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Why I think that LAB will struggle to get a majority – politicalbetting.com
Why I think that LAB will struggle to get a majority – politicalbetting.com
The above dataset is from the latest YouGov poll which as you can see gives LAB a 24% lead over the Tories which is one of the highest of recent surveys. An interesting set of figures is the second grouping which does not exclude those not having a party choice. This represents just under a third of the total CON vote from the last election and my guess is that a significant part of this will actually go back on the day
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I run a business and we are already looking at ways we can train the first line of staff who answer emails to use this to improve how they respond.
But, yes, I'm sure he's wrong. This isn't some flash in the pan lead. It's a sea-change in British politics, such as happens once in a generation at best.
I will just point out though that the rot set in long before Truss and Kwarteng. It's revisionist to suggest otherwise. Labour will hardly need to remind us about the awful pandemic experiences in which Boris' sleazy tories told us one thing and practised another. The visceral erosion of tory support began long ago. Boris was found to be totally unsuitable for the top job and the chaos began back then. And I need hardly add that the Brexit which Boris delivered us has found to be a disaster. Even my Leave friends are now saying it.
I suggest that we should all be thinking of the opposite: just how HUGE might Labour's lead be? How low will the tory numbers fall? The reason many of them are starting to leave the ship is because they know it's sinking.
I suggest the ballpark figure is 100-150 tory MPs but it could go lower if circumstances continue to conspire against them, which seems pretty likely.
Older people generally find change difficult to accept or believe. More than youngsters they tend to pin their assessment of the world on what has happened before. This isn't all bad. Often it displays the great wisdom of experience.
However, when a sea-change in attitudes occurs older people generally take longer to catch up.
The other category who are finding it hard to accept are the blue filter tories. They see the world through a prism and cling to every last vestige of hope. Just as love is blind so are beliefs.
This is not intended to be taken as personal, or rude, it's just that the objective, empirical, evidence all points to a sea change in this country. You simply don't come back from poll deficits like these. It's like 1945 again or 1997, and there is nothing now the tories can do to avert the electoral catastrophe that is coming their way.
stop ittell people if they have been shadow banned.I have told my main email handler for all of December he MUST use this and only if at the end of the month if his emails have improved then he can not do so. Progress!
It's clear this is the future and we have had a meeting already to discuss this and work out how to take best advantage.
Having dissed those who find change hard to adapt to, there are some (many) things about modern life from which I recoil.
I was hopeful that the pandemic might cause a recalibration and a return to more nature-based life. To an extent it did but the techno giants are creeping back into every crevice of life and I, for one, wish to raise my hand in dissent.
I wouldn't go as far as gluing myself to a motorway or throwing paint over a famous canvass but the techno west's merry-go-round is so very wrong on so many levels.
And yet I'd rather live as an 'ordinary' person today than in 1870. Or 1970, for that matter.
Yes, the country does face problems, as does the world. But we will muddle through, as we always have done.
Wait, is that right?
London
Lab 60%
Con 17%
LD 12%
Grn 5%
Ref 4%
Rest of South
Lab 40%
Con 32%
LD 11%
Grn 8%
Ref 8%
Midlands and Wales
Lab 46%
Con 25%
Ref 9%
LD 8%
Grn 7%
PC 3%
North
Lab 60%
Con 18%
Ref 10%
Grn 5%
LD 5%
Scotland
SNP 43%
Lab 29%
Con 12%
Ref 6%
LD 6%
Grn 4%
https://twitter.com/Femi_Sorry/status/1600998426296324097?t=Bu6ZgwXYDx1n-wDeOWlrwA&s=19
Lab 8% ahead in "Rest of South" and 21% ahead in "Midlands and Wales".
Idiotic to argue that it is carbon neutral provided you don't burn the coal.
And if the coal replaces 'dirtier' types of coal, then it may actually be a positive (though worse than not burning coal at all).
