I can say growing up no new car, no pets, no sky....I must be in line for leader of a political party.
I grew up with oil fired heating and peat in the fire.
Join the back of the queue.
Nah you see that's the mistake you are making, you can't be really poor, that's not allowed. You have to just appear to be in touch with the struggle.
You had heating? I grew up with one coal fire and a couple of paraffin heaters. And permanent frost on the inside of the windows from November to March. And I wasn't poor, because in the late 1940s the majority of the population were just like us. Most of us didn't live in houses or flats we, or our parents owned, didn't have electricity and thought ourselves bloody lucky to have a house at all, because most of our neighbourhood was a huge bombsite.
As for the idea of having any kind of car...
My Grandad was the first to have a car and a tv in their area. Imagine explaining that to youth of today....what did you use the internet on then ;-)
The Sky Sports are particularly good at is refreshing themselves and innovation. They are way ahead of everybody else in the quality of the analysis and who they pick to present this.
Watching Henry explain Man City on MNF was a masterclass in how people, who are in the game and know the game at the very highest level, think about it and what is trying to be achieved.
Same with the cricket, they brutally axed all the old duffers and in came the likes of Kumar Sangakkara. Not only a legendary player but is involved with strategy in IPL.
Golf, for the Masters, they will have Butch Harmon, the man who coaches or has coached nearly all the best players in the game.
Yes, it's exceptionally high quality coverage. £30/month is an absolute steal – and it's possible to get it cheaper as part of a wider cable package.
There is one aspect of this which I am staggered has never been even hinted at, let alone discussed. The failure of the Post Office is obvious and they deserve a special depth of hell. But what about the Courts ???
It is the job of the courts to determine whether a defendant is guilty or not guilty. They failed even more spectacularly that the Post Office in their alloted task. Quite frankly it is the Judges that allowed these miscarriages of justice to occur in the courts they were presiding over who should be in these open cells.
If someone tries to stitch me up, and some have tried at a much lower level then I would rely on the courts to dig down to the truth. THEY DID NOT DO THIS. Why are they not at the receiving end of everyone's wrath, they are mine.
We've discussed this before.
Without claiming the courts are perfect, it's important to note that neither judge nor jury can easily detect when an apparently respectable expert witness is perjuring themself - and that is yet more difficult in cases relying on computer evidence, when government has passed legislation effectively saying that it can't be challenged. (One of the most disgraceful - and predictably idiotic - pieces of legislation ever to hit the statute book.)
British courts are not investigators - they can only deal with the evidence presented to them.
The law of evidence has to make presumptions, though they are all rebuttable. And this is the difficulty in an electronic digital age.
To take a naive example, if a piece of evidence is what Y says that X said in a phone call, there is a presumption not that Y is telling the truth, but that in the actual world what Y heard relates reliably to what X said because the telephone message heard is a correlate of what is said.
If the prosecution had to prove this with expert evidence every time, the entire system would collapse.
The computer problem, and the digital world generally, is a more or less infinite extension of this problem.
The current law places the burden of proof, in criminal cases relying on computer evidence, on the defendant. That is a clear injustice.
It's not an simple problem, as you note, but the current solution is plain wrong.
What is tricky is suggesting what would be the right approach. The wrong ones are clear enough. I can't see a way through it. Large scale real world presumptions are absolutely essential to the operation of law, as they are to daily life.
The presumption that what Nigelb wrote has a correlate in what I have just read relies upon the reliability of a staggeringly complex global operation which would take massive expertise to unravel and prove or disprove in its entirety.
In the big picture I would like to see a national public defence forensic service dedicated to assisting the defence in criminal cases charged with the task of sorting exactly these sorts of issues, both in individual cases and in spotting generic problems. I shall be waiting quite a time.
At an absolute minimum, crafting some possible exceptions to the current iron rule ought to be possible. It's a matter of plain fact that computers do not operate as deterministic machines, and the product of given programs is subject to error. The statute could be made to recognise that.
That won't do really. It's not an iron rule, it's a rebuttable presumption which is totally different. Iron rules are irrebuttable. And not a good idea. (Like Rwanda is a safe country).
The Sky Sports are particularly good at is refreshing themselves and innovation. They are way ahead of everybody else in the quality of the analysis and who they pick to present this.
Watching Henry explain Man City on MNF was a masterclass in how people, who are in the game and know the game at the very highest level, think about it and what is trying to be achieved.
Same with the cricket, they brutally axed all the old duffers and in came the likes of Kumar Sangakkara. Not only a legendary player but is involved with strategy in IPL.
Golf, for the Masters, they will have Butch Harmon, the man who coaches or has coached nearly all the best players in the game.
Yes, it's exceptionally high quality coverage. £30/month is an absolute steal – and it's possible to get it cheaper as part of a wider cable package.
I would pay £30/month just to listen to Kumar Sangakkara talk about anything!
Yes a lot of polling variability. And fairly ridiculous that someone who has not lived here or paid our main taxes for 20-30 years still has a vote. Hope this is reversed swiftly.
I wonder if Tories really war gamed it, before given the 3 million foreign legion votes?
Are these people Remainers or Brexiteers? Are they close to family in UK struggling from what the Tory’s have done to the country - sewage in all the water, NHS waiting lists, out of touch Prime Minister during cost of living crisis etc.
Survation data has slightly different fieldwork dates ('5-11 June, 60% conducted 10-11 June) - but imagine it's methodology playing a big part of the difference.
See also: another poll showing the Greens on 8%!
Labour now below 1997 New Labour voteshare levels with both Survation and Verian but heading for more seats thanks to the divide on the right
Erm, not because of “the divide on the right”
But because of how shit the Conservative Party are right now in most voters’ eyes. Dress it up how you like, add 2 + 2 and make yourself whatever figure you like, but it’s the pants performance of the tories which more than any other single factor is driving this General Election.
Fact my friend.
No it is the divide on the right giving the Tories 100 seats not 200+ seats under FPTP
No, it's not.
It's that people don't want to vote for your version of the Tories.
The right is not divided any more than the left is or you can add Labour and Greens and Lib Dems altogether.
People who vote for different parties have different views. That's their choice.
this post is just plain bonkers
No, it's backed by evidence.
If Lib Dems wanted to vote Labour they'd vote Labour. They don't, as they don't want to, for whatever reason which is their free choice.
If Reform voters wanted to vote Tory they'd vote Tory. They don't as they don't want to which is their free choice.
Adding disparate parties together and pretending they're a division or a whole is what's bonkers.
Change - about all you'll be left with once Reeves starts taxing you
Come on please spare us this kind of thing. It’s just straight out of the CCHQ playbook. Regardless of which Party it comes from this site deserves better.
Brooke has become an unbearable partisan bore.
Much worse than that, his keyboard frequently loses its apostrophe function.
I wonder if Tories really war gamed it, before given the 3 million foreign legion votes?
Are these people Remainers or Brexiteers? Are they close to family in UK struggling from what the Tory’s have done to the country - sewage in all the water, NHS waiting lists, out of touch Prime Minister during cost of living crisis etc.
If you aren't in the UK for over 10 years that seems long enough for you to no longer be able to vote. That's two parliaments (and in modern history 10 PMs) down the line.
How many people who haven't lived in the UK for over 15 years are ever coming back? Very few I would guess. Obviously if you do return permanently, then you should be able to vote again.
Few seem to appreciate that this scandal, the blood contamination case, the Andy Malkinson case (and other similar ones), the endless NHS and Police scandals are all symptomatic of a shredded administrative and political class lacking in competence, integrity and either the ability to admit to or willingness to correct mistakes.
I found myself in disagreement with this paragraph.
But only because you forgot to mention education...
It's a very long list. Ours was not meant to be comprehensive.
Very good piece.
I’m not usually one to demand heads roll for scandals, but I make exceptions for the Post Office and for those who covered up the grooming gangs.
There’s more than a decade of PO senior management who conspired to cover up this scandal, and their victims deserve to see them in court.
Thank you Sandpit.
As the Inquiry approaches its end, it creeps nearer and nearer to the political arena. We will soon be seeing Vince Cable and Jo Swinson giving evidence. There will also be a small number of Civil Servants appearing.
As Ms C explained to me, the terms of the Inquiry were crafted by Civil Servants so it should come as no surprise that its remit stops a little short of scrutinising the role of the Civil Service and its Political masters. My guess is that they will say they were lied to, and in any case didn't make any decisions concerning prosecutions. I doubt even Jason Beer will be able to pierce that veil.
There will however be some prosecutions, I think. I just hope they go a bit beyond Paula Vennells and her immediate buddies. She deserves it, but scapegoating her would only assist the cover-up.
The most interesting witness will probably be Gareth Jenkins, the chief software engineer who designed and updated the Horizon computer system.
Sir Wyn evidently thinks so too. He's allowed four days.
Ms C and I have both been surprised and a little disappointed that no PO witness has completely broken ranks and told it like it really is. It is just possible Jenkins may be the one. He has little to lose. He's the number one candidate for a perjury charge, he's not of the PO, and at his age you'd think he'd do anything to stay out of chokey - even turn King's Evidence.
