Jim Pickard 🐋 @PickardJE number of international students paying deposits to study at UK universities has “plummeted” after Sunak put restrictions on education visas
Enroly said deposits to a sample of 24 British universities had declined 57% year-on-year as of May
That's university finances (and incidentally our balance of payments) screwed. It will be catastrophic for a significant number of universities.
They're nothing but visa factories for migration, and dependents in particular.
If dozens of marginal universities close I can't say I'm bothered.
On 1 level I agree with you but there is a lot of jobs in universities, a lot of regional pride and people have long memories. They also consume a lot of town centre space and closure would be very visible alongside the related business closures.
I suspect were a university to close (and many are likely to unless this idea is reversed) I expect it would impact Tory votes for a very long time in the area..
There was a survey in 2008 (when Lampeter collapsed and had to be rescued) that noted in any area where the university was a dominant employer, rescue was nearly always a better option than bankruptcy and closure.
They also noted this didn't apply in London, where something silly like half of all universities in the UK are and where they could probably be closed easily enough without anyone really noticing.
The conclusion anyone reaches on this is going to depend on whether you approach it from a public sector/top down/bottomless pit of government money or free market business point of view.
Not necessarily. In the case of Lampeter it would actually have cost more in terms of the financial impact to the government to close the university than to rescue it via increased unemployment benefit, reduced tax income for the local area, etc. (there's a general suspicion that in the last few years changes have been made by the leadership of the new university to make that less plausible, as they want to concentrate on their campuses in Carmarthen and Swansea). And it should be noted the 'rescue' involved what amounted to the university being wound up and its assets transferred to two other unis as part of a wider merger process.
But I wonder how much impact it would really have in a town with multiple universities e.g. Manchester, Leeds, Leicester, Bristol or even Cambridge, how damaging it would be? (obviously for Cambridge I'm thinking of Anglia Ruskin rather than King's College...)
Good questions - of a sort that sensible governments have a stab at analysing before they implement a policy.
I've no reason to believe that her conviction was unjust, or that a miscarriage of justice was involved. But I do think having dramas and documentaries made *whilst* the case is ongoing, with the active participation of people involved with the case, is troubling. As I've said before about other 'contemporary' or near-contemporary documentaries.
(Again, this post is not about the Letby case; it's about the media interactions with it.)
Dreadful.
I also can't understand why a doctor who was a de facto prosecutor and presumably at one stage a possible suspect was allowed to give evidence anonymously. The whole thing looks very like the Post Office prosecutions.
We have fairly strict rules on not "preparing" witnesses to the extent that their evidence becomes not what they know or saw but what they have been told. I am struggling to see how this sort of thing is compatible with that.
» show previous quotes The better Scottish Universities did well in attracting English students willing to pay them £9k a year for courses that the SG was paying just over £5k for. Boris threatened to close that loophole but I don't think he did. The number of funded places available for Scottish student has been falling because the budget simply can't stretch to cover the cost of those who want to attend for this "free" education. Ironically, this has driven quite a lot of Scottish students south, willing to take on English fees to get a better education or a University place. One of these is my son.
But your friend is right. The likes of Edinburgh, Glasgow and St Andrews have balanced the books with ever increasing numbers of foreign students paying up to £20k a year for some courses. How the strand below that are coping is a mystery to me.
David insinuating that you have to go to England to get a decent education is pure bollox. There are brilliant universities in Scotland that are a match for anywhere in the world. Wanting to boast that you went to Oxford or Cambridge is not down to lack of good university courses in Scotland, just means you can buy a bragging place if you have lots of money.
That's not what I am saying Malcolm. I agree that Scotland has some excellent Universities. What is driving some young people south is that it is hard to get an assisted place from the SG in them because the number of assisted places is being restricted as the budget gets tighter.
Scottish Universities are also really struggling to compete because the money they receive from the SG per student is substantially less than the fees charged to students under the English system. The cream of Scottish Universities have compensated by having more foreign students and also (particularly in St Andrews and Edinburgh) having lots of English students paying the same as they would in England. But these options are not available for all or even most Universities. Their financial position is increasingly perilous.
If you are wanting to go to University it can be easier to get a place in a good English University paying the English fees (by borrowing) than getting an assisted place in Scotland. The "free" University option in Scotland seemed like a good idea but it has had negative consequences that will increase sharply if University fees go up again south of the border. Personally, I favour some form of graduate tax as a means of funding Universities.
Scottish universities are an excellent option for many people in the north of England. Where I live (within sight of Scotland) it is a popular option. Reasons: they are close, they are excellent, they want English students.
BTW, universities is a field where London dominates less than many. Of the top 30 in the latest Guardian league table (not very reliable or meaningful, but it's something) 5 are in London, 5 are in Scotland, 20 in the rest of the UK.
Jim Pickard 🐋 @PickardJE number of international students paying deposits to study at UK universities has “plummeted” after Sunak put restrictions on education visas
Enroly said deposits to a sample of 24 British universities had declined 57% year-on-year as of May
That's university finances (and incidentally our balance of payments) screwed. It will be catastrophic for a significant number of universities.
They're nothing but visa factories for migration, and dependents in particular.
If dozens of marginal universities close I can't say I'm bothered.
On 1 level I agree with you but there is a lot of jobs in universities, a lot of regional pride and people have long memories. They also consume a lot of town centre space and closure would be very visible alongside the related business closures.
I suspect were a university to close (and many are likely to unless this idea is reversed) I expect it would impact Tory votes for a very long time in the area..
There was a survey in 2008 (when Lampeter collapsed and had to be rescued) that noted in any area where the university was a dominant employer, rescue was nearly always a better option than bankruptcy and closure.
They also noted this didn't apply in London, where something silly like half of all universities in the UK are and where they could probably be closed easily enough without anyone really noticing.
The conclusion anyone reaches on this is going to depend on whether you approach it from a public sector/top down/bottomless pit of government money or free market business point of view.
Not necessarily. In the case of Lampeter it would actually have cost more in terms of the financial impact to the government to close the university than to rescue it via increased unemployment benefit, reduced tax income for the local area, etc. (there's a general suspicion that in the last few years changes have been made by the leadership of the new university to make that less plausible, as they want to concentrate on their campuses in Carmarthen and Swansea). And it should be noted the 'rescue' involved what amounted to the university being wound up and its assets transferred to two other unis as part of a wider merger process.
But I wonder how much impact it would really have in a town with multiple universities e.g. Manchester, Leeds, Leicester, Bristol or even Cambridge, how damaging it would be? (obviously for Cambridge I'm thinking of Anglia Ruskin rather than King's College...)
Does Manchester still have a number of universities - every time I look another one seems to have merged into Manchester University.
Leeds definitely does have multiple universities. If you want to take the 2025 Leeds uni course, just go to Beckett a couple of years earlier - the number of courses Leeds steal wholesale is obvious once someone points it out to you
Also, what's this bollocks about Spurs fans wanting to lose to prevent the Arse winning the league. As an Arsenal fan of some years, I'm going to say I've been supporting them longer than anyone else on here so there, and if the positions were reversed, I would want us to be playing CL football next season rather than prevent Spurs from winning the League.
Spurs not winning the league would be some kind of consolation were we not to qualify for the CL but the CL is the most important competition out there (oh Thierry, oh Freddie - how much did those misses cost us). And I would want to be playing there.
On topic, I'd agree that 120 Tory MPs would be about the minimum if we were still dealing with the 1997 world of 3-party politics. But we're not.
The pterodactyl in the ointment is Reform. Voting intention + leadership ratings + relative issues competence + tactical voting + semi-proportional swing could well push the Tories down to 120 seats.
However, the 'worst case' scenario is that Reform's vote comes primarily from ex-2019 Tories (we know this is true at the moment: Deltapoll's most recent had about two-thirds of their current support coming from there; most of the rest, presumably was the Brexit Party), and holds up at current levels.
Now, I know there's a degree of double-counting there but I think there's also a widespread assumption that polls will tighten as we head to the election, as they usually do. And perhaps, probably, they will. But it's no guarantee. The usual pressures on minor-party squeeze aren't there in anything like the scale that they were in 2019. Labour isn't as extreme, the issues aren't as stark, the election isn't as close: and the Tories are really disliked. Swingback has usually started well before now whereas if anything, the Tories are still sinking in support. If Reform polls 10%+ it's possible that the 'worst case' is the Conservatives well down into double figures.
We shouldn't allow our thinking to be hemmed in by past events. I suspect that '120' is considered a minimum because it's ballpark within the worst-ever Tory experience; it cannot go lower because it has not gone lower.
Yet the Tories are polling 10% below where they were in 1997. True, Labour is also lower but then the polls also exaggerated their support then (a point often forgotten because of the landslide delivered and because tactical voting produced a result more consistent with the predictions of those bigger leads; the two effects cancelled each other out to an extent).
Even discounting black swans - and it does look as if Sunak is there for the duration and that the Tories won't accidentally re-elect Liz Truss or similar - we should take seriously the possibility, though not the probability, of a 1931-type outcome.
Agree. There is a case to be made for anything from Tories well down into double figures to NOM. There are a lot of moving parts in the machine: turnout, don't knows, variable swing, Reform, tactical voting, the boats and the flights, Labour mistakes (just getting into gear - Elphicke, Rayner, unions, anyone seen Burgon recently?), media (The Sun?), and of course Black Swans.
Question: What is the minimum number of seats the Tories have to lose (from 365) to certainly be unable to form a government?
I find it hard to see a path to NOM.
There only hope is a deal to get the Fukkers not to stand in key marginals. Seems unlikely but you never know.
I picked up a vibe in the last thread that ai is suddenly a banned topic? In global politics today we’re just seeing the latest iteration of how slow politicians and the public are in anticipating and preparing for epoch changing events and technology (rise of fascism, global warming, the internet, covid, whatever).
If it were not obvious already, after yesterday’s openai release, it should be clear hat the capabilities of this tech are going to utterly shape the course of this century.
Occasionally I tune in and see the debates between professional politicians and those that consider themselves politically engaged. I’m blown away by the triviality. So much focus on minor differences in fiscal allocation. And almost no consideration of how the grand sweep of time renders those debates meaningless.
It's Leon's current bug bear which means he posts about every 5 minutes given the chance hence he is banned from talking about it if no one else is...
On 1 level he's right it's perfectly possible that AI will change the world as someone who uses it I don't think it will in the way Leon thinks it will.
He's not right, as he's not claiming that it's 'perfectly possible' AI will change the world. He is claiming that he is *certain* it will change the world, and that we'll all lose our jobs and OH MY GOD!!!!!!
Like the lableak theory, he takes a possibility and turns it into certainty. Unfortunately for him, his past predictions are (ahem) rather poor, especially in this sector.He also all too often confuses AGI and AI, and sentience, consciousness and intelligence - perhaps purposefully.
As for your last line: that's my view. *If* current-methodology AI pans out as the hypers think (and that is *not* a certainty...), the social and political changes might not be what we think, or at the scale (they might be bigger or smaller). It's incredibly hard to come up with any prediction that isn't just waving your finger in the air, as much would depend on the capabilities of the AI and the way it is received.
The very concept of AI is a mystification. It's just binary programming.
Like our brains that unconsciously spin a web of consciousness.
On topic, I'd agree that 120 Tory MPs would be about the minimum if we were still dealing with the 1997 world of 3-party politics. But we're not.
The pterodactyl in the ointment is Reform. Voting intention + leadership ratings + relative issues competence + tactical voting + semi-proportional swing could well push the Tories down to 120 seats.
However, the 'worst case' scenario is that Reform's vote comes primarily from ex-2019 Tories (we know this is true at the moment: Deltapoll's most recent had about two-thirds of their current support coming from there; most of the rest, presumably was the Brexit Party), and holds up at current levels.
Now, I know there's a degree of double-counting there but I think there's also a widespread assumption that polls will tighten as we head to the election, as they usually do. And perhaps, probably, they will. But it's no guarantee. The usual pressures on minor-party squeeze aren't there in anything like the scale that they were in 2019. Labour isn't as extreme, the issues aren't as stark, the election isn't as close: and the Tories are really disliked. Swingback has usually started well before now whereas if anything, the Tories are still sinking in support. If Reform polls 10%+ it's possible that the 'worst case' is the Conservatives well down into double figures.
We shouldn't allow our thinking to be hemmed in by past events. I suspect that '120' is considered a minimum because it's ballpark within the worst-ever Tory experience; it cannot go lower because it has not gone lower.
Yet the Tories are polling 10% below where they were in 1997. True, Labour is also lower but then the polls also exaggerated their support then (a point often forgotten because of the landslide delivered and because tactical voting produced a result more consistent with the predictions of those bigger leads; the two effects cancelled each other out to an extent).
Even discounting black swans - and it does look as if Sunak is there for the duration and that the Tories won't accidentally re-elect Liz Truss or similar - we should take seriously the possibility, though not the probability, of a 1931-type outcome.
As I said earlier current polling puts the Tory party on the precipice where the difference between 200 seats and 20 is 4% / margin of error and even that depends on the level of tactical voting.
I can easily see the Tories getting 200 seats, I can equally given a little bit of bad news see them getting few to none
The problem is our polling seems no more accurate now than it was decades ago. And it still, despite correction after correction, routinely understates the Tories in 90% of cases.
We could do away with this and have a much more dynamic democracy if instead of 5 year terms then a general election, we had elections for a selection of seats every 3 months (ideally elected under STV or at least AV) such that an unpopular government couldn't hold the country to ransom waiting for a GE, but a popular government could actually strengthen its position in parliament over time.
Every 3 months a tranche of 30 seats goes up for election. Either regional (that would be fun but could create distortions in policy) or say alphabetical. Over the course of 5 or so years the entire house of commons would be re-elected. By now the Conservatives would have lost their majority but Labour would probably be working as a minority or with coalition partners, gradually building up their seat count.
Every 3 months too often? How about 60 seats every 6 months, or 120 seats every year at the start of May?
It's not dissimilar to how US senate elections work.
You can look back over the last decade and ponder with interest how that sort of system might have played out.
Does this apply to any other demographic, Landon? Do I get to be black if I like Motown and fancy myself in cornrows? What if I claim the authentic me has always been black and that you're being racist to me? Would that be OK, or would you find it ludicrous and deeply offensive?
On topic, I'd agree that 120 Tory MPs would be about the minimum if we were still dealing with the 1997 world of 3-party politics. But we're not.
The pterodactyl in the ointment is Reform. Voting intention + leadership ratings + relative issues competence + tactical voting + semi-proportional swing could well push the Tories down to 120 seats.
However, the 'worst case' scenario is that Reform's vote comes primarily from ex-2019 Tories (we know this is true at the moment: Deltapoll's most recent had about two-thirds of their current support coming from there; most of the rest, presumably was the Brexit Party), and holds up at current levels.
Now, I know there's a degree of double-counting there but I think there's also a widespread assumption that polls will tighten as we head to the election, as they usually do. And perhaps, probably, they will. But it's no guarantee. The usual pressures on minor-party squeeze aren't there in anything like the scale that they were in 2019. Labour isn't as extreme, the issues aren't as stark, the election isn't as close: and the Tories are really disliked. Swingback has usually started well before now whereas if anything, the Tories are still sinking in support. If Reform polls 10%+ it's possible that the 'worst case' is the Conservatives well down into double figures.
We shouldn't allow our thinking to be hemmed in by past events. I suspect that '120' is considered a minimum because it's ballpark within the worst-ever Tory experience; it cannot go lower because it has not gone lower.
Yet the Tories are polling 10% below where they were in 1997. True, Labour is also lower but then the polls also exaggerated their support then (a point often forgotten because of the landslide delivered and because tactical voting produced a result more consistent with the predictions of those bigger leads; the two effects cancelled each other out to an extent).
Even discounting black swans - and it does look as if Sunak is there for the duration and that the Tories won't accidentally re-elect Liz Truss or similar - we should take seriously the possibility, though not the probability, of a 1931-type outcome.
As I said earlier current polling puts the Tory party on the precipice where the difference between 200 seats and 20 is 4% / margin of error and even that depends on the level of tactical voting.
I can easily see the Tories getting 200 seats, I can equally given a little bit of bad news see them getting few to none
The problem is our polling seems no more accurate now than it was decades ago. And it still, despite correction after correction, routinely understates the Tories in 90% of cases.
We could do away with this and have a much more dynamic democracy if instead of 5 year terms then a general election, we had elections for a selection of seats every 3 months (ideally elected under STV or at least AV) such that an unpopular government couldn't hold the country to ransom waiting for a GE, but a popular government could actually strengthen its position in parliament over time.
Every 3 months a tranche of 30 seats goes up for election. Either regional (that would be fun but could create distortions in policy) or say alphabetical. Over the course of 5 or so years the entire house of commons would be re-elected. By now the Conservatives would have lost their majority but Labour would probably be working as a minority or with coalition partners, gradually building up their seat count.
Every 3 months too often? How about 60 seats every 6 months, or 120 seats every year at the start of May?
It's not dissimilar to how US senate elections work.
You can look back over the last decade and ponder with interest how that sort of system might have played out.
Shorttermism is already a problem, it would be out of control if the next election was always less than 3 months or even less than a year away. Four years is a good length of time for a new government to come in and rule things their way and then go back to the electorate for a verdict on how they have done.
It's the same reason as I dislike electing councils by thirds, it makes handover from one party to another messy.
I've no reason to believe that her conviction was unjust, or that a miscarriage of justice was involved. But I do think having dramas and documentaries made *whilst* the case is ongoing, with the active participation of people involved with the case, is troubling. As I've said before about other 'contemporary' or near-contemporary documentaries.
(Again, this post is not about the Letby case; it's about the media interactions with it.)
Interesting. Justice and showbiz don't mix for a very simple reason. The moment anyone connected with the prosecution of a case has a financial interest in the outcome, or a financial interest in the evidence pointing towards any particular conclusion, then the case is tainted, and the entire edifice is the fruit of a poisoned tree. This particularly applies when this is unknown, undeclared or not obvious.
(BTW my working assumption is that if in fact Letby had a viable defence they would have called quite extensive expert evidence, and they didn't. This would not be for want of trying.)
I've no reason to believe that her conviction was unjust, or that a miscarriage of justice was involved. But I do think having dramas and documentaries made *whilst* the case is ongoing, with the active participation of people involved with the case, is troubling. As I've said before about other 'contemporary' or near-contemporary documentaries.
(Again, this post is not about the Letby case; it's about the media interactions with it.)
Interesting. Justice and showbiz don't mix for a very simple reason. The moment anyone connected with the prosecution of a case has a financial interest in the outcome, or a financial interest in the evidence pointing towards any particular conclusion, then the case is tainted, and the entire edifice is the fruit of a poisoned tree. This particularly applies when this is unknown, undeclared or not obvious.
(BTW my working assumption is that if in fact Letby had a viable defence they would have called quite extensive expert evidence, and they didn't. This would not be for want of trying.)
I hope to God the case against her was sound, if only for the sake of the parents. Although that sounds a bit like Lord Denning on the Birmingham Six!
On topic, I'd agree that 120 Tory MPs would be about the minimum if we were still dealing with the 1997 world of 3-party politics. But we're not.
The pterodactyl in the ointment is Reform. Voting intention + leadership ratings + relative issues competence + tactical voting + semi-proportional swing could well push the Tories down to 120 seats.
