The LDs now clear betting favourite to gain North Shropshire – politicalbetting.com

A week today the Tories will be defending the by-election – a seat they won with a majority of 40%+ over LAB at GE2019 when the LDs were in third place – 53% behind the Tories.
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Bugger.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/sports-personality/59505132
I voted for Tom Brady.
https://www.betfair.com/exchange/plus/special-bets/market/1.177196899
I guess it makes sense that the person from the British Isles is favourite.
Now the Tories are underdogs he can proclaim the likely narrow Tory hold thanks to 15% or so still voting Labour not LD as a triumph.
It would be the first Tory by election hold over the LDs for 5 years, since Witney in 2016 and Boris would proclaim it as a great comeback against the odds after the past fortnight.
LDs being far too cocky I think
I need some help on the best way to vote tactically in this election.
The irony of politics today is extraordinary when Boris is in touch with public opinion on this and a large part of his party are not
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/covid-vaccine-booster-doses-per-capita?country=ISR~USA~FRA~ITA~GBR~DEU~BEL~CHL
Homework, homework !
I suspect Europe is later than us as they were 1-2 months behind last time.
Perhaps they are limited by people reaching the 6 month point?
However that will be a shot across Boris' bows not to bring in a full Christmas lockdown or face a wholesale backbench revolt
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNhh-OLzWlE
Red wall first time Tories
Poor people
Voters who have voted for other parties in the past
Old Women, especially Welsh ones
Non-CofE congregants
The Scotch
Have I missed any other groups? Perhaps as a nod to the excellent bill proposing to remove citizenship from swarthy foreign-type non-Brits there should be an Electoral Reform bill to remove from traitors the right to vote if they don't pass the test. Only members of Conservative Associations and foreign-domiciled donors will be allowed a vote in the new democracy.
Also, it isn't "cocky" to be betting favourites - supporters of all parties are allowed to, and do, place bets. Personally, I continue to think it is a very big ask for the LDs although the signs look quite good. I think the reaction over the past couple of days in the betting markets may be a slight over-reaction given how many votes will already have been cast by post.
"If I'm in a theatre watching a musical, can I take my mask off to sing?"
No10: "Yes. There is a general exemption for singing"
So could I walk into Tesco without a mask as long as I'm singing?
No10: "Essentially, yes"
https://twitter.com/tnewtondunn/status/1468926687287070735?t=E3R6VSQ9aZ_mF1UAWiUTtw&s=19
Media back to their nonsense.
In North Shropshire the LDs are throwing everyone but the kitchen sink at it!
https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/old+woman#:~:text=An exceptionally fussy, timid, circumspect,anxious person, especially a woman.
As for me, better than evens on the Cons holding a seat with such a big margin just 2 years ago is very tempting but something is stopping me. Going to sit it out.
Lord Geidt: For the credibility of this inquiry, I have tested the assertions of Lord Brownlow and the relevant political and government officials that at no point in the eight months until late February 2021, as media reports were emerging, was the prime minister made aware of either the fact or the method of the costs of refurbishing the apartment having been paid.
Electoral Commission: Lord Brownlow via WhatsApp asking him to authorise further, at that stage unspecified, refurbishment works on the residence. Lord Brownlow agreed to do so, and also explained that the proposed trust had not yet been set up but that he knew where the funding was coming from.
So, we have a clear breach of Electoral Law. And at least one clear breach of the Ministerial Code. EDIT. Also that the Number 10 lie machine is trying on the defence of "Lord Brownlow was chair of the blind trust, and acted in accordance with his experience of managing blind trusts in that way. The prime minister’s discussions with Lord Brownlow were done without him knowing the underlying donor.". Except that as the Electoral Commission note, there was no blind trust at the time of the 29/11/20 WhatsApp message, and as it is asking for further money it is clear earlier messages had also been exchanged.
As the Votemaster General notes above, "This is great news for Boris."
Of those efforts, North Shropshire is EASILY the toughest ask. Both Richmond and Brecon had had Lib Dem MPs in the recent past, and Chesham was a Remain voting seat where the Lib Dems started in a clear (though poor) second.
AZ-AZ–Moderna is my regimen I
am past caringdon't know how good that is supposed to be overallDo you know if the Borders bill has passed the HOC as I thought a vote was due this week ?
The motion on Paterson wasn't defeated. It passed with 13 Tory votes against. It was the reaction and subsequent U-turn which led him to quit.
Lol
You are Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf and I claim my £5!
Which is the nearest your average folk get to the theatre in a year. For a musical or not.
You're right the chart must be wrong though - can't be 101% (actually nearer 102%) as not a rounding thing.
John Burn-Murdoch
@jburnmurdoch
·
3h
1) Good to see this now being acknowledged and communicated by WHO
2) It doesn't mean "Omicron is milder". It means immunity (via both vax and infection) is kicking in Flexed biceps
Quote Tweet
Clare Wilson
@ClareWilsonMed
· 4h
WHO says there are preliminary signs omicron is milder as hospitalisations in South Africa remain low.
