to LAB swing of 6%.

Read the full story here

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Comments

  • FloaterFloater Posts: 14,195
    edited July 2021
    first - unlike Labour
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 48,775
    Broken, sleazy Tories on the slide!
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,755
    That's still a pretty hefty lead in such seats, and the fact that the swing is to Labour, rather than the Lib Dems, would lessen Conservative losses.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited July 2021
    Hundreds of AI tools have been built to catch covid. None of them helped.

    https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/07/30/1030329/machine-learning-ai-failed-covid-hospital-diagnosis-pandemic
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 38,959
    edited July 2021
    Quintus.

    In re fili praevii:
    Dura_Ace said:



    I can say things in French. But if I ask a question and receive a reply, usually I have no idea what the other person has said.

    We should just teach kids how to order a coffee, order a beer and say 'I love you' in a dozen languages and settle for that.

    My father said wryly that he learned French for 6 years at Winchester, and then took a trip to Paris;he found he was unable to ask the inspector when they would arrive.


    I was educated in French only until I was 12 and couldn't really write English at that age. When I got to English speaking schools in the US and UK I was amazed at how little grammar was taught compared to my Francophone education.

    Now that I'm a language tutor I see the same situation among British students. Teaching Latin would help slightly as they would be exposed to grammatical concepts like declension. There is almost no declension in English but it's very important in other languages. I regularly see anglophone students struggle with it in Russian.

    It could be fixed much more effectively by teaching Linguistics rather than Latin but that would not stimulate the desiccated G spots of Telegraph readers with type 2 diabetes in the same way so the tories won't do it.
    I wonder if the Latin is because its full of gender to troll the wokists?

    Also - because it gives those parents with money to send their brats to private schools an advantage? At the moment Latin can't seriously be used as an educational criterion. It's like an O level in sheep-farming - only the Welsh, etc., have a hope of doing it. But make it a general educational qualification ...

  • MikeSmithsonMikeSmithson Posts: 7,382
    Sean_F said:

    That's still a pretty hefty lead in such seats, and the fact that the swing is to Labour, rather than the Lib Dems, would lessen Conservative losses.

    Except that polls like this can't take into account the LD campaign effect. Remember punters gave the Tories a 95% chance of holding C&A right up to the final week. I regarded it as a 95% certain LD gain right from the outset
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 14,605
    Labour up 4, Greens up 7, Lib Dems down 6.

    If it was the Lib Dems up 5, and Labour/Greens level then perhaps the Tories would have something to worry about.

    There will be a limit to the number of seats the Lib Dems can campaign hard in.
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,147
    The Swedish discus throwers win the award for the best celebration.
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 48,775
    Carnyx said:

    Quintus.

    In re fili praevii:

    Dura_Ace said:



    I can say things in French. But if I ask a question and receive a reply, usually I have no idea what the other person has said.

    We should just teach kids how to order a coffee, order a beer and say 'I love you' in a dozen languages and settle for that.

    My father said wryly that he learned French for 6 years at Winchester, and then took a trip to Paris;he found he was unable to ask the inspector when they would arrive.


    I was educated in French only until I was 12 and couldn't really write English at that age. When I got to English speaking schools in the US and UK I was amazed at how little grammar was taught compared to my Francophone education.

    Now that I'm a language tutor I see the same situation among British students. Teaching Latin would help slightly as they would be exposed to grammatical concepts like declension. There is almost no declension in English but it's very important in other languages. I regularly see anglophone students struggle with it in Russian.

    It could be fixed much more effectively by teaching Linguistics rather than Latin but that would not stimulate the desiccated G spots of Telegraph readers with type 2 diabetes in the same way so the tories won't do it.
    I wonder if the Latin is because its full of gender to troll the wokists?


    I wonder if the mixed events in the Olympics are there to troll the anti-wokeists?
  • FloaterFloater Posts: 14,195
    Super spreader event underway in Paris
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,607
    edited July 2021
    Fortunately for the Tories there are only 2 seats in the top 100 Labour target seats that are Tory held and in the South East or East and which voted Remain ie Wycombe and Reading West. So a 6% swing to Labour in the South and East in Tory held Remain seats is not a big concern for the blues, though it would be for Steve Baker in Wycombe.

    The vast majority of Tory held Remain seats in the South East have the LDs as the main challengers but there is just a 1% swing to the LDs on this poll from the Tories, so it would need major Labour tactical voting for the Tories to be concerned at the seats going yellow and even then they should narrowly hold onto a majority if they hold the Redwall
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,147

    Sean_F said:

    That's still a pretty hefty lead in such seats, and the fact that the swing is to Labour, rather than the Lib Dems, would lessen Conservative losses.

    Except that polls like this can't take into account the LD campaign effect. Remember punters gave the Tories a 95% chance of holding C&A right up to the final week. I regarded it as a 95% certain LD gain right from the outset
    That campaign effect didn’t do them a lot of good in 2019.
  • pigeonpigeon Posts: 4,052
    tlg86 said:

    The Swedish discus throwers win the award for the best celebration.

    And in one bold leap, Sweden vault over Kuwait, San Marino and the British rowing team in the medal table :smiley:
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 23,786
    Carnyx said:

    Quintus.

    In re fili praevii:

    Dura_Ace said:



    I can say things in French. But if I ask a question and receive a reply, usually I have no idea what the other person has said.

    We should just teach kids how to order a coffee, order a beer and say 'I love you' in a dozen languages and settle for that.

    My father said wryly that he learned French for 6 years at Winchester, and then took a trip to Paris;he found he was unable to ask the inspector when they would arrive.


    I was educated in French only until I was 12 and couldn't really write English at that age. When I got to English speaking schools in the US and UK I was amazed at how little grammar was taught compared to my Francophone education.

    Now that I'm a language tutor I see the same situation among British students. Teaching Latin would help slightly as they would be exposed to grammatical concepts like declension. There is almost no declension in English but it's very important in other languages. I regularly see anglophone students struggle with it in Russian.

    It could be fixed much more effectively by teaching Linguistics rather than Latin but that would not stimulate the desiccated G spots of Telegraph readers with type 2 diabetes in the same way so the tories won't do it.
    I wonder if the Latin is because its full of gender to troll the wokists?

    Also - because it gives those parents with money to send their brats to private schools an advantage? At the moment Latin can't seriously be used as an educational criterion. It's like an O level in sheep-farming - only the Welsh, etc., have a hope of doing it. But make it a general educational qualification ...

    Rachel Johnson (as in sister of ...) suggested rote learning of the classics was a soft route to Oxford.
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,755

    Sean_F said:

    That's still a pretty hefty lead in such seats, and the fact that the swing is to Labour, rather than the Lib Dems, would lessen Conservative losses.

    Except that polls like this can't take into account the LD campaign effect. Remember punters gave the Tories a 95% chance of holding C&A right up to the final week. I regarded it as a 95% certain LD gain right from the outset
    I think that's a good deal easier to achieve in a single-seat campaign than in a general election.
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    Carnyx said:

    Quintus.

    In re fili praevii:

    Dura_Ace said:



    I can say things in French. But if I ask a question and receive a reply, usually I have no idea what the other person has said.

    We should just teach kids how to order a coffee, order a beer and say 'I love you' in a dozen languages and settle for that.

    My father said wryly that he learned French for 6 years at Winchester, and then took a trip to Paris;he found he was unable to ask the inspector when they would arrive.


    I was educated in French only until I was 12 and couldn't really write English at that age. When I got to English speaking schools in the US and UK I was amazed at how little grammar was taught compared to my Francophone education.

    Now that I'm a language tutor I see the same situation among British students. Teaching Latin would help slightly as they would be exposed to grammatical concepts like declension. There is almost no declension in English but it's very important in other languages. I regularly see anglophone students struggle with it in Russian.

    It could be fixed much more effectively by teaching Linguistics rather than Latin but that would not stimulate the desiccated G spots of Telegraph readers with type 2 diabetes in the same way so the tories won't do it.
    I wonder if the Latin is because its full of gender to troll the wokists?

    Also - because it gives those parents with money to send their brats to private schools an advantage? At the moment Latin can't seriously be used as an educational criterion. It's like an O level in sheep-farming - only the Welsh, etc., have a hope of doing it. But make it a general educational qualification ...

    Rachel Johnson (as in sister of ...) suggested rote learning of the classics was a soft route to Oxford.
    'Tis. Trust me on this.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 38,959
    edited July 2021

    Carnyx said:

    Quintus.

    In re fili praevii:

    Dura_Ace said:



    I can say things in French. But if I ask a question and receive a reply, usually I have no idea what the other person has said.

    We should just teach kids how to order a coffee, order a beer and say 'I love you' in a dozen languages and settle for that.

    My father said wryly that he learned French for 6 years at Winchester, and then took a trip to Paris;he found he was unable to ask the inspector when they would arrive.


    I was educated in French only until I was 12 and couldn't really write English at that age. When I got to English speaking schools in the US and UK I was amazed at how little grammar was taught compared to my Francophone education.

    Now that I'm a language tutor I see the same situation among British students. Teaching Latin would help slightly as they would be exposed to grammatical concepts like declension. There is almost no declension in English but it's very important in other languages. I regularly see anglophone students struggle with it in Russian.

    It could be fixed much more effectively by teaching Linguistics rather than Latin but that would not stimulate the desiccated G spots of Telegraph readers with type 2 diabetes in the same way so the tories won't do it.
    I wonder if the Latin is because its full of gender to troll the wokists?

    Also - because it gives those parents with money to send their brats to private schools an advantage? At the moment Latin can't seriously be used as an educational criterion. It's like an O level in sheep-farming - only the Welsh, etc., have a hope of doing it. But make it a general educational qualification ...

    Rachel Johnson (as in sister of ...) suggested rote learning of the classics was a soft route to Oxford.
    So why would Tories want more competition for their children's life chances?
  • darkagedarkage Posts: 4,697
    edited July 2021
    With regard to this information, it really seems quite insignificant.
    The tories still have a massive lead in the south east: and they can encroach further in to the red wall, if they have the right strategy. There will of course be some consequences for them in other parts of the country, but it is inevitable that departing from thatcherite free market policies would mean losing some wealthy southern voters, who were the main beneficiaries of these economic policies. Where these voters turn to is unclear: neither the greens nor the lib dems are a particularly good fit. So there is some movement, but in my view it is unexpected and unsuprising.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 38,959

    Carnyx said:

    Quintus.

    In re fili praevii:

    Dura_Ace said:



    I can say things in French. But if I ask a question and receive a reply, usually I have no idea what the other person has said.

    We should just teach kids how to order a coffee, order a beer and say 'I love you' in a dozen languages and settle for that.

    My father said wryly that he learned French for 6 years at Winchester, and then took a trip to Paris;he found he was unable to ask the inspector when they would arrive.