Labour to receive fewer votes (12,877,918 votes) than they got at 2017 General Election
Current price 13/8 the price when I placed a bet was 8/1
Based on likely reduced turnout I reckon Lab will need to be on circa 44 to exceed the 2017 figure DYOR
That's an interesting bet. People often conflate 2017 and 2019 and forget that Magic Grandpa did rather well in the former (and terribly in the latter).
The forgetting is often deliberate (I'm looking at you HUYFD 😀) in order to beat Starmer with the "worse than Corbyn" stick. But that narrative leads to the odds you quote. Getting fewer actual votes is distinctly possible.
That's the best RefCon poll movement for a while: up 3 points net. But only good compared with their dire score last time. It's LLG 60 RefCon 35, one of the best LLG leads across the pollsters.
No real evidence for a Lib Dem surge. I think that YouGov was an outlier. Plenty of evidence for a Reform surge.
No point adding G to LL
Most Greens will not vote for LAB under any circumstances
That's the best RefCon poll movement for a while: up 3 points net. But only good compared with their dire score last time. It's LLG 60 RefCon 35, one of the best LLG leads across the pollsters.
No real evidence for a Lib Dem surge. I think that YouGov was an outlier. Plenty of evidence for a Reform surge.
No point adding G to LL
Most Greens will not vote for LAB under any circumstances
🤣
Put your mouth where your mouth is then. What PV are the Greens ending up with? Couple of recent polls put them on 8%. You saying higher than 4%?
I can say growing up no new car, no pets, no sky....I must be in line for leader of a political party.
I grew up with oil fired heating and peat in the fire.
Join the back of the queue.
I grew up with no central heating. We had a single fireplace with coal/coke. I'd get "potted meat" legs from standing too close with my back to the fire to warm up on my return from school.
I wonder if Tories really war gamed it, before given the 3 million foreign legion votes?
Are these people Remainers or Brexiteers? Are they close to family in UK struggling from what the Tory’s have done to the country - sewage in all the water, NHS waiting lists, out of touch Prime Minister during cost of living crisis etc.
If you aren't in the UK for over 10 years that seems long enough for you to no longer be able to vote. That's two parliaments (and in modern history 10 PMs) down the line.
How many people who haven't lived in the UK for over 15 years are ever coming back? Very few I would guess.
A decade is five Parliaments now looking ahead a few weeks and back the rest of the decade.
Possibly, but most of the vote that will be shifted by the story has already gone.
The DUP get some credit for how decisively they acted when they heard the news - the party were told after 11pm, and he was kicked out first thing the next morning. No equivocations, no hand-wringing, no delay. Still not a great situation for them, but it would have been much, much worse if they'd messed around.
Their real problem comes from their position on post-Brexit trading arrangements and the chaos in public services resulting from the prolonged absence of the Stormont administration.
They're being squeezed from both sides, and this election is, er, unlikely to go well for them.
Do the PB Sports-Loving Sky Refuseniks also refuse to watch Sky Sports at their friends' houses and in the pub?
Or is it just screening it in their own homes they object to?
It was one of the biggest snobberies of the 1990s, not wanting to have a satellite dish attached to the outside of your home. Lots of people who loved sport had to listen to it on the radio because they wouldn't contemplate having Sky Sports installed.
I can say growing up no new car, no pets, no sky....I must be in line for leader of a political party.
I grew up with oil fired heating and peat in the fire.
Join the back of the queue.
I grew up with no central heating. We had a single fireplace with coal/coke. I'd get "potted meat" legs from standing too close with my back to the fire to warm up on my return from school.
There is one aspect of this which I am staggered has never been even hinted at, let alone discussed. The failure of the Post Office is obvious and they deserve a special depth of hell. But what about the Courts ???
It is the job of the courts to determine whether a defendant is guilty or not guilty. They failed even more spectacularly that the Post Office in their alloted task. Quite frankly it is the Judges that allowed these miscarriages of justice to occur in the courts they were presiding over who should be in these open cells.
If someone tries to stitch me up, and some have tried at a much lower level then I would rely on the courts to dig down to the truth. THEY DID NOT DO THIS. Why are they not at the receiving end of everyone's wrath, they are mine.
We've discussed this before.
Without claiming the courts are perfect, it's important to note that neither judge nor jury can easily detect when an apparently respectable expert witness is perjuring themself - and that is yet more difficult in cases relying on computer evidence, when government has passed legislation effectively saying that it can't be challenged. (One of the most disgraceful - and predictably idiotic - pieces of legislation ever to hit the statute book.)
British courts are not investigators - they can only deal with the evidence presented to them.
The law of evidence has to make presumptions, though they are all rebuttable. And this is the difficulty in an electronic digital age.
To take a naive example, if a piece of evidence is what Y says that X said in a phone call, there is a presumption not that Y is telling the truth, but that in the actual world what Y heard relates reliably to what X said because the telephone message heard is a correlate of what is said.
If the prosecution had to prove this with expert evidence every time, the entire system would collapse.
The computer problem, and the digital world generally, is a more or less infinite extension of this problem.
The current law places the burden of proof, in criminal cases relying on computer evidence, on the defendant. That is a clear injustice.
It's not an simple problem, as you note, but the current solution is plain wrong.
What is tricky is suggesting what would be the right approach. The wrong ones are clear enough. I can't see a way through it. Large scale real world presumptions are absolutely essential to the operation of law, as they are to daily life.
The presumption that what Nigelb wrote has a correlate in what I have just read relies upon the reliability of a staggeringly complex global operation which would take massive expertise to unravel and prove or disprove in its entirety.
In the big picture I would like to see a national public defence forensic service dedicated to assisting the defence in criminal cases charged with the task of sorting exactly these sorts of issues, both in individual cases and in spotting generic problems. I shall be waiting quite a time.
At an absolute minimum, crafting some possible exceptions to the current iron rule ought to be possible. It's a matter of plain fact that computers do not operate as deterministic machines, and the product of given programs is subject to error. The statute could be made to recognise that.
I used to work on bit-reproducible computer code. One of the tests after making changes was that the results would be bit-reproducible across different processor decompositions.
Across complex, real world systems, that's not particularly common though. (I acknowledge I should have said "some computers".)
I ought to be possible to codify some sort of standards for assessing what is reliable and what isn't. The current bald assumption is palpable nonsense, but it is, nonetheless, the law.
I can say growing up no new car, no pets, no sky....I must be in line for leader of a political party.
I grew up with oil fired heating and peat in the fire.
Join the back of the queue.
Nah you see that's the mistake you are making, you can't be really poor, that's not allowed. You have to just appear to be in touch with the struggle.
You had heating? I grew up with one coal fire and a couple of paraffin heaters. And permanent frost on the inside of the windows from November to March. And I wasn't poor, because in the late 1940s the majority of the population were just like us. Most of us didn't live in houses or flats we, or our parents owned, didn't have electricity and thought ourselves bloody lucky to have a house at all, because most of our neighbourhood was a huge bombsite.
As for the idea of having any kind of car...
70s weren't dramatically different to this. Paraffin runs to the garage for the paraffin heater, check. Drawing patterns on the inside ice on the crittal windows, check. Cars were much more normal though and the bombed out sites had all been cleared by the 60s
Do the PB Sports-Loving Sky Refuseniks also refuse to watch Sky Sports at their friends' houses and in the pub?
Or is it just screening it in their own homes they object to?
It was one of the biggest snobberies of the 1990s, not wanting to have a satellite dish attached to the outside of your home. Lots of people who loved sport had to listen to it on the radio because they wouldn't contemplate having Sky Sports installed.
Where as being a commoner from Stoke, it was the opposite, people couldn't wait to show it off...and the masssssive telly on wheels, that was like some sort of World Strongest Man challenge to try and move. Eddie Hall would have to come round if you ever wanted to move it upstairs.
The very weird testimonies of @LostPassword and @Nigelb rather prove my point about Sky Sports sneering. They obviously don’t like sport that much.
I'm not sneering (which is your own weird conclusion) at Sky sports. I just despise Murdoch and his legacy.
As I noted, I miss the cricket. I couldn't care less about football.
Sky Sports is nothing to do with Murdoch anymore, he sold it six years ago.
It's owned by Comcast, an American network that has sod all to do with Murdoch.
"And his legacy."
You will of course be aware that Comcast is even more of a sports monopolist than was the Dirty Digger.
Arguably the BBC is itself a TV Monopolist. Do you refuse to pay the licence fee?
Refusing to pay for Sky is legal. Refusing to pay the BBC tax, and therefore Kuenssberg’s wages, is illegal.
Paying the licence fee is a choice I chose not to make for about 14 years. I decided to start paying it again in early 2021 - when Channel 4 bought the TV rights for England's tour of India. (But apparently I'm not a true sports fan).
