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.
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.
This is just a caricature of what I wrote the other day. As I mentioned at that time, 18th Century Brutain was arguably Europe's intellectual powerhouse, but we still haven't entirely emerged from the turgid anti-intellectualism of 19th Cemtury Britain. I also mentioned that, had been Glastonbury Abbey left standing, it would have been the equal of anything on the Continent.
What we have now is a cocktail of anti-intellectualism, which is the wrong interpretation of our traditional liberty of thought and scepticism, with commercialism. The fact that British reality TV formats and strictly genre dramas have been some of the most internationally commercially successful since the 1990's does not mean that our broadcast sector is any longer particularly highly artistically regarded, compared to what it was. Do we really want to be known for exporting Big Brother and huge numbers of similar formats around the world?
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?
BJO doesn't mention seats. He's giving the actual number of people in the polling sample, rather than the percentages.
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.
Yes and too much handed out for nothing.
Well, we just have to make sure we don't hand over the keys till we've made the buggers dance for it!
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.
But fossil fuels don't work either - the highest rates of fuel poverty are in rural areas.
Heating oil is expensive, simply because of the transportation costs (particularly if coming over by ferry), and then you have a doubling in prices following Ukraine (despite our plentiful domestic production). There is no price cap for oil
That's why renewables are such an opportunity for rural areas once it gets going properly. And unlike for the rest of the population, you can actually insulate yourself from global energy markets using domestic wind etc.
As you can see from that TwiX thread, this is not the only time Donald Trump has spoken about the shark/electrocution dilemma. Quite why...
His followers are anti-electric vehicles and he seems to think this is a good explanation as to why electric vehicles are a bad thing, since electricity and water don't mix.
The fact that cars aren't ships, and the fact that even fossil-fuel consuming ships have batteries and electricity is neither here nor there.
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
I'm not sure that second list is seat numbers either, as it adds up to 742.
On the broader point, that there are lots of undecideds. It's about 19.6% in that poll, whereas Survation's final 2019 poll, which was pretty accurate, still had 14.7% saying undecided. So there's definitely more, but not really the kind of difference that would suggest this election's polls will go wrong.
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.
But fossil fuels don't work either - the highest rates of fuel poverty are in rural areas.
Heating oil is expensive, simply because of the transportation costs (particularly if coming over by ferry), and then you have a doubling in prices following Ukraine (despite our plentiful domestic production). There is no price cap for oil
That's why renewables are such an opportunity for rural areas once it gets going properly. And unlike for the rest of the population, you can actually insulate yourself from global energy markets using domestic wind etc.
Only if you overcome the NIMBY scum who want to prevent wind turbines, power pylons etc as they're an eyesore etc.
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.
Agree absolutely. The PO case will, I hope, bring about change. Drafting the change is the problem.
As you can see from that TwiX thread, this is not the only time Donald Trump has spoken about the shark/electrocution dilemma. Quite why...
His followers are anti-electric vehicles and he seems to think this is a good explanation as to why electric vehicles are a bad thing, since electricity and water don't mix.
The fact that cars aren't ships, and the fact that even fossil-fuel consuming ships have batteries and electricity is neither here nor there.
What Trump does is like a comedian. He tries loads of random material out at these rallies, sees what reaction it gets and keeps the stuff that the crowd get excited by. The other day it was reading the Cheesecake Factory menu.
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.
Sorry for doxing you. Miss.
Close enough
So close he has visited Belgravia I think
Of course. Where I used to live it was 10 minute walk away!
Been following all your posts Malc. You are very conservative in your values and outlook arn’t you?
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.
This is just a caricature of what I wrote the other day. As I mentioned at that time, 18th Century Brutain was arguably Europe's intellectual powerhouse, but we still haven't entirely emerged from the turgid anti-intellectualism of 19th Cemtury Britain. I also mentioned that, had been Glastonbury Abbey left standing, it would have been the equal of anything on the Continent.
What we have now is a cocktail of anti-intellectualism, which is the wrong interpretation of our traditional liberty of thought and scepticism, with commercialism. The fact that British reality TV formats and strictly genre dramas have been some of the most internationally commercially successful since the 1990's does not mean that our broadcast sector is any longer particularly highly artistically regarded, compared to what it was. Do we really want to be known for exporting Big Brother and huge numbers of similar formats around the world?
So if we are anti-intellectual for creating these programmes what does that say of the countries who are lapping them up?
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.
But fossil fuels don't work either - the highest rates of fuel poverty are in rural areas.
