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Mid Beds could go CON, LAB or LD – politicalbetting.com
Mid Beds could go CON, LAB or LD – politicalbetting.com
From a betting perspective the by-election in Mid Bedfordshire looks set to be the most intriguing contest of recent times.
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Just paid our first tranche of protection money to Sadiq - two-days' worth of ULEZ charge (£25) to cover our journey from Ilford to my brother's place just the other side of Basildon. We left yesterday and got back an hour or so ago.
The Tories have a healthy majority anyway, so its not as if "letting in" someone else changes the Parliamentary arithmetic.
If you win, then fantastic, and you can try to keep the seat next time.
If you lose, you've not lost anything.
Go for it.
Sorry OGH.
If I had to be pushed I'd say Tory hold. With Labour third. But the value is laying the LD's.
It is very complex. A rogue poll could have a lot of influence. Expect the Tory press have one prepared.
Thirty years ago was the Nordic Biker War. Of course gang related violence existed. They were launching anti tank missiles at each other
Over 8 games in this European round, lost six, drawn two. By an aggregate of 26-7.
And well done to the BMA. This is a battle to save the NHS. If any of you actually want to have a functioning NHS, now is the time to support them.
Not that massive swings are not interesting, who doesn't love a bit of drama after all, but despite lip service in those seats it was always clear who the main opponent to the Tories would be. This one I really doubt will be a close three way or anything, it's just not immediately clear who benefits.
My gut feeling is that Labour will now claim the mantle of principal opposition in the seat. Something in the general nature of reporting just doesn't feel like a LD triumph to me.
Here we go!
The Nordic Biker Wars resulted in nine people dead (7 bikers) over three years, and that stretched across Finland, Norway, Denmark, and Sweden
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_Biker_War
The reality today?
"Sweden hits record with 60 shot dead in 2022
Reuters
December 19, 2022"
One year alone, 60 dead, in just Sweden, and most of them gang related
Here:
"How Peaceful Sweden Became Europe’s Gun-Murder Capital
Scandinavia’s answer to Pablo Escobar orchestrates much of the growing violence from Turkey"
https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-peaceful-sweden-became-europes-gun-murder-capital-a5b500a7
This piffling whataboutery no longer works
In this one, I'd want to see a little more liquidity though, and a tighter overround.
https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/SWE/sweden/murder-homicide-rate#:~:text=Sweden murder/homicide rate for,a 5.4% decline from 2017.
But I don't think the 1997 election result has any relevance.
https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/POL/poland/murder-homicide-rate
That allows the LibDems to accuse Labour of splitting the vote and opens up the usual Labour civil war of “too beige” vs “too socialist” vs “all the fault of someone in LOTO’s office who I don’t like” vs (contd. p94)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_in_Sweden
The second graph shows Swedish immigration. The purple line is migration into Sweden
And the crazy bit is, the Swedes haven't actually taken that many asylum seekers compared to - say - Spain or Switzerland. And yet, they've managed to ghettoize them and completely fail any kind of assimilation, or fitting in with local norms.
I thangyou, I thangyou. Try the fish, etc
or
Rishi Sunak - PM from 2022-2024
It still seems an easy choice to me, from his perspective. Party prospects? Eh, why care about that, he might retain his seat but he'll be taking it easy on the backbenches for the next 3-5 years anyway.
The immigration starts, big time, in about 2012? The surge in rapes, homicides, begins soon after, and follows it with exactitude
Swedes are not dim. This is presumably why they have started voting for the far right Sweden Democrats, to the extent they are now propping up the Swedish government
Perhaps it is the source of the migrants?
Setting aside Poles (I don't think they are letting off bombs), most recent Swedish immigrants have been from Iraq, Iran, Syria and Somalia, it looks like. Perhaps this is a different profile to Norway? I genuinely dunno
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_Sweden
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/immigration-system-statistics-year-ending-december-2022/how-many-people-do-we-grant-protection-to
Bring back piracy to end global warming.
A manana
Could also go with how deadly ice cream is. Ice cream causes shark attacks after all.
What is your thesis, and how does the data compare to the thesis? Is your thesis that immigrants cause rapes?
Why is there a drop-off in rapes at the end of the chart? Is it because there's fewer immigrants in Sweden, if your thesis is that immigrants cause rapes?
Because no, there aren't fewer immigrants in Sweden. There may be somewhat fewer migrating in the final years, but the ones who already migrated are still there. There are more immigrants in Sweden in the final years than a couple of years earlier, but fewer rapes, so immigration now is reducing rapes by your logic.