    I was educated in French only until I was 12 and couldn't really write English at that age. When I got to English speaking schools in the US and UK I was amazed at how little grammar was taught compared to my Francophone education.

    Now that I'm a language tutor I see the same situation among British students. Teaching Latin would help slightly as they would be exposed to grammatical concepts like declension. There is almost no declension in English but it's very important in other languages. I regularly see anglophone students struggle with it in Russian.

    It could be fixed much more effectively by teaching Linguistics rather than Latin but that would not stimulate the desiccated G spots of Telegraph readers with type 2 diabetes in the same way so the tories won't do it.
    I wonder if the Latin is because its full of gender to troll the wokists?


    I wonder if the mixed events in the Olympics are there to troll the anti-wokeists?
    They certainly didn't have them in the good old days when they were running around in the altogether at Olympia. No arguments there about what to wear in the sprinting, beach volleyball and handball.

    No female competitors either, mind (possible exception being the owners of the chariot racing teams, who IIRC were the ones who got the medals, not the chauffeurs, but I can't recall if they all had to be male owners).
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758
    pigeon said:

    tlg86 said:

    The Swedish discus throwers win the award for the best celebration.

    And in one bold leap, Sweden vault over Kuwait, San Marino and the British rowing team in the medal table :smiley:
    Little known fact: in the 1912 Stockholm Olympics the New College rowing team was so good the UK selected them in toto for the 8s.

    They impressed the Swedish King sufficiently that he granted New the right to row in the Swedish royal colours (purple and gold) in perpetuity
  • LeonLeon Posts: 45,700
    Prior thread very interesting (perhaps not the stuff about roads)

    I too have made insane predictions way out of my area of competence - I know this might not come as a shock, but it was a bit of an epiphany for me, just this morning

    eg Yesterday I confidently predicted that Team GB would do quite badly compared to reasonable expectations. I said we would finish behind Oz, Russia and maybe another European country. I said we might finish around 9th in the medal table, and get around 40-45 medals

    This morning I considered my prediction, and I laughed at my own stupidity

    Where was I getting my info with which to make these precise calls? Out of my ass, basically. It is all a hunch, an intimation. In fact it's not even a hunch, it's more like a spasm in reaction to early disappointments. There are people out there - on this site - who know far more about these Games, right down to individual athletes in more obscure sports, and their various chances. Their prophesies are 100 times more valuable than mine.

    If my "prediction" turns out to be anywhere near correct it will be nearly pure luck and almost zero judgement.

    My only defence is that I never bet on these hunches. I only ever bet after proper consideration and research. Which is probably why I bet very rarely

  • TresTres Posts: 2,150
    tlg86 said:

    Sean_F said:

    That's still a pretty hefty lead in such seats, and the fact that the swing is to Labour, rather than the Lib Dems, would lessen Conservative losses.

    Except that polls like this can't take into account the LD campaign effect. Remember punters gave the Tories a 95% chance of holding C&A right up to the final week. I regarded it as a 95% certain LD gain right from the outset
    That campaign effect didn’t do them a lot of good in 2019.
    That's because Corbynistas were more interested in stopping LDs than beating the Tories.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,607
    edited July 2021
    darkage said:

    With regard to this information, it really seems quite insignificant.
    The tories still have a massive lead in the south east: and they can encroach further in to the red wall, if they have the right strategy. There will of course be some consequences for them in other parts of the country, but it is inevitable that departing from thatcherite free market policies would mean losing some wealthy southern voters, who were the main beneficiaries of these economic policies. Where these voters turn to is unclear: neither the greens nor the lib dems are a particularly good fit. So there is some movement, but in my view it is unexpected and unsuprising.

    On this polling even if the Tories lost say 20 SouthEast seats, mainly to the LDs a la Chesham and Amersham, they would still have a comfortable majority of 40.

    To be at serious risk of losing their majority they would need to lose about 20-30 seats to Labour in the Red Wall too as you correctly point out and as Hartlepool and Batley and Spen show Labour are barely able to hold onto all their Red Wall seats they hold now let alone regain them from the Tories.

    Starmer has made it safe for some upper middle class Southern Tory Remainers to vote LD maybe but he has yet to make any progress at all in regaining working class Leave voters in the North and Midlands from the Tories
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited July 2021
    Leon said:

    Prior thread very interesting (perhaps not the stuff about roads)

    I too have made insane predictions way out of my area of competence - I know this might not come as a shock, but it was a bit of an epiphany for me, just this morning

    eg Yesterday I confidently predicted that Team GB would do quite badly compared to reasonable expectations. I said we would finish behind Oz, Russia and maybe another European country. I said we might finish around 9th in the medal table, and get around 40-45 medals

    This morning I considered my prediction, and I laughed at my own stupidity

    Where was I getting my info with which to make these precise calls? Out of my ass, basically. It is all a hunch, an intimation. In fact it's not even a hunch, it's more like a spasm in reaction to early disappointments. There are people out there - on this site - who know far more about these Games, right down to individual athletes in more obscure sports, and their various chances. Their prophesies are 100 times more valuable than mine.

    If my "prediction" turns out to be anywhere near correct it will be nearly pure luck and almost zero judgement.

    My only defence is that I never bet on these hunches. I only ever bet after proper consideration and research. Which is probably why I bet very rarely

    New nickname...leon the trolley....
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,005
    On topic, it’s worth noting that YouGov has been quite picky about the seats it has defined as blue wall (noting also that C&A didn’t qualify!). Most of them sit along a wide band between Gloucester and Eastbourne - in the south it doesn’t go further west than around Southampton and there are only three seats from East Anglia in the sample, compared to at least nine from Greater London.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    I am absolutely BEGGING everyone to PLEASE learn Bayes' rule. Please!

    https://twitter.com/pfau/status/1421228742362402819?s=19
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830
    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    Quintus.

    In re fili praevii:

    Dura_Ace said:



    I can say things in French. But if I ask a question and receive a reply, usually I have no idea what the other person has said.

    We should just teach kids how to order a coffee, order a beer and say 'I love you' in a dozen languages and settle for that.

    My father said wryly that he learned French for 6 years at Winchester, and then took a trip to Paris;he found he was unable to ask the inspector when they would arrive.


    I was educated in French only until I was 12 and couldn't really write English at that age. When I got to English speaking schools in the US and UK I was amazed at how little grammar was taught compared to my Francophone education.

    Now that I'm a language tutor I see the same situation among British students. Teaching Latin would help slightly as they would be exposed to grammatical concepts like declension. There is almost no declension in English but it's very important in other languages. I regularly see anglophone students struggle with it in Russian.

    It could be fixed much more effectively by teaching Linguistics rather than Latin but that would not stimulate the desiccated G spots of Telegraph readers with type 2 diabetes in the same way so the tories won't do it.
    I wonder if the Latin is because its full of gender to troll the wokists?

    Also - because it gives those parents with money to send their brats to private schools an advantage? At the moment Latin can't seriously be used as an educational criterion. It's like an O level in sheep-farming - only the Welsh, etc., have a hope of doing it. But make it a general educational qualification ...

    Rachel Johnson (as in sister of ...) suggested rote learning of the classics was a soft route to Oxford.
    So why would Tories want more competition for their children's life chances?
    Tokenism. The Universities might dump the classics if it became obvious they are an upper middle class scam. You want a trickle of comp school entrants to point at and claim how inclusive it all is.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    Some serious bad blood between the 3 Jamaican ladies.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603
    Even fully fit Dina Asher-Smith wouldn't have got anywhere near the medals.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,607
    edited July 2021
    IanB2 said:

    On topic, it’s worth noting that YouGov has been quite picky about the seats it has defined as blue wall (noting also that C&A didn’t qualify!). Most of them sit along a wide band between Gloucester and Eastbourne - in the south it doesn’t go further west than around Southampton and there are only three seats from East Anglia in the sample, compared to at least nine from Greater London.

    Even adding Greater London there are only 6 Tory held Remain seats in the top 100 Labour target seats - Kensington, Chipping Barnet, Chingford and Woodford Green, Hendon and Cities of London and Westminster and Harrow East.

    Albeit that would see Starmer claim the scalps of IDS and Theresa Villiers
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,005
    DougSeal said:
    A computer that could smell someone ten miles away and identify which Olympic sized swimming pool has a drop of blood in it would be a remarkable machine. Dogs’ smell is somewhere between 1,000 and 10,000 times better than ours and it occupies between 30-40% of their brain capacity.
  • TresTres Posts: 2,150

    Some serious bad blood between the 3 Jamaican ladies.

    Good to see some adherence to the social distancing guidance.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,760
    IanB2 said:

    DougSeal said:
    A computer that could smell someone ten miles away and identify which Olympic sized swimming pool has a drop of blood in it would be a remarkable machine. Dogs’ smell is somewhere between 1,000 and 10,000 times better than ours and it occupies between 30-40% of their brain capacity.
    And what does my dog do with this power? Spends as much time as possible sniffing where other dogs have done a wee...
  • LeonLeon Posts: 45,700
    edited July 2021
    The Olympics needs a dramatic new sport

    I reckon it is time to reintroduce pok-ta-pok: the Mesomaerican ball game (of the Maya, Aztecs, etc)

    It is simple but quite compelling. Two teams of maybe four players each compete on a hard stone ball-court, not unlike a real tennis court. With bats, arms and hips they propel a large, firm rubber ball at each other and also at a stone hoop placed high to the side. Victory is achieved via points, or by slotting the ball through the hoop.

    it's not a game for the faint hearted, however. For example, the ball is genuinely hard, and can cause severe bruising, internal injuries - even death in extreme cases. Also, at the end of the game the entire losing team is ritually sacrificed by decapitation, and after that they also sacrifice and dismember the entire winning team. And then the next teams play, for a while, with the severed heads and hands.

    So it might not be quite in tune with the Woke agenda in British Olympics, but on the other hand the inquest into TeamGB's performance would be rendered largely pointless, thus saving money?
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,005
    HYUFD said:

    Fortunately for the Tories there are only 2 seats in the top 100 Labour target seats that are Tory held and in the South East or East and which voted Remain ie Wycombe and Reading West. So a 6% swing to Labour in the South and East in Tory held Remain seats is not a big concern for the blues, though it would be for Steve Baker in Wycombe.

    The vast majority of Tory held Remain seats in the South East have the LDs as the main challengers but there is just a 1% swing to the LDs on this poll from the Tories, so it would need major Labour tactical voting for the Tories to be concerned at the seats going yellow and even then they should narrowly hold onto a majority if they hold the Redwall

    If the green and LibDem vote deploys strategically, things would look better.

    YouGov’s own map identifies nine of its chosen seats that would fall to Labour based on its polling, with LibDems gaining three and a further four that are too close to call.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,631
    Sean_F said:

    That's still a pretty hefty lead in such seats, and the fact that the swing is to Labour, rather than the Lib Dems, would lessen Conservative losses.