It's perfectly legal (in Britain) to watch Netflix and not pay the licence fee. (In Ireland the law is stricter, you need a licence for the TV itself)
I can say growing up no new car, no pets, no sky....I must be in line for leader of a political party.
I grew up with oil fired heating and peat in the fire.
Join the back of the queue.
I still have oil fired heating. Pretty common in rural parts.
Fairliered Jnr. installed oil fired heating in his newbuild in rural ANME last year. No mains gas and heat pumps were too expensive and inefficient. He also has a wood burner. Green heating policies don’t work in rural areas.
The very weird testimonies of @LostPassword and @Nigelb rather prove my point about Sky Sports sneering. They obviously don’t like sport that much.
I'm not sneering (which is your own weird conclusion) at Sky sports. I just despise Murdoch and his legacy.
As I noted, I miss the cricket. I couldn't care less about football.
Sky Sports is nothing to do with Murdoch anymore, he sold it six years ago.
It's owned by Comcast, an American network that has sod all to do with Murdoch.
"And his legacy."
You will of course be aware that Comcast is even more of a sports monopolist than was the Dirty Digger.
Arguably the BBC is itself a TV Monopolist. Do you refuse to pay the licence fee?
Refusing to pay for Sky is legal. Refusing to pay the BBC tax, and therefore Kuenssberg’s wages, is illegal.
Paying the licence fee is a choice I chose not to make for about 14 years. I decided to start paying it again in early 2021 - when Channel 4 bought the TV rights for England's tour of India. (But apparently I'm not a true sports fan).
It's perfectly legal (in Britain) to watch Netflix and not pay the licence fee. (In Ireland the law is stricter, you need a licence for the TV itself)
If you don't watch any live tv or iPlayer, no licence required. You don't need it for ITVX, 4OD, Netflix etc. You can even listen to BBC radio or watch clips of Kuenssberg's show on the BBC website with no licence.
If it wasn't for Sky Sports I wouldn't have it as I watch zero live tv other than sports. And I don't know the last time I watched anything on iPlayer.
There is one aspect of this which I am staggered has never been even hinted at, let alone discussed. The failure of the Post Office is obvious and they deserve a special depth of hell. But what about the Courts ???
It is the job of the courts to determine whether a defendant is guilty or not guilty. They failed even more spectacularly that the Post Office in their alloted task. Quite frankly it is the Judges that allowed these miscarriages of justice to occur in the courts they were presiding over who should be in these open cells.
If someone tries to stitch me up, and some have tried at a much lower level then I would rely on the courts to dig down to the truth. THEY DID NOT DO THIS. Why are they not at the receiving end of everyone's wrath, they are mine.
We've discussed this before.
Without claiming the courts are perfect, it's important to note that neither judge nor jury can easily detect when an apparently respectable expert witness is perjuring themself - and that is yet more difficult in cases relying on computer evidence, when government has passed legislation effectively saying that it can't be challenged. (One of the most disgraceful - and predictably idiotic - pieces of legislation ever to hit the statute book.)
British courts are not investigators - they can only deal with the evidence presented to them.
The law of evidence has to make presumptions, though they are all rebuttable. And this is the difficulty in an electronic digital age.
To take a naive example, if a piece of evidence is what Y says that X said in a phone call, there is a presumption not that Y is telling the truth, but that in the actual world what Y heard relates reliably to what X said because the telephone message heard is a correlate of what is said.
If the prosecution had to prove this with expert evidence every time, the entire system would collapse.
The computer problem, and the digital world generally, is a more or less infinite extension of this problem.
The current law places the burden of proof, in criminal cases relying on computer evidence, on the defendant. That is a clear injustice.
It's not an simple problem, as you note, but the current solution is plain wrong.
What is tricky is suggesting what would be the right approach. The wrong ones are clear enough. I can't see a way through it. Large scale real world presumptions are absolutely essential to the operation of law, as they are to daily life.
The presumption that what Nigelb wrote has a correlate in what I have just read relies upon the reliability of a staggeringly complex global operation which would take massive expertise to unravel and prove or disprove in its entirety.
In the big picture I would like to see a national public defence forensic service dedicated to assisting the defence in criminal cases charged with the task of sorting exactly these sorts of issues, both in individual cases and in spotting generic problems. I shall be waiting quite a time.
At an absolute minimum, crafting some possible exceptions to the current iron rule ought to be possible. It's a matter of plain fact that computers do not operate as deterministic machines, and the product of given programs is subject to error. The statute could be made to recognise that.
That won't do really. It's not an iron rule, it's a rebuttable presumption which is totally different. Iron rules are irrebuttable. And not a good idea. (Like Rwanda is a safe country).
The iron rule is the presumption in favour of the computer system; that is an iron rule with no exceptions. A defendant must therefore prove the evidence unreliable, rather than the prosecution proving their case.
An individual defendant, even if entirely innocent, often has no realistic means of meeting that challenge.
I can say growing up no new car, no pets, no sky....I must be in line for leader of a political party.
I grew up with oil fired heating and peat in the fire.
Join the back of the queue.
Nah you see that's the mistake you are making, you can't be really poor, that's not allowed. You have to just appear to be in touch with the struggle.
You had heating? I grew up with one coal fire and a couple of paraffin heaters. And permanent frost on the inside of the windows from November to March. And I wasn't poor, because in the late 1940s the majority of the population were just like us. Most of us didn't live in houses or flats we, or our parents owned, didn't have electricity and thought ourselves bloody lucky to have a house at all, because most of our neighbourhood was a huge bombsite.
As for the idea of having any kind of car...
Nowadays, window glazing technology has advanced to the stage where you can get frost on the outside of your window, while it is toasty and warm inside.
I hope Labour revoke this when they come into power.
As for the guy campaigning for this. F*ck you.
"He has spent 20 years campaigning for the UK government to improve state pensions for British citizens who moved abroad. Some countries, like Canada, do not have a financial agreement with the UK that allows for annual increases to the UK state pension."
I can say growing up no new car, no pets, no sky....I must be in line for leader of a political party.
I grew up with oil fired heating and peat in the fire.
Join the back of the queue.
Nah you see that's the mistake you are making, you can't be really poor, that's not allowed. You have to just appear to be in touch with the struggle.
You had heating? I grew up with one coal fire and a couple of paraffin heaters. And permanent frost on the inside of the windows from November to March. And I wasn't poor, because in the late 1940s the majority of the population were just like us. Most of us didn't live in houses or flats we, or our parents owned, didn't have electricity and thought ourselves bloody lucky to have a house at all, because most of our neighbourhood was a huge bombsite.
As for the idea of having any kind of car...
My Grandad was the first to have a car and a tv in their area. Imagine explaining that to youth of today....what did you use the internet on then ;-)
My Dad was visiting my Grandad, who looked out of the window and remarked there was a car parked in the street.
My Dad said it was his.
He was a sales rep, It was a company car. My Grandad was astonished at the thought of anybody giving someone a car
As a result we did have new cars every few years when I was growing up
The Sky Sports are particularly good at is refreshing themselves and innovation. They are way ahead of everybody else in the quality of the analysis and who they pick to present this.
Watching Henry explain Man City on MNF was a masterclass in how people, who are in the game and know the game at the very highest level, think about it and what is trying to be achieved.
Same with the cricket, they brutally axed all the old duffers and in came the likes of Kumar Sangakkara. Not only a legendary player but is involved with strategy in IPL.
Golf, for the Masters, they will have Butch Harmon, the man who coaches or has coached nearly all the best players in the game.
Yes, it's exceptionally high quality coverage. £30/month is an absolute steal – and it's possible to get it cheaper as part of a wider cable package.
I would pay £30/month just to listen to Kumar Sangakkara talk about anything!
There is one aspect of this which I am staggered has never been even hinted at, let alone discussed. The failure of the Post Office is obvious and they deserve a special depth of hell. But what about the Courts ???
It is the job of the courts to determine whether a defendant is guilty or not guilty. They failed even more spectacularly that the Post Office in their alloted task. Quite frankly it is the Judges that allowed these miscarriages of justice to occur in the courts they were presiding over who should be in these open cells.
If someone tries to stitch me up, and some have tried at a much lower level then I would rely on the courts to dig down to the truth. THEY DID NOT DO THIS. Why are they not at the receiving end of everyone's wrath, they are mine.
We've discussed this before.
Without claiming the courts are perfect, it's important to note that neither judge nor jury can easily detect when an apparently respectable expert witness is perjuring themself - and that is yet more difficult in cases relying on computer evidence, when government has passed legislation effectively saying that it can't be challenged. (One of the most disgraceful - and predictably idiotic - pieces of legislation ever to hit the statute book.)
British courts are not investigators - they can only deal with the evidence presented to them.
The law of evidence has to make presumptions, though they are all rebuttable. And this is the difficulty in an electronic digital age.
To take a naive example, if a piece of evidence is what Y says that X said in a phone call, there is a presumption not that Y is telling the truth, but that in the actual world what Y heard relates reliably to what X said because the telephone message heard is a correlate of what is said.
If the prosecution had to prove this with expert evidence every time, the entire system would collapse.