However, the 'worst case' scenario is that Reform's vote comes primarily from ex-2019 Tories (we know this is true at the moment: Deltapoll's most recent had about two-thirds of their current support coming from there; most of the rest, presumably was the Brexit Party), and holds up at current levels.
Now, I know there's a degree of double-counting there but I think there's also a widespread assumption that polls will tighten as we head to the election, as they usually do. And perhaps, probably, they will. But it's no guarantee. The usual pressures on minor-party squeeze aren't there in anything like the scale that they were in 2019. Labour isn't as extreme, the issues aren't as stark, the election isn't as close: and the Tories are really disliked. Swingback has usually started well before now whereas if anything, the Tories are still sinking in support. If Reform polls 10%+ it's possible that the 'worst case' is the Conservatives well down into double figures.
We shouldn't allow our thinking to be hemmed in by past events. I suspect that '120' is considered a minimum because it's ballpark within the worst-ever Tory experience; it cannot go lower because it has not gone lower.
Yet the Tories are polling 10% below where they were in 1997. True, Labour is also lower but then the polls also exaggerated their support then (a point often forgotten because of the landslide delivered and because tactical voting produced a result more consistent with the predictions of those bigger leads; the two effects cancelled each other out to an extent).
Even discounting black swans - and it does look as if Sunak is there for the duration and that the Tories won't accidentally re-elect Liz Truss or similar - we should take seriously the possibility, though not the probability, of a 1931-type outcome.
In 1997 the swing against the Tories was fairly similar in the Reading/Milton Keynes types of seats as it was in the Amber Valley/Erewash types of seats. This time the swing is likely to be larger in the former seats and less in the latter. Whether that means the Tories will win more seats than 1997 is difficult to say.
Also, what's this bollocks about Spurs fans wanting to lose to prevent the Arse winning the league. As an Arsenal fan of some years, I'm going to say I've been supporting them longer than anyone else on here so there, and if the positions were reversed, I would want us to be playing CL football next season rather than prevent Spurs from winning the League.
Spurs not winning the league would be some kind of consolation were we not to qualify for the CL but the CL is the most important competition out there (oh Thierry, oh Freddie - how much did those misses cost us). And I would want to be playing there.
On topic, I'd agree that 120 Tory MPs would be about the minimum if we were still dealing with the 1997 world of 3-party politics. But we're not.
The pterodactyl in the ointment is Reform. Voting intention + leadership ratings + relative issues competence + tactical voting + semi-proportional swing could well push the Tories down to 120 seats.
However, the 'worst case' scenario is that Reform's vote comes primarily from ex-2019 Tories (we know this is true at the moment: Deltapoll's most recent had about two-thirds of their current support coming from there; most of the rest, presumably was the Brexit Party), and holds up at current levels.
Now, I know there's a degree of double-counting there but I think there's also a widespread assumption that polls will tighten as we head to the election, as they usually do. And perhaps, probably, they will. But it's no guarantee. The usual pressures on minor-party squeeze aren't there in anything like the scale that they were in 2019. Labour isn't as extreme, the issues aren't as stark, the election isn't as close: and the Tories are really disliked. Swingback has usually started well before now whereas if anything, the Tories are still sinking in support. If Reform polls 10%+ it's possible that the 'worst case' is the Conservatives well down into double figures.
We shouldn't allow our thinking to be hemmed in by past events. I suspect that '120' is considered a minimum because it's ballpark within the worst-ever Tory experience; it cannot go lower because it has not gone lower.
Yet the Tories are polling 10% below where they were in 1997. True, Labour is also lower but then the polls also exaggerated their support then (a point often forgotten because of the landslide delivered and because tactical voting produced a result more consistent with the predictions of those bigger leads; the two effects cancelled each other out to an extent).
Even discounting black swans - and it does look as if Sunak is there for the duration and that the Tories won't accidentally re-elect Liz Truss or similar - we should take seriously the possibility, though not the probability, of a 1931-type outcome.
Agree. There is a case to be made for anything from Tories well down into double figures to NOM. There are a lot of moving parts in the machine: turnout, don't knows, variable swing, Reform, tactical voting, the boats and the flights, Labour mistakes (just getting into gear - Elphicke, Rayner, unions, anyone seen Burgon recently?), media (The Sun?), and of course Black Swans.
Question: What is the minimum number of seats the Tories have to lose (from 365) to certainly be unable to form a government?
50.
The DUP *might* do another deal if there's enough cash on the table but I wouldn't assume it, by any means. I think they'd probably prefer to try their chances screwing Labour over instead (and would, of course, have equal leverage there as with the Tories). Every other party (bar SF, obviously) would vote against. Realistically, about 44. And that'd go with a by-election soon enough.
I'd be very surprised if the DUP were prepared to do any sort of deal with the Tories this time round:
1. It'd be a tacit admission that funding agreed for getting the Stormont administration back up and running wasn't as good a deal as they had previously claimed. 2. Big Gav Robinson needs more time to bed himself in and establish his independence. He won't want to be seen as weak by backing a loser. 3. There's always a tension within the DUP between pragmatism vs principle - pragmatism has had the upper hand recently, so they're more likely to tilt back towards principle when they next need to deal with Westminster.
It's also worth noting that Rishi had spent quite a bit of time and energy buttering up Wee Jeffrey Donaldson personally. With his sudden departure, that now looks like a waste of effort.
I've no reason to believe that her conviction was unjust, or that a miscarriage of justice was involved. But I do think having dramas and documentaries made *whilst* the case is ongoing, with the active participation of people involved with the case, is troubling. As I've said before about other 'contemporary' or near-contemporary documentaries.
(Again, this post is not about the Letby case; it's about the media interactions with it.)
Interesting. Justice and showbiz don't mix for a very simple reason. The moment anyone connected with the prosecution of a case has a financial interest in the outcome, or a financial interest in the evidence pointing towards any particular conclusion, then the case is tainted, and the entire edifice is the fruit of a poisoned tree. This particularly applies when this is unknown, undeclared or not obvious.
(BTW my working assumption is that if in fact Letby had a viable defence they would have called quite extensive expert evidence, and they didn't. This would not be for want of trying.)
I hope to God the case against her was sound, if only for the sake of the parents. Although that sounds a bit like Lord Denning on the Birmingham Six!
Justice needs to be done; not scapegoating.
I was predisposed to be suspicious of the case against her, because the initial reporting of the evidence sounded vaguely similar to the cot death cases in terms of a potential misuse of statistics. But having looked further it was completely different and much stronger.
The main doubt in the case was over which specific baby deaths and near-deaths to attribute to her actions. There was more evidence for some than others.
Does this apply to any other demographic, Landon? Do I get to be black if I like Motown and fancy myself in cornrows? What if I claim the authentic me has always been black and that you're being racist to me? Would that be OK, or would you find it ludicrous and deeply offensive?
On topic, I'd agree that 120 Tory MPs would be about the minimum if we were still dealing with the 1997 world of 3-party politics. But we're not.
The pterodactyl in the ointment is Reform. Voting intention + leadership ratings + relative issues competence + tactical voting + semi-proportional swing could well push the Tories down to 120 seats.
However, the 'worst case' scenario is that Reform's vote comes primarily from ex-2019 Tories (we know this is true at the moment: Deltapoll's most recent had about two-thirds of their current support coming from there; most of the rest, presumably was the Brexit Party), and holds up at current levels.
Now, I know there's a degree of double-counting there but I think there's also a widespread assumption that polls will tighten as we head to the election, as they usually do. And perhaps, probably, they will. But it's no guarantee. The usual pressures on minor-party squeeze aren't there in anything like the scale that they were in 2019. Labour isn't as extreme, the issues aren't as stark, the election isn't as close: and the Tories are really disliked. Swingback has usually started well before now whereas if anything, the Tories are still sinking in support. If Reform polls 10%+ it's possible that the 'worst case' is the Conservatives well down into double figures.
We shouldn't allow our thinking to be hemmed in by past events. I suspect that '120' is considered a minimum because it's ballpark within the worst-ever Tory experience; it cannot go lower because it has not gone lower.
Yet the Tories are polling 10% below where they were in 1997. True, Labour is also lower but then the polls also exaggerated their support then (a point often forgotten because of the landslide delivered and because tactical voting produced a result more consistent with the predictions of those bigger leads; the two effects cancelled each other out to an extent).
Even discounting black swans - and it does look as if Sunak is there for the duration and that the Tories won't accidentally re-elect Liz Truss or similar - we should take seriously the possibility, though not the probability, of a 1931-type outcome.
As I said earlier current polling puts the Tory party on the precipice where the difference between 200 seats and 20 is 4% / margin of error and even that depends on the level of tactical voting.
I can easily see the Tories getting 200 seats, I can equally given a little bit of bad news see them getting few to none
The problem is our polling seems no more accurate now than it was decades ago. And it still, despite correction after correction, routinely understates the Tories in 90% of cases.
We could do away with this and have a much more dynamic democracy if instead of 5 year terms then a general election, we had elections for a selection of seats every 3 months (ideally elected under STV or at least AV) such that an unpopular government couldn't hold the country to ransom waiting for a GE, but a popular government could actually strengthen its position in parliament over time.
Every 3 months a tranche of 30 seats goes up for election. Either regional (that would be fun but could create distortions in policy) or say alphabetical. Over the course of 5 or so years the entire house of commons would be re-elected. By now the Conservatives would have lost their majority but Labour would probably be working as a minority or with coalition partners, gradually building up their seat count.
Every 3 months too often? How about 60 seats every 6 months, or 120 seats every year at the start of May?
It's not dissimilar to how US senate elections work.
You can look back over the last decade and ponder with interest how that sort of system might have played out.
If the whole electorate votes every 3 months then the turnout will drop to 20%-30%. Most people are prepared to do their "democratic duty" every year ot rwo, but every 3 months, I think you'll get a lot of rude comments and not just from "Brenda in Bristol"
But the main problem with the suggestion is a combinaton of two things. As a country moves from say Conservative to Labour, there will be change over period where a coalition government is needed. For coalitions to work there needs to be time to negotiate a strong coalition agreement. That won't be pratical if the make up of a coalition changes every few months.
The reason why the Senate system works is that a) the change is only every two years, but more importantly b) the senate is not the government. That role in in the USA is the reponsibility of the president who appoints hst ministers, mostly outside the House/Senate. The presisdent is a clear change every 4/8 years and not a gradual pendulum swing.
I've no reason to believe that her conviction was unjust, or that a miscarriage of justice was involved. But I do think having dramas and documentaries made *whilst* the case is ongoing, with the active participation of people involved with the case, is troubling. As I've said before about other 'contemporary' or near-contemporary documentaries.
(Again, this post is not about the Letby case; it's about the media interactions with it.)
Interesting. Justice and showbiz don't mix for a very simple reason. The moment anyone connected with the prosecution of a case has a financial interest in the outcome, or a financial interest in the evidence pointing towards any particular conclusion, then the case is tainted, and the entire edifice is the fruit of a poisoned tree. This particularly applies when this is unknown, undeclared or not obvious.
(BTW my working assumption is that if in fact Letby had a viable defence they would have called quite extensive expert evidence, and they didn't. This would not be for want of trying.)
I hope to God the case against her was sound, if only for the sake of the parents. Although that sounds a bit like Lord Denning on the Birmingham Six!
Justice needs to be done; not scapegoating.
I was predisposed to be suspicious of the case against her, because the initial reporting of the evidence sounded vaguely similar to the cot death cases in terms of a potential misuse of statistics. But having looked further it was completely different and much stronger.
The main doubt in the case was over which specific baby deaths and near-deaths to attribute to her actions. There was more evidence for some than others.
Yes, the professional statisticians were all over this case, so no one would have got away with doing a Roy Meadow and his 'Prosecutor's Fallacy'.
On topic, I'd agree that 120 Tory MPs would be about the minimum if we were still dealing with the 1997 world of 3-party politics. But we're not.
The pterodactyl in the ointment is Reform. Voting intention + leadership ratings + relative issues competence + tactical voting + semi-proportional swing could well push the Tories down to 120 seats.
However, the 'worst case' scenario is that Reform's vote comes primarily from ex-2019 Tories (we know this is true at the moment: Deltapoll's most recent had about two-thirds of their current support coming from there; most of the rest, presumably was the Brexit Party), and holds up at current levels.
Now, I know there's a degree of double-counting there but I think there's also a widespread assumption that polls will tighten as we head to the election, as they usually do. And perhaps, probably, they will. But it's no guarantee. The usual pressures on minor-party squeeze aren't there in anything like the scale that they were in 2019. Labour isn't as extreme, the issues aren't as stark, the election isn't as close: and the Tories are really disliked. Swingback has usually started well before now whereas if anything, the Tories are still sinking in support. If Reform polls 10%+ it's possible that the 'worst case' is the Conservatives well down into double figures.
We shouldn't allow our thinking to be hemmed in by past events. I suspect that '120' is considered a minimum because it's ballpark within the worst-ever Tory experience; it cannot go lower because it has not gone lower.
Yet the Tories are polling 10% below where they were in 1997. True, Labour is also lower but then the polls also exaggerated their support then (a point often forgotten because of the landslide delivered and because tactical voting produced a result more consistent with the predictions of those bigger leads; the two effects cancelled each other out to an extent).
Even discounting black swans - and it does look as if Sunak is there for the duration and that the Tories won't accidentally re-elect Liz Truss or similar - we should take seriously the possibility, though not the probability, of a 1931-type outcome.
As I said earlier current polling puts the Tory party on the precipice where the difference between 200 seats and 20 is 4% / margin of error and even that depends on the level of tactical voting.
I can easily see the Tories getting 200 seats, I can equally given a little bit of bad news see them getting few to none
The problem is our polling seems no more accurate now than it was decades ago. And it still, despite correction after correction, routinely understates the Tories in 90% of cases.
We could do away with this and have a much more dynamic democracy if instead of 5 year terms then a general election, we had elections for a selection of seats every 3 months (ideally elected under STV or at least AV) such that an unpopular government couldn't hold the country to ransom waiting for a GE, but a popular government could actually strengthen its position in parliament over time.
Every 3 months a tranche of 30 seats goes up for election. Either regional (that would be fun but could create distortions in policy) or say alphabetical. Over the course of 5 or so years the entire house of commons would be re-elected. By now the Conservatives would have lost their majority but Labour would probably be working as a minority or with coalition partners, gradually building up their seat count.
Every 3 months too often? How about 60 seats every 6 months, or 120 seats every year at the start of May?
It's not dissimilar to how US senate elections work.
You can look back over the last decade and ponder with interest how that sort of system might have played out.
Liked as an interesting idea.
I was thinking of distortions if a government had a large majority, such that one set of seats would not change the government whatever the outcome - they'd be treated by voters more like by elections, possibly. But then those big majorities would probably become uncommon, as there wouldn't be the big release of tension every five years and giving the government - if the opposition seemed better - a good kicking.
I think you'd want to work out a good geographical distribution rather than alphabetically. Larger, multi-member constituencies might be one way, as in some of the approaches to going more proportional. Say five members, with one coming up for re-election each year.
On topic, I'd agree that 120 Tory MPs would be about the minimum if we were still dealing with the 1997 world of 3-party politics. But we're not.
The pterodactyl in the ointment is Reform. Voting intention + leadership ratings + relative issues competence + tactical voting + semi-proportional swing could well push the Tories down to 120 seats.
However, the 'worst case' scenario is that Reform's vote comes primarily from ex-2019 Tories (we know this is true at the moment: Deltapoll's most recent had about two-thirds of their current support coming from there; most of the rest, presumably was the Brexit Party), and holds up at current levels.
Now, I know there's a degree of double-counting there but I think there's also a widespread assumption that polls will tighten as we head to the election, as they usually do. And perhaps, probably, they will. But it's no guarantee. The usual pressures on minor-party squeeze aren't there in anything like the scale that they were in 2019. Labour isn't as extreme, the issues aren't as stark, the election isn't as close: and the Tories are really disliked. Swingback has usually started well before now whereas if anything, the Tories are still sinking in support. If Reform polls 10%+ it's possible that the 'worst case' is the Conservatives well down into double figures.
We shouldn't allow our thinking to be hemmed in by past events. I suspect that '120' is considered a minimum because it's ballpark within the worst-ever Tory experience; it cannot go lower because it has not gone lower.
Yet the Tories are polling 10% below where they were in 1997. True, Labour is also lower but then the polls also exaggerated their support then (a point often forgotten because of the landslide delivered and because tactical voting produced a result more consistent with the predictions of those bigger leads; the two effects cancelled each other out to an extent).
Even discounting black swans - and it does look as if Sunak is there for the duration and that the Tories won't accidentally re-elect Liz Truss or similar - we should take seriously the possibility, though not the probability, of a 1931-type outcome.
As I said earlier current polling puts the Tory party on the precipice where the difference between 200 seats and 20 is 4% / margin of error and even that depends on the level of tactical voting.
I can easily see the Tories getting 200 seats, I can equally given a little bit of bad news see them getting few to none
I mean, the Tories need to hope for a few things to keep upwards of 200 seats. They need to keep too many voters heading to other parties (predominantly Reform and Labour) and they need Labour to fail at their squeeze messaging. I don't think they have the talent to do both of those things at the moment. The longer Sunak waits, the more people want him to leave, and the more time there is for more Tory MPs to jump ship, not restand, do normal Tory MP stuff and fuck it all up, etc. For pure damage mitigation he should call a GE and run a campaign of "we know we're going to lose, but you don't want to give Labour free reign to do anything they want / you don't want the Tories to become a laughing stock, so vote for us anyway in some places". That would open up more people to feel they can vote Green and LD if they want to. It would be an admission of failure, which politicians hate, and it would be weak, which politicians hate, but it would at least be honest - and I think the electorate would reward a bit of honesty. They wouldn't elect another Tory government based on it, but I think it would prevent a Canada 93 event - which is what I think the Tories are heading for.
I've no reason to believe that her conviction was unjust, or that a miscarriage of justice was involved. But I do think having dramas and documentaries made *whilst* the case is ongoing, with the active participation of people involved with the case, is troubling. As I've said before about other 'contemporary' or near-contemporary documentaries.
(Again, this post is not about the Letby case; it's about the media interactions with it.)
Interesting. Justice and showbiz don't mix for a very simple reason. The moment anyone connected with the prosecution of a case has a financial interest in the outcome, or a financial interest in the evidence pointing towards any particular conclusion, then the case is tainted, and the entire edifice is the fruit of a poisoned tree. This particularly applies when this is unknown, undeclared or not obvious.
(BTW my working assumption is that if in fact Letby had a viable defence they would have called quite extensive expert evidence, and they didn't. This would not be for want of trying.)
I hope to God the case against her was sound, if only for the sake of the parents. Although that sounds a bit like Lord Denning on the Birmingham Six!
Justice needs to be done; not scapegoating.
I was predisposed to be suspicious of the case against her, because the initial reporting of the evidence sounded vaguely similar to the cot death cases in terms of a potential misuse of statistics. But having looked further it was completely different and much stronger.
The main doubt in the case was over which specific baby deaths and near-deaths to attribute to her actions. There was more evidence for some than others.
Yes, the professional statisticians were all over this case, so no one would have got away with doing a Roy Meadow and his 'Prosecutor's Fallacy'.
Yep. Stats patterns were used to help identify lines of enquiry here, IIRC, but then there was actual evidence used to secure the conviction.