    The risk to the Conservatives is that you see a repeat of 2005, and extensive tactical voting.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,607
    IshmaelZ said:

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    Quintus.

    In re fili praevii:

    Dura_Ace said:



    I can say things in French. But if I ask a question and receive a reply, usually I have no idea what the other person has said.

    We should just teach kids how to order a coffee, order a beer and say 'I love you' in a dozen languages and settle for that.

    My father said wryly that he learned French for 6 years at Winchester, and then took a trip to Paris;he found he was unable to ask the inspector when they would arrive.


    I was educated in French only until I was 12 and couldn't really write English at that age. When I got to English speaking schools in the US and UK I was amazed at how little grammar was taught compared to my Francophone education.

    Now that I'm a language tutor I see the same situation among British students. Teaching Latin would help slightly as they would be exposed to grammatical concepts like declension. There is almost no declension in English but it's very important in other languages. I regularly see anglophone students struggle with it in Russian.

    It could be fixed much more effectively by teaching Linguistics rather than Latin but that would not stimulate the desiccated G spots of Telegraph readers with type 2 diabetes in the same way so the tories won't do it.
    I wonder if the Latin is because its full of gender to troll the wokists?

    Also - because it gives those parents with money to send their brats to private schools an advantage? At the moment Latin can't seriously be used as an educational criterion. It's like an O level in sheep-farming - only the Welsh, etc., have a hope of doing it. But make it a general educational qualification ...

    Rachel Johnson (as in sister of ...) suggested rote learning of the classics was a soft route to Oxford.
    So why would Tories want more competition for their children's life chances?
    Tokenism. The Universities might dump the classics if it became obvious they are an upper middle class scam. You want a trickle of comp school entrants to point at and claim how inclusive it all is.
    There is not much to dump, the only universities which still do pure Classics/Latin degrees are Oxford and Cambridge, St Andrews, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Exeter and Nottingham, Manchester, Bristol, KCL and UCL and Royal Holloway.

    They are all pretty posh universities anyway
  • YoungTurkYoungTurk Posts: 158
    FPT
    Dura_Ace said:


    [...]I was amazed at how little grammar was taught compared to my Francophone education.

    Now that I'm a language tutor I see the same situation among British students. Teaching Latin would help slightly as they would be exposed to grammatical concepts like declension. There is almost no declension in English but it's very important in other languages. I regularly see anglophone students struggle with it in Russian.

    It could be fixed much more effectively by teaching Linguistics rather than Latin [...]

    English should be taught so as to help with the learning of other languages later. Teaching the right perspective at the beginning doesn't take long. See what I wrote here. English has almost no declension, but cases can be taught as something functional. In fact the absence of declension can be used to teach the difference and relationship between form and function. Like this:

    "In 'He sees sugar', 'sugar' is the direct object of the verb and we say that means it's in the accusative case. In 'Sugar is in the jar', 'sugar' is the subject of the verb and we say it's in the nominative case. In English no special endings are used, and as you can see the two instances of the word 'sugar' take exactly the same form. But many other languages use special endings to tell you the case, i.e. what relationship the noun is in with the verb or with some other clause element. That gives more scope with word order, which you can vary for emphasis more easily because the ending of 'sugar' will tell you what case it's in."

    "Nouns can take other forms than these two. For example, you can get a prepositional phrase such as 'to Mary'. In 'He gives the letter to Mary', we say 'Mary' is in the dative case. Functionally 'Mary' is the indirect object of the verb. In English this functional relationship can be expressed using the preposition 'to', but it can also occur without a preposition, in 'He gives Mary the letter'. 'Mary' is in the same case here as it is in 'He gives the letter to Mary': the dative. In languages such as Russian, you just use the ending for the dative case and in this example you wouldn't use a preposition at all.
    " Etc.

    Aspect can be introduced in English grammar in a similar fashion. For example:

    "There are three simple tenses - past, present, and future. In English you can make each one progressive (or continuous), to communicate that a state is continuing, or you can make it perfect, to communicate that something happened (or a state existed) before the viewpoint time but with relevance that still exists in that time, which may perhaps be because it's still going on. Or you can do both. For example if you do both, you can get 'He had been thinking' (past perfect progressive), 'He has been thinking' (present perfect progressive), and 'He will have been thinking' (future perfect progressive). In English the 'present', 'present perfect', 'present progressive', and 'present perfect progressive', are usually all called separate tenses, giving 12 all told. But in some languages there is the concept of 'aspect', and it would make just as much sense to say that 'progressive' and 'perfect' are 'aspects', respectively showing that something is 'actually going on' and that something 'went on beforehand and has continuing relevance'." Etc.

    I.e. actually bring out the concepts of grammar - function, form, relationships, tense. I have given this in accelerated form, but it can be taught in ~10 hours including time allowed for exercises.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,631
    Floater said:

    Super spreader event underway in Paris

    It’s appallingly covered here in the US; CNN has a story on Amanda Knox returning to Italy, but nothing on the French riots.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,005
    Leon said:

    Prior thread very interesting (perhaps not the stuff about roads)

    I too have made insane predictions way out of my area of competence - I know this might not come as a shock, but it was a bit of an epiphany for me, just this morning

    eg Yesterday I confidently predicted that Team GB would do quite badly compared to reasonable expectations. I said we would finish behind Oz, Russia and maybe another European country. I said we might finish around 9th in the medal table, and get around 40-45 medals

    This morning I considered my prediction, and I laughed at my own stupidity

    Where was I getting my info with which to make these precise calls? Out of my ass, basically. It is all a hunch, an intimation. In fact it's not even a hunch, it's more like a spasm in reaction to early disappointments. There are people out there - on this site - who know far more about these Games, right down to individual athletes in more obscure sports, and their various chances. Their prophesies are 100 times more valuable than mine.

    If my "prediction" turns out to be anywhere near correct it will be nearly pure luck and almost zero judgement.

    My only defence is that I never bet on these hunches. I only ever bet after proper consideration and research. Which is probably why I bet very rarely

    The only predictions of yours that ever come anywhere close are those that you have nicked from other PB’ers.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,607
    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Fortunately for the Tories there are only 2 seats in the top 100 Labour target seats that are Tory held and in the South East or East and which voted Remain ie Wycombe and Reading West. So a 6% swing to Labour in the South and East in Tory held Remain seats is not a big concern for the blues, though it would be for Steve Baker in Wycombe.

    The vast majority of Tory held Remain seats in the South East have the LDs as the main challengers but there is just a 1% swing to the LDs on this poll from the Tories, so it would need major Labour tactical voting for the Tories to be concerned at the seats going yellow and even then they should narrowly hold onto a majority if they hold the Redwall

    If the green and LibDem vote deploys strategically, things would look better.

    YouGov’s own map identifies nine of its chosen seats that would fall to Labour based on its polling, with LibDems gaining three and a further four that are too close to call.
    That is adding 6 Labour gains in Tory Remain held seats in Greater London to 2 or 3 in the South and East but even if all those 16 identified were lost by the Tories they would still have a majority of nearly 50 if they held all their Red Wall seats
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited July 2021
    Tres said:

    Some serious bad blood between the 3 Jamaican ladies.

    Good to see some adherence to the social distancing guidance.
    I don't think they need a pandemic to encourage each other from not wanting to embrace ...crickey...i think they hate each other that much they would prefer literally if any other countries athletes got in the medals.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,631
    Carnyx said:

    Quintus.

    In re fili praevii:

    Dura_Ace said:



    I can say things in French. But if I ask a question and receive a reply, usually I have no idea what the other person has said.

    We should just teach kids how to order a coffee, order a beer and say 'I love you' in a dozen languages and settle for that.

    My father said wryly that he learned French for 6 years at Winchester, and then took a trip to Paris;he found he was unable to ask the inspector when they would arrive.


    I was educated in French only until I was 12 and couldn't really write English at that age. When I got to English speaking schools in the US and UK I was amazed at how little grammar was taught compared to my Francophone education.

    Now that I'm a language tutor I see the same situation among British students. Teaching Latin would help slightly as they would be exposed to grammatical concepts like declension. There is almost no declension in English but it's very important in other languages. I regularly see anglophone students struggle with it in Russian.

    It could be fixed much more effectively by teaching Linguistics rather than Latin but that would not stimulate the desiccated G spots of Telegraph readers with type 2 diabetes in the same way so the tories won't do it.
    I wonder if the Latin is because its full of gender to troll the wokists?

    Also - because it gives those parents with money to send their brats to private schools an advantage? At the moment Latin can't seriously be used as an educational criterion. It's like an O level in sheep-farming - only the Welsh, etc., have a hope of doing it. But make it a general educational qualification ...

    Are you kidding?

    Latin has neuter, so you can identify as they/them and not he or she. It is therefore perfect for these woke times.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 45,700
    The victorious captain of the triumphant home side, in the celebrated Veracruz Condors versus Tikal United Pok-ta-Pok Grand Final of 398AD.


  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,005

    IanB2 said:

    DougSeal said:
    A computer that could smell someone ten miles away and identify which Olympic sized swimming pool has a drop of blood in it would be a remarkable machine. Dogs’ smell is somewhere between 1,000 and 10,000 times better than ours and it occupies between 30-40% of their brain capacity.
    And what does my dog do with this power? Spends as much time as possible sniffing where other dogs have done a wee...
    We did an introduction to scent training last weekend, and there is some more useful stuff you can do with your dog if you give it some time. For example it is relatively easy to train your dog to find stuff like your car keys, and the trainer’s dog is apparently well known for tracking down missing cats near where they live.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,607
    edited July 2021
    Leon said:

    The Olympics needs a dramatic new sport

    I reckon it is time to reintroduce pok-ta-pok: the Mesomaerican ball game (of the Maya, Aztecs, etc)

    It is simple but quite compelling. Two teams of maybe four players each compete on a hard stone ball-court, not unlike a real tennis court. With bats, arms and hips they propel a large, firm rubber ball at each other and also at a stone hoop placed high to the side. Victory is achieved via points, or by slotting the ball through the hoop.

    it's not a game for the faint hearted, however. For example, the ball is genuinely hard, and can cause severe bruising, internal injuries - even death in extreme cases. Also, at the end of the game the entire losing team is ritually sacrificed by decapitation, and after that they also sacrifice and dismember the entire winning team. And then the next teams play, for a while, with the severed heads and hands.

    So it might not be quite in tune with the Woke agenda in British Olympics, but on the other hand the inquest into TeamGB's performance would be rendered largely pointless, thus saving money?

    Maybe Cortes was not too bad after all.

