politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » It’s Thursday night and Harry Hayfield’s local by-election

I can now comment via my blackberry, so this is better than Disqus. On topic, of course I know where Dacorum is, it is our next door borough.

Well, anything is better than Disqus, even though it is spectacularly naff that you can't have a space in a user name.

Edit: Ah, editing works. That's good.

Full result frpm Adeyfield West
LD 363 Lab 278 Con 229 UKIP 193 Eng Dem 51

2011 result
Con 619/594 Lab 611/592 LD 209/204

it's nice to use. changed my avatar easily on my android phone, but couldn't find out how to do it on Chrome.

Nick Raynsford MP just announced he will retire in 2015. No surprise

I note that there isn't the edit function anymore. It was very useful for me. I will miss it.

@Andrea

Another selection contest to follow Which scion of a famous Labour dynasty will be rumoured to be sniffing around there? Will Dora declare for it even before Lewisham Deptford selects?

Gove doing very well. Dominating the panel on QT.

@Carola

Thanks. Got it now

@Neil

Raynsford's wife is already in the Commons. So who can we place there? I guess it will Open

oflynnexpress Gove has been bloody good tonight. Just a lot cleverer than most of the current generation of politicians.

New Zealand 79/1 at lunch on the first day at Auckland:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/cricket/21825762

@Y0kel

The Russians have loads of spare cash. They don't make anything but they have a sixth of the world's land surface to dig it up mineral wealth. For example in January 2013 Russia had a positive trade balance of 17,742 USD Million, a figure we would die for. Also most of the mineral extraction and trading is carried out (now) by state owned enterprise.

Russia is enjoying its new found status as a global trading power and would not want to risk its new wealth by engaging in aggressive military expansion. Yes it will defend its national interests and territory and trade military hardware with countries, like Syria, where they have historical regional leverage but the days of imperialism are over. They are much more likely to place oil rigs in Cyprus waters than battleship fleets.

What Russia will want to protect is the confidentiality of its financial dealings with Cypriot banks. The last thing they will countenance is outsiders poring over the bank's books identifying Russian customers and transactions to any authority except the Russian government. It would be hard to underestimate the importance of this need for data security.

The double taxation treaty between Cyprus and Russia dates back to the days of the USSR. No visas are required for Russians to enter Cyprus and both countries have reciprocal property owning rights. Most importantly no withholding tax is levied by Cyprus on Russian remittances and earnings. This special relationship with Cyprus was set up to enable the Russian economy to move quickly from a centrally planned communist model to a 'democratic' free market model. It gave Russian enterprises access to an inplace legal system, corporation and banking infrastructure long before these existed in Russia itself.

For these historical reasons, all sectors of the Russian economy from the highest levels of Government, through all sizes of enterprise and private individuals and households have used Cyprus as a financial, corporate and legal centre. Yes there will be 'mafia' money in there somewhere but the vast bulk of deposits and transactions will be legimate. Any foreigner doing business regularly with Russia would be advised to set up a Cyprus based company to be the counterparty to its Russian customers,

So Cyprus must not be seen as a conventional offshore tax haven for Russians. It is much more its gateway to international trade and finance. Russian money flows into Cyprus, is held there for relatively short periods and is then remitted back to Russia as inbound capital investment. Cyprus to Russia is more like The City is to the UK than it is like, say, the Isle of Man or Jersey.

Although Cyprus has been vital to Russia's economic transformation there have always been calls for its functions to be repatriated to Moscow and the Russian regions. Even in the early 1990s there was talk of the double taxation treaty being renegotiated for this purpose, Always delayed it has finally been revised under Putin and Medvedev with new rules coming into place in 2015.

All this means that the economic stability of Cyprus and the continuing solvency of its banking sector is absolutely vital to the Russian economy. The current crisis will however offer an opportunity for Russia to accelerate the downsizing of Cyprus's role and the bringing forward of the new 2015 rules.

My guess as to Russia's response to the current crisis is that Putin will make a bold offer to support the recapitalisation and restructuring of the Cypriot banks, perhaps even taking temporary 'control' of the banks in order to separate out Russian assets and liabilities from those of Cypriots. The Russian government will move to obtain full information on Russian depositors and transactions; to protect that information from falling into non-Russian hands; and to protect the business and monetary interests of its citizens.

So Russia will save the Cypriot banks to secure its own interests. Battleships and ports may be threatened but these will only be pawns in the negotiations on share of burden with the EU. Any net loan arrangements needed will be secured against mineral extraction rights in Cypriot waters.

The last prediction I make is that Russia will only make the saving offer at 'one minute to midnight'. Russians love power: the longer the supplicant waits the more their power accretes.