You've correlated a first and second order variable and called them the same. It doesn't work that way.
And asylum seekers are not allowed to just live anywhere. To avoid the formation of ghettos or areas of dominant immigrant population they are told which county they have to live in for the first few years.
The system works. I have never been in a country where the immigrant population was so well integrated. And it is a ciculcular thing. Because the integration is so good the acceptance of large numbers of immigrants is very high amongst the Norwegian population in general. So the immigrants feel more welcome and so there is a much better relationship.
Of course I am sure it is nopt all plain sailing all the time and sadly you still get lunatics like Anders Brevik. But as I said at the time - indeed I think in conversation with you - it is ironic that he was railing against immigration when Norway is one of the most integrated countries in Europe - and thoroughly Norwegian.
So why has Sweden had terrible trouble, while Norway has had - essentially - none?
Basically: Norway (and to a lesser extent Denmark and Finland) puts a massive amount of emphasis on integration and getting immigrants speaking Norwegian. IIRC Mr Tyndall, when he was living there (and even as a highly paid oil industry worker) was required to take Norwegian lessons. They also go to a great deal of trouble to make sure that they don't let ghettos form. Basically, if you're a Syrian refugee, you probably won't find yourself with other Syrian refugees. But on the other hand, this seems to work: employment rates for Eritreans / Syrians / are pretty close to those for the native born.
Sweden, by contrast, welcomed everyone and then chucked them in grim housing estates in Lund and the outskirts of Stockholm, without any skills or any significant likelihood of integrating or even earning a living.
Operation code red now activated by the no 10 spin machine . It’s migrants fault , the French , leftie lawyers , the blob ....
This rancid government needs to be put out of its misery . The next GE can’t come soon enough .
Laying the LDs obviously also covers the not-inconsiderable chance of the Tories sneaking back in through the middle.
BBC More Or Less programme. Around 22 min, 50 secs.
"China has emitted more CO2 in the last 8 years than the UK has done since 1750".
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001q0s6
- relations with the EU: most I discussed it with were happy with the status quo, but uneasy about the future. Most also expected that the EU would eventually find a way to renege on the thicket of bilateral agreements that Switzerland has and force it into a situation more like Norway's. No sign of this happening at the moment, though.
- economy: doing fairly well despite the very strong franc. But everybody watching the situation in Germany, which Switzerland tends to track, very closely.
- Brexit: this was followed suprisingly closely in Switzerland. Opinion followed broadly the same left-right split as in Britain, with my left-wing friends saying they can't believe we did it, and my conservative contacts wondering what took us so long.
- politics: unlike every other country I've visited recently, most people seem reasonably happy with the current government, which, as usual in Switzerland, is a broad coalition. After been untouchable twenty years ago, the conservative and anti-immigrant SVP is now seen as part of the establishment. There are no distinctive and compelling political issues at the moment.
- the army: there was an amusing and so very Swiss moment when my train crossed the border from Germany and at the first stop a couple of dozen soldiers, whose weekend training had just ended, got on in full camouflage with their rifles over their shoulders. In most countries I'd feel threated by that, but somehow in Switzerland I even felt slightly safer. Everybody seems to hate their military training, but nobody thinks it'll stop soon, and those that absolutely despise it can get out of it by claiming to be gay and having psychological problems. And when you ask them who exactly the army defends against, you never get a clear answer.
- Ukraine. Everybody is very pro-Ukrainian, across the political spectrum, but also concerned not to jeopardise Switzerland's neutrality. So the government's rather two-faced policy of selling Germany tanks that Germany then passes on to Ukraine has broad support.
- immigration. Amusing to hear that in Switzerland German doctors and nurses keep the hospitals running, as Filipinos do here (and in Germany I hear). There is a big divide, common in Europe, between Ukrainian refugees, who have been welcomed, and brown and black refugees, whose reception is much more split along political lines.
- prices. That's the thing that most foreigners feel all the time now that the Franc is almost at parity with the pound, which means that everything is three or four times what it costs back home. But Switzerland is so small that most can mitigate it by crossing the border for their shopping, as workers go in the opposite direction.
🇰🇷 South Korea fertility rate:
2015: 1.24
2016: 1.17
2017: 1.05
2018: 0.98
2019: 0.92
2020: 0.84
2021: 0.81
2022: 0.78
2023: 0.70
Of course being a very wealthy country probably helps, too.
They've sold a small number of (German) tanks back to Germany, on the understanding that they won't be used in Ukraine.
And refused a recent request for a larger number
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-66671397
In both instances it will actually be about pay and jobs.