The computer problem, and the digital world generally, is a more or less infinite extension of this problem.
The current law places the burden of proof, in criminal cases relying on computer evidence, on the defendant. That is a clear injustice.
It's not an simple problem, as you note, but the current solution is plain wrong.
What is tricky is suggesting what would be the right approach. The wrong ones are clear enough. I can't see a way through it. Large scale real world presumptions are absolutely essential to the operation of law, as they are to daily life.
The presumption that what Nigelb wrote has a correlate in what I have just read relies upon the reliability of a staggeringly complex global operation which would take massive expertise to unravel and prove or disprove in its entirety.
In the big picture I would like to see a national public defence forensic service dedicated to assisting the defence in criminal cases charged with the task of sorting exactly these sorts of issues, both in individual cases and in spotting generic problems. I shall be waiting quite a time.
At an absolute minimum, crafting some possible exceptions to the current iron rule ought to be possible. It's a matter of plain fact that computers do not operate as deterministic machines, and the product of given programs is subject to error. The statute could be made to recognise that.
I used to work on bit-reproducible computer code. One of the tests after making changes was that the results would be bit-reproducible across different processor decompositions.
Across complex, real world systems, that's not particularly common though. (I acknowledge I should have said "some computers".)
I ought to be possible to codify some sort of standards for assessing what is reliable and what isn't. The current bald assumption is palpable nonsense, but it is, nonetheless, the law.
The two biggest problem with computers are GIGO (garbage in, garbage out) and PEBKAC (problem exists between keyboard and chair).
The idea they're infallible is complete nonsense, especially when used incorrectly.
Sun allegedly has settled on Labour and will announce shortly
Be interesting to see if its whole hearted, LAAAAAAABBBBBBBOURRRR, or its time for a change, we will give Labour the benefit of the doubt this time, but be warned Starmer.
Few seem to appreciate that this scandal, the blood contamination case, the Andy Malkinson case (and other similar ones), the endless NHS and Police scandals are all symptomatic of a shredded administrative and political class lacking in competence, integrity and either the ability to admit to or willingness to correct mistakes.
I found myself in disagreement with this paragraph.
But only because you forgot to mention education...
It's a very long list. Ours was not meant to be comprehensive.
Very good piece.
I’m not usually one to demand heads roll for scandals, but I make exceptions for the Post Office and for those who covered up the grooming gangs.
There’s more than a decade of PO senior management who conspired to cover up this scandal, and their victims deserve to see them in court.
Thank you Sandpit.
As the Inquiry approaches its end, it creeps nearer and nearer to the political arena. We will soon be seeing Vince Cable and Jo Swinson giving evidence. There will also be a small number of Civil Servants appearing.
As Ms C explained to me, the terms of the Inquiry were crafted by Civil Servants so it should come as no surprise that its remit stops a little short of scrutinising the role of the Civil Service and its Political masters. My guess is that they will say they were lied to, and in any case didn't make any decisions concerning prosecutions. I doubt even Jason Beer will be able to pierce that veil.
There will however be some prosecutions, I think. I just hope they go a bit beyond Paula Vennells and her immediate buddies. She deserves it, but scapegoating her would only assist the cover-up.
The most interesting witness will probably be Gareth Jenkins, the chief software engineer who designed and updated the Horizon computer system.
Sir Wyn evidently thinks so too. He's allowed four days.
Ms C and I have both been surprised and a little disappointed that no PO witness has completely broken ranks and told it like it really is. It is just possible Jenkins may be the one. He has little to lose. He's the number one candidate for a perjury charge, he's not of the PO, and at his age you'd think he'd do anything to stay out of chokey - even turn King's Evidence.
Yes, if there’s someone who’s really going to come out swinging, and with an awful lot of evidence to prove his case, it’s going to be Jenkins.
I can't see the Tories getting a bounce from their manifesto launch. Not only did it have naff all red meat and rubbish policies, but the conversation moved on rapidly. There isn't even an ongoing row about anything to get any PR buzz.
Its like doing a social media ad campaign and by the next day nobody is talking about it.
There is one aspect of this which I am staggered has never been even hinted at, let alone discussed. The failure of the Post Office is obvious and they deserve a special depth of hell. But what about the Courts ???
It is the job of the courts to determine whether a defendant is guilty or not guilty. They failed even more spectacularly that the Post Office in their alloted task. Quite frankly it is the Judges that allowed these miscarriages of justice to occur in the courts they were presiding over who should be in these open cells.
If someone tries to stitch me up, and some have tried at a much lower level then I would rely on the courts to dig down to the truth. THEY DID NOT DO THIS. Why are they not at the receiving end of everyone's wrath, they are mine.
We've discussed this before.
Without claiming the courts are perfect, it's important to note that neither judge nor jury can easily detect when an apparently respectable expert witness is perjuring themself - and that is yet more difficult in cases relying on computer evidence, when government has passed legislation effectively saying that it can't be challenged. (One of the most disgraceful - and predictably idiotic - pieces of legislation ever to hit the statute book.)
British courts are not investigators - they can only deal with the evidence presented to them.
The law of evidence has to make presumptions, though they are all rebuttable. And this is the difficulty in an electronic digital age.
To take a naive example, if a piece of evidence is what Y says that X said in a phone call, there is a presumption not that Y is telling the truth, but that in the actual world what Y heard relates reliably to what X said because the telephone message heard is a correlate of what is said.
If the prosecution had to prove this with expert evidence every time, the entire system would collapse.
The computer problem, and the digital world generally, is a more or less infinite extension of this problem.
The current law places the burden of proof, in criminal cases relying on computer evidence, on the defendant. That is a clear injustice.
It's not an simple problem, as you note, but the current solution is plain wrong.
What is tricky is suggesting what would be the right approach. The wrong ones are clear enough. I can't see a way through it. Large scale real world presumptions are absolutely essential to the operation of law, as they are to daily life.
The presumption that what Nigelb wrote has a correlate in what I have just read relies upon the reliability of a staggeringly complex global operation which would take massive expertise to unravel and prove or disprove in its entirety.
In the big picture I would like to see a national public defence forensic service dedicated to assisting the defence in criminal cases charged with the task of sorting exactly these sorts of issues, both in individual cases and in spotting generic problems. I shall be waiting quite a time.
At an absolute minimum, crafting some possible exceptions to the current iron rule ought to be possible. It's a matter of plain fact that computers do not operate as deterministic machines, and the product of given programs is subject to error. The statute could be made to recognise that.
I used to work on bit-reproducible computer code. One of the tests after making changes was that the results would be bit-reproducible across different processor decompositions.
Across complex, real world systems, that's not particularly common though. (I acknowledge I should have said "some computers".)
I ought to be possible to codify some sort of standards for assessing what is reliable and what isn't. The current bald assumption is palpable nonsense, but it is, nonetheless, the law.
The two biggest problem with computers are GIGO (garbage in, garbage out) and PEBKAC (problem exists between keyboard and chair).
The idea they're infallible is complete nonsense, especially when used incorrectly.
With ChatGPT we will see a lot more of the both, particularly the later. .
Do the PB Sports-Loving Sky Refuseniks also refuse to watch Sky Sports at their friends' houses and in the pub?
Or is it just screening it in their own homes they object to?
It was one of the biggest snobberies of the 1990s, not wanting to have a satellite dish attached to the outside of your home. Lots of people who loved sport had to listen to it on the radio because they wouldn't contemplate having Sky Sports installed.
That's true. However, these days you don't need a dish. Haven't for years. I get mine via cable telly.
With a full ballot prompt, we are seeing the initial effects of tactical voting. Asked the direct question. a plurality say they would"
"Would you or would you not vote for a party that was not your first choice in order to stop a party that you dislike from winning?"
Would - 45% Would not - 43% Don’t know - 12%
45% are prepared to vote for a party which is not their first choice, if it meant denying a party they did not like from winning. We see evidence of this in the voting intention figures too, where 38% of 2019 Lib Dem voters say they intend to vote Labour, as do 9% of Green voters. 6% of Labour 2019 voters say they will vote Green, 5% for the Lib Dems.
It’s time to talk TV (tactical vote, not vests for tarantula’s)
I tried it last night, and intelligent PBers Ben Farooq just took the piss. But as a betting site, the impact of TV on both seats and eventual proportional of vote (PV) once all votes counted, can be huge.
TV normally happens when you are best placed to get the Tory out.
Labour are the biggest TV winners. Any bet on them getting less than 43% PV is a wasted bet once you factor in TV. Labour will get TV from Lib Dem’s, Greens and Reform. Lib Dem’s can get up to 15% PV or more with TV from Labour and the Greens. Greens get TV from no one. They get squeezed. Tories might get a bit of TV from Labour in Scotland? more than Labour get TV from the Tories in Scotland?
I understand your point now you've defined what the abbreviations mean. TV I guessed. PV was a mystery to me.
Point of order: it's well established that I'm a mid-wattage Dundee bedsit wanker who stares at bollards all day. Calling me intelligent, like me, doesn't wash.