  • LeonLeon Posts: 45,700
    IanB2 said:

    Leon said:

    Prior thread very interesting (perhaps not the stuff about roads)

    I too have made insane predictions way out of my area of competence - I know this might not come as a shock, but it was a bit of an epiphany for me, just this morning

    eg Yesterday I confidently predicted that Team GB would do quite badly compared to reasonable expectations. I said we would finish behind Oz, Russia and maybe another European country. I said we might finish around 9th in the medal table, and get around 40-45 medals

    This morning I considered my prediction, and I laughed at my own stupidity

    Where was I getting my info with which to make these precise calls? Out of my ass, basically. It is all a hunch, an intimation. In fact it's not even a hunch, it's more like a spasm in reaction to early disappointments. There are people out there - on this site - who know far more about these Games, right down to individual athletes in more obscure sports, and their various chances. Their prophesies are 100 times more valuable than mine.

    If my "prediction" turns out to be anywhere near correct it will be nearly pure luck and almost zero judgement.

    My only defence is that I never bet on these hunches. I only ever bet after proper consideration and research. Which is probably why I bet very rarely

    The only predictions of yours that ever come anywhere close are those that you have nicked from other PB’ers.
    Quite possibly true, but I always have the ultimate solace that, whatever my sins and disappointments, I am not you
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,005
    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Fortunately for the Tories there are only 2 seats in the top 100 Labour target seats that are Tory held and in the South East or East and which voted Remain ie Wycombe and Reading West. So a 6% swing to Labour in the South and East in Tory held Remain seats is not a big concern for the blues, though it would be for Steve Baker in Wycombe.

    The vast majority of Tory held Remain seats in the South East have the LDs as the main challengers but there is just a 1% swing to the LDs on this poll from the Tories, so it would need major Labour tactical voting for the Tories to be concerned at the seats going yellow and even then they should narrowly hold onto a majority if they hold the Redwall

    If the green and LibDem vote deploys strategically, things would look better.

    YouGov’s own map identifies nine of its chosen seats that would fall to Labour based on its polling, with LibDems gaining three and a further four that are too close to call.
    That is adding 6 Labour gains in Tory Remain held seats in Greater London to 2 or 3 in the South and East but even if all those 16 identified were lost by the Tories they would still have a majority of nearly 50 if they held all their Red Wall seats
    if….
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,631

    Labour up 4, Greens up 7, Lib Dems down 6.

    If it was the Lib Dems up 5, and Labour/Greens level then perhaps the Tories would have something to worry about.

    There will be a limit to the number of seats the Lib Dems can campaign hard in.

    It will be very interesting to see if the Greens can manage to become relevant enough to grab the third party spot from the libdems.

    In theory, they are in an excellent position to do so, but so far they have made very little progress outside the Euro elections. (And we aren’t getting those any more.)
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 48,775
    Leon said:

    Prior thread very interesting (perhaps not the stuff about roads)

    I love you too, @Leon :lol:
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 38,959
    rcs1000 said:

    Carnyx said:

    Quintus.

    In re fili praevii:

    Dura_Ace said:



    I can say things in French. But if I ask a question and receive a reply, usually I have no idea what the other person has said.

    We should just teach kids how to order a coffee, order a beer and say 'I love you' in a dozen languages and settle for that.

    My father said wryly that he learned French for 6 years at Winchester, and then took a trip to Paris;he found he was unable to ask the inspector when they would arrive.


    I was educated in French only until I was 12 and couldn't really write English at that age. When I got to English speaking schools in the US and UK I was amazed at how little grammar was taught compared to my Francophone education.

    Now that I'm a language tutor I see the same situation among British students. Teaching Latin would help slightly as they would be exposed to grammatical concepts like declension. There is almost no declension in English but it's very important in other languages. I regularly see anglophone students struggle with it in Russian.

    It could be fixed much more effectively by teaching Linguistics rather than Latin but that would not stimulate the desiccated G spots of Telegraph readers with type 2 diabetes in the same way so the tories won't do it.
    I wonder if the Latin is because its full of gender to troll the wokists?

    Also - because it gives those parents with money to send their brats to private schools an advantage? At the moment Latin can't seriously be used as an educational criterion. It's like an O level in sheep-farming - only the Welsh, etc., have a hope of doing it. But make it a general educational qualification ...

    Are you kidding?

    Latin has neuter, so you can identify as they/them and not he or she. It is therefore perfect for these woke times.
    It/they, to be even better. But I was thinking more along the lines that all sailors are feminine, for instance, as are all tables ...
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,005
    edited July 2021
    Leon said:

    IanB2 said:

    Leon said:

    Prior thread very interesting (perhaps not the stuff about roads)

    I too have made insane predictions way out of my area of competence - I know this might not come as a shock, but it was a bit of an epiphany for me, just this morning

    eg Yesterday I confidently predicted that Team GB would do quite badly compared to reasonable expectations. I said we would finish behind Oz, Russia and maybe another European country. I said we might finish around 9th in the medal table, and get around 40-45 medals

    This morning I considered my prediction, and I laughed at my own stupidity

    Where was I getting my info with which to make these precise calls? Out of my ass, basically. It is all a hunch, an intimation. In fact it's not even a hunch, it's more like a spasm in reaction to early disappointments. There are people out there - on this site - who know far more about these Games, right down to individual athletes in more obscure sports, and their various chances. Their prophesies are 100 times more valuable than mine.

    If my "prediction" turns out to be anywhere near correct it will be nearly pure luck and almost zero judgement.

    My only defence is that I never bet on these hunches. I only ever bet after proper consideration and research. Which is probably why I bet very rarely

    The only predictions of yours that ever come anywhere close are those that you have nicked from other PB’ers.
    Quite possibly true, but I always have the ultimate solace that, whatever my sins and disappointments, I am not you
    It’s a very bad sign to have been beaten back to your argument of last resort so quickly.
  • NickPalmerNickPalmer Posts: 21,244
    rcs1000 said:

    Floater said:

    Super spreader event underway in Paris

    It’s appallingly covered here in the US; CNN has a story on Amanda Knox returning to Italy, but nothing on the French riots.
    Does the US media ever take much interest in demos in Europe? Or even anything else?
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,608
    rcs1000 said:

    Labour up 4, Greens up 7, Lib Dems down 6.

    If it was the Lib Dems up 5, and Labour/Greens level then perhaps the Tories would have something to worry about.

    There will be a limit to the number of seats the Lib Dems can campaign hard in.

    It will be very interesting to see if the Greens can manage to become relevant enough to grab the third party spot from the libdems.

    In theory, they are in an excellent position to do so, but so far they have made very little progress outside the Euro elections. (And we aren’t getting those any more.)
    Really? Why ever not?
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,147
    rcs1000 said:

    Floater said:

    Super spreader event underway in Paris

    It’s appallingly covered here in the US; CNN has a story on Amanda Knox returning to Italy, but nothing on the French riots.
    It never gets mentioned in our press.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    Predictable....

    BBC News - Afghanistan: Fighting rages as Taliban besiege three key cities
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-58040141
  • pigeonpigeon Posts: 4,052
    Leon said:

    Prior thread very interesting (perhaps not the stuff about roads)

    I too have made insane predictions way out of my area of competence - I know this might not come as a shock, but it was a bit of an epiphany for me, just this morning

    eg Yesterday I confidently predicted that Team GB would do quite badly compared to reasonable expectations. I said we would finish behind Oz, Russia and maybe another European country. I said we might finish around 9th in the medal table, and get around 40-45 medals

    This morning I considered my prediction, and I laughed at my own stupidity

    Where was I getting my info with which to make these precise calls? Out of my ass, basically. It is all a hunch, an intimation. In fact it's not even a hunch, it's more like a spasm in reaction to early disappointments. There are people out there - on this site - who know far more about these Games, right down to individual athletes in more obscure sports, and their various chances. Their prophesies are 100 times more valuable than mine.

    If my "prediction" turns out to be anywhere near correct it will be nearly pure luck and almost zero judgement.

    My only defence is that I never bet on these hunches. I only ever bet after proper consideration and research. Which is probably why I bet very rarely

    Very wise. I know relatively little about what's going on; however...

    *The British team is currently sat on 28 medals
    *Boxing has produced a bronze, three more semi-finalists who now can't do any worse than bronze, and three more quarter-finalists
    *Sailing has also produced a bronze and British crews are competitive in six of the eight events that have yet to complete (two in first place, three in second and one in fourth the last time I looked)
    *The three-day eventers are doing well at the moment
    *The men's golfers are competitive and the women's haven't started yet
    *The individual apparatus finals in gymnastics haven't happened yet
    *Flatwater canoeing hasn't started yet (and I've not the foggiest whether there are any competitive Brits going in that event, but I'm pretty sure there were medallists last time)
    *The whole athletics programme has only just got started (and I know it doesn't look promising from the British POV, but there are a *lot* of events and the team might yet get something out of it)
    *AND track cycling has yet to get underway

    In medal table terms I rate it as a competition for 5th with Australia, and 50 medals looks achievable. That'd be broadly comparable with Beijing, and a credible overall achievement IMHO.
  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 13,981
    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Fortunately for the Tories there are only 2 seats in the top 100 Labour target seats that are Tory held and in the South East or East and which voted Remain ie Wycombe and Reading West. So a 6% swing to Labour in the South and East in Tory held Remain seats is not a big concern for the blues, though it would be for Steve Baker in Wycombe.

    The vast majority of Tory held Remain seats in the South East have the LDs as the main challengers but there is just a 1% swing to the LDs on this poll from the Tories, so it would need major Labour tactical voting for the Tories to be concerned at the seats going yellow and even then they should narrowly hold onto a majority if they hold the Redwall

    If the green and LibDem vote deploys strategically, things would look better.

    YouGov’s own map identifies nine of its chosen seats that would fall to Labour based on its polling, with LibDems gaining three and a further four that are too close to call.
    Here's the list;

    CON TO LAB:
    - Chingford & Woodford Green
    - Chipping Barent
    - Filton & Bradley Stoke
    - Hendon
    - Kensington & Chelsea
    - Milton Keynes N
    - Stroud
    - Truro & Falmouth
    - Wycombe

    CON to LDM:
    - Cheltenham
    - Wimbledon
    - Winchester

    https://twitter.com/ElectionMapsUK/status/1421178611223121922?s=20

    Considering the way that Lab and Lib Dem tore chunks out of each other in 2019, surely some tactical unwind is going to be expected? Take Batley + Spen, where it looks like there was just enough of a Lib to Lab shift for Kim Leadbetter to fend of the catty one. That can fairly easily lead to fewer Lib Dem votes and more seats- look at the history of the Alliance/Lib Dems in the 80's and 90's. What matters for the Lib Dems is getting votes in the right places, not national swing.