Heating oil is expensive, simply because of the transportation costs (particularly if coming over by ferry), and then you have a doubling in prices following Ukraine (despite our plentiful domestic production). There is no price cap for oil
That's why renewables are such an opportunity for rural areas once it gets going properly. And unlike for the rest of the population, you can actually insulate yourself from global energy markets using domestic wind etc.
Only if you overcome the NIMBY scum who want to prevent wind turbines, power pylons etc as they're an eyesore etc.
Wind turbines can look majestic. Across from the Clwyd coast there's the Gwynt y Môr, Rhyl Flats and North Hoyle fields and on the two sunny days per year they look absolutely stunning on the horizon.
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.
Thank you, David. Nice to have you on our side!
What troubles me is that the whole web of intrigue is so vast and complex that as soon as you reach into one part you are drawn into the rest. And they all blame each other. Vennells will say it was the lawyers, the lawyers will say it was the Board, they all blame Fujitsu, and of course they all operated with the full consent of the shareholder. I agree though that keeping it as small & simple as possible is in principle the right way to go. (For a good example of the wrong way and how it failed, I refer you to the Maxwell case, which I expect you know all about.)
Another problem is the status of some of the suspects. It's probably considered ok to go for the likes of Vennells, van den Bogerd and the wretched Jarnail Singh, but are we going to see Brian Altman in the dock? Or even Angela Perkins, wife of the former Foreign Secretary? That would be a nice curve ball for PM Starmer.
Surprisingly, Ms C is rather more bullish than me on that one. She thinks Starmer would go for it regardless. Her relative pessimism is based more on the time factor, and the sclerotic ways of The Plod.
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
I'm not sure that second list is seat numbers either, as it adds up to 742.
On the broader point, that there are lots of undecideds. It's about 19.6% in that poll, whereas Survation's final 2019 poll, which was pretty accurate, still had 14.7% saying undecided. So there's definitely more, but not really the kind of difference that would suggest this election's polls will go wrong.
Correct. There are no seats numbers in his post. I thought that was pretty obvious.
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.
But fossil fuels don't work either - the highest rates of fuel poverty are in rural areas.
Heating oil is expensive, simply because of the transportation costs (particularly if coming over by ferry), and then you have a doubling in prices following Ukraine (despite our plentiful domestic production). There is no price cap for oil
That's why renewables are such an opportunity for rural areas once it gets going properly. And unlike for the rest of the population, you can actually insulate yourself from global energy markets using domestic wind etc.
Only if you overcome the NIMBY scum who want to prevent wind turbines, power pylons etc as they're an eyesore etc.
Wind turbines can look majestic. Across from the Clwyd coast there's the Gwynt y Môr, Rhyl Flats and North Hoyle fields and on the two sunny days per year they look absolutely stunning on the horizon.
I totally agree, but the NIMBY scum often don't and make excuses to block them. Which is ridiculous.
Our energy bills would be a lot lower if we'd spent the last decade building as much onshore wind power as we could.
If you actually listened to the report and put aside your prejudices a little you would find out that he is highlighting the poor performance of Ofwat and he wants to set up a watchdog about sewage in streams and rivers which does its job.
Scots poll KLAXON GE Voting intention (Scotland) (changes vs Ipsos Jan 2024 poll) · SNP: 36% (-3) · Labour: 36% (+4) · Conservatives: 13% (-1) · Liberal Democrats: 5% (-1) · Reform UK: 4% (+1) · Scottish Green Party: 3% (-1) · Alba Party: 1% (unchanged) · Other: 1% (+1)
3 to 9 June
Textbook usage of the klaxon there. Credit where it is due.
51/49 split in favour of independence, down from a 3% lead. In the midst of a UK election campaign where the the SNP refuse to talk about it, that's a decent result.
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
I'm not sure that second list is seat numbers either, as it adds up to 742.
On the broader point, that there are lots of undecideds. It's about 19.6% in that poll, whereas Survation's final 2019 poll, which was pretty accurate, still had 14.7% saying undecided. So there's definitely more, but not really the kind of difference that would suggest this election's polls will go wrong.
Correct. There are no seats numbers in his post. I thought that was pretty obvious.
Not sure it's obvious - Plenty of people don't immediately add up every list they see, and that list doesn't look too far from Parliamentary numbers, particularly if your first assumption is that's what it is.
Frankly at this stage only @bigjohnowls can clarify. Not even an SKS fan could explain.