That being said, we are very lucky in the UK that we did AZ first (for most people). Mix and match is simply better.
(There was a - small - study in the US published this week that showed boosting Pfizer with J&J resulted in a much longer lived immune response.)
Everyone just loves telling everyone else what to do.
The whole thing is a charade.
Scandal - the EU likes to brag it has donated more Covid vaccines than any other state... but it has only delivered 124m of the 353m it claims to have donated, far fewer than the US, for example, has shipped to poorer countries
https://www.ft.com/content/d0b53ea4-5eef-4bc7-814c-a69b0dfa1c06
Passed the report state on Tuesday. Priti Vacant's attempt to make your brave son a criminal is still in the bill. And her proposal to strip citizenship from non-British forrin scum is still in the bill.
Lets be fair, with *that* as a government, ex-communication isn't a bad thing.
In the context of Covid it is for society as a whole to decide what is an acceptable number of deaths for given levels of authoritarian regulation. We do it for Flu and set the bar very high. My personal view is we should have a similarly high bar for Covid. Sadly at the moment both the authoritarian political classes and much of the population seem to agree that it should be much lower. How long that will last when they find all their pubs and shops have disappeared and they are out of a job is another matter.
"Let them wear masks"
Written by you.
Irony eats itself.
Now the LDs are favourites even a narrow Tory hold with a slashed majority is an early Christmas present for Boris
Even halving the dosage of Pfizer doesn't seem to make much difference from the POV of boosters.
The Birmingham Hodge Hill one is interesting. I wonder if HYUFD classes that as a great Labour win on the same basis he is ramping Shropshire for Johnson? Of course, Blair did go on to win the General Election the following year, albeit on a much reduced majority and vote.
We could not say that for Covid when it started, and we can not say it for Omicron - although I am hopeful.
We can decide that an 'acceptable' number of deaths is, but we have no way of ensuring that Covid will happily say: "Oh, I've killed enough. I'll stop now." It is all too easy to reach the agreed level, and find out a week later you've doubled it and it is out of control.
We have more information on the earlier variants, including amongst vaccinated and unvaccinated populations, so we could - perhaps - do so for that. But now there's Omicron.
Road and rail accidents also do not have exponential growth (aside from very low figures), and it is much easier to lose control of a pandemic than it is a safety case.
Finally, there's the issue of the tyranny of the majority. It is not a random subset of the population being affected, but very specific groups. That makes me very uneasy.
A similar calculation is probably done by government to attempt to calculate the benefits of intervention v non intervention. That said, we are talking of the government of Boris Johnson, so probably not.
Recent mini-rise looks to have stopped. Looks like a milder week weather wise next week too...
Might get a bit of a decrease before the Omicron wave really gets going.
I think the LibDems have played a blinder of a campaign in N.Shropshire. There's a logic in asserting themselves as the home for moderate Tories who've supported Paterson for decades but think "all of this" is beyond the pale. But it's a bit of a jump from that assertion and 10pc last time to "Winning Here" two years later. If they pull it off, they've done execptionally well.
While the odds reflect the success of that, I think it just as likely that most Lab voters outside the bubble won't get (or agree with) the tactical voting campaign, the 'left' vote remains split, and the Tories (also relying on habitual votes outside the bubble) get home with a reduced 40pc of a reduced turnout.
(PS: on the graph, the Reform candidate should be *Kirsty* Walmsley - Rebecca's her middle name. Her performance will be interesting too.. previous Tory councillor herself, mum's still a Tory councillor, dad used to lead the county council but is now her campaign manager. You can imagine a section of Oswestry Tory society seeing that as a decent punt for a protest vote.)
- A lot of postal votes were probably cast before the lastest farrago of scandals, own-goals and in-fighting
- It won't be obvious whether Labour or the LibDems are the better place for an anti-Boris vote
- If you're disgruntled, haven't put in a postal vote, but would have voted Tory, you'll probably stay at home rather than come out to vote LD or Lab.
So I still think the Tories are value at the current odds. I may be totally wrong, of course!
Do will still have to WFH prior to driving into the office for the Christmas Party?
https://www.libdemvoice.org/postal-votes-shout-out-if-you-are-helping-in-north-shropshire-this-weekend-69180.html
https://www.codastory.com/waronscience/doctor-in-disguise-russia-coronavirus/
...Sergey Samborsky, a welder by profession, went undercover as a doctor in a Siberian hospital for three days in late October. He did what the medical staff at the hospital would not do: care for his 84-year-old grandmother and other mistreated patients in an overcrowded coronavirus ward. He documented his hospital visits with his phone and when he made the shocking footage public, he felt the Russian state media machine turn on him.
Now known across Russia as the “Grandson from Tomsk,” Samborsky, 27, had gone to Moscow to knock on the doors of federal authorities to file complaints of gross medical negligence. When it became clear that instead of considering his complaints, authorities intended to arrest him, Samborsky fled to neighboring Georgia....