    More generally, the efficiency of the anti-Conservative vote is at least as important as the size of the Conservative vote. May 2017 got a much higher percentage share of the vote than Cameron 2015, but fewer seats.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 45,700
    IanB2 said:

    Leon said:

    IanB2 said:

    Leon said:

    Prior thread very interesting (perhaps not the stuff about roads)

    I too have made insane predictions way out of my area of competence - I know this might not come as a shock, but it was a bit of an epiphany for me, just this morning

    eg Yesterday I confidently predicted that Team GB would do quite badly compared to reasonable expectations. I said we would finish behind Oz, Russia and maybe another European country. I said we might finish around 9th in the medal table, and get around 40-45 medals

    This morning I considered my prediction, and I laughed at my own stupidity

    Where was I getting my info with which to make these precise calls? Out of my ass, basically. It is all a hunch, an intimation. In fact it's not even a hunch, it's more like a spasm in reaction to early disappointments. There are people out there - on this site - who know far more about these Games, right down to individual athletes in more obscure sports, and their various chances. Their prophesies are 100 times more valuable than mine.

    If my "prediction" turns out to be anywhere near correct it will be nearly pure luck and almost zero judgement.

    My only defence is that I never bet on these hunches. I only ever bet after proper consideration and research. Which is probably why I bet very rarely

    The only predictions of yours that ever come anywhere close are those that you have nicked from other PB’ers.
    Quite possibly true, but I always have the ultimate solace that, whatever my sins and disappointments, I am not you
    It’s a very bad sign to be down to your argument of last resort so soon.
    But I am not making an argument. I am asserting a plain fact, something so obvious it borders on a truism
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 38,959
    HYUFD said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    Quintus.

    In re fili praevii:

    Dura_Ace said:



    I can say things in French. But if I ask a question and receive a reply, usually I have no idea what the other person has said.

    We should just teach kids how to order a coffee, order a beer and say 'I love you' in a dozen languages and settle for that.

    My father said wryly that he learned French for 6 years at Winchester, and then took a trip to Paris;he found he was unable to ask the inspector when they would arrive.


    I was educated in French only until I was 12 and couldn't really write English at that age. When I got to English speaking schools in the US and UK I was amazed at how little grammar was taught compared to my Francophone education.

    Now that I'm a language tutor I see the same situation among British students. Teaching Latin would help slightly as they would be exposed to grammatical concepts like declension. There is almost no declension in English but it's very important in other languages. I regularly see anglophone students struggle with it in Russian.

    It could be fixed much more effectively by teaching Linguistics rather than Latin but that would not stimulate the desiccated G spots of Telegraph readers with type 2 diabetes in the same way so the tories won't do it.
    I wonder if the Latin is because its full of gender to troll the wokists?

    Also - because it gives those parents with money to send their brats to private schools an advantage? At the moment Latin can't seriously be used as an educational criterion. It's like an O level in sheep-farming - only the Welsh, etc., have a hope of doing it. But make it a general educational qualification ...

    Rachel Johnson (as in sister of ...) suggested rote learning of the classics was a soft route to Oxford.
    So why would Tories want more competition for their children's life chances?
    Tokenism. The Universities might dump the classics if it became obvious they are an upper middle class scam. You want a trickle of comp school entrants to point at and claim how inclusive it all is.
    There is not much to dump, the only universities which still do pure Classics/Latin degrees are Oxford and Cambridge, St Andrews, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Exeter and Nottingham, Manchester, Bristol, KCL and UCL and Royal Holloway.

    They are all pretty posh universities anyway
    So?

    If cutting the classics means an instant downwards improvement to the posho-meter reading , to help meet the targets mandated by government, they'll have to consider it very seriously.
  • CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,053
    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    DougSeal said:
    A computer that could smell someone ten miles away and identify which Olympic sized swimming pool has a drop of blood in it would be a remarkable machine. Dogs’ smell is somewhere between 1,000 and 10,000 times better than ours and it occupies between 30-40% of their brain capacity.
    And what does my dog do with this power? Spends as much time as possible sniffing where other dogs have done a wee...
    We did an introduction to scent training last weekend, and there is some more useful stuff you can do with your dog if you give it some time. For example it is relatively easy to train your dog to find stuff like your car keys, and the trainer’s dog is apparently well known for tracking down missing cats near where they live.
    Right. I know what I'm going to be doing this weekend - training the dog to find my reading glasses.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 38,959
    Cyclefree said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    DougSeal said:
    A computer that could smell someone ten miles away and identify which Olympic sized swimming pool has a drop of blood in it would be a remarkable machine. Dogs’ smell is somewhere between 1,000 and 10,000 times better than ours and it occupies between 30-40% of their brain capacity.
    And what does my dog do with this power? Spends as much time as possible sniffing where other dogs have done a wee...
    We did an introduction to scent training last weekend, and there is some more useful stuff you can do with your dog if you give it some time. For example it is relatively easy to train your dog to find stuff like your car keys, and the trainer’s dog is apparently well known for tracking down missing cats near where they live.
    Right. I know what I'm going to be doing this weekend - training the dog to find my reading glasses.
    What breed, might I inquire? Always interesting to see what breeds people pick ...
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,631
    Carnyx said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Carnyx said:

    Quintus.

    In re fili praevii:

    Dura_Ace said:



    I can say things in French. But if I ask a question and receive a reply, usually I have no idea what the other person has said.

    We should just teach kids how to order a coffee, order a beer and say 'I love you' in a dozen languages and settle for that.

    My father said wryly that he learned French for 6 years at Winchester, and then took a trip to Paris;he found he was unable to ask the inspector when they would arrive.


    I was educated in French only until I was 12 and couldn't really write English at that age. When I got to English speaking schools in the US and UK I was amazed at how little grammar was taught compared to my Francophone education.

    Now that I'm a language tutor I see the same situation among British students. Teaching Latin would help slightly as they would be exposed to grammatical concepts like declension. There is almost no declension in English but it's very important in other languages. I regularly see anglophone students struggle with it in Russian.

    It could be fixed much more effectively by teaching Linguistics rather than Latin but that would not stimulate the desiccated G spots of Telegraph readers with type 2 diabetes in the same way so the tories won't do it.
    I wonder if the Latin is because its full of gender to troll the wokists?

    Also - because it gives those parents with money to send their brats to private schools an advantage? At the moment Latin can't seriously be used as an educational criterion. It's like an O level in sheep-farming - only the Welsh, etc., have a hope of doing it. But make it a general educational qualification ...

    Are you kidding?

    Latin has neuter, so you can identify as they/them and not he or she. It is therefore perfect for these woke times.
    It/they, to be even better. But I was thinking more along the lines that all sailors are feminine, for instance, as are all tables ...
    I believe that Latin has an exception if the table chooses to self identify differently.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,303
    Just flicked over to the 100m women's final - pretty funny how the Jamaicans, despite winning all three medals, did not seem to be happy for each other in the immediate aftermath, none of the usual team celebrations, with the commentator saying they are not the best of friends. I assume they celebrated together afterwards, but it was a bit unusual.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,005
    Leon said:

    IanB2 said:

    Leon said:

    IanB2 said:

    Leon said:

    Prior thread very interesting (perhaps not the stuff about roads)

    I too have made insane predictions way out of my area of competence - I know this might not come as a shock, but it was a bit of an epiphany for me, just this morning

    eg Yesterday I confidently predicted that Team GB would do quite badly compared to reasonable expectations. I said we would finish behind Oz, Russia and maybe another European country. I said we might finish around 9th in the medal table, and get around 40-45 medals

    This morning I considered my prediction, and I laughed at my own stupidity

    Where was I getting my info with which to make these precise calls? Out of my ass, basically. It is all a hunch, an intimation. In fact it's not even a hunch, it's more like a spasm in reaction to early disappointments. There are people out there - on this site - who know far more about these Games, right down to individual athletes in more obscure sports, and their various chances. Their prophesies are 100 times more valuable than mine.

    If my "prediction" turns out to be anywhere near correct it will be nearly pure luck and almost zero judgement.

    My only defence is that I never bet on these hunches. I only ever bet after proper consideration and research. Which is probably why I bet very rarely

    The only predictions of yours that ever come anywhere close are those that you have nicked from other PB’ers.
    Quite possibly true, but I always have the ultimate solace that, whatever my sins and disappointments, I am not you
    It’s a very bad sign to be down to your argument of last resort so soon.
    But I am not making an argument. I am asserting a plain fact, something so obvious it borders on a truism
    Having nothing in your locker other than making the same point again is another very bad sign.
  • justin124justin124 Posts: 11,527

    Sean_F said:

    That's still a pretty hefty lead in such seats, and the fact that the swing is to Labour, rather than the Lib Dems, would lessen Conservative losses.

    Except that polls like this can't take into account the LD campaign effect. Remember punters gave the Tories a 95% chance of holding C&A right up to the final week. I regarded it as a 95% certain LD gain right from the outset
    On these figures Wimbledon would be a 3-way marginal - LD31 Con 30 Lab 28.Were Labour to move into a national poll lead, it would be a seat the party could win from third place.
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 14,605
    rcs1000 said:

    Sean_F said:

    That's still a pretty hefty lead in such seats, and the fact that the swing is to Labour, rather than the Lib Dems, would lessen Conservative losses.

    The risk to the Conservatives is that you see a repeat of 2005, and extensive tactical voting.
    Sure, but that's been a risk at every election, and most of the time it doesn't happen. On the headline figures there's even more fracturing of the anti-Tory vote, with the increase in the Green Party share, which makes tactical voting harder to organise and less likely to be successful.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,607
    edited July 2021
    Carnyx said:

    HYUFD said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    Quintus.

    In re fili praevii:

    Dura_Ace said:



    I can say things in French. But if I ask a question and receive a reply, usually I have no idea what the other person has said.

    We should just teach kids how to order a coffee, order a beer and say 'I love you' in a dozen languages and settle for that.

    My father said wryly that he learned French for 6 years at Winchester, and then took a trip to Paris;he found he was unable to ask the inspector when they would arrive.


    I was educated in French only until I was 12 and couldn't really write English at that age. When I got to English speaking schools in the US and UK I was amazed at how little grammar was taught compared to my Francophone education.

    Now that I'm a language tutor I see the same situation among British students. Teaching Latin would help slightly as they would be exposed to grammatical concepts like declension. There is almost no declension in English but it's very important in other languages. I regularly see anglophone students struggle with it in Russian.

    It could be fixed much more effectively by teaching Linguistics rather than Latin but that would not stimulate the desiccated G spots of Telegraph readers with type 2 diabetes in the same way so the tories won't do it.
    I wonder if the Latin is because its full of gender to troll the wokists?

    Also - because it gives those parents with money to send their brats to private schools an advantage? At the moment Latin can't seriously be used as an educational criterion. It's like an O level in sheep-farming - only the Welsh, etc., have a hope of doing it. But make it a general educational qualification ...