If you actually listened to the report and put aside your prejudices a little you would find out that he is highlighting the poor performance of Ofwat and he wants to set up a watchdog about sewage in streams and rivers which does itsjob.
But most people will only see this. And I am not being prejudice, I generally don't know what they stunts are highlighting each day. I see the picture or these social media clips and it looks like a lot of fun, but I don't know what policy point they are making.
In comparison, I have had some Labour ads on YouTube, and they are very clear and to the point. Boring, but clear.
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.
But fossil fuels don't work either - the highest rates of fuel poverty are in rural areas.
Heating oil is expensive, simply because of the transportation costs (particularly if coming over by ferry), and then you have a doubling in prices following Ukraine (despite our plentiful domestic production). There is no price cap for oil
That's why renewables are such an opportunity for rural areas once it gets going properly. And unlike for the rest of the population, you can actually insulate yourself from global energy markets using domestic wind etc.
If you can insulate your house properly without ruining it.
If you actually listened to the report and put aside your prejudices a little you would find out that he is highlighting the poor performance of Ofwat and he wants to set up a watchdog about sewage in streams and rivers which does itsjob.
But most people will only see this.
That's the point. If you hang a fact or series of facts on a funny story or situation it is more efficiently put across. Ask any teacher in school.
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.
from the Ipsos scottish poll: Labour is likely to be the main beneficiary, with 24% of this group saying they may switch to Labour, compared with 12% for the SNP. The Conservative vote looks soft, with 55% of those intending to vote Conservative saying they may change their mind – and those voters would be most likely to switch to Labour
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.
Sorry for doxing you. Miss.
Close enough
So close he has visited Belgravia I think
Of course. Where I used to live it was 10 minute walk away!
Been following all your posts Malc. You are very conservative in your values and outlook arn’t you?
I am indeed, A conservative with a heart, with no time for lazy slackers , selfish gits and ne'er do wells.
Someone tell him court jester is no longer a position in government.
He's having fun. People like having fun, and generally like seeing other people having fun.
His two main opponents look as though their idea of 'fun' would connect with, at best, 0.1% of the population.
Good on Davey. The Lib Dems need some media exposure, and this is a good way of doing it.
Wait until the campaign reaches EU day, when he'll hop on a small boat to France to highlight the Lib Dem policy on youth mobility with EU member states.
If you actually listened to the report and put aside your prejudices a little you would find out that he is highlighting the poor performance of Ofwat and he wants to set up a watchdog about sewage in streams and rivers which does itsjob.
But most people will only see this. And I am not being prejudice, I generally don't know what they stunts are highlighting each day. I see the picture or these social media clips and it looks like a lot of fun, but I don't know what policy point they are making.
In comparison, I have had some Labour ads on YouTube, and they are very clear and to the point. Boring, but clear.
i refer you back to my comment earlier. Boring means no-one listens or it's easily forgotten.
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.
This is just a caricature of what I wrote the other day. As I mentioned at that time, 18th Century Brutain was arguably Europe's intellectual powerhouse, but we still haven't entirely emerged from the turgid anti-intellectualism of 19th Cemtury Britain. I also mentioned that, had been Glastonbury Abbey left standing, it would have been the equal of anything on the Continent.
What we have now is a cocktail of anti-intellectualism, which is the wrong interpretation of our traditional liberty of thought and scepticism, with commercialism. The fact that British reality TV formats and strictly genre dramas have been some of the most internationally commercially successful since the 1990's does not mean that our broadcast sector is any longer particularly highly artistically regarded, compared to what it was. Do we really want to be known for exporting Big Brother and huge numbers of similar formats around the world?
So if we are anti-intellectual for creating these programmes what does that say of the countries who are lapping them up?
And Big Brother was Dutch btw.
Britain was arguably the key driver of reality formats worldwide ; this was getting going just as I was leaving the BBC in the early '2000s. That was the result of many things ; Murdoch breaking the terrestrial monopoles and essentially forcing Thatcher to dissolve the IBA, which recorded levels of public service content ; the removal of requirements on ITV companies for particular programming ; the conscious commercialisation of Channel 4 in the 1990 Act ; and Birt bringing in McKinsey to save money, and also destroying a large part of BBC television's in the distinctiveness in the process of the mid '90s. As a result, our television became much more formulaically commercial and damaging to our own public culture, but also more commercially successful abroad, generating more tax revenue for the Exchequer. Was the trade-off worth it, for the effects on our own culture ? I'm not personally sure that it was.