It's fine to use statistical anomalies to look more into something to see whether there is a problem (as in benchmarking hospital/doctor performance etc) but one has to remember that type 1 errors are common and that green jelly beans might not cause acne
Re Meadows, one also has to understand that you can't use stats based on independent events for things that are likely not independent - for non-sinister reasons - too!
On topic, I'd agree that 120 Tory MPs would be about the minimum if we were still dealing with the 1997 world of 3-party politics. But we're not.
The pterodactyl in the ointment is Reform. Voting intention + leadership ratings + relative issues competence + tactical voting + semi-proportional swing could well push the Tories down to 120 seats.
However, the 'worst case' scenario is that Reform's vote comes primarily from ex-2019 Tories (we know this is true at the moment: Deltapoll's most recent had about two-thirds of their current support coming from there; most of the rest, presumably was the Brexit Party), and holds up at current levels.
Now, I know there's a degree of double-counting there but I think there's also a widespread assumption that polls will tighten as we head to the election, as they usually do. And perhaps, probably, they will. But it's no guarantee. The usual pressures on minor-party squeeze aren't there in anything like the scale that they were in 2019. Labour isn't as extreme, the issues aren't as stark, the election isn't as close: and the Tories are really disliked. Swingback has usually started well before now whereas if anything, the Tories are still sinking in support. If Reform polls 10%+ it's possible that the 'worst case' is the Conservatives well down into double figures.
We shouldn't allow our thinking to be hemmed in by past events. I suspect that '120' is considered a minimum because it's ballpark within the worst-ever Tory experience; it cannot go lower because it has not gone lower.
Yet the Tories are polling 10% below where they were in 1997. True, Labour is also lower but then the polls also exaggerated their support then (a point often forgotten because of the landslide delivered and because tactical voting produced a result more consistent with the predictions of those bigger leads; the two effects cancelled each other out to an extent).
Even discounting black swans - and it does look as if Sunak is there for the duration and that the Tories won't accidentally re-elect Liz Truss or similar - we should take seriously the possibility, though not the probability, of a 1931-type outcome.
As I said earlier current polling puts the Tory party on the precipice where the difference between 200 seats and 20 is 4% / margin of error and even that depends on the level of tactical voting.
I can easily see the Tories getting 200 seats, I can equally given a little bit of bad news see them getting few to none
The problem is our polling seems no more accurate now than it was decades ago. And it still, despite correction after correction, routinely understates the Tories in 90% of cases.
We could do away with this and have a much more dynamic democracy if instead of 5 year terms then a general election, we had elections for a selection of seats every 3 months (ideally elected under STV or at least AV) such that an unpopular government couldn't hold the country to ransom waiting for a GE, but a popular government could actually strengthen its position in parliament over time.
Every 3 months a tranche of 30 seats goes up for election. Either regional (that would be fun but could create distortions in policy) or say alphabetical. Over the course of 5 or so years the entire house of commons would be re-elected. By now the Conservatives would have lost their majority but Labour would probably be working as a minority or with coalition partners, gradually building up their seat count.
Every 3 months too often? How about 60 seats every 6 months, or 120 seats every year at the start of May?
It's not dissimilar to how US senate elections work.
You can look back over the last decade and ponder with interest how that sort of system might have played out.
Shorttermism is already a problem, it would be out of control if the next election was always less than 3 months or even less than a year away. Four years is a good length of time for a new government to come in and rule things their way and then go back to the electorate for a verdict on how they have done.
It's the same reason as I dislike electing councils by thirds, it makes handover from one party to another messy.
Random draw each day with chance of fresh election starting at 1 in 10,000 at the start of a government decreasing to 1 in 100 after 5 years. Keep them on their toes.
Does this apply to any other demographic, Landon? Do I get to be black if I like Motown and fancy myself in cornrows? What if I claim the authentic me has always been black and that you're being racist to me? Would that be OK, or would you find it ludicrous and deeply offensive?
I'm down with a ban on posting Tweets or comments from/about JKR, unless they relate to Harry Potter or the detective books/series with the guy who was in Musketeers and looks a bit like Guy Garvey
On topic, I'd agree that 120 Tory MPs would be about the minimum if we were still dealing with the 1997 world of 3-party politics. But we're not.
The pterodactyl in the ointment is Reform. Voting intention + leadership ratings + relative issues competence + tactical voting + semi-proportional swing could well push the Tories down to 120 seats.
However, the 'worst case' scenario is that Reform's vote comes primarily from ex-2019 Tories (we know this is true at the moment: Deltapoll's most recent had about two-thirds of their current support coming from there; most of the rest, presumably was the Brexit Party), and holds up at current levels.
Now, I know there's a degree of double-counting there but I think there's also a widespread assumption that polls will tighten as we head to the election, as they usually do. And perhaps, probably, they will. But it's no guarantee. The usual pressures on minor-party squeeze aren't there in anything like the scale that they were in 2019. Labour isn't as extreme, the issues aren't as stark, the election isn't as close: and the Tories are really disliked. Swingback has usually started well before now whereas if anything, the Tories are still sinking in support. If Reform polls 10%+ it's possible that the 'worst case' is the Conservatives well down into double figures.
We shouldn't allow our thinking to be hemmed in by past events. I suspect that '120' is considered a minimum because it's ballpark within the worst-ever Tory experience; it cannot go lower because it has not gone lower.
Yet the Tories are polling 10% below where they were in 1997. True, Labour is also lower but then the polls also exaggerated their support then (a point often forgotten because of the landslide delivered and because tactical voting produced a result more consistent with the predictions of those bigger leads; the two effects cancelled each other out to an extent).
Even discounting black swans - and it does look as if Sunak is there for the duration and that the Tories won't accidentally re-elect Liz Truss or similar - we should take seriously the possibility, though not the probability, of a 1931-type outcome.
As I said earlier current polling puts the Tory party on the precipice where the difference between 200 seats and 20 is 4% / margin of error and even that depends on the level of tactical voting.
I can easily see the Tories getting 200 seats, I can equally given a little bit of bad news see them getting few to none
The problem is our polling seems no more accurate now than it was decades ago. And it still, despite correction after correction, routinely understates the Tories in 90% of cases.
We could do away with this and have a much more dynamic democracy if instead of 5 year terms then a general election, we had elections for a selection of seats every 3 months (ideally elected under STV or at least AV) such that an unpopular government couldn't hold the country to ransom waiting for a GE, but a popular government could actually strengthen its position in parliament over time.
Every 3 months a tranche of 30 seats goes up for election. Either regional (that would be fun but could create distortions in policy) or say alphabetical. Over the course of 5 or so years the entire house of commons would be re-elected. By now the Conservatives would have lost their majority but Labour would probably be working as a minority or with coalition partners, gradually building up their seat count.
Every 3 months too often? How about 60 seats every 6 months, or 120 seats every year at the start of May?
It's not dissimilar to how US senate elections work.
You can look back over the last decade and ponder with interest how that sort of system might have played out.
If the whole electorate votes every 3 months then the turnout will drop to 20%-30%. Most people are prepared to do their "democratic duty" every year ot rwo, but every 3 months, I think you'll get a lot of rude comments and not just from "Brenda in Bristol"
But the main problem with the suggestion is a combinaton of two things. As a country moves from say Conservative to Labour, there will be change over period where a coalition government is needed. For coalitions to work there needs to be time to negotiate a strong coalition agreement. That won't be pratical if the make up of a coalition changes every few months.
The reason why the Senate system works is that a) the change is only every two years, but more importantly b) the senate is not the government. That role in in the USA is the reponsibility of the president who appoints hst ministers, mostly outside the House/Senate. The presisdent is a clear change every 4/8 years and not a gradual pendulum swing.
Ah but no: each voter only gets to vote once every five years, when their turn comes around.
But I’m gratified people have taken my post seriously enough to rebut it.
On topic, I'd agree that 120 Tory MPs would be about the minimum if we were still dealing with the 1997 world of 3-party politics. But we're not.
The pterodactyl in the ointment is Reform. Voting intention + leadership ratings + relative issues competence + tactical voting + semi-proportional swing could well push the Tories down to 120 seats.
However, the 'worst case' scenario is that Reform's vote comes primarily from ex-2019 Tories (we know this is true at the moment: Deltapoll's most recent had about two-thirds of their current support coming from there; most of the rest, presumably was the Brexit Party), and holds up at current levels.
Now, I know there's a degree of double-counting there but I think there's also a widespread assumption that polls will tighten as we head to the election, as they usually do. And perhaps, probably, they will. But it's no guarantee. The usual pressures on minor-party squeeze aren't there in anything like the scale that they were in 2019. Labour isn't as extreme, the issues aren't as stark, the election isn't as close: and the Tories are really disliked. Swingback has usually started well before now whereas if anything, the Tories are still sinking in support. If Reform polls 10%+ it's possible that the 'worst case' is the Conservatives well down into double figures.
We shouldn't allow our thinking to be hemmed in by past events. I suspect that '120' is considered a minimum because it's ballpark within the worst-ever Tory experience; it cannot go lower because it has not gone lower.
Yet the Tories are polling 10% below where they were in 1997. True, Labour is also lower but then the polls also exaggerated their support then (a point often forgotten because of the landslide delivered and because tactical voting produced a result more consistent with the predictions of those bigger leads; the two effects cancelled each other out to an extent).
Even discounting black swans - and it does look as if Sunak is there for the duration and that the Tories won't accidentally re-elect Liz Truss or similar - we should take seriously the possibility, though not the probability, of a 1931-type outcome.
As I said earlier current polling puts the Tory party on the precipice where the difference between 200 seats and 20 is 4% / margin of error and even that depends on the level of tactical voting.
I can easily see the Tories getting 200 seats, I can equally given a little bit of bad news see them getting few to none
The problem is our polling seems no more accurate now than it was decades ago. And it still, despite correction after correction, routinely understates the Tories in 90% of cases.
We could do away with this and have a much more dynamic democracy if instead of 5 year terms then a general election, we had elections for a selection of seats every 3 months (ideally elected under STV or at least AV) such that an unpopular government couldn't hold the country to ransom waiting for a GE, but a popular government could actually strengthen its position in parliament over time.
Every 3 months a tranche of 30 seats goes up for election. Either regional (that would be fun but could create distortions in policy) or say alphabetical. Over the course of 5 or so years the entire house of commons would be re-elected. By now the Conservatives would have lost their majority but Labour would probably be working as a minority or with coalition partners, gradually building up their seat count.
Every 3 months too often? How about 60 seats every 6 months, or 120 seats every year at the start of May?
It's not dissimilar to how US senate elections work.
You can look back over the last decade and ponder with interest how that sort of system might have played out.
Shorttermism is already a problem, it would be out of control if the next election was always less than 3 months or even less than a year away. Four years is a good length of time for a new government to come in and rule things their way and then go back to the electorate for a verdict on how they have done.
It's the same reason as I dislike electing councils by thirds, it makes handover from one party to another messy.
Your argument appears to be that you don't trust the voters to be able to make sensible decisions. It's an argument against elections altogether.
I think things will only improve if everyone - voters, politicians, media - starts to act in a more grown-up fashion. Five years of consequence-free throwing of tantrums all round, while the government tries to do sensible things by stealth, is no way to develop a more mature political culture.
An argument against more frequent elections that I find more convincing is that the purpose of electrons is to elect representatives to sort out the detail, the purpose of which is to enable the voters not to pay close attention for as long as possible. More frequent elections is therefore inefficient.
I quite like the idea - not sure whose it was - of updating this model for modern times by doing away with representative elections and replacing it with delegation of individual votes. Politicians and parties would compete to collect delegations from voters. So, for example, I could choose to delegate my vote in the Commons to Shahrar Ali of the Green Party, and he'd then get to vote on legislation with the accumulated votes of everyone who had chosen to do the same.
On topic, I'd agree that 120 Tory MPs would be about the minimum if we were still dealing with the 1997 world of 3-party politics. But we're not.
The pterodactyl in the ointment is Reform. Voting intention + leadership ratings + relative issues competence + tactical voting + semi-proportional swing could well push the Tories down to 120 seats.
However, the 'worst case' scenario is that Reform's vote comes primarily from ex-2019 Tories (we know this is true at the moment: Deltapoll's most recent had about two-thirds of their current support coming from there; most of the rest, presumably was the Brexit Party), and holds up at current levels.
Now, I know there's a degree of double-counting there but I think there's also a widespread assumption that polls will tighten as we head to the election, as they usually do. And perhaps, probably, they will. But it's no guarantee. The usual pressures on minor-party squeeze aren't there in anything like the scale that they were in 2019. Labour isn't as extreme, the issues aren't as stark, the election isn't as close: and the Tories are really disliked. Swingback has usually started well before now whereas if anything, the Tories are still sinking in support. If Reform polls 10%+ it's possible that the 'worst case' is the Conservatives well down into double figures.
We shouldn't allow our thinking to be hemmed in by past events. I suspect that '120' is considered a minimum because it's ballpark within the worst-ever Tory experience; it cannot go lower because it has not gone lower.
Yet the Tories are polling 10% below where they were in 1997. True, Labour is also lower but then the polls also exaggerated their support then (a point often forgotten because of the landslide delivered and because tactical voting produced a result more consistent with the predictions of those bigger leads; the two effects cancelled each other out to an extent).
Even discounting black swans - and it does look as if Sunak is there for the duration and that the Tories won't accidentally re-elect Liz Truss or similar - we should take seriously the possibility, though not the probability, of a 1931-type outcome.
As I said earlier current polling puts the Tory party on the precipice where the difference between 200 seats and 20 is 4% / margin of error and even that depends on the level of tactical voting.
I can easily see the Tories getting 200 seats, I can equally given a little bit of bad news see them getting few to none
The problem is our polling seems no more accurate now than it was decades ago. And it still, despite correction after correction, routinely understates the Tories in 90% of cases.
We could do away with this and have a much more dynamic democracy if instead of 5 year terms then a general election, we had elections for a selection of seats every 3 months (ideally elected under STV or at least AV) such that an unpopular government couldn't hold the country to ransom waiting for a GE, but a popular government could actually strengthen its position in parliament over time.
Every 3 months a tranche of 30 seats goes up for election. Either regional (that would be fun but could create distortions in policy) or say alphabetical. Over the course of 5 or so years the entire house of commons would be re-elected. By now the Conservatives would have lost their majority but Labour would probably be working as a minority or with coalition partners, gradually building up their seat count.
Every 3 months too often? How about 60 seats every 6 months, or 120 seats every year at the start of May?
It's not dissimilar to how US senate elections work.
You can look back over the last decade and ponder with interest how that sort of system might have played out.
I like this as a concept (if we're taking representative democracy as a given) - but agree with others that these would encourage more short term thinking from politicians and it would create voter fatigue. Political media would love it, though... Better than this, in my view, would just be more devolution - Westminster has too much power centralised in it and has done for too long. If we want more dynamic politics with ideas and solutions to problems, politicians need to be closer to those problems. Take Andy Burnham - he was seen as the centrist solution when Corbyn first ran after Miliband ended his leadership, and now he's making the case for building council housing without extending right to buy! He would never have said that as LOTO - but as the mayor of Greater Manchester he can and has.
Does this apply to any other demographic, Landon? Do I get to be black if I like Motown and fancy myself in cornrows? What if I claim the authentic me has always been black and that you're being racist to me? Would that be OK, or would you find it ludicrous and deeply offensive?
I'm down with a ban on posting Tweets or comments from/about JKR, unless they relate to Harry Potter or the detective books/series with the guy who was in Musketeers and looks a bit like Guy Garvey
Do many of us (irrespective of our interest or lack of it in the trans issue) care one way or another what Rowling's opinion is from day to day ?
On topic, I'd agree that 120 Tory MPs would be about the minimum if we were still dealing with the 1997 world of 3-party politics. But we're not.
The pterodactyl in the ointment is Reform. Voting intention + leadership ratings + relative issues competence + tactical voting + semi-proportional swing could well push the Tories down to 120 seats.
However, the 'worst case' scenario is that Reform's vote comes primarily from ex-2019 Tories (we know this is true at the moment: Deltapoll's most recent had about two-thirds of their current support coming from there; most of the rest, presumably was the Brexit Party), and holds up at current levels.
Now, I know there's a degree of double-counting there but I think there's also a widespread assumption that polls will tighten as we head to the election, as they usually do. And perhaps, probably, they will. But it's no guarantee. The usual pressures on minor-party squeeze aren't there in anything like the scale that they were in 2019. Labour isn't as extreme, the issues aren't as stark, the election isn't as close: and the Tories are really disliked. Swingback has usually started well before now whereas if anything, the Tories are still sinking in support. If Reform polls 10%+ it's possible that the 'worst case' is the Conservatives well down into double figures.
We shouldn't allow our thinking to be hemmed in by past events. I suspect that '120' is considered a minimum because it's ballpark within the worst-ever Tory experience; it cannot go lower because it has not gone lower.
Yet the Tories are polling 10% below where they were in 1997. True, Labour is also lower but then the polls also exaggerated their support then (a point often forgotten because of the landslide delivered and because tactical voting produced a result more consistent with the predictions of those bigger leads; the two effects cancelled each other out to an extent).
Even discounting black swans - and it does look as if Sunak is there for the duration and that the Tories won't accidentally re-elect Liz Truss or similar - we should take seriously the possibility, though not the probability, of a 1931-type outcome.
As I said earlier current polling puts the Tory party on the precipice where the difference between 200 seats and 20 is 4% / margin of error and even that depends on the level of tactical voting.
I can easily see the Tories getting 200 seats, I can equally given a little bit of bad news see them getting few to none
The problem is our polling seems no more accurate now than it was decades ago. And it still, despite correction after correction, routinely understates the Tories in 90% of cases.
We could do away with this and have a much more dynamic democracy if instead of 5 year terms then a general election, we had elections for a selection of seats every 3 months (ideally elected under STV or at least AV) such that an unpopular government couldn't hold the country to ransom waiting for a GE, but a popular government could actually strengthen its position in parliament over time.
Every 3 months a tranche of 30 seats goes up for election. Either regional (that would be fun but could create distortions in policy) or say alphabetical. Over the course of 5 or so years the entire house of commons would be re-elected. By now the Conservatives would have lost their majority but Labour would probably be working as a minority or with coalition partners, gradually building up their seat count.
Every 3 months too often? How about 60 seats every 6 months, or 120 seats every year at the start of May?
It's not dissimilar to how US senate elections work.
You can look back over the last decade and ponder with interest how that sort of system might have played out.
Shorttermism is already a problem, it would be out of control if the next election was always less than 3 months or even less than a year away. Four years is a good length of time for a new government to come in and rule things their way and then go back to the electorate for a verdict on how they have done.
It's the same reason as I dislike electing councils by thirds, it makes handover from one party to another messy.
On topic, I'd agree that 120 Tory MPs would be about the minimum if we were still dealing with the 1997 world of 3-party politics. But we're not.
The pterodactyl in the ointment is Reform. Voting intention + leadership ratings + relative issues competence + tactical voting + semi-proportional swing could well push the Tories down to 120 seats.
However, the 'worst case' scenario is that Reform's vote comes primarily from ex-2019 Tories (we know this is true at the moment: Deltapoll's most recent had about two-thirds of their current support coming from there; most of the rest, presumably was the Brexit Party), and holds up at current levels.