    Rachel Johnson (as in sister of ...) suggested rote learning of the classics was a soft route to Oxford.
    So why would Tories want more competition for their children's life chances?
    Tokenism. The Universities might dump the classics if it became obvious they are an upper middle class scam. You want a trickle of comp school entrants to point at and claim how inclusive it all is.
    There is not much to dump, the only universities which still do pure Classics/Latin degrees are Oxford and Cambridge, St Andrews, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Exeter and Nottingham, Manchester, Bristol, KCL and UCL and Royal Holloway.

    They are all pretty posh universities anyway
    So?

    If cutting the classics means an instant downwards improvement to the posho-meter reading , to help meet the targets mandated by government, they'll have to consider it very seriously.
    It is dumbing down and would make barely any difference whatsoever, as they are tiny courses anyway.

    We Tories are in power and in government and have set no state school target, we are not Labour and do not care, we support selection on merit and high academic standards, hence Williamson is pushing Latin in state schools. So if they want to suck up to Williamson if anything universities will expand their classics courses and do state school outreach for them.

    Plus not all classics students will be privately educated and Oxbridge are 60% state school now anyway
  • NickPalmerNickPalmer Posts: 21,244
    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Fortunately for the Tories there are only 2 seats in the top 100 Labour target seats that are Tory held and in the South East or East and which voted Remain ie Wycombe and Reading West. So a 6% swing to Labour in the South and East in Tory held Remain seats is not a big concern for the blues, though it would be for Steve Baker in Wycombe.

    The vast majority of Tory held Remain seats in the South East have the LDs as the main challengers but there is just a 1% swing to the LDs on this poll from the Tories, so it would need major Labour tactical voting for the Tories to be concerned at the seats going yellow and even then they should narrowly hold onto a majority if they hold the Redwall

    If the green and LibDem vote deploys strategically, things would look better.

    YouGov’s own map identifies nine of its chosen seats that would fall to Labour based on its polling, with LibDems gaining three and a further four that are too close to call.
    Major tactical voting is becoming pretty standard down here in Surrey. The LibDem candidate in my area (Jeremy Hunt'ds seat) took the County seat with a vote increase of 38%, and I know a lot of them were Labour and Green voters who could see he was obviously the best non-Tory bet in that election. I voted Labour but we put out zero leaflets in the division since we felt our money was better spent elsewhere.

    The problem is only in seats where more than one non-Tory candidate can reasonably claim to have a good chance. I don't think there will be an election pact, but a sharp word with constituency parties to concentrate on geuinely winnable seats ought to be possible.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,005
    Carnyx said:

    Cyclefree said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    DougSeal said:
    A computer that could smell someone ten miles away and identify which Olympic sized swimming pool has a drop of blood in it would be a remarkable machine. Dogs’ smell is somewhere between 1,000 and 10,000 times better than ours and it occupies between 30-40% of their brain capacity.
    And what does my dog do with this power? Spends as much time as possible sniffing where other dogs have done a wee...
    We did an introduction to scent training last weekend, and there is some more useful stuff you can do with your dog if you give it some time. For example it is relatively easy to train your dog to find stuff like your car keys, and the trainer’s dog is apparently well known for tracking down missing cats near where they live.
    Right. I know what I'm going to be doing this weekend - training the dog to find my reading glasses.
    What breed, might I inquire? Always interesting to see what breeds people pick ...
    Mine is a Pumi and we were at a Hungarian dog breed sports event. But most dog breeds can be trained to do scent training (objectively herding breeds should be behind many of the others) and there is some good stuff on YouTube if you go hunting for it. Start with cloves and work toward more useful scents.
  • Doesn't surprise me at all. There's a lot of feeble research applying machine learning algorithms to medical problems, which just involves sticking data into an existing black box and trying to make predictions without understanding any of the underlying mechanisms. Some of the weakest science out there, imo, and a waste of funding.

    --AS
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,745
    edited July 2021
    Sean_F said:

    That's still a pretty hefty lead in such seats, and the fact that the swing is to Labour, rather than the Lib Dems, would lessen Conservative losses.

    Come the election we need lots of tactical voting to GTTO. Otherwise ... 5 more years.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,005
    rcs1000 said:

    Floater said:

    Super spreader event underway in Paris

    It’s appallingly covered here in the US; CNN has a story on Amanda Knox returning to Italy, but nothing on the French riots.
    She returned to Italy back in June.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 43,870
    rcs1000 said:

    Floater said:

    Super spreader event underway in Paris

    It’s appallingly covered here in the US; CNN has a story on Amanda Knox returning to Italy, but nothing on the French riots.
    Yes, but riots in Paris occur every week...
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,631

    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Fortunately for the Tories there are only 2 seats in the top 100 Labour target seats that are Tory held and in the South East or East and which voted Remain ie Wycombe and Reading West. So a 6% swing to Labour in the South and East in Tory held Remain seats is not a big concern for the blues, though it would be for Steve Baker in Wycombe.

    The vast majority of Tory held Remain seats in the South East have the LDs as the main challengers but there is just a 1% swing to the LDs on this poll from the Tories, so it would need major Labour tactical voting for the Tories to be concerned at the seats going yellow and even then they should narrowly hold onto a majority if they hold the Redwall

    If the green and LibDem vote deploys strategically, things would look better.

    YouGov’s own map identifies nine of its chosen seats that would fall to Labour based on its polling, with LibDems gaining three and a further four that are too close to call.
    Here's the list;

    CON TO LAB:
    - Chingford & Woodford Green
    - Chipping Barent
    - Filton & Bradley Stoke
    - Hendon
    - Kensington & Chelsea
    - Milton Keynes N
    - Stroud
    - Truro & Falmouth
    - Wycombe

    CON to LDM:
    - Cheltenham
    - Wimbledon
    - Winchester

    https://twitter.com/ElectionMapsUK/status/1421178611223121922?s=20

    Considering the way that Lab and Lib Dem tore chunks out of each other in 2019, surely some tactical unwind is going to be expected? Take Batley + Spen, where it looks like there was just enough of a Lib to Lab shift for Kim Leadbetter to fend of the catty one. That can fairly easily lead to fewer Lib Dem votes and more seats- look at the history of the Alliance/Lib Dems in the 80's and 90's. What matters for the Lib Dems is getting votes in the right places, not national swing.

    More generally, the efficiency of the anti-Conservative vote is at least as important as the size of the Conservative vote. May 2017 got a much higher percentage share of the vote than Cameron 2015, but fewer seats.
    In 1997, the libdems did only fractionally better (percentage-wise) than in 2019, but got four-times the seats.

    (Or, to put it another way, they got half the vote share of 1983 and more than twice the seats.)

    This demonstrates (a) that the absolute level of Conservative vote is very important to them, and (b) tactical voting matters.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,608
    tlg86 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Floater said:

    Super spreader event underway in Paris

    It’s appallingly covered here in the US; CNN has a story on Amanda Knox returning to Italy, but nothing on the French riots.
    It never gets mentioned in our press.
    The French are revolting. Its not news.
  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 13,981
    rcs1000 said:

    Labour up 4, Greens up 7, Lib Dems down 6.

    If it was the Lib Dems up 5, and Labour/Greens level then perhaps the Tories would have something to worry about.

    There will be a limit to the number of seats the Lib Dems can campaign hard in.

    It will be very interesting to see if the Greens can manage to become relevant enough to grab the third party spot from the libdems.

    In theory, they are in an excellent position to do so, but so far they have made very little progress outside the Euro elections. (And we aren’t getting those any more.)
    How much are Greens as a party prepared to do the ruthlessness needed to get a foothold under FPTP, then turn it into a platform? Pick (say) five seats where they have a chance and work them to death, then ten, then twenty... the sort of laserlike Focus that the various incarnations of the yellow team have managed for decades? Have they access to the resources to do that?
  • LeonLeon Posts: 45,700
    HYUFD said:

    Leon said:

    The Olympics needs a dramatic new sport

    I reckon it is time to reintroduce pok-ta-pok: the Mesomaerican ball game (of the Maya, Aztecs, etc)

    It is simple but quite compelling. Two teams of maybe four players each compete on a hard stone ball-court, not unlike a real tennis court. With bats, arms and hips they propel a large, firm rubber ball at each other and also at a stone hoop placed high to the side. Victory is achieved via points, or by slotting the ball through the hoop.

    it's not a game for the faint hearted, however. For example, the ball is genuinely hard, and can cause severe bruising, internal injuries - even death in extreme cases. Also, at the end of the game the entire losing team is ritually sacrificed by decapitation, and after that they also sacrifice and dismember the entire winning team. And then the next teams play, for a while, with the severed heads and hands.

    So it might not be quite in tune with the Woke agenda in British Olympics, but on the other hand the inquest into TeamGB's performance would be rendered largely pointless, thus saving money?

    Maybe Cortes was not too bad after all.

    MesoAmerican cultures were ridiculously grisly, but that also makes them endlessly fascinating, in a macabre way


    Whenever you think you have reached the depths of their depravity, they have the capacity to surprise on the downside. The Moche Culture of north Peru (circa 8th century AD) is particularly good at this. OMFG. They worshipped a tarantula God who demanded they sacrifice their own relatives, they gave the victims special drugs so the blood ran extra slow and the sacrifice took hours. During this process, the family would REDACTED REDACTED

    Meanwhile the Aztecs could sacrifice thousands of people in a single day in their capital, Tenochtitlan

    Here's a Guardian article denouncing the evil Spanish for destroying this marvellous culture, in particular it complains about

    "massacres of some of our earliest thinkers such as the Aztec"

    SOME OF OUR EARLIEST THINKERS



    https://www.theguardian.com/education/commentisfree/2015/mar/23/philosophy-white-men-university-courses

  • isamisam Posts: 40,658
    edited July 2021

    Sean_F said:

    That's still a pretty hefty lead in such seats, and the fact that the swing is to Labour, rather than the Lib Dems, would lessen Conservative losses.

    Except that polls like this can't take into account the LD campaign effect. Remember punters gave the Tories a 95% chance of holding C&A right up to the final week. I regarded it as a 95% certain LD gain right from the outset
    You made it 1/20?!!!! Wowsers

    That is the biggest difference between what someone makes it, and what the market is I have ever heard of in my lifetime working in betting, incredible. The maximumest of all maximum bets - like saying something that is 10/1 should be 1/100!!!

    Wouldn't the Lib Dem campaign effect be diluted in a GE compared to a one off like a by election though?

    I find it pretty amazing the YouGov finds the Lib Dems down on their 2019 vote mind you, cant have that
  • justin124justin124 Posts: 11,527
    HYUFD said:

    Fortunately for the Tories there are only 2 seats in the top 100 Labour target seats that are Tory held and in the South East or East and which voted Remain ie Wycombe and Reading West. So a 6% swing to Labour in the South and East in Tory held Remain seats is not a big concern for the blues, though it would be for Steve Baker in Wycombe.