On the question of what it says about our neighbours that these mainly reality and highly formulaic formats are running riot there too, that's a fair question. But again, I would look to our nearest neighbours, as I started with. They've preserved often much higher intellectual standards on the main terrestrial channels, and I would say their culture is the better for it.
I haven't seen a single political advert this campaign unless it's been linked to on here but that doesn't surprise me.
Labour have spent the last four years telling voters like me that we shouldn't support them. I'm not in the market for what Conservatives or Reform are selling and Lib Dems and Greens don't have the money.
If you actually listened to the report and put aside your prejudices a little you would find out that he is highlighting the poor performance of Ofwat and he wants to set up a watchdog about sewage in streams and rivers which does itsjob.
But most people will only see this. And I am not being prejudice, I generally don't know what they stunts are highlighting each day. I see the picture or these social media clips and it looks like a lot of fun, but I don't know what policy point they are making.
In comparison, I have had some Labour ads on YouTube, and they are very clear and to the point. Boring, but clear.
i refer you back to my comment earlier. Boring means no-one listens or it's easily forgotten.
But I know what the policy was, it was about better support for the classroom and mental health of students.
I saw this clip of the unknown stuntman, I genuinely had no idea what it was about. I don't know what the others ones are about either other than the paddleboard was about sewage in the water (I think). I presume the Lib Dems are promising to clear it up or something?
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.
from the Ipsos scottish poll: Labour is likely to be the main beneficiary, with 24% of this group saying they may switch to Labour, compared with 12% for the SNP. The Conservative vote looks soft, with 55% of those intending to vote Conservative saying they may change their mind – and those voters would be most likely to switch to Labour
Labour are just Tories with red ties so no surprise.
Someone tell him court jester is no longer a position in government.
He's having fun. People like having fun, and generally like seeing other people having fun.
His two main opponents look as though their idea of 'fun' would connect with, at best, 0.1% of the population.
Good on Davey. The Lib Dems need some media exposure, and this is a good way of doing it.
Wait until the campaign reaches EU day, when he'll hop on a small boat to France to highlight the Lib Dem policy on youth mobility with EU member states.
Evel Knievel style jump from the white cliff of Dover to highlight how hard it is to travel to Europe these days?
In that London for the day. Look: warm and blue skies! Also look: The ugliness of London's most important station is incomprehensible!
Euston is absolutely shocking. Possibly the ugliest big station in Western Europe?
I know they plan to tear it down for HS2 but it was ugly from the get-go
But it is good to see nice weather in the Smoke, friends back home are telling me they’ve put the heating on. In June
PS Euston is not the most important station, I don’t think. That’s surely waterloo by sheer numbers or Kings X/St Panc because of the combo of so many lines including Eurostar
If you actually listened to the report and put aside your prejudices a little you would find out that he is highlighting the poor performance of Ofwat and he wants to set up a watchdog about sewage in streams and rivers which does itsjob.
But most people will only see this. And I am not being prejudice, I generally don't know what they stunts are highlighting each day. I see the picture or these social media clips and it looks like a lot of fun, but I don't know what policy point they are making.
In comparison, I have had some Labour ads on YouTube, and they are very clear and to the point. Boring, but clear.
i refer you back to my comment earlier. Boring means no-one listens or it's easily forgotten.
But I know what the policy was, it was about better support for the classroom and mental health of students.
I saw this clip of the unknown stuntman, I genuinely had no idea what it was about. I don't know what the others ones are about either other than the paddleboard was about sewage in the water (I think).
you may know what the policy is/was..., but you are only 1 vote.
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.
But fossil fuels don't work either - the highest rates of fuel poverty are in rural areas.
Heating oil is expensive, simply because of the transportation costs (particularly if coming over by ferry), and then you have a doubling in prices following Ukraine (despite our plentiful domestic production). There is no price cap for oil
That's why renewables are such an opportunity for rural areas once it gets going properly. And unlike for the rest of the population, you can actually insulate yourself from global energy markets using domestic wind etc.
Only if you overcome the NIMBY scum who want to prevent wind turbines, power pylons etc as they're an eyesore etc.
Wind turbines can look majestic. Across from the Clwyd coast there's the Gwynt y Môr, Rhyl Flats and North Hoyle fields and on the two sunny days per year they look absolutely stunning on the horizon.
I totally agree, but the NIMBY scum often don't and make excuses to block them. Which is ridiculous.
Our energy bills would be a lot lower if we'd spent the last decade building as much onshore wind power as we could.