Now, I know there's a degree of double-counting there but I think there's also a widespread assumption that polls will tighten as we head to the election, as they usually do. And perhaps, probably, they will. But it's no guarantee. The usual pressures on minor-party squeeze aren't there in anything like the scale that they were in 2019. Labour isn't as extreme, the issues aren't as stark, the election isn't as close: and the Tories are really disliked. Swingback has usually started well before now whereas if anything, the Tories are still sinking in support. If Reform polls 10%+ it's possible that the 'worst case' is the Conservatives well down into double figures.
We shouldn't allow our thinking to be hemmed in by past events. I suspect that '120' is considered a minimum because it's ballpark within the worst-ever Tory experience; it cannot go lower because it has not gone lower.
Yet the Tories are polling 10% below where they were in 1997. True, Labour is also lower but then the polls also exaggerated their support then (a point often forgotten because of the landslide delivered and because tactical voting produced a result more consistent with the predictions of those bigger leads; the two effects cancelled each other out to an extent).
Even discounting black swans - and it does look as if Sunak is there for the duration and that the Tories won't accidentally re-elect Liz Truss or similar - we should take seriously the possibility, though not the probability, of a 1931-type outcome.
As I said earlier current polling puts the Tory party on the precipice where the difference between 200 seats and 20 is 4% / margin of error and even that depends on the level of tactical voting.
I can easily see the Tories getting 200 seats, I can equally given a little bit of bad news see them getting few to none
I mean, the Tories need to hope for a few things to keep upwards of 200 seats. They need to keep too many voters heading to other parties (predominantly Reform and Labour) and they need Labour to fail at their squeeze messaging. I don't think they have the talent to do both of those things at the moment. The longer Sunak waits, the more people want him to leave, and the more time there is for more Tory MPs to jump ship, not restand, do normal Tory MP stuff and fuck it all up, etc. For pure damage mitigation he should call a GE and run a campaign of "we know we're going to lose, but you don't want to give Labour free reign to do anything they want / you don't want the Tories to become a laughing stock, so vote for us anyway in some places". That would open up more people to feel they can vote Green and LD if they want to. It would be an admission of failure, which politicians hate, and it would be weak, which politicians hate, but it would at least be honest - and I think the electorate would reward a bit of honesty. They wouldn't elect another Tory government based on it, but I think it would prevent a Canada 93 event - which is what I think the Tories are heading for.
Just on the timing, we're almost at the point where any election called now would be into the Scottish school holidays (an election called today would be held on June 20; the Scottish schools break up the following week). That wouldn't necessarily be a blocker but it would introduce another inconvenient element into the story (and more SNP grievance to feed off). Personally, I don't think it's that big a deal. If a relatively small part of the UK, population-wise, chooses to do it's own thing then that's its right and what devolution's about but it can't (or shouldn't) expect everyone else to run around its exceptional arrangements.
But it's not long before we'd be into the period where you couldn't hold an election before the rest of the schools break up for summer too, and that would matter more in terms of practical arrangements, for public, for media, for activists and candidates and - not least - for local councils running the thing.
I've no reason to believe that her conviction was unjust, or that a miscarriage of justice was involved. But I do think having dramas and documentaries made *whilst* the case is ongoing, with the active participation of people involved with the case, is troubling. As I've said before about other 'contemporary' or near-contemporary documentaries.
(Again, this post is not about the Letby case; it's about the media interactions with it.)
Interesting. Justice and showbiz don't mix for a very simple reason. The moment anyone connected with the prosecution of a case has a financial interest in the outcome, or a financial interest in the evidence pointing towards any particular conclusion, then the case is tainted, and the entire edifice is the fruit of a poisoned tree. This particularly applies when this is unknown, undeclared or not obvious.
(BTW my working assumption is that if in fact Letby had a viable defence they would have called quite extensive expert evidence, and they didn't. This would not be for want of trying.)
I hope to God the case against her was sound, if only for the sake of the parents. Although that sounds a bit like Lord Denning on the Birmingham Six!
Justice needs to be done; not scapegoating.
I was predisposed to be suspicious of the case against her, because the initial reporting of the evidence sounded vaguely similar to the cot death cases in terms of a potential misuse of statistics. But having looked further it was completely different and much stronger.
The main doubt in the case was over which specific baby deaths and near-deaths to attribute to her actions. There was more evidence for some than others.
The fact that the jury didn't convict on all counts (and acquitted on two) gave me some confidence that they'd done a thorough job, rather than just deciding she was a bad'un.
On topic, I'd agree that 120 Tory MPs would be about the minimum if we were still dealing with the 1997 world of 3-party politics. But we're not.
The pterodactyl in the ointment is Reform. Voting intention + leadership ratings + relative issues competence + tactical voting + semi-proportional swing could well push the Tories down to 120 seats.
However, the 'worst case' scenario is that Reform's vote comes primarily from ex-2019 Tories (we know this is true at the moment: Deltapoll's most recent had about two-thirds of their current support coming from there; most of the rest, presumably was the Brexit Party), and holds up at current levels.
Now, I know there's a degree of double-counting there but I think there's also a widespread assumption that polls will tighten as we head to the election, as they usually do. And perhaps, probably, they will. But it's no guarantee. The usual pressures on minor-party squeeze aren't there in anything like the scale that they were in 2019. Labour isn't as extreme, the issues aren't as stark, the election isn't as close: and the Tories are really disliked. Swingback has usually started well before now whereas if anything, the Tories are still sinking in support. If Reform polls 10%+ it's possible that the 'worst case' is the Conservatives well down into double figures.
We shouldn't allow our thinking to be hemmed in by past events. I suspect that '120' is considered a minimum because it's ballpark within the worst-ever Tory experience; it cannot go lower because it has not gone lower.
Yet the Tories are polling 10% below where they were in 1997. True, Labour is also lower but then the polls also exaggerated their support then (a point often forgotten because of the landslide delivered and because tactical voting produced a result more consistent with the predictions of those bigger leads; the two effects cancelled each other out to an extent).
Even discounting black swans - and it does look as if Sunak is there for the duration and that the Tories won't accidentally re-elect Liz Truss or similar - we should take seriously the possibility, though not the probability, of a 1931-type outcome.
As I said earlier current polling puts the Tory party on the precipice where the difference between 200 seats and 20 is 4% / margin of error and even that depends on the level of tactical voting.
I can easily see the Tories getting 200 seats, I can equally given a little bit of bad news see them getting few to none
I mean, the Tories need to hope for a few things to keep upwards of 200 seats. They need to keep too many voters heading to other parties (predominantly Reform and Labour) and they need Labour to fail at their squeeze messaging. I don't think they have the talent to do both of those things at the moment. The longer Sunak waits, the more people want him to leave, and the more time there is for more Tory MPs to jump ship, not restand, do normal Tory MP stuff and fuck it all up, etc. For pure damage mitigation he should call a GE and run a campaign of "we know we're going to lose, but you don't want to give Labour free reign to do anything they want / you don't want the Tories to become a laughing stock, so vote for us anyway in some places". That would open up more people to feel they can vote Green and LD if they want to. It would be an admission of failure, which politicians hate, and it would be weak, which politicians hate, but it would at least be honest - and I think the electorate would reward a bit of honesty. They wouldn't elect another Tory government based on it, but I think it would prevent a Canada 93 event - which is what I think the Tories are heading for.
Just on the timing, we're almost at the point where any election called now would be into the Scottish school holidays (an election called today would be held on June 20; the Scottish schools break up the following week). That wouldn't necessarily be a blocker but it would introduce another inconvenient element into the story (and more SNP grievance to feed off). Personally, I don't think it's that big a deal. If a relatively small part of the UK, population-wise, chooses to do it's own thing then that's its right and what devolution's about but it can't (or shouldn't) expect everyone else to run around its exceptional arrangements.
But it's not long before we'd be into the period where you couldn't hold an election before the rest of the schools break up for summer too, and that would matter more in terms of practical arrangements, for public, for media, for activists and candidates and - not least - for local councils running the thing.
Realistically he'd need to call it on return from Whitsun break to get Wash up and avoid the majority school holidays.
Does this apply to any other demographic, Landon? Do I get to be black if I like Motown and fancy myself in cornrows? What if I claim the authentic me has always been black and that you're being racist to me? Would that be OK, or would you find it ludicrous and deeply offensive?
I'm down with a ban on posting Tweets or comments from/about JKR, unless they relate to Harry Potter or the detective books/series with the guy who was in Musketeers and looks a bit like Guy Garvey
Do many of us (irrespective of our interest or lack of it in the trans issue) care one way or another what Rowling's opinion is from day to day ?
It’s not even on my list of things to care about occasionally!
On topic, I'd agree that 120 Tory MPs would be about the minimum if we were still dealing with the 1997 world of 3-party politics. But we're not.
The pterodactyl in the ointment is Reform. Voting intention + leadership ratings + relative issues competence + tactical voting + semi-proportional swing could well push the Tories down to 120 seats.
However, the 'worst case' scenario is that Reform's vote comes primarily from ex-2019 Tories (we know this is true at the moment: Deltapoll's most recent had about two-thirds of their current support coming from there; most of the rest, presumably was the Brexit Party), and holds up at current levels.
Now, I know there's a degree of double-counting there but I think there's also a widespread assumption that polls will tighten as we head to the election, as they usually do. And perhaps, probably, they will. But it's no guarantee. The usual pressures on minor-party squeeze aren't there in anything like the scale that they were in 2019. Labour isn't as extreme, the issues aren't as stark, the election isn't as close: and the Tories are really disliked. Swingback has usually started well before now whereas if anything, the Tories are still sinking in support. If Reform polls 10%+ it's possible that the 'worst case' is the Conservatives well down into double figures.
We shouldn't allow our thinking to be hemmed in by past events. I suspect that '120' is considered a minimum because it's ballpark within the worst-ever Tory experience; it cannot go lower because it has not gone lower.
Yet the Tories are polling 10% below where they were in 1997. True, Labour is also lower but then the polls also exaggerated their support then (a point often forgotten because of the landslide delivered and because tactical voting produced a result more consistent with the predictions of those bigger leads; the two effects cancelled each other out to an extent).
Even discounting black swans - and it does look as if Sunak is there for the duration and that the Tories won't accidentally re-elect Liz Truss or similar - we should take seriously the possibility, though not the probability, of a 1931-type outcome.
In 1997 the swing against the Tories was fairly similar in the Reading/Milton Keynes types of seats as it was in the Amber Valley/Erewash types of seats. This time the swing is likely to be larger in the former seats and less in the latter. Whether that means the Tories will win more seats than 1997 is difficult to say.
The swing is likely to be larger in the safer Tory seats this time, simply because of maths - if the election delivered on current polling - though obviously there'd be variation within that too.
The swing from 2019 is so large and the current Tory share so small historically that you simply run out of votes to cull from Labour seats and the more marginal ones to stay at something like a core vote, so the balance *has* to come from the safer Tory ones.
On topic, I'd agree that 120 Tory MPs would be about the minimum if we were still dealing with the 1997 world of 3-party politics. But we're not.
The pterodactyl in the ointment is Reform. Voting intention + leadership ratings + relative issues competence + tactical voting + semi-proportional swing could well push the Tories down to 120 seats.
However, the 'worst case' scenario is that Reform's vote comes primarily from ex-2019 Tories (we know this is true at the moment: Deltapoll's most recent had about two-thirds of their current support coming from there; most of the rest, presumably was the Brexit Party), and holds up at current levels.
Now, I know there's a degree of double-counting there but I think there's also a widespread assumption that polls will tighten as we head to the election, as they usually do. And perhaps, probably, they will. But it's no guarantee. The usual pressures on minor-party squeeze aren't there in anything like the scale that they were in 2019. Labour isn't as extreme, the issues aren't as stark, the election isn't as close: and the Tories are really disliked. Swingback has usually started well before now whereas if anything, the Tories are still sinking in support. If Reform polls 10%+ it's possible that the 'worst case' is the Conservatives well down into double figures.
We shouldn't allow our thinking to be hemmed in by past events. I suspect that '120' is considered a minimum because it's ballpark within the worst-ever Tory experience; it cannot go lower because it has not gone lower.
Yet the Tories are polling 10% below where they were in 1997. True, Labour is also lower but then the polls also exaggerated their support then (a point often forgotten because of the landslide delivered and because tactical voting produced a result more consistent with the predictions of those bigger leads; the two effects cancelled each other out to an extent).
Even discounting black swans - and it does look as if Sunak is there for the duration and that the Tories won't accidentally re-elect Liz Truss or similar - we should take seriously the possibility, though not the probability, of a 1931-type outcome.
As I said earlier current polling puts the Tory party on the precipice where the difference between 200 seats and 20 is 4% / margin of error and even that depends on the level of tactical voting.
I can easily see the Tories getting 200 seats, I can equally given a little bit of bad news see them getting few to none
I mean, the Tories need to hope for a few things to keep upwards of 200 seats. They need to keep too many voters heading to other parties (predominantly Reform and Labour) and they need Labour to fail at their squeeze messaging. I don't think they have the talent to do both of those things at the moment. The longer Sunak waits, the more people want him to leave, and the more time there is for more Tory MPs to jump ship, not restand, do normal Tory MP stuff and fuck it all up, etc. For pure damage mitigation he should call a GE and run a campaign of "we know we're going to lose, but you don't want to give Labour free reign to do anything they want / you don't want the Tories to become a laughing stock, so vote for us anyway in some places". That would open up more people to feel they can vote Green and LD if they want to. It would be an admission of failure, which politicians hate, and it would be weak, which politicians hate, but it would at least be honest - and I think the electorate would reward a bit of honesty. They wouldn't elect another Tory government based on it, but I think it would prevent a Canada 93 event - which is what I think the Tories are heading for.
Just on the timing, we're almost at the point where any election called now would be into the Scottish school holidays (an election called today would be held on June 20; the Scottish schools break up the following week). That wouldn't necessarily be a blocker but it would introduce another inconvenient element into the story (and more SNP grievance to feed off). Personally, I don't think it's that big a deal. If a relatively small part of the UK, population-wise, chooses to do it's own thing then that's its right and what devolution's about but it can't (or shouldn't) expect everyone else to run around its exceptional arrangements.
But it's not long before we'd be into the period where you couldn't hold an election before the rest of the schools break up for summer too, and that would matter more in terms of practical arrangements, for public, for media, for activists and candidates and - not least - for local councils running the thing.
I mean, from a purely cynical point of view, wouldn't that likely work in the favour of the Tories?
Does this apply to any other demographic, Landon? Do I get to be black if I like Motown and fancy myself in cornrows? What if I claim the authentic me has always been black and that you're being racist to me? Would that be OK, or would you find it ludicrous and deeply offensive?
I'm down with a ban on posting Tweets or comments from/about JKR, unless they relate to Harry Potter or the detective books/series with the guy who was in Musketeers and looks a bit like Guy Garvey
Strike. Quite good on the tv imo. Don't know about the books.
On topic, I'd agree that 120 Tory MPs would be about the minimum if we were still dealing with the 1997 world of 3-party politics. But we're not.
The pterodactyl in the ointment is Reform. Voting intention + leadership ratings + relative issues competence + tactical voting + semi-proportional swing could well push the Tories down to 120 seats.
However, the 'worst case' scenario is that Reform's vote comes primarily from ex-2019 Tories (we know this is true at the moment: Deltapoll's most recent had about two-thirds of their current support coming from there; most of the rest, presumably was the Brexit Party), and holds up at current levels.
Now, I know there's a degree of double-counting there but I think there's also a widespread assumption that polls will tighten as we head to the election, as they usually do. And perhaps, probably, they will. But it's no guarantee. The usual pressures on minor-party squeeze aren't there in anything like the scale that they were in 2019. Labour isn't as extreme, the issues aren't as stark, the election isn't as close: and the Tories are really disliked. Swingback has usually started well before now whereas if anything, the Tories are still sinking in support. If Reform polls 10%+ it's possible that the 'worst case' is the Conservatives well down into double figures.
We shouldn't allow our thinking to be hemmed in by past events. I suspect that '120' is considered a minimum because it's ballpark within the worst-ever Tory experience; it cannot go lower because it has not gone lower.
Yet the Tories are polling 10% below where they were in 1997. True, Labour is also lower but then the polls also exaggerated their support then (a point often forgotten because of the landslide delivered and because tactical voting produced a result more consistent with the predictions of those bigger leads; the two effects cancelled each other out to an extent).
Even discounting black swans - and it does look as if Sunak is there for the duration and that the Tories won't accidentally re-elect Liz Truss or similar - we should take seriously the possibility, though not the probability, of a 1931-type outcome.
Agree. There is a case to be made for anything from Tories well down into double figures to NOM. There are a lot of moving parts in the machine: turnout, don't knows, variable swing, Reform, tactical voting, the boats and the flights, Labour mistakes (just getting into gear - Elphicke, Rayner, unions, anyone seen Burgon recently?), media (The Sun?), and of course Black Swans.
Question: What is the minimum number of seats the Tories have to lose (from 365) to certainly be unable to form a government?
50.
The DUP *might* do another deal if there's enough cash on the table but I wouldn't assume it, by any means. I think they'd probably prefer to try their chances screwing Labour over instead (and would, of course, have equal leverage there as with the Tories). Every other party (bar SF, obviously) would vote against. Realistically, about 44. And that'd go with a by-election soon enough.
I'd be very surprised if the DUP were prepared to do any sort of deal with the Tories this time round:
1. It'd be a tacit admission that funding agreed for getting the Stormont administration back up and running wasn't as good a deal as they had previously claimed. 2. Big Gav Robinson needs more time to bed himself in and establish his independence. He won't want to be seen as weak by backing a loser. 3. There's always a tension within the DUP between pragmatism vs principle - pragmatism has had the upper hand recently, so they're more likely to tilt back towards principle when they next need to deal with Westminster.
It's also worth noting that Rishi had spent quite a bit of time and energy buttering up Wee Jeffrey Donaldson personally. With his sudden departure, that now looks like a waste of effort.
I agree. But the question was what the minimum number of Tory losses is for them to be certainly unable to form a govt. Even though I agree that the chance of the DUP propping them up again is small, there is a chance of it so we don't get to certain Labour govt (of some form) territory until the Tories go sub-315, in my opinion. But anything sub-320 is very flaky and probably doesn't work.
I've no reason to believe that her conviction was unjust, or that a miscarriage of justice was involved. But I do think having dramas and documentaries made *whilst* the case is ongoing, with the active participation of people involved with the case, is troubling. As I've said before about other 'contemporary' or near-contemporary documentaries.
(Again, this post is not about the Letby case; it's about the media interactions with it.)
Interesting. Justice and showbiz don't mix for a very simple reason. The moment anyone connected with the prosecution of a case has a financial interest in the outcome, or a financial interest in the evidence pointing towards any particular conclusion, then the case is tainted, and the entire edifice is the fruit of a poisoned tree. This particularly applies when this is unknown, undeclared or not obvious.
(BTW my working assumption is that if in fact Letby had a viable defence they would have called quite extensive expert evidence, and they didn't. This would not be for want of trying.)
I hope to God the case against her was sound, if only for the sake of the parents. Although that sounds a bit like Lord Denning on the Birmingham Six!
Justice needs to be done; not scapegoating.
I was predisposed to be suspicious of the case against her, because the initial reporting of the evidence sounded vaguely similar to the cot death cases in terms of a potential misuse of statistics. But having looked further it was completely different and much stronger.