Oh, hang on. It wasn't decades ago. Seven years ago:
"Corbynmania went into orbit when the Labour leadership frontrunner revealed he would reopen coal mines if he becomes Prime Minister."
https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/labour-leadership-contender-jeremy-corbyn-9817411
I'm a big fan of in situ gasification, which would be a great way to exploit the UK's massive deposits under the North Sea.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary has a 'time machine' option, showing (they claim) when a word first appeared in print. It's quite fun.
For instance, 400 years ago "Scotchwoman" first appeared in print. And in a foreshadowing of Leon, so did "superintellectual"
https://www.merriam-webster.com/time-traveler/1622
I'm glad to have exposed this flummery, and hope you will be forgiving as I enunciate the scenic but latterly inexplainable time-based etymology of our urbane language.
Question for the green enthusiasts: without coal, how do you make steel? If you're not making wind turbines (and many other things) from steel, what are you going to use?
Currently we export most of our scrap steel for processing elsewhere. Incidentally 83% of the coal produced by the new mine is for export too.
I doubt fear/mistrust of Labour has completely disappeared merely because Corbyn is out of the party. Mike is right that many of those hesitant Tories will return, Big_G style, when it comes to the vote - and that not insignificant number telling pollsters they will vote Reform most likely won’t have that option when it comes to the real vote. Plus the system is effectively weighted to favour the Tories, especially under the new boundaries, and it is ever so easy to forget that this is so. Who remembers, now, that more people voted for anti-Brexit or second referendum parties last time; even the BBC occasionally slips and reports that ‘most people’ voted for Brexit in 2019.
I am pretty sure, like you, that the Tories will lose next time, but am also conscious that I want this to be so. I don’t think an unprecedented wipeout is as yet nailed on.
It’s also where an attempt to bat time would have been sensible.
Brook should be the one to make way for Bairstow until he’s learned judgement.
And I bet Musk doesn't publish any of the communications from the Trump camp over the story.
So far the 'openness' has been entirely one sided.
Though I have to agree this looks more of a Foakes pitch.
...West Cumbria Mining is promoting the use of its coking coal in the UK steel industry, with the slogan: “Great coal, great steel, Great Britain.” However, the vast majority of the coal produced will be exported, because most UK steel producers have rejected the coal, which is high in sulphur and surplus to their needs. European steelmakers are also turning away from coal to pursue electric arc furnaces and renewable energy....
It probably lowers carbon emissions overall due to much longer transits required for the coal from those countries, and this has a 25 year lifespan only so it's a bridging facility.
Let's see how our bowlers do.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/dec/09/environment-agency-to-boost-natural-flood-management-after-pilots
Hopefully some of the pro-dredgers will be convinced too.
Nobody wins making party political points from decades ago. So much has changed.
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/735078-the-poet-robert-browning-caused-considerable-consternation-by-including-the
(The link isn't a terribly accurate account of what happened but it will do.)
And we're expecting to export over 85% of production.
It's not strategic at all; it's an offshore private equity project that makes very little sense from the POV of the UK.
If you want to return to a time before man and flood the levels, then fine. Buy out those who live there and let nature take its course.
If you aren’t prepared to do that, some dredging will be needed.
...
Koreans are deemed to be a year old when born and a year is added every 1 January. It’s this age most commonly cited by Koreans in everyday life.
A separate system also exists for conscription purposes or calculating the legal age to drink alcohol and smoke, in which a person’s age is calculated from zero at birth and a year is added on 1 January.
Since the early 1960s, however, South Korea has for medical and legal documents also used the international norm of calculating from zero at birth and adding a year on every birthday.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/dec/09/all-south-koreans-to-become-younger-as-traditional-age-system-scrapped
Globalisation claims another victim.
Wise in the short term, but idiotic in the long term. Scotland is off, and with her disappears much of England’s energy and water. And sole nuclear base.
Falmouth: don’t say you weren’t warned!
The mine will be tiny, produce mediocre coal and probably have a foreshortened useful economic life as met coal gets phased out of steel production in the next couple of decades. Makes no economic sense. Meanwhile - completely out of proportion to any environmental impact of the mine itself - it
gives every country under pressure to reduce coal use the opportunity to point and shout hypocrite, and carry on as before.