Point of order refused. It’s well established fact in PB, anyone who describes their life in such detail is making it all up. You are in fact an Oxbridge educated high class hooker, who lives in Belgravia and works under the name of Lexie.
I can say growing up no new car, no pets, no sky....I must be in line for leader of a political party.
I grew up with oil fired heating and peat in the fire.
Join the back of the queue.
Nah you see that's the mistake you are making, you can't be really poor, that's not allowed. You have to just appear to be in touch with the struggle.
You had heating? I grew up with one coal fire and a couple of paraffin heaters. And permanent frost on the inside of the windows from November to March. And I wasn't poor, because in the late 1940s the majority of the population were just like us. Most of us didn't live in houses or flats we, or our parents owned, didn't have electricity and thought ourselves bloody lucky to have a house at all, because most of our neighbourhood was a huge bombsite.
As for the idea of having any kind of car...
Nowadays, window glazing technology has advanced to the stage where you can get frost on the outside of your window, while it is toasty and warm inside.
Where I live, it’s common to wake up on a summer’s morning to condensation on the outside, as the hot outside air meets the relatively cool glass.
There is one aspect of this which I am staggered has never been even hinted at, let alone discussed. The failure of the Post Office is obvious and they deserve a special depth of hell. But what about the Courts ???
It is the job of the courts to determine whether a defendant is guilty or not guilty. They failed even more spectacularly that the Post Office in their alloted task. Quite frankly it is the Judges that allowed these miscarriages of justice to occur in the courts they were presiding over who should be in these open cells.
If someone tries to stitch me up, and some have tried at a much lower level then I would rely on the courts to dig down to the truth. THEY DID NOT DO THIS. Why are they not at the receiving end of everyone's wrath, they are mine.
We've discussed this before.
Without claiming the courts are perfect, it's important to note that neither judge nor jury can easily detect when an apparently respectable expert witness is perjuring themself - and that is yet more difficult in cases relying on computer evidence, when government has passed legislation effectively saying that it can't be challenged. (One of the most disgraceful - and predictably idiotic - pieces of legislation ever to hit the statute book.)
British courts are not investigators - they can only deal with the evidence presented to them.
The law of evidence has to make presumptions, though they are all rebuttable. And this is the difficulty in an electronic digital age.
To take a naive example, if a piece of evidence is what Y says that X said in a phone call, there is a presumption not that Y is telling the truth, but that in the actual world what Y heard relates reliably to what X said because the telephone message heard is a correlate of what is said.
If the prosecution had to prove this with expert evidence every time, the entire system would collapse.
The computer problem, and the digital world generally, is a more or less infinite extension of this problem.
The current law places the burden of proof, in criminal cases relying on computer evidence, on the defendant. That is a clear injustice.
It's not an simple problem, as you note, but the current solution is plain wrong.
What is tricky is suggesting what would be the right approach. The wrong ones are clear enough. I can't see a way through it. Large scale real world presumptions are absolutely essential to the operation of law, as they are to daily life.
The presumption that what Nigelb wrote has a correlate in what I have just read relies upon the reliability of a staggeringly complex global operation which would take massive expertise to unravel and prove or disprove in its entirety.
In the big picture I would like to see a national public defence forensic service dedicated to assisting the defence in criminal cases charged with the task of sorting exactly these sorts of issues, both in individual cases and in spotting generic problems. I shall be waiting quite a time.
At an absolute minimum, crafting some possible exceptions to the current iron rule ought to be possible. It's a matter of plain fact that computers do not operate as deterministic machines, and the product of given programs is subject to error. The statute could be made to recognise that.
That won't do really. It's not an iron rule, it's a rebuttable presumption which is totally different. Iron rules are irrebuttable. And not a good idea. (Like Rwanda is a safe country).
The iron rule is the presumption in favour of the computer system; that is an iron rule with no exceptions. A defendant must therefore prove the evidence unreliable, rather than the prosecution proving their case.
An individual defendant, even if entirely innocent, often has no realistic means of meeting that challenge.
That was of course very much the case with the PO and Fujitsu, who deliberately and routinely denied defendants access to the system data.
I can say growing up no new car, no pets, no sky....I must be in line for leader of a political party.
I grew up with oil fired heating and peat in the fire.
Join the back of the queue.
I grew up with no central heating. We had a single fireplace with coal/coke. I'd get "potted meat" legs from standing too close with my back to the fire to warm up on my return from school.
I can say growing up no new car, no pets, no sky....I must be in line for leader of a political party.
I grew up with oil fired heating and peat in the fire.
Join the back of the queue.
I still have oil fired heating. Pretty common in rural parts.
Fairliered Jnr. installed oil fired heating in his newbuild in rural ANME last year. No mains gas and heat pumps were too expensive and inefficient. He also has a wood burner. Green heating policies don’t work in rural areas.
My brother in law built his house before the pandemic. They moved in during 2018 or early 2019. They live in a rural area and they have a heat pump that works very well. Now that they have some solar panels, their annual bill for heating and electricity is very low.
But then they have good insulation and modern window glazing.
It's tragic that houses are still being built to such low standards that they require fossil fuels to heat them. Such a pointless waste.
The very weird testimonies of @LostPassword and @Nigelb rather prove my point about Sky Sports sneering. They obviously don’t like sport that much.
I'm not sneering (which is your own weird conclusion) at Sky sports. I just despise Murdoch and his legacy.
As I noted, I miss the cricket. I couldn't care less about football.
Sky Sports is nothing to do with Murdoch anymore, he sold it six years ago.
It's owned by Comcast, an American network that has sod all to do with Murdoch.
"And his legacy."
You will of course be aware that Comcast is even more of a sports monopolist than was the Dirty Digger.
Arguably the BBC is itself a TV Monopolist. Do you refuse to pay the licence fee?
Refusing to pay for Sky is legal. Refusing to pay the BBC tax, and therefore Kuenssberg’s wages, is illegal.
Paying the licence fee is a choice I chose not to make for about 14 years. I decided to start paying it again in early 2021 - when Channel 4 bought the TV rights for England's tour of India. (But apparently I'm not a true sports fan).
It's perfectly legal (in Britain) to watch Netflix and not pay the licence fee. (In Ireland the law is stricter, you need a licence for the TV itself)
If you don't watch any live tv or iPlayer, no licence required. You don't need it for ITVX, 4OD, Netflix etc. You can even listen to BBC radio or watch clips of Kuenssberg's show on the BBC website with no licence.
If it wasn't for Sky Sports I wouldn't have it as I watch zero live tv other than sports. And I don't know the last time I watched anything on iPlayer.
Is there an option to pay for a licence that blocks this?
I can say growing up no new car, no pets, no sky....I must be in line for leader of a political party.
I grew up with oil fired heating and peat in the fire.
Join the back of the queue.
Nah you see that's the mistake you are making, you can't be really poor, that's not allowed. You have to just appear to be in touch with the struggle.
You had heating? I grew up with one coal fire and a couple of paraffin heaters. And permanent frost on the inside of the windows from November to March. And I wasn't poor, because in the late 1940s the majority of the population were just like us. Most of us didn't live in houses or flats we, or our parents owned, didn't have electricity and thought ourselves bloody lucky to have a house at all, because most of our neighbourhood was a huge bombsite.
As for the idea of having any kind of car...
Nowadays, window glazing technology has advanced to the stage where you can get frost on the outside of your window, while it is toasty and warm inside.
And who would have thought it? Eh? All these years later, sat toasty on the inside, looking at frost, on the outside.
I can say growing up no new car, no pets, no sky....I must be in line for leader of a political party.
I grew up with oil fired heating and peat in the fire.
Join the back of the queue.
Nah you see that's the mistake you are making, you can't be really poor, that's not allowed. You have to just appear to be in touch with the struggle.
You had heating? I grew up with one coal fire and a couple of paraffin heaters. And permanent frost on the inside of the windows from November to March. And I wasn't poor, because in the late 1940s the majority of the population were just like us. Most of us didn't live in houses or flats we, or our parents owned, didn't have electricity and thought ourselves bloody lucky to have a house at all, because most of our neighbourhood was a huge bombsite.
As for the idea of having any kind of car...
My Grandad was the first to have a car and a tv in their area. Imagine explaining that to youth of today....what did you use the internet on then ;-)
My Dad was visiting my Grandad, who looked out of the window and remarked there was a car parked in the street.
My Dad said it was his.
He was a sales rep, It was a company car. My Grandad was astonished at the thought of anybody giving someone a car
As a result we did have new cars every few years when I was growing up
His thesis on the Tories is that they have become European style, high tax, big government, party. Which is absolutely not something he likes.
They have.
The high tax is indisputable. And stuff like the anti-smoking laws are exactly what you would expect from big government type party, not the Tory party. There is no nudge there, its ban it.
The "it was posher not to have Sky" takes are thoroughly dumb. No, your parents just weren't in to watching live sport.