The main doubt in the case was over which specific baby deaths and near-deaths to attribute to her actions. There was more evidence for some than others.
The fact that the jury didn't convict on all counts (and acquitted on two) gave me some confidence that they'd done a thorough job, rather than just deciding she was a bad'un.
I am afraid all my heuristics about prosecutors and defenders and jurors have gone out of the window post Post Office. She may have done it, but the fact of her conviction is not evidence that she did it.
Prediction: Biden will start to lead consistently in the national polls within a month of the Dow hitting 40,000.
Problem: He really needs to be ahead by a few percent given the electoral college.
I assume the polls are going the other way atm from the betting. Trump has gone odds-on again and Biden is out at 2.5. This despite me sending an immense amount of personal psychic energy over the Atlantic to get things ticking in the right direction. But I will continue till the job is done. Deadline (for this effort): end of August. Success metric: Biden 5 point lead.
Prediction: Biden will start to lead consistently in the national polls within a month of the Dow hitting 40,000.
Problem: He really needs to be ahead by a few percent given the electoral college.
From my position of monumental ignorance about how the USA system works, SFAICS the polling generally makes no difference to the outcome prospects, apart from polling in about 7 swing states where Trump is doing OK last I heard. As with Bootle and South Holland, we already know the rest of the results Have I got this right?
On topic, I'd agree that 120 Tory MPs would be about the minimum if we were still dealing with the 1997 world of 3-party politics. But we're not.
The pterodactyl in the ointment is Reform. Voting intention + leadership ratings + relative issues competence + tactical voting + semi-proportional swing could well push the Tories down to 120 seats.
However, the 'worst case' scenario is that Reform's vote comes primarily from ex-2019 Tories (we know this is true at the moment: Deltapoll's most recent had about two-thirds of their current support coming from there; most of the rest, presumably was the Brexit Party), and holds up at current levels.
Now, I know there's a degree of double-counting there but I think there's also a widespread assumption that polls will tighten as we head to the election, as they usually do. And perhaps, probably, they will. But it's no guarantee. The usual pressures on minor-party squeeze aren't there in anything like the scale that they were in 2019. Labour isn't as extreme, the issues aren't as stark, the election isn't as close: and the Tories are really disliked. Swingback has usually started well before now whereas if anything, the Tories are still sinking in support. If Reform polls 10%+ it's possible that the 'worst case' is the Conservatives well down into double figures.
We shouldn't allow our thinking to be hemmed in by past events. I suspect that '120' is considered a minimum because it's ballpark within the worst-ever Tory experience; it cannot go lower because it has not gone lower.
Yet the Tories are polling 10% below where they were in 1997. True, Labour is also lower but then the polls also exaggerated their support then (a point often forgotten because of the landslide delivered and because tactical voting produced a result more consistent with the predictions of those bigger leads; the two effects cancelled each other out to an extent).
Even discounting black swans - and it does look as if Sunak is there for the duration and that the Tories won't accidentally re-elect Liz Truss or similar - we should take seriously the possibility, though not the probability, of a 1931-type outcome.
As I said earlier current polling puts the Tory party on the precipice where the difference between 200 seats and 20 is 4% / margin of error and even that depends on the level of tactical voting.
I can easily see the Tories getting 200 seats, I can equally given a little bit of bad news see them getting few to none
I mean, the Tories need to hope for a few things to keep upwards of 200 seats. They need to keep too many voters heading to other parties (predominantly Reform and Labour) and they need Labour to fail at their squeeze messaging. I don't think they have the talent to do both of those things at the moment. The longer Sunak waits, the more people want him to leave, and the more time there is for more Tory MPs to jump ship, not restand, do normal Tory MP stuff and fuck it all up, etc. For pure damage mitigation he should call a GE and run a campaign of "we know we're going to lose, but you don't want to give Labour free reign to do anything they want / you don't want the Tories to become a laughing stock, so vote for us anyway in some places". That would open up more people to feel they can vote Green and LD if they want to. It would be an admission of failure, which politicians hate, and it would be weak, which politicians hate, but it would at least be honest - and I think the electorate would reward a bit of honesty. They wouldn't elect another Tory government based on it, but I think it would prevent a Canada 93 event - which is what I think the Tories are heading for.
Just on the timing, we're almost at the point where any election called now would be into the Scottish school holidays (an election called today would be held on June 20; the Scottish schools break up the following week). That wouldn't necessarily be a blocker but it would introduce another inconvenient element into the story (and more SNP grievance to feed off). Personally, I don't think it's that big a deal. If a relatively small part of the UK, population-wise, chooses to do it's own thing then that's its right and what devolution's about but it can't (or shouldn't) expect everyone else to run around its exceptional arrangements.
But it's not long before we'd be into the period where you couldn't hold an election before the rest of the schools break up for summer too, and that would matter more in terms of practical arrangements, for public, for media, for activists and candidates and - not least - for local councils running the thing.
I mean, from a purely cynical point of view, wouldn't that likely work in the favour of the Tories?
Is not the current shilly-shallying and silly what-sitting over the election date evidence of the stupidity of scrapping the FTPA?
On topic, I'd agree that 120 Tory MPs would be about the minimum if we were still dealing with the 1997 world of 3-party politics. But we're not.
The pterodactyl in the ointment is Reform. Voting intention + leadership ratings + relative issues competence + tactical voting + semi-proportional swing could well push the Tories down to 120 seats.
However, the 'worst case' scenario is that Reform's vote comes primarily from ex-2019 Tories (we know this is true at the moment: Deltapoll's most recent had about two-thirds of their current support coming from there; most of the rest, presumably was the Brexit Party), and holds up at current levels.
Now, I know there's a degree of double-counting there but I think there's also a widespread assumption that polls will tighten as we head to the election, as they usually do. And perhaps, probably, they will. But it's no guarantee. The usual pressures on minor-party squeeze aren't there in anything like the scale that they were in 2019. Labour isn't as extreme, the issues aren't as stark, the election isn't as close: and the Tories are really disliked. Swingback has usually started well before now whereas if anything, the Tories are still sinking in support. If Reform polls 10%+ it's possible that the 'worst case' is the Conservatives well down into double figures.
We shouldn't allow our thinking to be hemmed in by past events. I suspect that '120' is considered a minimum because it's ballpark within the worst-ever Tory experience; it cannot go lower because it has not gone lower.
Yet the Tories are polling 10% below where they were in 1997. True, Labour is also lower but then the polls also exaggerated their support then (a point often forgotten because of the landslide delivered and because tactical voting produced a result more consistent with the predictions of those bigger leads; the two effects cancelled each other out to an extent).
Even discounting black swans - and it does look as if Sunak is there for the duration and that the Tories won't accidentally re-elect Liz Truss or similar - we should take seriously the possibility, though not the probability, of a 1931-type outcome.
As I said earlier current polling puts the Tory party on the precipice where the difference between 200 seats and 20 is 4% / margin of error and even that depends on the level of tactical voting.
I can easily see the Tories getting 200 seats, I can equally given a little bit of bad news see them getting few to none
The problem is our polling seems no more accurate now than it was decades ago. And it still, despite correction after correction, routinely understates the Tories in 90% of cases.
We could do away with this and have a much more dynamic democracy if instead of 5 year terms then a general election, we had elections for a selection of seats every 3 months (ideally elected under STV or at least AV) such that an unpopular government couldn't hold the country to ransom waiting for a GE, but a popular government could actually strengthen its position in parliament over time.
Every 3 months a tranche of 30 seats goes up for election. Either regional (that would be fun but could create distortions in policy) or say alphabetical. Over the course of 5 or so years the entire house of commons would be re-elected. By now the Conservatives would have lost their majority but Labour would probably be working as a minority or with coalition partners, gradually building up their seat count.
Every 3 months too often? How about 60 seats every 6 months, or 120 seats every year at the start of May?
It's not dissimilar to how US senate elections work.
You can look back over the last decade and ponder with interest how that sort of system might have played out.
Shorttermism is already a problem, it would be out of control if the next election was always less than 3 months or even less than a year away. Four years is a good length of time for a new government to come in and rule things their way and then go back to the electorate for a verdict on how they have done.
It's the same reason as I dislike electing councils by thirds, it makes handover from one party to another messy.
Your argument appears to be that you don't trust the voters to be able to make sensible decisions. It's an argument against elections altogether.
I think things will only improve if everyone - voters, politicians, media - starts to act in a more grown-up fashion. Five years of consequence-free throwing of tantrums all round, while the government tries to do sensible things by stealth, is no way to develop a more mature political culture.
An argument against more frequent elections that I find more convincing is that the purpose of electrons is to elect representatives to sort out the detail, the purpose of which is to enable the voters not to pay close attention for as long as possible. More frequent elections is therefore inefficient.
I quite like the idea - not sure whose it was - of updating this model for modern times by doing away with representative elections and replacing it with delegation of individual votes. Politicians and parties would compete to collect delegations from voters. So, for example, I could choose to delegate my vote in the Commons to Shahrar Ali of the Green Party, and he'd then get to vote on legislation with the accumulated votes of everyone who had chosen to do the same.
I remember seeing a worked example based on weighting each MP's vote according to the proportion of support they had in their constituency.
If I recall correctly, it would be much less proportional than even FPTP - with MPs from safe seats being weighted more heavily, it means that changes in marginal constituencies count for less.
(And, of course, pure delegative systems tend to be associated with authoritarianism - see soviet democracy, council communism, or even Uribismo in Chile in the 2000s)
Does this apply to any other demographic, Landon? Do I get to be black if I like Motown and fancy myself in cornrows? What if I claim the authentic me has always been black and that you're being racist to me? Would that be OK, or would you find it ludicrous and deeply offensive?
Prediction: Biden will start to lead consistently in the national polls within a month of the Dow hitting 40,000.
Problem: He really needs to be ahead by a few percent given the electoral college.
Biden seems to have lost the Sun Belt, so he needs to win the Rust Belt. Currently he is not... I don't see how the Dow hitting 40k will help with the Rust Belt. Some economic populism or clear impact of infrastructure spending could help. Making the argument that Alito and Thomas are gonna die soon so he could reshape SCOTUS might help (although that could also mobilise the GOP voters who care about the courts). But he can't win them by tacking to the right, because Trump can always just go further rightward or claim he's the safest bet for right wing outcomes.
Does this apply to any other demographic, Landon? Do I get to be black if I like Motown and fancy myself in cornrows? What if I claim the authentic me has always been black and that you're being racist to me? Would that be OK, or would you find it ludicrous and deeply offensive?
I've no reason to believe that her conviction was unjust, or that a miscarriage of justice was involved. But I do think having dramas and documentaries made *whilst* the case is ongoing, with the active participation of people involved with the case, is troubling. As I've said before about other 'contemporary' or near-contemporary documentaries.
(Again, this post is not about the Letby case; it's about the media interactions with it.)
Interesting. Justice and showbiz don't mix for a very simple reason. The moment anyone connected with the prosecution of a case has a financial interest in the outcome, or a financial interest in the evidence pointing towards any particular conclusion, then the case is tainted, and the entire edifice is the fruit of a poisoned tree. This particularly applies when this is unknown, undeclared or not obvious.
(BTW my working assumption is that if in fact Letby had a viable defence they would have called quite extensive expert evidence, and they didn't. This would not be for want of trying.)
I hope to God the case against her was sound, if only for the sake of the parents. Although that sounds a bit like Lord Denning on the Birmingham Six!
Justice needs to be done; not scapegoating.
I was predisposed to be suspicious of the case against her, because the initial reporting of the evidence sounded vaguely similar to the cot death cases in terms of a potential misuse of statistics. But having looked further it was completely different and much stronger.
The main doubt in the case was over which specific baby deaths and near-deaths to attribute to her actions. There was more evidence for some than others.
The fact that the jury didn't convict on all counts (and acquitted on two) gave me some confidence that they'd done a thorough job, rather than just deciding she was a bad'un.
I am afraid all my heuristics about prosecutors and defenders and jurors have gone out of the window post Post Office. She may have done it, but the fact of her conviction is not evidence that she did it.
The poor old jurors are in a unique position. They can't control what evidence they are presented with. The probability is with most of the PO cases, that the prosecution came up with expert (false) evidence about the data, and the defence failed to counter it with their own expert evidence. It seems this was in part because the PO failed to disclose the whole picture to the defence.
The jury is entitled to conclude that a case to answer has been put up, and it hasn't been answered. The judge will tell them to judge only on the evidence and nothing else. Hence the tragedy unfolded. The jurors (I have never been one) are the least responsible part of this shameful saga.
It is a general part of the English system and assumptions that expert witnesses don't lie to you in court. The tainting of this tradition (which is actually quite noble) is a disaster.
Does this apply to any other demographic, Landon? Do I get to be black if I like Motown and fancy myself in cornrows? What if I claim the authentic me has always been black and that you're being racist to me? Would that be OK, or would you find it ludicrous and deeply offensive?
Stonewall are back in front of an Employment Tribunal today for trying to get a black lesbian barrister fired.
Poster 1: rolling around in shit is fun
Poster 2: I don't want to roll around in shit
Poster 1: What are you afraid of, why won't you roll around in the shit, you're just an authoritarian who won't debate the benefits of rolling around in shit.
Does this apply to any other demographic, Landon? Do I get to be black if I like Motown and fancy myself in cornrows? What if I claim the authentic me has always been black and that you're being racist to me? Would that be OK, or would you find it ludicrous and deeply offensive?
Stonewall are back in front of an Employment Tribunal today for trying to get a black lesbian barrister fired.
Poster 1: rolling around in shit is fun
Poster 2: I don't want to roll around in shit
Poster 1: What are you afraid of, why won't you roll around in the shit, you're just an authoritarian who won't debate the benefits of rolling around in shit.
Great engagement with the substance - up to your usual standard.
Prediction: Biden will start to lead consistently in the national polls within a month of the Dow hitting 40,000.
Problem: He really needs to be ahead by a few percent given the electoral college.
From my position of monumental ignorance about how the USA system works, SFAICS the polling generally makes no difference to the outcome prospects, apart from polling in about 7 swing states where Trump is doing OK last I heard. As with Bootle and South Holland, we already know the rest of the results Have I got this right?
Yes, its all about the swing states, but they do change. Florida has been a swing state, not really at the moment. Perhaps a non-swing state can quickly become a swing state, take the red wall for comparison in the UK.
Prediction: Biden will start to lead consistently in the national polls within a month of the Dow hitting 40,000.
Problem: He really needs to be ahead by a few percent given the electoral college.
From my position of monumental ignorance about how the USA system works, SFAICS the polling generally makes no difference to the outcome prospects, apart from polling in about 7 swing states where Trump is doing OK last I heard. As with Bootle and South Holland, we already know the rest of the results Have I got this right?
Broadly speaking, yes, but, generally speaking, you have the same voters nationwide, just in different proportions to the swing states, so national polls should be a reasonably good proxy for the swing state polls - at least within the range of polling uncertainty.
And it costs about seven times more to do a high-quality opinion poll in each of seven swing states then it does to do the same nationwide, so you should have more polls nationwide, which gives you statistical advantages.
Does this apply to any other demographic, Landon? Do I get to be black if I like Motown and fancy myself in cornrows? What if I claim the authentic me has always been black and that you're being racist to me? Would that be OK, or would you find it ludicrous and deeply offensive?
I'm down with a ban on posting Tweets or comments from/about JKR, unless they relate to Harry Potter or the detective books/series with the guy who was in Musketeers and looks a bit like Guy Garvey
Do many of us (irrespective of our interest or lack of it in the trans issue) care one way or another what Rowling's opinion is from day to day ?
Not really, no. Although a certain corner of the internet does.
To try to take a broader (and more interesting) perspective on this than the trans debate, strip out the trans stuff from the rolling stone article I jokingly linked to downthread and what you're left with is an interesting article about how people are radicalised. TL;DR, Rowling is to Twitter as Plato was to PB - well and truly down the rabbit hole.
I had a friend who was obsessed with 4chan back when it was protesting Scientology and posting crude memes, but similarly got sucked into a lot of the racist rhetoric as the tone of the website shifted from early chaos to 'white nationalism' as the Nazis took over the site (It was always a cesspit - it became a racist cesspit).
And this was long before the algorithmic filter bubble world we live in today, where the algorithm a) sees what we're most interested and b) pushes more content in front of us about that topic that c) first reinforces that worldview, d) shows us stuff that outrages that worldview and e) drives us into ever deeper and more extreme ideological positions as a result of a,b,c,d.
Rowling is but one example of that on a single subject, but there are plenty of examples of others who have been similarly radicalised by social media on a variety of topics.
I'm not sure there's an answer to the toxicity of online debate, because it seems like the steps a -> e above seem baked into the way social media platforms are built. Or, more scarily, baked into the way human psychology has evolved.
Constructive, well reasoned debate on any topic can be interesting and enlightening. But when it descends to the level of vitriol, as it so often does particularly on matters of 'identity politics', it benefits nobody.
On topic, I'd agree that 120 Tory MPs would be about the minimum if we were still dealing with the 1997 world of 3-party politics. But we're not.
The pterodactyl in the ointment is Reform. Voting intention + leadership ratings + relative issues competence + tactical voting + semi-proportional swing could well push the Tories down to 120 seats.
However, the 'worst case' scenario is that Reform's vote comes primarily from ex-2019 Tories (we know this is true at the moment: Deltapoll's most recent had about two-thirds of their current support coming from there; most of the rest, presumably was the Brexit Party), and holds up at current levels.
Now, I know there's a degree of double-counting there but I think there's also a widespread assumption that polls will tighten as we head to the election, as they usually do. And perhaps, probably, they will. But it's no guarantee. The usual pressures on minor-party squeeze aren't there in anything like the scale that they were in 2019. Labour isn't as extreme, the issues aren't as stark, the election isn't as close: and the Tories are really disliked. Swingback has usually started well before now whereas if anything, the Tories are still sinking in support. If Reform polls 10%+ it's possible that the 'worst case' is the Conservatives well down into double figures.
We shouldn't allow our thinking to be hemmed in by past events. I suspect that '120' is considered a minimum because it's ballpark within the worst-ever Tory experience; it cannot go lower because it has not gone lower.
Yet the Tories are polling 10% below where they were in 1997. True, Labour is also lower but then the polls also exaggerated their support then (a point often forgotten because of the landslide delivered and because tactical voting produced a result more consistent with the predictions of those bigger leads; the two effects cancelled each other out to an extent).
Even discounting black swans - and it does look as if Sunak is there for the duration and that the Tories won't accidentally re-elect Liz Truss or similar - we should take seriously the possibility, though not the probability, of a 1931-type outcome.
As I said earlier current polling puts the Tory party on the precipice where the difference between 200 seats and 20 is 4% / margin of error and even that depends on the level of tactical voting.
I can easily see the Tories getting 200 seats, I can equally given a little bit of bad news see them getting few to none
The problem is our polling seems no more accurate now than it was decades ago. And it still, despite correction after correction, routinely understates the Tories in 90% of cases.
We could do away with this and have a much more dynamic democracy if instead of 5 year terms then a general election, we had elections for a selection of seats every 3 months (ideally elected under STV or at least AV) such that an unpopular government couldn't hold the country to ransom waiting for a GE, but a popular government could actually strengthen its position in parliament over time.