    The vast majority of Tory held Remain seats in the South East have the LDs as the main challengers but there is just a 1% swing to the LDs on this poll from the Tories, so it would need major Labour tactical voting for the Tories to be concerned at the seats going yellow and even then they should narrowly hold onto a majority if they hold the Redwall

    Why would Labour voters be inclined to vote tactically on the basis of a single election result in 2019 which is likely to have been an aberration due to the salience of particular issues and local factors at the time? Very difficult not to see Labour as the main challenger in seats such as Finchley 7 Wood Green and Cities of London & Westminster next time. Wimbledon is also far from clear , given that the seat was Labour-held 1997 - 2005.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,631

    rcs1000 said:

    Sean_F said:

    That's still a pretty hefty lead in such seats, and the fact that the swing is to Labour, rather than the Lib Dems, would lessen Conservative losses.

    The risk to the Conservatives is that you see a repeat of 2005, and extensive tactical voting.
    Sure, but that's been a risk at every election, and most of the time it doesn't happen. On the headline figures there's even more fracturing of the anti-Tory vote, with the increase in the Green Party share, which makes tactical voting harder to organise and less likely to be successful.
    If the Greens were to get 5-10% of the vote at future General Elections, it would be mana from heaven for the Conservatives as the left of center vote would be split three ways in England (and four in Scotland and Wales).

    But history suggests that voters get better at tactical voting, the longer a party remains in power. I suspect that will happen this time around too - not that important in 2024, but a big deal in 2028.
  • CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,053
    Carnyx said:

    Cyclefree said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    DougSeal said:
    A computer that could smell someone ten miles away and identify which Olympic sized swimming pool has a drop of blood in it would be a remarkable machine. Dogs’ smell is somewhere between 1,000 and 10,000 times better than ours and it occupies between 30-40% of their brain capacity.
    And what does my dog do with this power? Spends as much time as possible sniffing where other dogs have done a wee...
    We did an introduction to scent training last weekend, and there is some more useful stuff you can do with your dog if you give it some time. For example it is relatively easy to train your dog to find stuff like your car keys, and the trainer’s dog is apparently well known for tracking down missing cats near where they live.
    Right. I know what I'm going to be doing this weekend - training the dog to find my reading glasses.
    What breed, might I inquire? Always interesting to see what breeds people pick ...
    A mixture of collie and NZ Huntaway. Came from a local farmer. His parents were working dogs. He tries to herd the cats. Has a wonderful sweet personality.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,607
    Leon said:

    HYUFD said:

    Leon said:

    The Olympics needs a dramatic new sport

    I reckon it is time to reintroduce pok-ta-pok: the Mesomaerican ball game (of the Maya, Aztecs, etc)

    It is simple but quite compelling. Two teams of maybe four players each compete on a hard stone ball-court, not unlike a real tennis court. With bats, arms and hips they propel a large, firm rubber ball at each other and also at a stone hoop placed high to the side. Victory is achieved via points, or by slotting the ball through the hoop.

    it's not a game for the faint hearted, however. For example, the ball is genuinely hard, and can cause severe bruising, internal injuries - even death in extreme cases. Also, at the end of the game the entire losing team is ritually sacrificed by decapitation, and after that they also sacrifice and dismember the entire winning team. And then the next teams play, for a while, with the severed heads and hands.

    So it might not be quite in tune with the Woke agenda in British Olympics, but on the other hand the inquest into TeamGB's performance would be rendered largely pointless, thus saving money?

    Maybe Cortes was not too bad after all.

    MesoAmerican cultures were ridiculously grisly, but that also makes them endlessly fascinating, in a macabre way


    Whenever you think you have reached the depths of their depravity, they have the capacity to surprise on the downside. The Moche Culture of north Peru (circa 8th century AD) is particularly good at this. OMFG. They worshipped a tarantula God who demanded they sacrifice their own relatives, they gave the victims special drugs so the blood ran extra slow and the sacrifice took hours. During this process, the family would REDACTED REDACTED

    Meanwhile the Aztecs could sacrifice thousands of people in a single day in their capital, Tenochtitlan

    Here's a Guardian article denouncing the evil Spanish for destroying this marvellous culture, in particular it complains about

    "massacres of some of our earliest thinkers such as the Aztec"

    SOME OF OUR EARLIEST THINKERS



    https://www.theguardian.com/education/commentisfree/2015/mar/23/philosophy-white-men-university-courses

    Plus most of them died from disease brought by the Spanish, not mass killing as they practiced themselves
  • NickPalmerNickPalmer Posts: 21,244

    Labour up 4, Greens up 7, Lib Dems down 6.

    If it was the Lib Dems up 5, and Labour/Greens level then perhaps the Tories would have something to worry about.

    There will be a limit to the number of seats the Lib Dems can campaign hard in.

    The LibDem drop in the poll is actually partly a measure of the tactical vote that already exists. The poll compares PREFERENCE now with ACTUAL votes then, and I'm certain that a chunk of people who prefer Labour or Green voted LibDem in 2019. There are also places in the south (e.g. Portsmouth S) where the reverse is true, but they're less frequent.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 45,700
    pigeon said:

    Leon said:

    Prior thread very interesting (perhaps not the stuff about roads)

    I too have made insane predictions way out of my area of competence - I know this might not come as a shock, but it was a bit of an epiphany for me, just this morning

    eg Yesterday I confidently predicted that Team GB would do quite badly compared to reasonable expectations. I said we would finish behind Oz, Russia and maybe another European country. I said we might finish around 9th in the medal table, and get around 40-45 medals

    This morning I considered my prediction, and I laughed at my own stupidity

    Where was I getting my info with which to make these precise calls? Out of my ass, basically. It is all a hunch, an intimation. In fact it's not even a hunch, it's more like a spasm in reaction to early disappointments. There are people out there - on this site - who know far more about these Games, right down to individual athletes in more obscure sports, and their various chances. Their prophesies are 100 times more valuable than mine.

    If my "prediction" turns out to be anywhere near correct it will be nearly pure luck and almost zero judgement.

    My only defence is that I never bet on these hunches. I only ever bet after proper consideration and research. Which is probably why I bet very rarely

    Very wise. I know relatively little about what's going on; however...

    *The British team is currently sat on 28 medals
    *Boxing has produced a bronze, three more semi-finalists who now can't do any worse than bronze, and three more quarter-finalists
    *Sailing has also produced a bronze and British crews are competitive in six of the eight events that have yet to complete (two in first place, three in second and one in fourth the last time I looked)
    *The three-day eventers are doing well at the moment
    *The men's golfers are competitive and the women's haven't started yet
    *The individual apparatus finals in gymnastics haven't happened yet
    *Flatwater canoeing hasn't started yet (and I've not the foggiest whether there are any competitive Brits going in that event, but I'm pretty sure there were medallists last time)
    *The whole athletics programme has only just got started (and I know it doesn't look promising from the British POV, but there are a *lot* of events and the team might yet get something out of it)
    *AND track cycling has yet to get underway

    In medal table terms I rate it as a competition for 5th with Australia, and 50 medals looks achievable. That'd be broadly comparable with Beijing, and a credible overall achievement IMHO.
    I solemnly promise that if my prediction turns out accurate, I will somehow "forget" I said any of this, and I will confidently praise my own remarkable foresight. I give you my word on that
  • pigeonpigeon Posts: 4,052
    Leon said:

    The Olympics needs a dramatic new sport

    I reckon it is time to reintroduce pok-ta-pok: the Mesomaerican ball game (of the Maya, Aztecs, etc)

    It is simple but quite compelling. Two teams of maybe four players each compete on a hard stone ball-court, not unlike a real tennis court. With bats, arms and hips they propel a large, firm rubber ball at each other and also at a stone hoop placed high to the side. Victory is achieved via points, or by slotting the ball through the hoop.

    it's not a game for the faint hearted, however. For example, the ball is genuinely hard, and can cause severe bruising, internal injuries - even death in extreme cases. Also, at the end of the game the entire losing team is ritually sacrificed by decapitation, and after that they also sacrifice and dismember the entire winning team. And then the next teams play, for a while, with the severed heads and hands.

    So it might not be quite in tune with the Woke agenda in British Olympics, but on the other hand the inquest into TeamGB's performance would be rendered largely pointless, thus saving money?

    Perhaps just a tad severe...

    Chariot racing and horse archery are both ancient disciplines ripe for revival. In a previous thread I also invented elephant javelin, but the provision of the necessary animals could prove somewhat challenging. Horse javelin could still be fantastic though.

    Also, jousting.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 38,959
    IanB2 said:

    Carnyx said:

    Cyclefree said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    DougSeal said:
    A computer that could smell someone ten miles away and identify which Olympic sized swimming pool has a drop of blood in it would be a remarkable machine. Dogs’ smell is somewhere between 1,000 and 10,000 times better than ours and it occupies between 30-40% of their brain capacity.
    And what does my dog do with this power? Spends as much time as possible sniffing where other dogs have done a wee...
    We did an introduction to scent training last weekend, and there is some more useful stuff you can do with your dog if you give it some time. For example it is relatively easy to train your dog to find stuff like your car keys, and the trainer’s dog is apparently well known for tracking down missing cats near where they live.
    Right. I know what I'm going to be doing this weekend - training the dog to find my reading glasses.
    What breed, might I inquire? Always interesting to see what breeds people pick ...
    Mine is a Pumi and we were at a Hungarian dog breed sports event. But most dog breeds can be trained to do scent training (objectively herding breeds should be behind many of the others) and there is some good stuff on YouTube if you go hunting for it. Start with cloves and work toward more useful scents.
    How interesting - although I've seen several Vizslas and a friend has one, I've never heard of the Pumi. Sounds rather like a border collie in some ways - intelligence but also need to keep busy.
  • YoungTurkYoungTurk Posts: 158
    Those ones aren't even the CRS. No yellow helmet stripes.

    That cop bouncing around like a boxer must be on something...
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,631
    justin124 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Fortunately for the Tories there are only 2 seats in the top 100 Labour target seats that are Tory held and in the South East or East and which voted Remain ie Wycombe and Reading West. So a 6% swing to Labour in the South and East in Tory held Remain seats is not a big concern for the blues, though it would be for Steve Baker in Wycombe.