At the time, it was the "colour tv" of the 60s. The same as having one of the early big screens (the ones that weighed a tonne and because CRT absolutely huge lump behind, and on wheels). It was a bit of a status symbol. In general, kids who had it showed it is off, those that didn't, wanted their parents to get it.
I am sure for the Guardian reading chatting classes in North London it was seen for the commoner, but wider society it was up there with having a new car regularly.
Obviously Sunak's point is that is parents were making decent money, but they spent it all on his education and not the luxuries in life.
Sunak's problem is that this approach just smacks of self-righteousness, another form of privilege. Not only am I richer than you, but I am better than you. I don't think it's the winning strategy he thinks it is with most voters.
I think Sunak is rightly proud of his success in life, the current dysfunctional enterprise notwithstanding. If it takes some minor sacrifices why wouldn't anyone make them?
Thing is most people aren't as successful as him, won't get the opportunities and don't expect to. Sunak has nothing to say these, the 99% of the population who maybe do think him self righteous.
With a full ballot prompt, we are seeing the initial effects of tactical voting. Asked the direct question. a plurality say they would"
"Would you or would you not vote for a party that was not your first choice in order to stop a party that you dislike from winning?"
Would - 45% Would not - 43% Don’t know - 12%
45% are prepared to vote for a party which is not their first choice, if it meant denying a party they did not like from winning. We see evidence of this in the voting intention figures too, where 38% of 2019 Lib Dem voters say they intend to vote Labour, as do 9% of Green voters. 6% of Labour 2019 voters say they will vote Green, 5% for the Lib Dems.
It’s time to talk TV (tactical vote, not vests for tarantula’s)
I tried it last night, and intelligent PBers Ben Farooq just took the piss. But as a betting site, the impact of TV on both seats and eventual proportional of vote (PV) once all votes counted, can be huge.
TV normally happens when you are best placed to get the Tory out.
Labour are the biggest TV winners. Any bet on them getting less than 43% PV is a wasted bet once you factor in TV. Labour will get TV from Lib Dem’s, Greens and Reform. Lib Dem’s can get up to 15% PV or more with TV from Labour and the Greens. Greens get TV from no one. They get squeezed. Tories might get a bit of TV from Labour in Scotland? more than Labour get TV from the Tories in Scotland?
I understand your point now you've defined what the abbreviations mean. TV I guessed. PV was a mystery to me.
Point of order: it's well established that I'm a mid-wattage Dundee bedsit wanker who stares at bollards all day. Calling me intelligent, like me, doesn't wash.
Point of order refused. It’s well established fact in PB, anyone who describes their life in such detail is making it all up. You are in fact an Oxbridge educated high class hooker, who lives in Belgravia and works under the name of Lexie.
I asked ChatGPT the classic, Wolf, Sheep, Cabbage game, but changed the rules slightly...its answer was like a Trump ramble, when the solution was take them all at the same time, but put the wolf in a cage and cabbage in a box.
They were literally chanting - ‘We will find the Jews. We want their blood’- and the police did nothing. The govt has done nothing. It is hard to know how to react. Has the British state simply given up on Jews living peacefully in the UK? (Note – it won’t end with the Jews, it never does). And if not, what will be the trigger for action? How much worse must things get?"
No they aren’t. And you posted seat numbers. I’m not sure where you have gone wrong but you’re in a right royal muddle on this one.
A reminder that Survation gave:
Cons 23% Labour 41% LibDems 10% Reform 12% Greens 6% SNP 3%
Which would lead roughly to:
Conservative 102 Labour 458 Liberal Democrats 46 Green 2 SNP 14 Reform 3
p.s. I can’t quite work out which table you’ve mis-applied @bigjohnowls but you’ve gone wrong somewhere in that data set. I mean, spotting 19 Green and 81 LibDems MPs in 2019 should make you see that?
They were literally chanting - ‘We will find the Jews. We want their blood’- and the police did nothing. The govt has done nothing. It is hard to know how to react. Has the British state simply given up on Jews living peacefully in the UK? (Note – it won’t end with the Jews, it never does). And if not, what will be the trigger for action? How much worse must things get?"
Arh but you see there are multiple interpretations of that slogan, it could be about non-violent inner struggle.....
As soon as you let slide calls for Jihad and Globalise the Intifada everything is on the table. We aren't the US with second amendment protections that allow much wider use of speech however hateful. But at the same time, somebody tweets something offensive and the plod are knocking on doors.
Sun allegedly has settled on Labour and will announce shortly
Be interesting to see if its whole hearted, LAAAAAAABBBBBBBOURRRR, or its time for a change, we will give Labour the benefit of the doubt this time, but be warned Starmer.
It will definitely be the latter, but if its true its still important. I wouldn't wrap my chips with that paper, but there are a hell of a lot people, that don't engage with politics day in day out, who will read that in the Sun, and say, yep it's time for a change, I'm going to give Labour a chance
One of the most common flaws in complex prosecutions is overcharging them with difficult and contentious charges that result in a messy trial. There can be good reasons for doing this. Generally, it is not permitted to lead evidence of a crime which is not on the indictment so not charging something can sometimes make the leading of evidence more challenging.
In general terms, however, I agree with @Cyclefree and @Peter_the_Punter that simple, clear cut trials are the best, even if they do not embrace the full horror of this. It is more important that we get convictions whilst the accused are still alive and active than it is that every misdeed is punished. The priority here is to bring it home to those in such positions that they are not immune and will be held to account. This might, hopefully, make those in the future facing with such, I hesitate to say dilemmas because there is little evidence that the ethical factors even occurred to those responsible, decisions, pause and reflect. This is the most important outcome. It is a thistle we have failed to grasp several times. This is an important opportunity.
No they aren’t. And you posted seat numbers. I’m not sure where you have gone wrong but you’re in a right royal muddle on this one.
A reminder that Survation gave:
Cons 23% Labour 41% LibDems 10% Reform 12% Greens 6% SNP 3%
Which would lead roughly to:
Conservative 102 Labour 458 Liberal Democrats 46 Green 2 SNP 14 Reform 3
p.s. I can’t quite work out which table you’ve mis-applied @bigjohnowls but you’ve gone wrong somewhere in that data set. I mean, spotting 19 Green and 81 LibDems MPs in 2019 should make you see that?
I believe he was quoting the raw number of respondents data
I asked ChatGPT the classic, Wolf, Sheep, Cabbage game, but changed the rules slightly...its answer was like a Trump ramble, when the solution was take them all at the same time, but put the wolf in a cage and cabbage in a box.
Sky has always provided a fantastic sports service, and Murdoch is a grim, plutocratic opportunist who has helped to immeasurably impoverish British television, newspapers and public life, primarily through his influence on Thatcher's reshaping of broadcasting in the 1980's. Partly as a result, British television overal is a shadow of its former self, but Sky TV still provides an excellent range of sports coverage.
Indeed. But Sky TV is nowt to do with Murdoch anymore. It was sold to Comcast six years ago!!
Indeed, I do know about that too. But I think some people just can't forgive Sky its original role, which I do partly understand.
We've gone from having world-leading television standards, to essentially average television that continental professionals don't think that much of, in the space of just two and a half decades. I accept that someone was going to eventally break the old terrestrial monopoly, but he skewed the new process and regulatory framework, by using what was essentially corruption, and resulting in less interesting TV across the board Still, I accept that there"s no reason why a new Sky now owned by someone else should have to accept any blame for any of that.
It’s clear you’ve got a bit of a downer on the UK compared to the continent. Our average churches and our lack of inventive thinking and ideas since the reformation but your comment “ average television that continental professionals don't think that much of” is just plain bollocks.
Britain is one of the global leaders in selling programmes and programme formats. British TV dramas are immensely popular globally and even crazy detective programmes such as Death in Paradise are huge sellers with big viewership and fan bases in Europe and indeed the world.
There is now a problemwhere the EU is trying to cap the amount of non-EU shows on planforms however the platforms are saying “slight problem, most of what we are showing, and the most popular programmes are British so can we make an exception please otherwise it’s going to be a bit boring.”
The UK has issues, our weather, our beaches, our native food, some of our sports teams, our administrators. There’s no need to sniffily make shit up though. I’m guessing you think that because we haven’t won Eurovision for ages our music industry is looked down on by those Continental music industry types? It’s not by the way.
Sun allegedly has settled on Labour and will announce shortly
Be interesting to see if its whole hearted, LAAAAAAABBBBBBBOURRRR, or its time for a change, we will give Labour the benefit of the doubt this time, but be warned Starmer.
It will definitely be the latter, but if its true its still important. I wouldn't wrap my chips with that paper, but there are a hell of a lot people, that don't engage with politics day in day out, who will read that in the Sun, and say, yep it's time for a change, I'm going to give Labour a chance
In this case, I think those people have already worked it out. They don't need the Sun to tell them.
No they aren’t. And you posted seat numbers. I’m not sure where you have gone wrong but you’re in a right royal muddle on this one.