Every 3 months a tranche of 30 seats goes up for election. Either regional (that would be fun but could create distortions in policy) or say alphabetical. Over the course of 5 or so years the entire house of commons would be re-elected. By now the Conservatives would have lost their majority but Labour would probably be working as a minority or with coalition partners, gradually building up their seat count.
Every 3 months too often? How about 60 seats every 6 months, or 120 seats every year at the start of May?
It's not dissimilar to how US senate elections work.
You can look back over the last decade and ponder with interest how that sort of system might have played out.
Shorttermism is already a problem, it would be out of control if the next election was always less than 3 months or even less than a year away. Four years is a good length of time for a new government to come in and rule things their way and then go back to the electorate for a verdict on how they have done.
It's the same reason as I dislike electing councils by thirds, it makes handover from one party to another messy.
Electing anything by thirds etc is horribly messy - whether it's a council or the trustees of the village duck pond preservation committee. It makes it impossible for anyone outside it to follow what is going on, and who is who, and is especially messy with casual vacancies by death or resignation.
Does this apply to any other demographic, Landon? Do I get to be black if I like Motown and fancy myself in cornrows? What if I claim the authentic me has always been black and that you're being racist to me? Would that be OK, or would you find it ludicrous and deeply offensive?
I'm down with a ban on posting Tweets or comments from/about JKR, unless they relate to Harry Potter or the detective books/series with the guy who was in Musketeers and looks a bit like Guy Garvey
Do many of us (irrespective of our interest or lack of it in the trans issue) care one way or another what Rowling's opinion is from day to day ?
I mean, I care about the fact that she uses her massive public platform and capital (both social and literal) to target normal individuals for targeted harassment and make spurious claims about them, as well as use it to prevent any legitimate criticism against herself.
Prediction: Biden will start to lead consistently in the national polls within a month of the Dow hitting 40,000.
Problem: He really needs to be ahead by a few percent given the electoral college.
From my position of monumental ignorance about how the USA system works, SFAICS the polling generally makes no difference to the outcome prospects, apart from polling in about 7 swing states where Trump is doing OK last I heard. As with Bootle and South Holland, we already know the rest of the results Have I got this right?
Broadly speaking, yes, but, generally speaking, you have the same voters nationwide, just in different proportions to the swing states, so national polls should be a reasonably good proxy for the swing state polls - at least within the range of polling uncertainty.
And it costs about seven times more to do a high-quality opinion poll in each of seven swing states then it does to do the same nationwide, so you should have more polls nationwide, which gives you statistical advantages.
Thanks. However, if there were only 7 constituencies in this country which everyone knew were the only ones that changed the national result I suspect there would be a passionate interest in how they were getting on (not least on PB), and crucially the voters may well behave differently from the national picture.
On topic, I'd agree that 120 Tory MPs would be about the minimum if we were still dealing with the 1997 world of 3-party politics. But we're not.
The pterodactyl in the ointment is Reform. Voting intention + leadership ratings + relative issues competence + tactical voting + semi-proportional swing could well push the Tories down to 120 seats.
However, the 'worst case' scenario is that Reform's vote comes primarily from ex-2019 Tories (we know this is true at the moment: Deltapoll's most recent had about two-thirds of their current support coming from there; most of the rest, presumably was the Brexit Party), and holds up at current levels.
Now, I know there's a degree of double-counting there but I think there's also a widespread assumption that polls will tighten as we head to the election, as they usually do. And perhaps, probably, they will. But it's no guarantee. The usual pressures on minor-party squeeze aren't there in anything like the scale that they were in 2019. Labour isn't as extreme, the issues aren't as stark, the election isn't as close: and the Tories are really disliked. Swingback has usually started well before now whereas if anything, the Tories are still sinking in support. If Reform polls 10%+ it's possible that the 'worst case' is the Conservatives well down into double figures.
We shouldn't allow our thinking to be hemmed in by past events. I suspect that '120' is considered a minimum because it's ballpark within the worst-ever Tory experience; it cannot go lower because it has not gone lower.
Yet the Tories are polling 10% below where they were in 1997. True, Labour is also lower but then the polls also exaggerated their support then (a point often forgotten because of the landslide delivered and because tactical voting produced a result more consistent with the predictions of those bigger leads; the two effects cancelled each other out to an extent).
Even discounting black swans - and it does look as if Sunak is there for the duration and that the Tories won't accidentally re-elect Liz Truss or similar - we should take seriously the possibility, though not the probability, of a 1931-type outcome.
As I said earlier current polling puts the Tory party on the precipice where the difference between 200 seats and 20 is 4% / margin of error and even that depends on the level of tactical voting.
I can easily see the Tories getting 200 seats, I can equally given a little bit of bad news see them getting few to none
I mean, the Tories need to hope for a few things to keep upwards of 200 seats. They need to keep too many voters heading to other parties (predominantly Reform and Labour) and they need Labour to fail at their squeeze messaging. I don't think they have the talent to do both of those things at the moment. The longer Sunak waits, the more people want him to leave, and the more time there is for more Tory MPs to jump ship, not restand, do normal Tory MP stuff and fuck it all up, etc. For pure damage mitigation he should call a GE and run a campaign of "we know we're going to lose, but you don't want to give Labour free reign to do anything they want / you don't want the Tories to become a laughing stock, so vote for us anyway in some places". That would open up more people to feel they can vote Green and LD if they want to. It would be an admission of failure, which politicians hate, and it would be weak, which politicians hate, but it would at least be honest - and I think the electorate would reward a bit of honesty. They wouldn't elect another Tory government based on it, but I think it would prevent a Canada 93 event - which is what I think the Tories are heading for.
Just on the timing, we're almost at the point where any election called now would be into the Scottish school holidays (an election called today would be held on June 20; the Scottish schools break up the following week). That wouldn't necessarily be a blocker but it would introduce another inconvenient element into the story (and more SNP grievance to feed off). Personally, I don't think it's that big a deal. If a relatively small part of the UK, population-wise, chooses to do it's own thing then that's its right and what devolution's about but it can't (or shouldn't) expect everyone else to run around its exceptional arrangements.
But it's not long before we'd be into the period where you couldn't hold an election before the rest of the schools break up for summer too, and that would matter more in terms of practical arrangements, for public, for media, for activists and candidates and - not least - for local councils running the thing.
I mean, from a purely cynical point of view, wouldn't that likely work in the favour of the Tories?
Only if it didn't prompt people to change their behaviour and/or voting intention as a result - and I think it probably would. The cynicism - alleged or real, doesn't really matter - would become an issue in its own right because it'd be such a plausible claim and the govt has enough baggage on that score.
Prediction: Biden will start to lead consistently in the national polls within a month of the Dow hitting 40,000.
Problem: He really needs to be ahead by a few percent given the electoral college.
From my position of monumental ignorance about how the USA system works, SFAICS the polling generally makes no difference to the outcome prospects, apart from polling in about 7 swing states where Trump is doing OK last I heard. As with Bootle and South Holland, we already know the rest of the results Have I got this right?
Yes, its all about the swing states, but they do change. Florida has been a swing state, not really at the moment. Perhaps a non-swing state can quickly become a swing state, take the red wall for comparison in the UK.
Texas often is the one that is seen as trending Democrat. It probably will get there eventually, but the hope this would happen in recent elections has always been dashed.
Does this apply to any other demographic, Landon? Do I get to be black if I like Motown and fancy myself in cornrows? What if I claim the authentic me has always been black and that you're being racist to me? Would that be OK, or would you find it ludicrous and deeply offensive?
Stonewall are back in front of an Employment Tribunal today for trying to get a black lesbian barrister fired.
To be fair, constant derailing without ever participating in the flow of conversation doesn't really seem much like debate to me.
Which is exactly Rowling’s complaint, that those of differing viewpoints to her own don’t want to actually debate with her, they want her to shut up and go away.
Does this apply to any other demographic, Landon? Do I get to be black if I like Motown and fancy myself in cornrows? What if I claim the authentic me has always been black and that you're being racist to me? Would that be OK, or would you find it ludicrous and deeply offensive?
I'm down with a ban on posting Tweets or comments from/about JKR, unless they relate to Harry Potter or the detective books/series with the guy who was in Musketeers and looks a bit like Guy Garvey
Do many of us (irrespective of our interest or lack of it in the trans issue) care one way or another what Rowling's opinion is from day to day ?
I mean, I care about the fact that she uses her massive public platform and capital (both social and literal) to target normal individuals for targeted harassment and make spurious claims about them, as well as use it to prevent any legitimate criticism against herself.
“Spurious claim”?
Stating that a man is a man?
That sport and football in particular lacks diversity?
While I hesitate to comment, many people are missing the key point in that @jk_rowling post. She was, among other things, pointing out the *lack of sex diversity in football management.*
This is, ofc, an important point, notable for any self-styled fans of diversity in sport...
... Appointing a TW manager increases diversity on one axis, but it does *nothing* to alter the lack of sex diversity in management, which is a persistent and troubling feature of UK football. And it's *impossible* to make this point without referring to sex.
Prediction: Biden will start to lead consistently in the national polls within a month of the Dow hitting 40,000.
Problem: He really needs to be ahead by a few percent given the electoral college.
Biden seems to have lost the Sun Belt, so he needs to win the Rust Belt. Currently he is not... I don't see how the Dow hitting 40k will help with the Rust Belt. Some economic populism or clear impact of infrastructure spending could help. Making the argument that Alito and Thomas are gonna die soon so he could reshape SCOTUS might help (although that could also mobilise the GOP voters who care about the courts). But he can't win them by tacking to the right, because Trump can always just go further rightward or claim he's the safest bet for right wing outcomes.
Biden favourability / unfavourability scores are ugly, on a historic scale. I still think it’s not impossible there’s a Dem convention bait and switch.
Does this apply to any other demographic, Landon? Do I get to be black if I like Motown and fancy myself in cornrows? What if I claim the authentic me has always been black and that you're being racist to me? Would that be OK, or would you find it ludicrous and deeply offensive?
I'm down with a ban on posting Tweets or comments from/about JKR, unless they relate to Harry Potter or the detective books/series with the guy who was in Musketeers and looks a bit like Guy Garvey
Do many of us (irrespective of our interest or lack of it in the trans issue) care one way or another what Rowling's opinion is from day to day ?
I mean, I care about the fact that she uses her massive public platform and capital (both social and literal) to target normal individuals for targeted harassment and make spurious claims about them, as well as use it to prevent any legitimate criticism against herself.
“Spurious claim”?
Stating that a man is a man?
That sport and football in particular lacks diversity?
While I hesitate to comment, many people are missing the key point in that @jk_rowling post. She was, among other things, pointing out the *lack of sex diversity in football management.*
This is, ofc, an important point, notable for any self-styled fans of diversity in sport...
... Appointing a TW manager increases diversity on one axis, but it does *nothing* to alter the lack of sex diversity in management, which is a persistent and troubling feature of UK football. And it's *impossible* to make this point without referring to sex.
On topic, I'd agree that 120 Tory MPs would be about the minimum if we were still dealing with the 1997 world of 3-party politics. But we're not.
The pterodactyl in the ointment is Reform. Voting intention + leadership ratings + relative issues competence + tactical voting + semi-proportional swing could well push the Tories down to 120 seats.
However, the 'worst case' scenario is that Reform's vote comes primarily from ex-2019 Tories (we know this is true at the moment: Deltapoll's most recent had about two-thirds of their current support coming from there; most of the rest, presumably was the Brexit Party), and holds up at current levels.
Now, I know there's a degree of double-counting there but I think there's also a widespread assumption that polls will tighten as we head to the election, as they usually do. And perhaps, probably, they will. But it's no guarantee. The usual pressures on minor-party squeeze aren't there in anything like the scale that they were in 2019. Labour isn't as extreme, the issues aren't as stark, the election isn't as close: and the Tories are really disliked. Swingback has usually started well before now whereas if anything, the Tories are still sinking in support. If Reform polls 10%+ it's possible that the 'worst case' is the Conservatives well down into double figures.
We shouldn't allow our thinking to be hemmed in by past events. I suspect that '120' is considered a minimum because it's ballpark within the worst-ever Tory experience; it cannot go lower because it has not gone lower.
Yet the Tories are polling 10% below where they were in 1997. True, Labour is also lower but then the polls also exaggerated their support then (a point often forgotten because of the landslide delivered and because tactical voting produced a result more consistent with the predictions of those bigger leads; the two effects cancelled each other out to an extent).
Even discounting black swans - and it does look as if Sunak is there for the duration and that the Tories won't accidentally re-elect Liz Truss or similar - we should take seriously the possibility, though not the probability, of a 1931-type outcome.
As I said earlier current polling puts the Tory party on the precipice where the difference between 200 seats and 20 is 4% / margin of error and even that depends on the level of tactical voting.
I can easily see the Tories getting 200 seats, I can equally given a little bit of bad news see them getting few to none
The problem is our polling seems no more accurate now than it was decades ago. And it still, despite correction after correction, routinely understates the Tories in 90% of cases.
We could do away with this and have a much more dynamic democracy if instead of 5 year terms then a general election, we had elections for a selection of seats every 3 months (ideally elected under STV or at least AV) such that an unpopular government couldn't hold the country to ransom waiting for a GE, but a popular government could actually strengthen its position in parliament over time.
Every 3 months a tranche of 30 seats goes up for election. Either regional (that would be fun but could create distortions in policy) or say alphabetical. Over the course of 5 or so years the entire house of commons would be re-elected. By now the Conservatives would have lost their majority but Labour would probably be working as a minority or with coalition partners, gradually building up their seat count.
Every 3 months too often? How about 60 seats every 6 months, or 120 seats every year at the start of May?
It's not dissimilar to how US senate elections work.
You can look back over the last decade and ponder with interest how that sort of system might have played out.
Shorttermism is already a problem, it would be out of control if the next election was always less than 3 months or even less than a year away. Four years is a good length of time for a new government to come in and rule things their way and then go back to the electorate for a verdict on how they have done.
It's the same reason as I dislike electing councils by thirds, it makes handover from one party to another messy.
Electing anything by thirds etc is horribly messy - whether it's a council or the trustees of the village duck pond preservation committee. It makes it impossible for anyone outside it to follow what is going on, and who is who, and is especially messy with casual vacancies by death or resignation.
I think the US were quite smart to separate out that idea (for the election of senators) from the more the representative democracy of House elections. Trying to combine the two things in one chamber, as suggested above, doesn't work, IMO.
Director’s cut of Apocalypse Now with all the good bits excised, imprinting itself on your visual cortex, forever. The (I presume) hero cutting about in a Citroen DS isn’t a good portent.
Does this apply to any other demographic, Landon? Do I get to be black if I like Motown and fancy myself in cornrows? What if I claim the authentic me has always been black and that you're being racist to me? Would that be OK, or would you find it ludicrous and deeply offensive?
Stonewall are back in front of an Employment Tribunal today for trying to get a black lesbian barrister fired.
To be fair, constant derailing without ever participating in the flow of conversation doesn't really seem much like debate to me.
Which is exactly Rowling’s complaint, that those of differing viewpoints to her own don’t want to actually debate with her, they want her to shut up and go away.
So what exactly are her differing viewpoints about voting systems, swing states, election timing, the effect of the media on the justice system or any of the other topics we were debating before the thread got derailed yet again?
Does this apply to any other demographic, Landon? Do I get to be black if I like Motown and fancy myself in cornrows? What if I claim the authentic me has always been black and that you're being racist to me? Would that be OK, or would you find it ludicrous and deeply offensive?
Stonewall are back in front of an Employment Tribunal today for trying to get a black lesbian barrister fired.
To be fair, constant derailing without ever participating in the flow of conversation doesn't really seem much like debate to me.
Which is exactly Rowling’s complaint, that those of differing viewpoints to her own don’t want to actually debate with her, they want her to shut up and go away.
Sounds familiar. And many (most) miss the point that this is a womens rights issue - so just over half the population.
Western governments are in a bit of a quandary here.
On one hand they want to encourage EV sales over cars with engines, and on the other hand the Chinese are clearly dumping these cars (in the economists’ sense of the word), with huge government support, and attempting to drive Western EV producers out of business to leave themselves with a monopoly.
Not an enviable position to be in, but in the US there’s bipartisan support for raising tariffs, the EU are also discussing it, and it’s likely to be a live issue in the UK soon as well.
Does this apply to any other demographic, Landon? Do I get to be black if I like Motown and fancy myself in cornrows? What if I claim the authentic me has always been black and that you're being racist to me? Would that be OK, or would you find it ludicrous and deeply offensive?
Stonewall are back in front of an Employment Tribunal today for trying to get a black lesbian barrister fired.
To be fair, constant derailing without ever participating in the flow of conversation doesn't really seem much like debate to me.
Which is exactly Rowling’s complaint, that those of differing viewpoints to her own don’t want to actually debate with her, they want her to shut up and go away.
JKR doesn't debate anyone when anyone tries to engage with her tweets so for her to complain that people don't want to debate her seems dishonest.
Prediction: Biden will start to lead consistently in the national polls within a month of the Dow hitting 40,000.
Problem: He really needs to be ahead by a few percent given the electoral college.
From my position of monumental ignorance about how the USA system works, SFAICS the polling generally makes no difference to the outcome prospects, apart from polling in about 7 swing states where Trump is doing OK last I heard. As with Bootle and South Holland, we already know the rest of the results Have I got this right?
Yes, its all about the swing states, but they do change. Florida has been a swing state, not really at the moment. Perhaps a non-swing state can quickly become a swing state, take the red wall for comparison in the UK.
Texas often is the one that is seen as trending Democrat. It probably will get there eventually, but the hope this would happen in recent elections has always been dashed.
It's seen as being sometimes frustratingly close for Democrats (although the Senate race this year doesn't look to be particularly), but this year is the thirtieth anniversary of ANY Democrat winning a statewide race in Texas, when George W Bush first became Governor, but some Democrats held on in down-ticket races. Before that, they won reasonably often.
So I'm not sure longer term it's been "trending" Democrat - just that it's sometimes close enough that they are regularly tempted to spend a vast amount of money on elections there while having nothing to show for it in three decades.
Sounds like a signal to the rest of the world not to buy US EVs.
How do you work that one out?
I assume because it suggests US made EVs won't win in a free marketplace against Chinese EVs?
Rather it's a very strong incentive for Chinese manufacturers to strike manufacturing deals with US manufacturers - as happened with Toyota etc in the 1980s.
(It's of course true that US manufacturers won't win a direct competition with Chinese ones, but neither domestic market is even close to a "free marketplace")
Sounds like a signal to the rest of the world not to buy US EVs.
How do you work that one out?
Assuming its to protect the US auto industry, suggests that US consumers would pay up to double for a Chinese EV than a US EV if there were no tariffs.
Does this apply to any other demographic, Landon? Do I get to be black if I like Motown and fancy myself in cornrows? What if I claim the authentic me has always been black and that you're being racist to me? Would that be OK, or would you find it ludicrous and deeply offensive?
Stonewall are back in front of an Employment Tribunal today for trying to get a black lesbian barrister fired.
To be fair, constant derailing without ever participating in the flow of conversation doesn't really seem much like debate to me.
Which is exactly Rowling’s complaint, that those of differing viewpoints to her own don’t want to actually debate with her, they want her to shut up and go away.
So what exactly are her differing viewpoints about voting systems, swing states, election timing, the effect of the media on the justice system or any of the other topics we were debating before the thread got derailed yet again?
The universities debate was interesting and I'd happily go back to it! I was half way into writing something about it when I ended up on a work call and lost what I was going to post.