These local election results are probably showing the importance of personal votes to the LDs. That means that if they're on 10% in the opinion polls they're probably heading for nearer 15% in reality once you take into consideration the personal votes for their MPs.

@AndyJS National vote shares are not that good a guide to LD prospects. In 1997 this dropped to 16% and they gained 24 seats.

UKIP won Gooshays - Havering!

Bad night for both Con and Lab

Pulpstar - it does sound as though you missed out, though I don't remember the exact timing when Working Family Tax Credit (which did as I recall relate to having a family) changed to Working Tax Credit. As Carl says, it makes a much bigger difference than the tax band and it was the main reason why for the first time for yonks it almost always paid to get a job. It does act as a sort of subsidy for employers in that they can get away with paying minimum wage - the argument is that the State benefits by not paying JSA, so it's giving you some of that as a reward for getting into work.

Islington - Junction

Lab 1,343 Green 381 LD 276 Con 120 BNP 31 SPGB 18

Lab gain from LD

Islington - St Georges

Lab 1,698 LD 371 Green 206 Con 87 BNP 20

Lab hold (in a Lab-LD split ward)

If you want a genuinely interesting cross-section of views, #Gove on Twitter would do you well. Comments on Gove's views on almost everything.

@AveryLP re Russia

What you say is true. However, Russia is incredibly dependent on energy exports. Something like 70% of the tax base is directly related to oil and gas. Should the rest of the world be able to repeat the extraordinary growth in tight oil production we've seen in the US in the last three years, then things will not look so great.

Interesting by-election results tonight.

Just Islington played safe and went as expected. Some of the other results may not be totally unexpected but still interesting and major parties should take note of them.

It seems you can cut and past directly to reply to a post

Havering is by far UKIP's best area in Greater London so not all that surprising to see them winning a seat there. It'll be interesting to see if they can hold onto it in next year's scheduled London elections.

Well, this is different – Well done Mike, fingers crossed that it all still works tomorrow. ;)

Hello. fr is not formal enough for new system.

Test First.........not!

Interesting by-elections, with prizes for Labour (humungous wins in marginal wards in North London, no doubt due to my presence :-) ), UKIP (another win out of nowhere) and the LibDems (outside London, one from each of Labour and Tories in split wards). Dreadful Tory results all round - 15% in their former seat in Havering, under 5% in the London seats.

I sincerely hope we don't go with this 'bowling first' nonsense if we win tosses during the ashes.

Test

@hunchman, that is my old avatar, grumpy old man in the pic is 13 year old Jasper the cat having a nap.

What a massive relief to be able to post again.

It's only taken me about 30 minutes to sign up because for some reason the system wants passwords of massive complexity and the Captcha codes are almost impossible to read. Does it really need to be so difficult?

Not sure if I was the only one but for the last week all I could see was approx 50 comments per thread and I was unable to log in to post at all.

Test

Can I just ask for a tip - in order to refresh comments am I right in thinking you have to refresh the whole page (unlike the old system where we were told to switch from old to new first - and back again)?

Hello MikeL: there will be various improvements rolled out to the commenting system in the next few days and weeks.

Just testing...

Well that works. Need to change my avatar though... Thanks to Rob + OGH!!

Hm, hard to tell which comment that is referring to. I wonder if there is any way to have comment numbers enabled?

Hello political betting.

Only took me 20 minutes to log on to the new system, although I had to change the Google password I have had for the last 5 years to get here.

Oops, posted last comment without editing, but thanks to Tony_E's advice have now found this option. This new system just gets better and better, well done to Robert and Max for their sterling efforts.

I can easily live without likes and editting merely for the fact that pb is once more readable
Many thanks to those that made it possible

@ZenPagan

You can edit for a limited time it seems. Go to your comment and hover over the top right of the comment box, a settings cog appears. Click for options.

@RobD, this was duly noted by Tony and my post edited to include it. But thanks Rob.

Hello fitalass - thanks for your comment.

I am having an IT nightmare tonight - in addition to signing up to PB my internet went down from 6pm to 8pm, 8.10pm to midnight and just now 2am to 3am.

Goodness knows what the problem is - whether it is my computer or the ISP or BT - I simply haven't a clue. It's literally enough to make one just want to abandon the whole thing.

The internet isn't a new invention - it's been widely used for many, many years and I really do feel things should not still be this difficult.

What is my avatar? Sorry, I'm too tired to think or do anything now.

I'm off to bed. Thanks for your help. Goodnight.

As is usual on a Thursday evening, my experience of being culturally uplifted by analysis of serial murderers on Channel 5 was followed by the dreary and desperate agony of wallowing in BBC's "Question Time". Perhaps it might be helpful to point out that the so-called "Crossbow Cannibal", Stephen Griffiths, was born on the same day as Ed Miliband. I blame the Labour government.