A reminder that Survation gave:
Cons 23% Labour 41% LibDems 10% Reform 12% Greens 6% SNP 3%
Which would lead roughly to:
Conservative 102 Labour 458 Liberal Democrats 46 Green 2 SNP 14 Reform 3
I'm afraid I think it's you that's in the muddle on this one.
The numbers he posted are the raw number of voters polled by Survation. So out of 900 or so people polled, 280 said Labour. The point he's making is that undecided is still high.
I think the confusion is that some of them were in the 200-300 range and it looked like the seat figures that everyone has been sharing over the past few weeks.
Change - about all you'll be left with once Reeves starts taxing you
Come on please spare us this kind of thing. It’s just straight out of the CCHQ playbook. Regardless of which Party it comes from this site deserves better.
Brooke has become an unbearable partisan bore.
Much worse than that, his keyboard frequently loses its apostrophe function.
I liked it. I thought it a good, snappy soundbite.
Good article, thanks Peter & Cycle. Depressing though - I have this recurring feeling nowadays that we are living during the period that will come to be known as the Fall of the West.
In some ways it's a blessing Mrs P. and I have no children, grandchildren etc. when I think of the prospect today's children are facing.
(Then again - I bet every generation has had similar thoughts at times, so cheer up BenPointer!)
It can be depressing, Ben. I have noticed the change in standards of administration and integrity in my lifetime, particularly in recent.
It is a problem, and it transcends party politics. Tough one for succeeding generations, I agree.
Agree Peter, huge drop in principles and decency at all levels in this country, people used to have manners , integrity etc , nowadays they have none of any of that, many will fleece you in a second , it is all me me me. More money all round but shitty people to go with it.
No they aren’t. And you posted seat numbers. I’m not sure where you have gone wrong but you’re in a right royal muddle on this one.
A reminder that Survation gave:
Cons 23% Labour 41% LibDems 10% Reform 12% Greens 6% SNP 3%
Which would lead roughly to:
Conservative 102 Labour 458 Liberal Democrats 46 Green 2 SNP 14 Reform 3
p.s. I can’t quite work out which table you’ve mis-applied @bigjohnowls but you’ve gone wrong somewhere in that data set. I mean, spotting 19 Green and 81 LibDems MPs in 2019 should make you see that?
I believe he was quoting the raw number of respondents data
Ya but even that doesn’t make sense of those figures.
The Secret Barrister made the point that somebody sexually assaulted today is likely to see the trial for that assault take place in 2029.
That's not good for anybody.
So many public services similarly trashed. Can anyone see an answer without additional spending and thus increased tax?
I don't think this is a problem money can solve. The Tories have been hosing money at stuff (particularly the NHS) without any perceptable improvement.
The reality is that we've been living wildly above our means for ages, and that we're now trapped under a mountain of debt created by this; after all the tax rises this Parliament, we're quite close to running a primary surplus, but the debt payments are crippling. There is very little scope to increase the tax take further, although there is scope to rebalance the tax system to be less logical.
It's a mess, the only possible long-term solution is cutting government tax and spending to get growth back, but that is going to involve slaying some very sacred cows.
The only chance of cutting tax and spending is the re election of a Sunak Tory government.
A landslide majority for Starmer Labour will almost certainly see taxes increase and gradually increase spending then further too
Yes, because the Triple Lock has done nothing to increase taxes on workers.
Errr.
The triple lock is a self financing ponzi scheme now that more pensioners are paying tax than people in work
Rishi giveth with one hand and taketh away with the other
Well, if it could be managed, a politically clever way to end the Triple Lock (in effect) would be when the tax receipts from richer pensioners reach a level where they pay for the increases.
I can say growing up no new car, no pets, no sky....I must be in line for leader of a political party.
I grew up with oil fired heating and peat in the fire.
Join the back of the queue.
Nah you see that's the mistake you are making, you can't be really poor, that's not allowed. You have to just appear to be in touch with the struggle.
You had heating? I grew up with one coal fire and a couple of paraffin heaters. And permanent frost on the inside of the windows from November to March. And I wasn't poor, because in the late 1940s the majority of the population were just like us. Most of us didn't live in houses or flats we, or our parents owned, didn't have electricity and thought ourselves bloody lucky to have a house at all, because most of our neighbourhood was a huge bombsite.
As for the idea of having any kind of car...
Nowadays, window glazing technology has advanced to the stage where you can get frost on the outside of your window, while it is toasty and warm inside.
Where I live, it’s common to wake up on a summer’s morning to condensation on the outside, as the hot outside air meets the relatively cool glass.
We have a window vacuum cleaner to remove the condensation from the inside of the windows - but the double-glazing in this house is quite old.
No they aren’t. And you posted seat numbers. I’m not sure where you have gone wrong but you’re in a right royal muddle on this one.
A reminder that Survation gave:
Cons 23% Labour 41% LibDems 10% Reform 12% Greens 6% SNP 3%
Which would lead roughly to:
Conservative 102 Labour 458 Liberal Democrats 46 Green 2 SNP 14 Reform 3
I'm afraid I think it's you that's in the muddle on this one.
The numbers he posted are the raw number of voters polled by Survation. So out of 900 or so people polled, 280 said Labour. The point he's making is that undecided is still high.
I think the confusion is that some of them were in the 200-300 range and it looked like the seat figures that everyone has been sharing over the past few weeks.
Several of the pollsters are still finding 40% or so that may change their mind. So there is some not inconsiderable chance for 'change' or 'stop the landslide' messages to impact the result.
I asked ChatGPT the classic, Wolf, Sheep, Cabbage game, but changed the rules slightly...its answer was like a Trump ramble, when the solution was take them all at the same time, but put the wolf in a cage and cabbage in a box.
If only it had given Liz Truss the latter advice.
Arhh but you see what happened was the deep state conspired against her simple solutions...
I can say growing up no new car, no pets, no sky....I must be in line for leader of a political party.
I grew up with oil fired heating and peat in the fire.
Join the back of the queue.
I grew up with no central heating. We had a single fireplace with coal/coke. I'd get "potted meat" legs from standing too close with my back to the fire to warm up on my return from school.
No they aren’t. And you posted seat numbers. I’m not sure where you have gone wrong but you’re in a right royal muddle on this one.
A reminder that Survation gave:
Cons 23% Labour 41% LibDems 10% Reform 12% Greens 6% SNP 3%
Which would lead roughly to:
Conservative 102 Labour 458 Liberal Democrats 46 Green 2 SNP 14 Reform 3
I'm afraid I think it's you that's in the muddle on this one.
The numbers he posted are the raw number of voters polled by Survation. So out of 900 or so people polled, 280 said Labour. The point he's making is that undecided is still high.
I think the confusion is that some of them were in the 200-300 range and it looked like the seat figures that everyone has been sharing over the past few weeks.
Argh. You can’t pull those raw numbers out and apply them to 2019, producing 19 sitting Green MPs and 81 LibDem MPs, and then to this election as seat numbers, which is what he did
Well you can but I might as well throw a whole load of numbers into a hat and make up any old rubbish I like.
And can we please remember that not everyone votes in a General Election? If turnout is c.65% that means that 35% aren’t "Undecideds” that you can then decide to allocate to whatever flavour herbal tea you choose. It means 35% didn’t vote or won’t vote.
Sigh. Best leave the pollsters to compute their final figures and explain how and why. Not to try and data mine the raw numbers when you don’t know what you’re doing. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing: look at @Leon
For all those of you interested: Start Trek III: The Search For Spock is having a limited rerelease this weekend (commencing Fri 14th). It's not very good but I'll probably go anyway.
Good article, thanks Peter & Cycle. Depressing though - I have this recurring feeling nowadays that we are living during the period that will come to be known as the Fall of the West.
In some ways it's a blessing Mrs P. and I have no children, grandchildren etc. when I think of the prospect today's children are facing.
(Then again - I bet every generation has had similar thoughts at times, so cheer up BenPointer!)
It can be depressing, Ben. I have noticed the change in standards of administration and integrity in my lifetime, particularly in recent.
It is a problem, and it transcends party politics. Tough one for succeeding generations, I agree.
Agree Peter, huge drop in principles and decency at all levels in this country, people used to have manners , integrity etc , nowadays they have none of any of that, many will fleece you in a second , it is all me me me. More money all round but shitty people to go with it.
Too much entitlement and people who 'know my rights'. Too much expectation of unrealistic lifestyle. Too many grifters and spivs. Not enough goodness.
It’s a pity, because @bigjohnowls ’s other point about whether Labour this time will under-poll their 2017 result in raw vote is a good one, and not a bad bet at 13/8
With a full ballot prompt, we are seeing the initial effects of tactical voting. Asked the direct question. a plurality say they would"
"Would you or would you not vote for a party that was not your first choice in order to stop a party that you dislike from winning?"
Would - 45% Would not - 43% Don’t know - 12%
45% are prepared to vote for a party which is not their first choice, if it meant denying a party they did not like from winning. We see evidence of this in the voting intention figures too, where 38% of 2019 Lib Dem voters say they intend to vote Labour, as do 9% of Green voters. 6% of Labour 2019 voters say they will vote Green, 5% for the Lib Dems.