In brief, the 'should universities be a public good or a business' was interesting and made me think of a friend in academia who pointed out that there is much more pressure to pass students than there used to be, because rich international students are in effect paying for a finishing school and the degree is the rubber stamp.
Supposedly also cheating is rampant with half the essays clearly being written by essay mills but staff unable to do anything about it. I imagine AI has made everything worse - surely it can't be that long before universities introduce the viva for masters students at least. Unless of course university is just a 'rubber stamp', in which case, what value does a degree really have at this point?
Prediction: Biden will start to lead consistently in the national polls within a month of the Dow hitting 40,000.
Problem: He really needs to be ahead by a few percent given the electoral college.
Biden seems to have lost the Sun Belt, so he needs to win the Rust Belt. Currently he is not... I don't see how the Dow hitting 40k will help with the Rust Belt. Some economic populism or clear impact of infrastructure spending could help. Making the argument that Alito and Thomas are gonna die soon so he could reshape SCOTUS might help (although that could also mobilise the GOP voters who care about the courts). But he can't win them by tacking to the right, because Trump can always just go further rightward or claim he's the safest bet for right wing outcomes.
Biden favourability / unfavourability scores are ugly, on a historic scale. I still think it’s not impossible there’s a Dem convention bait and switch.
I mean, maybe - but I don't know who is the clear inheritor. They don't want it to be Kamala Harris, because she is also not popular. Gavin Newsom has tried to set himself up as the heir to Biden, but I don't see him doing this seamlessly. And they would have to say that Biden had a health issue - they couldn't just swap him out after the primaries with no excuse. And if they say he has a health issue, that basically would be admitting they were wrong when the entire news cycle was "it's ageist to claim that Biden shouldn't rerun" etc...
Does this apply to any other demographic, Landon? Do I get to be black if I like Motown and fancy myself in cornrows? What if I claim the authentic me has always been black and that you're being racist to me? Would that be OK, or would you find it ludicrous and deeply offensive?
Stonewall are back in front of an Employment Tribunal today for trying to get a black lesbian barrister fired.
To be fair, constant derailing without ever participating in the flow of conversation doesn't really seem much like debate to me.
Which is exactly Rowling’s complaint, that those of differing viewpoints to her own don’t want to actually debate with her, they want her to shut up and go away.
Is there any argument that would ever change Rowling's pov? Seemingly, no. So she also doesn't want a debate - she just wants to claim that trans people are a threat to the public safety of women and girls with no evidence to back that up, and assert that being trans is not a thing. She also does not want a debate. But it's easier to hide behind "why won't you have a debate" than it is to say "I just want to be publicly grossed out by this group of people I dislike".
Does this apply to any other demographic, Landon? Do I get to be black if I like Motown and fancy myself in cornrows? What if I claim the authentic me has always been black and that you're being racist to me? Would that be OK, or would you find it ludicrous and deeply offensive?
Stonewall are back in front of an Employment Tribunal today for trying to get a black lesbian barrister fired.
To be fair, constant derailing without ever participating in the flow of conversation doesn't really seem much like debate to me.
Which is exactly Rowling’s complaint, that those of differing viewpoints to her own don’t want to actually debate with her, they want her to shut up and go away.
JKR doesn't debate anyone when anyone tries to engage with her tweets so for her to complain that people don't want to debate her seems dishonest.
See this thread:
You’ve asked me several questions on this thread and accused me of avoiding answering, so here goes….
Does this apply to any other demographic, Landon? Do I get to be black if I like Motown and fancy myself in cornrows? What if I claim the authentic me has always been black and that you're being racist to me? Would that be OK, or would you find it ludicrous and deeply offensive?
Stonewall are back in front of an Employment Tribunal today for trying to get a black lesbian barrister fired.
To be fair, constant derailing without ever participating in the flow of conversation doesn't really seem much like debate to me.
Which is exactly Rowling’s complaint, that those of differing viewpoints to her own don’t want to actually debate with her, they want her to shut up and go away.
It quite looks the other way to me, at least. She has enormous power, and a loud voice. She does not seem to want debate; she has HER VIEWS and she says them VERY LOUDLY. Which is fine, but it is not a 'debate'. It is religious certainty.
She definitely seems to want trans people to shut up and go away. More than that; it seems to me that she'd be fine if there were zero trans people, because she does not seem to think they really exist. For some people, trans people just seem to be dangerous men cosplaying, or lesbians who have been conned.
To be clear: IMV trans people exist. If you've lived as a woman for years, and had all the ops, then as far as I'm concerned you're a woman. Everything else scales down from that position; but generally, if they're not harming anyone: let people be who they want to be.
On topic, I'd agree that 120 Tory MPs would be about the minimum if we were still dealing with the 1997 world of 3-party politics. But we're not.
The pterodactyl in the ointment is Reform. Voting intention + leadership ratings + relative issues competence + tactical voting + semi-proportional swing could well push the Tories down to 120 seats.
However, the 'worst case' scenario is that Reform's vote comes primarily from ex-2019 Tories (we know this is true at the moment: Deltapoll's most recent had about two-thirds of their current support coming from there; most of the rest, presumably was the Brexit Party), and holds up at current levels.
Now, I know there's a degree of double-counting there but I think there's also a widespread assumption that polls will tighten as we head to the election, as they usually do. And perhaps, probably, they will. But it's no guarantee. The usual pressures on minor-party squeeze aren't there in anything like the scale that they were in 2019. Labour isn't as extreme, the issues aren't as stark, the election isn't as close: and the Tories are really disliked. Swingback has usually started well before now whereas if anything, the Tories are still sinking in support. If Reform polls 10%+ it's possible that the 'worst case' is the Conservatives well down into double figures.
We shouldn't allow our thinking to be hemmed in by past events. I suspect that '120' is considered a minimum because it's ballpark within the worst-ever Tory experience; it cannot go lower because it has not gone lower.
Yet the Tories are polling 10% below where they were in 1997. True, Labour is also lower but then the polls also exaggerated their support then (a point often forgotten because of the landslide delivered and because tactical voting produced a result more consistent with the predictions of those bigger leads; the two effects cancelled each other out to an extent).
Even discounting black swans - and it does look as if Sunak is there for the duration and that the Tories won't accidentally re-elect Liz Truss or similar - we should take seriously the possibility, though not the probability, of a 1931-type outcome.
As I said earlier current polling puts the Tory party on the precipice where the difference between 200 seats and 20 is 4% / margin of error and even that depends on the level of tactical voting.
I can easily see the Tories getting 200 seats, I can equally given a little bit of bad news see them getting few to none
Taking my insights from PB, I assumed the RAYNER/ELPHICKE/CURRY effect would see Sunak through to largest party?
Does this apply to any other demographic, Landon? Do I get to be black if I like Motown and fancy myself in cornrows? What if I claim the authentic me has always been black and that you're being racist to me? Would that be OK, or would you find it ludicrous and deeply offensive?
Stonewall are back in front of an Employment Tribunal today for trying to get a black lesbian barrister fired.
To be fair, constant derailing without ever participating in the flow of conversation doesn't really seem much like debate to me.
Which is exactly Rowling’s complaint, that those of differing viewpoints to her own don’t want to actually debate with her, they want her to shut up and go away.
JKR doesn't debate anyone when anyone tries to engage with her tweets so for her to complain that people don't want to debate her seems dishonest.
See this thread:
You’ve asked me several questions on this thread and accused me of avoiding answering, so here goes….
Which is not a 'debate'; it's a position platform.
" I do not, however, believe that surgeries and cross-sex hormones literally turn a person into the opposite sex, nor do I believe in the idea that each of us has a nebulous ‘gender identity’ that may or might not match our sexed bodies. "
Which is where, having known a few trans people, I think she's *very* wrong.
I've no reason to believe that her conviction was unjust, or that a miscarriage of justice was involved. But I do think having dramas and documentaries made *whilst* the case is ongoing, with the active participation of people involved with the case, is troubling. As I've said before about other 'contemporary' or near-contemporary documentaries.
(Again, this post is not about the Letby case; it's about the media interactions with it.)
Interesting. Justice and showbiz don't mix for a very simple reason. The moment anyone connected with the prosecution of a case has a financial interest in the outcome, or a financial interest in the evidence pointing towards any particular conclusion, then the case is tainted, and the entire edifice is the fruit of a poisoned tree. This particularly applies when this is unknown, undeclared or not obvious.
(BTW my working assumption is that if in fact Letby had a viable defence they would have called quite extensive expert evidence, and they didn't. This would not be for want of trying.)
I hope to God the case against her was sound, if only for the sake of the parents. Although that sounds a bit like Lord Denning on the Birmingham Six!
Justice needs to be done; not scapegoating.
I was predisposed to be suspicious of the case against her, because the initial reporting of the evidence sounded vaguely similar to the cot death cases in terms of a potential misuse of statistics. But having looked further it was completely different and much stronger.
The main doubt in the case was over which specific baby deaths and near-deaths to attribute to her actions. There was more evidence for some than others.
The fact that the jury didn't convict on all counts (and acquitted on two) gave me some confidence that they'd done a thorough job, rather than just deciding she was a bad'un.
I am afraid all my heuristics about prosecutors and defenders and jurors have gone out of the window post Post Office. She may have done it, but the fact of her conviction is not evidence that she did it.
I'd have thought the whole history of miscarriages of justice would have got you to that point, not just the PO.
Does this apply to any other demographic, Landon? Do I get to be black if I like Motown and fancy myself in cornrows? What if I claim the authentic me has always been black and that you're being racist to me? Would that be OK, or would you find it ludicrous and deeply offensive?
Stonewall are back in front of an Employment Tribunal today for trying to get a black lesbian barrister fired.
To be fair, constant derailing without ever participating in the flow of conversation doesn't really seem much like debate to me.
Which is exactly Rowling’s complaint, that those of differing viewpoints to her own don’t want to actually debate with her, they want her to shut up and go away.
She doesn’t seem that interested in ‘debate’ unless it’s on twitter with her divisions of Potteristas ready to be deployed, mass debate as it were. She obviously isn’t interested in the grubby and time consuming of actual politics, but unlike most campaigners Rowling doesn’t do interviews on the issue, only fluffy softball stuff on the franchise and my life as a writer & the books wot I wrote. Soundbites and tweets amplified by the media is her medium.
Sounds like a signal to the rest of the world not to buy US EVs.
How do you work that one out?
Assuming its to protect the US auto industry, suggests that US consumers would pay up to double for a Chinese EV than a US EV if there were no tariffs.
The Chinese government is attempting with EVs to do what they did with solar - subsidy to kill foreign competition until the whole supply chain shifts to China, locking in an advantage.
Why should every one put their hands over their eyes and pretend?
On topic, I'd agree that 120 Tory MPs would be about the minimum if we were still dealing with the 1997 world of 3-party politics. But we're not.
The pterodactyl in the ointment is Reform. Voting intention + leadership ratings + relative issues competence + tactical voting + semi-proportional swing could well push the Tories down to 120 seats.
However, the 'worst case' scenario is that Reform's vote comes primarily from ex-2019 Tories (we know this is true at the moment: Deltapoll's most recent had about two-thirds of their current support coming from there; most of the rest, presumably was the Brexit Party), and holds up at current levels.
Now, I know there's a degree of double-counting there but I think there's also a widespread assumption that polls will tighten as we head to the election, as they usually do. And perhaps, probably, they will. But it's no guarantee. The usual pressures on minor-party squeeze aren't there in anything like the scale that they were in 2019. Labour isn't as extreme, the issues aren't as stark, the election isn't as close: and the Tories are really disliked. Swingback has usually started well before now whereas if anything, the Tories are still sinking in support. If Reform polls 10%+ it's possible that the 'worst case' is the Conservatives well down into double figures.
We shouldn't allow our thinking to be hemmed in by past events. I suspect that '120' is considered a minimum because it's ballpark within the worst-ever Tory experience; it cannot go lower because it has not gone lower.
Yet the Tories are polling 10% below where they were in 1997. True, Labour is also lower but then the polls also exaggerated their support then (a point often forgotten because of the landslide delivered and because tactical voting produced a result more consistent with the predictions of those bigger leads; the two effects cancelled each other out to an extent).
Even discounting black swans - and it does look as if Sunak is there for the duration and that the Tories won't accidentally re-elect Liz Truss or similar - we should take seriously the possibility, though not the probability, of a 1931-type outcome.
As I said earlier current polling puts the Tory party on the precipice where the difference between 200 seats and 20 is 4% / margin of error and even that depends on the level of tactical voting.
I can easily see the Tories getting 200 seats, I can equally given a little bit of bad news see them getting few to none
I mean, the Tories need to hope for a few things to keep upwards of 200 seats. They need to keep too many voters heading to other parties (predominantly Reform and Labour) and they need Labour to fail at their squeeze messaging. I don't think they have the talent to do both of those things at the moment. The longer Sunak waits, the more people want him to leave, and the more time there is for more Tory MPs to jump ship, not restand, do normal Tory MP stuff and fuck it all up, etc. For pure damage mitigation he should call a GE and run a campaign of "we know we're going to lose, but you don't want to give Labour free reign to do anything they want / you don't want the Tories to become a laughing stock, so vote for us anyway in some places". That would open up more people to feel they can vote Green and LD if they want to. It would be an admission of failure, which politicians hate, and it would be weak, which politicians hate, but it would at least be honest - and I think the electorate would reward a bit of honesty. They wouldn't elect another Tory government based on it, but I think it would prevent a Canada 93 event - which is what I think the Tories are heading for.
Just on the timing, we're almost at the point where any election called now would be into the Scottish school holidays (an election called today would be held on June 20; the Scottish schools break up the following week). That wouldn't necessarily be a blocker but it would introduce another inconvenient element into the story (and more SNP grievance to feed off). Personally, I don't think it's that big a deal. If a relatively small part of the UK, population-wise, chooses to do it's own thing then that's its right and what devolution's about but it can't (or shouldn't) expect everyone else to run around its exceptional arrangements.
But it's not long before we'd be into the period where you couldn't hold an election before the rest of the schools break up for summer too, and that would matter more in terms of practical arrangements, for public, for media, for activists and candidates and - not least - for local councils running the thing.
I mean, from a purely cynical point of view, wouldn't that likely work in the favour of the Tories?
Is not the current shilly-shallying and silly what-sitting over the election date evidence of the stupidity of scrapping the FTPA?
Yes and no. Yes, it's great to just have the date set well in advance, and there is no picking and choosing by the party in power. No in that the act itself proved to be not worth the lambskin it was written on - no parliament can bind its successors and if you want a general election you get it.
Does this apply to any other demographic, Landon? Do I get to be black if I like Motown and fancy myself in cornrows? What if I claim the authentic me has always been black and that you're being racist to me? Would that be OK, or would you find it ludicrous and deeply offensive?
Sounds like a signal to the rest of the world not to buy US EVs.
How do you work that one out?
Assuming its to protect the US auto industry, suggests that US consumers would pay up to double for a Chinese EV than a US EV if there were no tariffs.
It suggests that anything much less than 100 percent tariffs risks being ineffective, which isn't quite the same thing.
As far as US industry is concerned, note that something like 40% of the workforce are today employed by Japanese companies.
Prediction: Biden will start to lead consistently in the national polls within a month of the Dow hitting 40,000.
Problem: He really needs to be ahead by a few percent given the electoral college.
Biden seems to have lost the Sun Belt, so he needs to win the Rust Belt. Currently he is not... I don't see how the Dow hitting 40k will help with the Rust Belt. Some economic populism or clear impact of infrastructure spending could help. Making the argument that Alito and Thomas are gonna die soon so he could reshape SCOTUS might help (although that could also mobilise the GOP voters who care about the courts). But he can't win them by tacking to the right, because Trump can always just go further rightward or claim he's the safest bet for right wing outcomes.
Biden favourability / unfavourability scores are ugly, on a historic scale. I still think it’s not impossible there’s a Dem convention bait and switch.
I mean, maybe - but I don't know who is the clear inheritor. They don't want it to be Kamala Harris, because she is also not popular. Gavin Newsom has tried to set himself up as the heir to Biden, but I don't see him doing this seamlessly. And they would have to say that Biden had a health issue - they couldn't just swap him out after the primaries with no excuse. And if they say he has a health issue, that basically would be admitting they were wrong when the entire news cycle was "it's ageist to claim that Biden shouldn't rerun" etc...
I just say so from playing with 270towin. Before the toss ups it’s Trump 235 Biden 226. Of the “toss ups” state level polling shows that Arizona, Nevada and Georgia are likely beyond Biden’s reach.
Which puts Trump on 268. And means he has a route through any one of Michigan, Penn or Wisconsin. Which are genuine toss ups. But it should be enough to give Dem decisions makers the fear and take one last look at an alternative to Biden.
Does this apply to any other demographic, Landon? Do I get to be black if I like Motown and fancy myself in cornrows? What if I claim the authentic me has always been black and that you're being racist to me? Would that be OK, or would you find it ludicrous and deeply offensive?
Stonewall are back in front of an Employment Tribunal today for trying to get a black lesbian barrister fired.
To be fair, constant derailing without ever participating in the flow of conversation doesn't really seem much like debate to me.
Which is exactly Rowling’s complaint, that those of differing viewpoints to her own don’t want to actually debate with her, they want her to shut up and go away.
So what exactly are her differing viewpoints about voting systems, swing states, election timing, the effect of the media on the justice system or any of the other topics we were debating before the thread got derailed yet again?
The universities debate was interesting and I'd happily go back to it! I was half way into writing something about it when I ended up on a work call and lost what I was going to post.
In brief, the 'should universities be a public good or a business' was interesting and made me think of a friend in academia who pointed out that there is much more pressure to pass students than there used to be, because rich international students are in effect paying for a finishing school and the degree is the rubber stamp.
Supposedly also cheating is rampant with half the essays clearly being written by essay mills but staff unable to do anything about it. I imagine AI has made everything worse - surely it can't be that long before universities introduce the viva for masters students at least. Unless of course university is just a 'rubber stamp', in which case, what value does a degree really have at this point?
My lad's girlfriend is nearing the end of her Master's in chemistry and has to do a viva, so at least some Master's students already do have to sit one. Also, he tells me that while he's tried using AI to help with essays, he finds the output too generic and error prone, and so has gone back to researching and writing them from scratch.
Does this apply to any other demographic, Landon? Do I get to be black if I like Motown and fancy myself in cornrows? What if I claim the authentic me has always been black and that you're being racist to me? Would that be OK, or would you find it ludicrous and deeply offensive?
Stonewall are back in front of an Employment Tribunal today for trying to get a black lesbian barrister fired.
To be fair, constant derailing without ever participating in the flow of conversation doesn't really seem much like debate to me.
Which is exactly Rowling’s complaint, that those of differing viewpoints to her own don’t want to actually debate with her, they want her to shut up and go away.
JKR doesn't debate anyone when anyone tries to engage with her tweets so for her to complain that people don't want to debate her seems dishonest.
See this thread:
You’ve asked me several questions on this thread and accused me of avoiding answering, so here goes….
Director’s cut of Apocalypse Now with all the good bits excised, imprinting itself on your visual cortex, forever. The (I presume) hero cutting about in a Citroen DS isn’t a good portent.