The national brand wrecking equivalent of a brand like John Lewis cutting costs by using sweatshop child labour for its clothing.
The SNP /Green Government is considering higher income tax rates for Scots earning over £43,663 in a bid to shore up public services. Ministers are looking at whether to put up the 41p and 46p rates in next week’s Budget.
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/scottish-government-considering-income-tax-28687827?
The Tory election results from between 2010 and 2017 where they won between 300 and 320 seats are a more useful baseline from which to assess likely changes. I think their economic and political position is far worse than in any of those.
How badly they do will depend on part on whether we are through to people's disposable incomes improving again by then.
I would like to know to what extent Scotland supplies England with water, how many water pipeline run from Scotland to England, can I see a map to this national linkup.
Response
The answer to your question is that whilst Scotland has a relative abundance of fresh water compared to an increasing number of parts of the world that are becoming water stressed due to population growth and climate factors, there are no current plans to export water to England or internationally.
https://www.gov.scot/publications/foi-202000104273/
Coal (metallurgical, not thermal) is used in three different ways in the production of steel:
- as a reducing agent
- as a source of heat
- as a source of carbon
The heat component is fairly easy to replace, but the others are not so simple.
And Scotland does not, and never has, send water to England. Except bottled water, which is not really important in the grand scheme of things.
Let's also not forget that the two largest offshore wind farms on the planet are off the coast of Yorkshire, not Edinburgh.
He isn't really a grievance merchant though. Just an English-hating bully.
However, on the point about "optics", I'm sorry, but it's bollocks. If the rest of the world is so immature as to wilfully conflate coking coal and thermal coal, then we're fucked anyway.
Legacy burning of coal and oil is popular at the moment and fits in nicely with the agenda of
those mad fascists Leon gets bent out bythe international left.Although to be fair, he was only repeating a lie that's very popular in the SNP at the moment. He may not have realised it wasn't true because he's never been one to check his facts.
It's actually really quite disturbing to see the level of derangement Scottish Nationalism or, at least, a large and vocal chunk of it, seems to have developed. I'm starting to think I was unfair to Farage in comparing them to him.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_arc_furnace
All prediction and betting is about probabilities. "Dobbin is nailed on to win the 2.30 at Newmarket" is shorthand for a rough statement about a specific event which always may or may not happen. "That so and so will occur" is a belief not a present fact (pace Aristotle's sea battle).
The implication that it is a certainty Labour will win is therefore wrong.
The second however is this. SFAICS no-one could put up a programme or manifesto which can be both any way truthful and leave the voter happy or assured that it can be achieved. Black swans and general uselessness have conspired to render this deeply improbable to a cynical, cold and poorer, sicker, harassed public.
So, emotionally, it is unlikely anyone can 'win' the next election, but possible for any party to lose it. Labour are good at fouling up the moderate centre ground vote. That's why the Tories usually win elections. Polling in the last 24 months shows a weary and extremely changeable public mood. It could (though I believe won't) change back.
But there is no chance that Labour making net gains of 125 seats is a certainty.
However... if coal was only used for its other two purposes: i.e. as a reducing agent and as a source of carbon, it would probably reduce coal usage in primary steel by 80% or so.
Today, however, that doesn't make economic sense.
Some say that England requires no representative, accountable, democractic institutions because the institutions of the British state are, in fact, de facto English. Mitchell alludes to this Anglo-centric mindset when he informs us that “when Palmerston said "English" he meant British”. My challenge to Mitchell and other Brits who wish to save the Union is to imagine a new multi-national Britain that draws strength from its hybridity instead of riding rough-shod over the national identities of Britain by buying into these Anglo-centric, Anglo-British notions of Britishness.
… if devolution has failed to ‘kill nationalism stone dead’, as George Robertson prophesised, it is partly because it has heightened the perception that Britain is the English State by proxy, and devolution merely an exercise in post-imperial imperialism.
Today when the public hears British politicians refer to ‘our country’ or ‘our NHS’ it is reasonable to assume that they are talking about England or the NHS in England
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/emotions-of-britishness-and-being-english-response-to-david-mitchell/