It’s time to talk TV (tactical vote, not vests for tarantula’s)
I tried it last night, and intelligent PBers Ben Farooq just took the piss. But as a betting site, the impact of TV on both seats and eventual proportional of vote (PV) once all votes counted, can be huge.
TV normally happens when you are best placed to get the Tory out.
Labour are the biggest TV winners. Any bet on them getting less than 43% PV is a wasted bet once you factor in TV. Labour will get TV from Lib Dem’s, Greens and Reform. Lib Dem’s can get up to 15% PV or more with TV from Labour and the Greens. Greens get TV from no one. They get squeezed. Tories might get a bit of TV from Labour in Scotland? more than Labour get TV from the Tories in Scotland?
I understand your point now you've defined what the abbreviations mean. TV I guessed. PV was a mystery to me.
Point of order: it's well established that I'm a mid-wattage Dundee bedsit wanker who stares at bollards all day. Calling me intelligent, like me, doesn't wash.
Point of order refused. It’s well established fact in PB, anyone who describes their life in such detail is making it all up. You are in fact an Oxbridge educated high class hooker, who lives in Belgravia and works under the name of Lexie.
Labour to receive fewer votes (12,877,918 votes) than they got at 2017 General Election
Current price 13/8 the price when I placed a bet was 8/1
Based on likely reduced turnout I reckon Lab will need to be on circa 44 to exceed the 2017 figure DYOR
That's an interesting bet. People often conflate 2017 and 2019 and forget that Magic Grandpa did rather well in the former (and terribly in the latter).
The forgetting is often deliberate (I'm looking at you HUYFD 😀) in order to beat Starmer with the "worse than Corbyn" stick. But that narrative leads to the odds you quote. Getting fewer actual votes is distinctly possible.
It is an interesting possibility but at 13/8 you would want careful analysis. At 8/1 sticking a finger in the air was good enough.
Comments
Labour to receive fewer votes (12,877,918 votes) than they got at 2017 General Election
Current price 13/8 the price when I placed a bet was 8/1
Based on likely reduced turnout I reckon Lab will need to be on circa 44 to exceed the 2017 figure DYOR
Are these people Remainers or Brexiteers? Are they close to family in UK struggling from what the Tory’s have done to the country - sewage in all the water, NHS waiting lists, out of touch Prime Minister during cost of living crisis etc.
If Lib Dems wanted to vote Labour they'd vote Labour. They don't, as they don't want to, for whatever reason which is their free choice.
If Reform voters wanted to vote Tory they'd vote Tory. They don't as they don't want to which is their free choice.
Adding disparate parties together and pretending they're a division or a whole is what's bonkers.
Much worse than that, his keyboard frequently loses its apostrophe function.
How many people who haven't lived in the UK for over 15 years are ever coming back? Very few I would guess. Obviously if you do return permanently, then you should be able to vote again.
Ms C and I have both been surprised and a little disappointed that no PO witness has completely broken ranks and told it like it really is. It is just possible Jenkins may be the one. He has little to lose. He's the number one candidate for a perjury charge, he's not of the PO, and at his age you'd think he'd do anything to stay out of chokey - even turn King's Evidence.
The forgetting is often deliberate (I'm looking at you HUYFD 😀) in order to beat Starmer with the "worse than Corbyn" stick. But that narrative leads to the odds you quote. Getting fewer actual votes is distinctly possible.
Put your mouth where your mouth is then. What PV are the Greens ending up with? Couple of recent polls put them on 8%. You saying higher than 4%?
Click on the Survation link
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2024_United_Kingdom_general_election
The DUP get some credit for how decisively they acted when they heard the news - the party were told after 11pm, and he was kicked out first thing the next morning. No equivocations, no hand-wringing, no delay. Still not a great situation for them, but it would have been much, much worse if they'd messed around.
Their real problem comes from their position on post-Brexit trading arrangements and the chaos in public services resulting from the prolonged absence of the Stormont administration.
They're being squeezed from both sides, and this election is, er, unlikely to go well for them.
(I acknowledge I should have said "some computers".)
I ought to be possible to codify some sort of standards for assessing what is reliable and what isn't. The current bald assumption is palpable nonsense, but it is, nonetheless, the law.
It's perfectly legal (in Britain) to watch Netflix and not pay the licence fee. (In Ireland the law is stricter, you need a licence for the TV itself)
If it wasn't for Sky Sports I wouldn't have it as I watch zero live tv other than sports. And I don't know the last time I watched anything on iPlayer.
An individual defendant, even if entirely innocent, often has no realistic means of meeting that challenge.
As for the guy campaigning for this. F*ck you.
"He has spent 20 years campaigning for the UK government to improve state pensions for British citizens who moved abroad. Some countries, like Canada, do not have a financial agreement with the UK that allows for annual increases to the UK state pension."
My Dad said it was his.
He was a sales rep, It was a company car. My Grandad was astonished at the thought of anybody giving someone a car
As a result we did have new cars every few years when I was growing up
The idea they're infallible is complete nonsense, especially when used incorrectly.
I suppose it could be going Individual
“Labour doesn’t have a candidate of the calibre of Tony Blair…and yet it’s still worse for the Tories than ’97.”
Brexit “broke” the Conservatives, creating a “civil war” in Tory ranks, says
@afneil
.
https://x.com/TimesRadio/status/1800852708322095300
Sorry for doxing you. Miss.
But then they have good insulation and modern window glazing.
It's tragic that houses are still being built to such low standards that they require fossil fuels to heat them. Such a pointless waste.
A reminder that Survation gave:
Cons 23%
Labour 41%
LibDems 10%
Reform 12%
Greens 6%
SNP 3%
Which would lead roughly to:
Conservative 102
Labour 458
Liberal Democrats 46
Green 2
SNP 14
Reform 3
That is a disgrace.
https://x.com/BidenHQ/status/1800168649824596213
Although, as said above by @wooliedyed - following not leading
Thing is most people aren't as successful as him, won't get the opportunities and don't expect to. Sunak has nothing to say these, the 99% of the population who maybe do think him self righteous.
Use the battery to electrocute the shark. Then bob about in the sea, taking a nap, while waiting to be rescued.
Jaws 2 (2d) refers.
Did he really not expect the face eating leopards would find the Tories tasty?
@ZacGoldsmith
They were literally chanting -
‘We will find the Jews. We want their blood’- and the police did nothing.
The govt has done nothing.
It is hard to know how to react.
Has the British state simply given up on Jews living peacefully in the UK? (Note – it won’t end with the Jews, it never does). And if not, what will be the trigger for action? How much worse must things get?"
https://x.com/ZacGoldsmith/status/1800829172094280170
As soon as you let slide calls for Jihad and Globalise the Intifada everything is on the table. We aren't the US with second amendment protections that allow much wider use of speech however hateful. But at the same time, somebody tweets something offensive and the plod are knocking on doors.
In general terms, however, I agree with @Cyclefree and @Peter_the_Punter that simple, clear cut trials are the best, even if they do not embrace the full horror of this. It is more important that we get convictions whilst the accused are still alive and active than it is that every misdeed is punished. The priority here is to bring it home to those in such positions that they are not immune and will be held to account. This might, hopefully, make those in the future facing with such, I hesitate to say dilemmas because there is little evidence that the ethical factors even occurred to those responsible, decisions, pause and reflect. This is the most important outcome. It is a thistle we have failed to grasp several times. This is an important opportunity.
Britain is one of the global leaders in selling programmes and programme formats. British TV dramas are immensely popular globally and even crazy detective programmes such as Death in Paradise are huge sellers with big viewership and fan bases in Europe and indeed the world.
There is now a problemwhere the EU is trying to cap the amount of non-EU shows on planforms however the platforms are saying “slight problem, most of what we are showing, and the most popular programmes are British so can we make an exception please otherwise it’s going to be a bit boring.”
The UK has issues, our weather, our beaches, our native food, some of our sports teams, our administrators. There’s no need to sniffily make shit up though. I’m guessing you think that because we haven’t won Eurovision for ages our music industry is looked down on by those Continental music industry types? It’s not by the way.
The numbers he posted are the raw number of voters polled by Survation. So out of 900 or so people polled, 280 said Labour. The point he's making is that undecided is still high.
I think the confusion is that some of them were in the 200-300 range and it looked like the seat figures that everyone has been sharing over the past few weeks.
More money all round but shitty people to go with it.
Anyway this isn’t the best use of my time.
Well you can but I might as well throw a whole load of numbers into a hat and make up any old rubbish I like.
And can we please remember that not everyone votes in a General Election? If turnout is c.65% that means that 35% aren’t "Undecideds” that you can then decide to allocate to whatever flavour herbal tea you choose. It means 35% didn’t vote or won’t vote.
Sigh. Best leave the pollsters to compute their final figures and explain how and why. Not to try and data mine the raw numbers when you don’t know what you’re doing. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing: look at @Leon