I am desperately trying to forget the Final Cut. He took one of the best films in the history of cinema and made it worse by adding bits that didn't need to be there. It was like the older Michaelangelo putting stone back around David and giving him a third arm. I have a lot of time for Coppola, but...well, we'll see. I'm still going to see Megalopolis tho.
His generation(ish) are all dying off. Spielberg did the Fabelmans, Scott butchered Napoleon. Scorsese did well but not brilliantly with KOTFM, I have no idea what happened with Mann and Ferrari. This is Coppola's last shot, and I have no idea whether it's going to be good or bad. C'mon guys, one of you produce a diamond before you go into the ground...
I've no reason to believe that her conviction was unjust, or that a miscarriage of justice was involved. But I do think having dramas and documentaries made *whilst* the case is ongoing, with the active participation of people involved with the case, is troubling. As I've said before about other 'contemporary' or near-contemporary documentaries.
(Again, this post is not about the Letby case; it's about the media interactions with it.)
Interesting. Justice and showbiz don't mix for a very simple reason. The moment anyone connected with the prosecution of a case has a financial interest in the outcome, or a financial interest in the evidence pointing towards any particular conclusion, then the case is tainted, and the entire edifice is the fruit of a poisoned tree. This particularly applies when this is unknown, undeclared or not obvious.
(BTW my working assumption is that if in fact Letby had a viable defence they would have called quite extensive expert evidence, and they didn't. This would not be for want of trying.)
I hope to God the case against her was sound, if only for the sake of the parents. Although that sounds a bit like Lord Denning on the Birmingham Six!
Justice needs to be done; not scapegoating.
I was predisposed to be suspicious of the case against her, because the initial reporting of the evidence sounded vaguely similar to the cot death cases in terms of a potential misuse of statistics. But having looked further it was completely different and much stronger.
The main doubt in the case was over which specific baby deaths and near-deaths to attribute to her actions. There was more evidence for some than others.
The fact that the jury didn't convict on all counts (and acquitted on two) gave me some confidence that they'd done a thorough job, rather than just deciding she was a bad'un.
I am afraid all my heuristics about prosecutors and defenders and jurors have gone out of the window post Post Office. She may have done it, but the fact of her conviction is not evidence that she did it.
The poor old jurors are in a unique position. They can't control what evidence they are presented with. The probability is with most of the PO cases, that the prosecution came up with expert (false) evidence about the data, and the defence failed to counter it with their own expert evidence. It seems this was in part because the PO failed to disclose the whole picture to the defence.
The jury is entitled to conclude that a case to answer has been put up, and it hasn't been answered. The judge will tell them to judge only on the evidence and nothing else. Hence the tragedy unfolded. The jurors (I have never been one) are the least responsible part of this shameful saga.
It is a general part of the English system and assumptions that expert witnesses don't lie to you in court. The tainting of this tradition (which is actually quite noble) is a disaster.
I think this is what the truth of PO scandal is. They knowingly lied about horizon, so that juries were led to believe that the postmaster's claims about horizon were rubbish, when we now know that they were correct. We have seen countless examples from the recent evidence of who knew about the horizon issues and when, so unpicking who lied in court shouldn't be too hard to find, if there is a will.
Does this apply to any other demographic, Landon? Do I get to be black if I like Motown and fancy myself in cornrows? What if I claim the authentic me has always been black and that you're being racist to me? Would that be OK, or would you find it ludicrous and deeply offensive?
Stonewall are back in front of an Employment Tribunal today for trying to get a black lesbian barrister fired.
To be fair, constant derailing without ever participating in the flow of conversation doesn't really seem much like debate to me.
Which is exactly Rowling’s complaint, that those of differing viewpoints to her own don’t want to actually debate with her, they want her to shut up and go away.
Is there any argument that would ever change Rowling's pov? Seemingly, no. So she also doesn't want a debate - she just wants to claim that trans people are a threat to the public safety of women and girls with no evidence to back that up, and assert that being trans is not a thing. She also does not want a debate. But it's easier to hide behind "why won't you have a debate" than it is to say "I just want to be publicly grossed out by this group of people I dislike".
Desperate stuff. The terminological inexactitude direct (note the subtle Shakespeare reference). Is this running out of steam?
Prediction: Biden will start to lead consistently in the national polls within a month of the Dow hitting 40,000.
Problem: He really needs to be ahead by a few percent given the electoral college.
Biden seems to have lost the Sun Belt, so he needs to win the Rust Belt. Currently he is not... I don't see how the Dow hitting 40k will help with the Rust Belt. Some economic populism or clear impact of infrastructure spending could help. Making the argument that Alito and Thomas are gonna die soon so he could reshape SCOTUS might help (although that could also mobilise the GOP voters who care about the courts). But he can't win them by tacking to the right, because Trump can always just go further rightward or claim he's the safest bet for right wing outcomes.
Biden favourability / unfavourability scores are ugly, on a historic scale. I still think it’s not impossible there’s a Dem convention bait and switch.
I mean, maybe - but I don't know who is the clear inheritor. They don't want it to be Kamala Harris, because she is also not popular. Gavin Newsom has tried to set himself up as the heir to Biden, but I don't see him doing this seamlessly. And they would have to say that Biden had a health issue - they couldn't just swap him out after the primaries with no excuse. And if they say he has a health issue, that basically would be admitting they were wrong when the entire news cycle was "it's ageist to claim that Biden shouldn't rerun" etc...
I just say so from playing with 270towin. Before the toss ups it’s Trump 235 Biden 226. Of the “toss ups” state level polling shows that Arizona, Nevada and Georgia are likely beyond Biden’s reach.
Which puts Trump on 268. And means he has a route through any one of Michigan, Penn or Wisconsin. Which are genuine toss ups. But it should be enough to give Dem decisions makers the fear and take one last look at an alternative to Biden.
Sure, and it should also make Democrats think about doing popular policies / stop doing things that are unpopular with their base. But they won't. Because the Democrats are shit at politics and only do the vote-scolding of "the alternative is so much worse, of course you'll vote for us".
Does this apply to any other demographic, Landon? Do I get to be black if I like Motown and fancy myself in cornrows? What if I claim the authentic me has always been black and that you're being racist to me? Would that be OK, or would you find it ludicrous and deeply offensive?
Stonewall are back in front of an Employment Tribunal today for trying to get a black lesbian barrister fired.
To be fair, constant derailing without ever participating in the flow of conversation doesn't really seem much like debate to me.
Which is exactly Rowling’s complaint, that those of differing viewpoints to her own don’t want to actually debate with her, they want her to shut up and go away.
To be clear: IMV trans people exist. If you've lived as a woman for years, and had all the ops, then as far as I'm concerned you're a woman. .
Some do, most don’t.
As a domestic abuse survivor Rowling is understandably concerned about men who seek access to women’s spaces. Not all of them “just want to get on with their lives”.
In particular where women are vulnerable - prison (most female prisoners are in for non violent crime, unlike men, and trans women prisoners have male, not female offending profiles), rape crisis centres, hospital wards and so on.
Gender ideology is a belief system - which people are perfectly entitled to believe in. People are also entitled not to believe it and resist its imposition as a superior criterion to “sex”.
Comments
BTW, universities is a field where London dominates less than many. Of the top 30 in the latest Guardian league table (not very reliable or meaningful, but it's something) 5 are in London, 5 are in Scotland, 20 in the rest of the UK.
Leeds definitely does have multiple universities. If you want to take the 2025 Leeds uni course, just go to Beckett a couple of years earlier - the number of courses Leeds steal wholesale is obvious once someone points it out to you
Spurs not winning the league would be some kind of consolation were we not to qualify for the CL but the CL is the most important competition out there (oh Thierry, oh Freddie - how much did those misses cost us). And I would want to be playing there.
https://twitter.com/culturaltutor/status/1790106921799688402
We could do away with this and have a much more dynamic democracy if instead of 5 year terms then a general election, we had elections for a selection of seats every 3 months (ideally elected under STV or at least AV) such that an unpopular government couldn't hold the country to ransom waiting for a GE, but a popular government could actually strengthen its position in parliament over time.
Every 3 months a tranche of 30 seats goes up for election. Either regional (that would be fun but could create distortions in policy) or say alphabetical. Over the course of 5 or so years the entire house of commons would be re-elected. By now the Conservatives would have lost their majority but Labour would probably be working as a minority or with coalition partners, gradually building up their seat count.
Every 3 months too often? How about 60 seats every 6 months, or 120 seats every year at the start of May?
It's not dissimilar to how US senate elections work.
You can look back over the last decade and ponder with interest how that sort of system might have played out.
What’s racist is reducing Blackness to liking Motown and wearing cornrows, you transphobic Nazi clown.
https://x.com/OhNoSheTwitnt/status/1789971579671134469
Does this apply to any other demographic, Landon? Do I get to be black if I like Motown and fancy myself in cornrows? What if I claim the authentic me has always been black and that you're being racist to me? Would that be OK, or would you find it ludicrous and deeply offensive?
https://x.com/jk_rowling/status/1789681522544455976
It's the same reason as I dislike electing councils by thirds, it makes handover from one party to another messy.
(BTW my working assumption is that if in fact Letby had a viable defence they would have called quite extensive expert evidence, and they didn't. This would not be for want of trying.)
Although that sounds a bit like Lord Denning on the Birmingham Six!
Justice needs to be done; not scapegoating.
1. It'd be a tacit admission that funding agreed for getting the Stormont administration back up and running wasn't as good a deal as they had previously claimed.
2. Big Gav Robinson needs more time to bed himself in and establish his independence. He won't want to be seen as weak by backing a loser.
3. There's always a tension within the DUP between pragmatism vs principle - pragmatism has had the upper hand recently, so they're more likely to tilt back towards principle when they next need to deal with Westminster.
It's also worth noting that Rishi had spent quite a bit of time and energy buttering up Wee Jeffrey Donaldson personally. With his sudden departure, that now looks like a waste of effort.
The main doubt in the case was over which specific baby deaths and near-deaths to attribute to her actions. There was more evidence for some than others.
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/j-k-rowling-trans-twitter-elon-musk-1235019620/
https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/robin-dembroff-dee-payton-breaking-analogy-between-race-and-gender/
DERAIL
Bring back endless AI spam.
But the main problem with the suggestion is a combinaton of two things. As a country moves from say Conservative to Labour, there will be change over period where a coalition government is needed. For coalitions to work there needs to be time to negotiate a strong coalition agreement. That won't be pratical if the make up of a coalition changes every few months.
The reason why the Senate system works is that a) the change is only every two years, but more importantly b) the senate is not the government. That role in in the USA is the reponsibility of the president who appoints hst ministers, mostly outside the House/Senate. The presisdent is a clear change every 4/8 years and not a gradual pendulum swing.
I was thinking of distortions if a government had a large majority, such that one set of seats would not change the government whatever the outcome - they'd be treated by voters more like by elections, possibly. But then those big majorities would probably become uncommon, as there wouldn't be the big release of tension every five years and giving the government - if the opposition seemed better - a good kicking.
I think you'd want to work out a good geographical distribution rather than alphabetically. Larger, multi-member constituencies might be one way, as in some of the approaches to going more proportional. Say five members, with one coming up for re-election each year.
It's fine to use statistical anomalies to look more into something to see whether there is a problem (as in benchmarking hospital/doctor performance etc) but one has to remember that type 1 errors are common and that green jelly beans might not cause acne
Re Meadows, one also has to understand that you can't use stats based on independent events for things that are likely not independent - for non-sinister reasons - too!
But I’m gratified people have taken my post seriously enough to rebut it.
I think things will only improve if everyone - voters, politicians, media - starts to act in a more grown-up fashion. Five years of consequence-free throwing of tantrums all round, while the government tries to do sensible things by stealth, is no way to develop a more mature political culture.
An argument against more frequent elections that I find more convincing is that the purpose of electrons is to elect representatives to sort out the detail, the purpose of which is to enable the voters not to pay close attention for as long as possible. More frequent elections is therefore inefficient.
I quite like the idea - not sure whose it was - of updating this model for modern times by doing away with representative elections and replacing it with delegation of individual votes. Politicians and parties would compete to collect delegations from voters. So, for example, I could choose to delegate my vote in the Commons to Shahrar Ali of the Green Party, and he'd then get to vote on legislation with the accumulated votes of everyone who had chosen to do the same.
Problem: He really needs to be ahead by a few percent given the electoral college.
But it's not long before we'd be into the period where you couldn't hold an election before the rest of the schools break up for summer too, and that would matter more in terms of practical arrangements, for public, for media, for activists and candidates and - not least - for local councils running the thing.
The swing from 2019 is so large and the current Tory share so small historically that you simply run out of votes to cull from Labour seats and the more marginal ones to stay at something like a core vote, so the balance *has* to come from the safer Tory ones.
If I recall correctly, it would be much less proportional than even FPTP - with MPs from safe seats being weighted more heavily, it means that changes in marginal constituencies count for less.
(And, of course, pure delegative systems tend to be associated with authoritarianism - see soviet democracy, council communism, or even Uribismo in Chile in the 2000s)
Stonewall are back in front of an Employment Tribunal today for trying to get a black lesbian barrister fired.
The jury is entitled to conclude that a case to answer has been put up, and it hasn't been answered. The judge will tell them to judge only on the evidence and nothing else. Hence the tragedy unfolded. The jurors (I have never been one) are the least responsible part of this shameful saga.
It is a general part of the English system and assumptions that expert witnesses don't lie to you in court. The tainting of this tradition (which is actually quite noble) is a disaster.
Poster 2: I don't want to roll around in shit
Poster 1: What are you afraid of, why won't you roll around in the shit, you're just an authoritarian who won't debate the benefits of rolling around in shit.
And it costs about seven times more to do a high-quality opinion poll in each of seven swing states then it does to do the same nationwide, so you should have more polls nationwide, which gives you statistical advantages.
To try to take a broader (and more interesting) perspective on this than the trans debate, strip out the trans stuff from the rolling stone article I jokingly linked to downthread and what you're left with is an interesting article about how people are radicalised. TL;DR, Rowling is to Twitter as Plato was to PB - well and truly down the rabbit hole.
I had a friend who was obsessed with 4chan back when it was protesting Scientology and posting crude memes, but similarly got sucked into a lot of the racist rhetoric as the tone of the website shifted from early chaos to 'white nationalism' as the Nazis took over the site (It was always a cesspit - it became a racist cesspit).
And this was long before the algorithmic filter bubble world we live in today, where the algorithm
a) sees what we're most interested and
b) pushes more content in front of us about that topic that
c) first reinforces that worldview,
d) shows us stuff that outrages that worldview and
e) drives us into ever deeper and more extreme ideological positions as a result of a,b,c,d.
Rowling is but one example of that on a single subject, but there are plenty of examples of others who have been similarly radicalised by social media on a variety of topics.
I'm not sure there's an answer to the toxicity of online debate, because it seems like the steps a -> e above seem baked into the way social media platforms are built. Or, more scarily, baked into the way human psychology has evolved.
Constructive, well reasoned debate on any topic can be interesting and enlightening. But when it descends to the level of vitriol, as it so often does particularly on matters of 'identity politics', it benefits nobody.
Stating that a man is a man?
That sport and football in particular lacks diversity?
While I hesitate to comment, many people are missing the key point in that @jk_rowling
post. She was, among other things, pointing out the *lack of sex diversity in football management.*
This is, ofc, an important point, notable for any self-styled fans of diversity in sport...
... Appointing a TW manager increases diversity on one axis, but it does *nothing* to alter the lack of sex diversity in management, which is a persistent and troubling feature of UK football.
And it's *impossible* to make this point without referring to sex.
https://x.com/runthinkwrite/status/1789981370539716816
US quadruples tariffs on Chinese EVs to 100%
https://news.sky.com/story/us-takes-aim-at-chinas-green-economy-with-new-tariffs-but-why-13135620
Trying to combine the two things in one chamber, as suggested above, doesn't work, IMO.
The (I presume) hero cutting about in a Citroen DS isn’t a good portent.
https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1790176325237449085
On one hand they want to encourage EV sales over cars with engines, and on the other hand the Chinese are clearly dumping these cars (in the economists’ sense of the word), with huge government support, and attempting to drive Western EV producers out of business to leave themselves with a monopoly.
Not an enviable position to be in, but in the US there’s bipartisan support for raising tariffs, the EU are also discussing it, and it’s likely to be a live issue in the UK soon as well.
So I'm not sure longer term it's been "trending" Democrat - just that it's sometimes close enough that they are regularly tempted to spend a vast amount of money on elections there while having nothing to show for it in three decades.
That said, Biden did surprisingly well in 2020.
(It's of course true that US manufacturers won't win a direct competition with Chinese ones, but neither domestic market is even close to a "free marketplace")
In brief, the 'should universities be a public good or a business' was interesting and made me think of a friend in academia who pointed out that there is much more pressure to pass students than there used to be, because rich international students are in effect paying for a finishing school and the degree is the rubber stamp.
Supposedly also cheating is rampant with half the essays clearly being written by essay mills but staff unable to do anything about it. I imagine AI has made everything worse - surely it can't be that long before universities introduce the viva for masters students at least. Unless of course university is just a 'rubber stamp', in which case, what value does a degree really have at this point?
You’ve asked me several questions on this thread and accused me of avoiding answering, so here goes….
https://x.com/jk_rowling/status/1776616861888655835
She definitely seems to want trans people to shut up and go away. More than that; it seems to me that she'd be fine if there were zero trans people, because she does not seem to think they really exist. For some people, trans people just seem to be dangerous men cosplaying, or lesbians who have been conned.
To be clear: IMV trans people exist. If you've lived as a woman for years, and had all the ops, then as far as I'm concerned you're a woman. Everything else scales down from that position; but generally, if they're not harming anyone: let people be who they want to be.
" I do not, however, believe that surgeries and cross-sex hormones literally turn a person into the opposite sex, nor do I believe in the idea that each of us has a nebulous ‘gender identity’ that may or might not match our sexed bodies. "
Which is where, having known a few trans people, I think she's *very* wrong.
She obviously isn’t interested in the grubby and time consuming of actual politics, but unlike most campaigners Rowling doesn’t do interviews on the issue, only fluffy softball stuff on the franchise and my life as a writer & the books wot I wrote. Soundbites and tweets amplified by the media is her medium.
Why should every one put their hands over their eyes and pretend?
As far as US industry is concerned, note that something like 40% of the workforce are today employed by Japanese companies.
Which puts Trump on 268. And means he has a route through any one of Michigan, Penn or Wisconsin. Which are genuine toss ups. But it should be enough to give Dem decisions makers the fear and take one last look at an alternative to Biden.
Expect as @Sandpit says tariffs will be applied by the EUand UK following the US decision
His generation(ish) are all dying off. Spielberg did the Fabelmans, Scott butchered Napoleon. Scorsese did well but not brilliantly with KOTFM, I have no idea what happened with Mann and Ferrari. This is Coppola's last shot, and I have no idea whether it's going to be good or bad. C'mon guys, one of you produce a diamond before you go into the ground...
As a domestic abuse survivor Rowling is understandably concerned about men who seek access to women’s spaces. Not all of them “just want to get on with their lives”.
In particular where women are vulnerable - prison (most female prisoners are in for non violent crime, unlike men, and trans women prisoners have male, not female offending profiles), rape crisis centres, hospital wards and so on.
Gender ideology is a belief system - which people are perfectly entitled to believe in. People are also entitled not to believe it and resist its imposition as a superior criterion to “sex”.