    The vast majority of Tory held Remain seats in the South East have the LDs as the main challengers but there is just a 1% swing to the LDs on this poll from the Tories, so it would need major Labour tactical voting for the Tories to be concerned at the seats going yellow and even then they should narrowly hold onto a majority if they hold the Redwall

    Why would Labour voters be inclined to vote tactically on the basis of a single election result in 2019 which is likely to have been an aberration due to the salience of particular issues and local factors at the time? Very difficult not to see Labour as the main challenger in seats such as Finchley 7 Wood Green and Cities of London & Westminster next time. Wimbledon is also far from clear , given that the seat was Labour-held 1997 - 2005.
    There are big constituency changes in London, which muddy the picture further.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,608
    Leon said:

    HYUFD said:

    Leon said:

    The Olympics needs a dramatic new sport

    I reckon it is time to reintroduce pok-ta-pok: the Mesomaerican ball game (of the Maya, Aztecs, etc)

    It is simple but quite compelling. Two teams of maybe four players each compete on a hard stone ball-court, not unlike a real tennis court. With bats, arms and hips they propel a large, firm rubber ball at each other and also at a stone hoop placed high to the side. Victory is achieved via points, or by slotting the ball through the hoop.

    it's not a game for the faint hearted, however. For example, the ball is genuinely hard, and can cause severe bruising, internal injuries - even death in extreme cases. Also, at the end of the game the entire losing team is ritually sacrificed by decapitation, and after that they also sacrifice and dismember the entire winning team. And then the next teams play, for a while, with the severed heads and hands.

    So it might not be quite in tune with the Woke agenda in British Olympics, but on the other hand the inquest into TeamGB's performance would be rendered largely pointless, thus saving money?

    Maybe Cortes was not too bad after all.

    MesoAmerican cultures were ridiculously grisly, but that also makes them endlessly fascinating, in a macabre way


    Whenever you think you have reached the depths of their depravity, they have the capacity to surprise on the downside. The Moche Culture of north Peru (circa 8th century AD) is particularly good at this. OMFG. They worshipped a tarantula God who demanded they sacrifice their own relatives, they gave the victims special drugs so the blood ran extra slow and the sacrifice took hours. During this process, the family would REDACTED REDACTED

    Meanwhile the Aztecs could sacrifice thousands of people in a single day in their capital, Tenochtitlan

    Here's a Guardian article denouncing the evil Spanish for destroying this marvellous culture, in particular it complains about

    "massacres of some of our earliest thinkers such as the Aztec"

    SOME OF OUR EARLIEST THINKERS



    https://www.theguardian.com/education/commentisfree/2015/mar/23/philosophy-white-men-university-courses

    Tarantula god eh? I wondered where our Secretary of State for Education got his inspiration. Sacrifices of the hopes and aspirations of a generation is probably the closest he can get these days.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 45,700
    HYUFD said:

    Leon said:

    HYUFD said:

    Leon said:

    The Olympics needs a dramatic new sport

    I reckon it is time to reintroduce pok-ta-pok: the Mesomaerican ball game (of the Maya, Aztecs, etc)

    It is simple but quite compelling. Two teams of maybe four players each compete on a hard stone ball-court, not unlike a real tennis court. With bats, arms and hips they propel a large, firm rubber ball at each other and also at a stone hoop placed high to the side. Victory is achieved via points, or by slotting the ball through the hoop.

    it's not a game for the faint hearted, however. For example, the ball is genuinely hard, and can cause severe bruising, internal injuries - even death in extreme cases. Also, at the end of the game the entire losing team is ritually sacrificed by decapitation, and after that they also sacrifice and dismember the entire winning team. And then the next teams play, for a while, with the severed heads and hands.

    So it might not be quite in tune with the Woke agenda in British Olympics, but on the other hand the inquest into TeamGB's performance would be rendered largely pointless, thus saving money?

    Maybe Cortes was not too bad after all.

    MesoAmerican cultures were ridiculously grisly, but that also makes them endlessly fascinating, in a macabre way


    Whenever you think you have reached the depths of their depravity, they have the capacity to surprise on the downside. The Moche Culture of north Peru (circa 8th century AD) is particularly good at this. OMFG. They worshipped a tarantula God who demanded they sacrifice their own relatives, they gave the victims special drugs so the blood ran extra slow and the sacrifice took hours. During this process, the family would REDACTED REDACTED

    Meanwhile the Aztecs could sacrifice thousands of people in a single day in their capital, Tenochtitlan

    Here's a Guardian article denouncing the evil Spanish for destroying this marvellous culture, in particular it complains about

    "massacres of some of our earliest thinkers such as the Aztec"

    SOME OF OUR EARLIEST THINKERS



    https://www.theguardian.com/education/commentisfree/2015/mar/23/philosophy-white-men-university-courses

    Plus most of them died from disease brought by the Spanish, not mass killing as they practiced themselves
    It's a genuine moral puzzle. Did these civilisations deserve to survive?

    In particular, the Aztecs were basically the Nazis of MesoAmerica. Extremely aggressive, militaristic, ethnocentric, bloodthirsty, autocratic at the top and servile at the bottom, and absolutely obsessed with death and blood. They were so nasty even the other gruesome, human-sacrificing Mexican cultures hated them (which is one reason the Aztec Empire fell so easily to Cortez, he got the Aztecs' local enemies on side)

    And yet a unique and remarkable civilisation - for all its hideous flaws - was totally obliterated, and much was lost

    Was this ultimately good, or bad? I can never quite decide.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited July 2021

    Doesn't surprise me at all. There's a lot of feeble research applying machine learning algorithms to medical problems, which just involves sticking data into an existing black box and trying to make predictions without understanding any of the underlying mechanisms. Some of the weakest science out there, imo, and a waste of funding.

    --AS
    My PhD supervisor back in the day best described this kind of research is every so often somebody invents a new hammer, then far too many people in the academic community without really knowing how to use it properly or what jobs it is good for, instead they run around finding every possible DIY job to which they apply the solution of hit with big new shiny hammer.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,607
    justin124 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Fortunately for the Tories there are only 2 seats in the top 100 Labour target seats that are Tory held and in the South East or East and which voted Remain ie Wycombe and Reading West. So a 6% swing to Labour in the South and East in Tory held Remain seats is not a big concern for the blues, though it would be for Steve Baker in Wycombe.

    The vast majority of Tory held Remain seats in the South East have the LDs as the main challengers but there is just a 1% swing to the LDs on this poll from the Tories, so it would need major Labour tactical voting for the Tories to be concerned at the seats going yellow and even then they should narrowly hold onto a majority if they hold the Redwall

    Why would Labour voters be inclined to vote tactically on the basis of a single election result in 2019 which is likely to have been an aberration due to the salience of particular issues and local factors at the time? Very difficult not to see Labour as the main challenger in seats such as Finchley 7 Wood Green and Cities of London & Westminster next time. Wimbledon is also far from clear , given that the seat was Labour-held 1997 - 2005.
    Given there is near zero chance of a Labour majority in 2023/24 without regaining most of Scotland from the SNP and huge gains in the Red Wall, it makes little difference.

    Whether a Labour or LD defeats a Tory in London and the South they would still make Starmer PM in a hung parliament
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 38,959
    Cyclefree said:

    Carnyx said:

    Cyclefree said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    DougSeal said:
    A computer that could smell someone ten miles away and identify which Olympic sized swimming pool has a drop of blood in it would be a remarkable machine. Dogs’ smell is somewhere between 1,000 and 10,000 times better than ours and it occupies between 30-40% of their brain capacity.
    And what does my dog do with this power? Spends as much time as possible sniffing where other dogs have done a wee...
    We did an introduction to scent training last weekend, and there is some more useful stuff you can do with your dog if you give it some time. For example it is relatively easy to train your dog to find stuff like your car keys, and the trainer’s dog is apparently well known for tracking down missing cats near where they live.
    Right. I know what I'm going to be doing this weekend - training the dog to find my reading glasses.
    What breed, might I inquire? Always interesting to see what breeds people pick ...
    A mixture of collie and NZ Huntaway. Came from a local farmer. His parents were working dogs. He tries to herd the cats. Has a wonderful sweet personality.
    How interesting - and presumably needing plenty of walkies and things to do.
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 14,605
    The other point to consider is that, if we assume the next election takes place on new boundaries this will also make tactical voting harder to organise. The 2005 GE cited was the last of a series of elections on those boundaries in England & Wales (although new boundaries in Scotland).
  • justin124justin124 Posts: 11,527
    rcs1000 said:

    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Fortunately for the Tories there are only 2 seats in the top 100 Labour target seats that are Tory held and in the South East or East and which voted Remain ie Wycombe and Reading West. So a 6% swing to Labour in the South and East in Tory held Remain seats is not a big concern for the blues, though it would be for Steve Baker in Wycombe.

    The vast majority of Tory held Remain seats in the South East have the LDs as the main challengers but there is just a 1% swing to the LDs on this poll from the Tories, so it would need major Labour tactical voting for the Tories to be concerned at the seats going yellow and even then they should narrowly hold onto a majority if they hold the Redwall

    If the green and LibDem vote deploys strategically, things would look better.

    YouGov’s own map identifies nine of its chosen seats that would fall to Labour based on its polling, with LibDems gaining three and a further four that are too close to call.
    Here's the list;

    CON TO LAB:
    - Chingford & Woodford Green
    - Chipping Barent
    - Filton & Bradley Stoke
    - Hendon
    - Kensington & Chelsea
    - Milton Keynes N
    - Stroud
    - Truro & Falmouth
    - Wycombe

    CON to LDM:
    - Cheltenham
    - Wimbledon
    - Winchester

    https://twitter.com/ElectionMapsUK/status/1421178611223121922?s=20

    Considering the way that Lab and Lib Dem tore chunks out of each other in 2019, surely some tactical unwind is going to be expected? Take Batley + Spen, where it looks like there was just enough of a Lib to Lab shift for Kim Leadbetter to fend of the catty one. That can fairly easily lead to fewer Lib Dem votes and more seats- look at the history of the Alliance/Lib Dems in the 80's and 90's. What matters for the Lib Dems is getting votes in the right places, not national swing.

    More generally, the efficiency of the anti-Conservative vote is at least as important as the size of the Conservative vote. May 2017 got a much higher percentage share of the vote than Cameron 2015, but fewer seats.
    In 1997, the libdems did only fractionally better (percentage-wise) than in 2019, but got four-times the seats.

    (Or, to put it another way, they got half the vote share of 1983 and more than twice the seats.)

    This demonstrates (a) that the absolute level of Conservative vote is very important to them, and (b) tactical voting matters.
    In 1997 the LDs polled 18% compared with just 12% in 2019.
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 10,227
    edited July 2021
    Another and contrary conclusion from the poll is that overall the Tories are doing reasonably well at spreading the centre left vote between three parties in the SE and E of England while concentrating the centre right vote on themselves. Whatever happens they are likely to lose some seats, the issue being whether they lose many, and if they gain a few in return. There is not the data here for a massive Tory wobble.

    I suspect the whole 'graduate' thing is about certain sorts of graduates clustering in certain sorts of seats. Highly educated Arundel and South Downs looks safe for now. The question to ask is: Why? If all the educated posh are voting centre left?
This discussion has been closed.