Local schemes in rural areas usually enjoy widespread support. What people get upset about is the "out of sight, out of mind" approach of central government, which leads to industrial scale turbines being places areas of outstanding natural beauty after protestations from people in more suburban areas, sometimes at higher cost.
I'd prefer if every inch of viable land in and around the central belt and perhaps Fife and the Lothians was covered in turbines if it meant that the Cairngorms, West Highlands and so on were protected. Shouting "NIMBY SCUM" doesn't quite capture the subtleties of this.
If you actually listened to the report and put aside your prejudices a little you would find out that he is highlighting the poor performance of Ofwat and he wants to set up a watchdog about sewage in streams and rivers which does itsjob.
But most people will only see this. And I am not being prejudice, I generally don't know what they stunts are highlighting each day. I see the picture or these social media clips and it looks like a lot of fun, but I don't know what policy point they are making.
In comparison, I have had some Labour ads on YouTube, and they are very clear and to the point. Boring, but clear.
i refer you back to my comment earlier. Boring means no-one listens or it's easily forgotten.
But I know what the policy was, it was about better support for the classroom and mental health of students.
I saw this clip of the unknown stuntman, I genuinely had no idea what it was about. I don't know what the others ones are about either other than the paddleboard was about sewage in the water (I think).
you may know what the policy is/was..., but you are only 1 vote.
I am only giving my honest opinion. I see the Unknown Stuntman's daily PR stunts and they look like fun, but I never know what the policy proposal is....more Wipeout parks for kids?
I think part of the problem is the Lib Dems aren't in the main debates, so he can't then reinforce the increased exposure with what the policies are behind it.
As you can see from that TwiX thread, this is not the only time Donald Trump has spoken about the shark/electrocution dilemma. Quite why...
His followers are anti-electric vehicles and he seems to think this is a good explanation as to why electric vehicles are a bad thing, since electricity and water don't mix.
The fact that cars aren't ships, and the fact that even fossil-fuel consuming ships have batteries and electricity is neither here nor there.
What Trump does is like a comedian. He tries loads of random material out at these rallies, sees what reaction it gets and keeps the stuff that the crowd get excited by. The other day it was reading the Cheesecake Factory menu.
A number of comedians in the US have described Trump as a comedian, because he works in exactly the same way they do at his rallies. He tries something, sees the reaction, changes a few words, and tries it again the next night to a different crowd.
As you can see from that TwiX thread, this is not the only time Donald Trump has spoken about the shark/electrocution dilemma. Quite why...
His followers are anti-electric vehicles and he seems to think this is a good explanation as to why electric vehicles are a bad thing, since electricity and water don't mix.
The fact that cars aren't ships, and the fact that even fossil-fuel consuming ships have batteries and electricity is neither here nor there.
What Trump does is like a comedian. He tries loads of random material out at these rallies, sees what reaction it gets and keeps the stuff that the crowd get excited by. The other day it was reading the Cheesecake Factory menu.
I think he should do the wolf, sheep, cabbage thing. Maybe talk about how Biden would take the cabbage and trust the wolf with the sheep.
As you can see from that TwiX thread, this is not the only time Donald Trump has spoken about the shark/electrocution dilemma. Quite why...
His followers are anti-electric vehicles and he seems to think this is a good explanation as to why electric vehicles are a bad thing, since electricity and water don't mix.
The fact that cars aren't ships, and the fact that even fossil-fuel consuming ships have batteries and electricity is neither here nor there.
What Trump does is like a comedian. He tries loads of random material out at these rallies, sees what reaction it gets and keeps the stuff that the crowd get excited by. The other day it was reading the Cheesecake Factory menu.
A number of comedians in the US have described Trump as a comedian, because he works in exactly the same way they do at his rallies. He tries something, sees the reaction, changes a few words, and tries it again the next night to a different crowd.
Chapelle routines on Trump are great and bang on the money.
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?"
If you actually listened to the report and put aside your prejudices a little you would find out that he is highlighting the poor performance of Ofwat and he wants to set up a watchdog about sewage in streams and rivers which does itsjob.
But most people will only see this. And I am not being prejudice, I generally don't know what they stunts are highlighting each day. I see the picture or these social media clips and it looks like a lot of fun, but I don't know what policy point they are making.
In comparison, I have had some Labour ads on YouTube, and they are very clear and to the point. Boring, but clear.
i refer you back to my comment earlier. Boring means no-one listens or it's easily forgotten.
But I know what the policy was, it was about better support for the classroom and mental health of students.
I saw this clip of the unknown stuntman, I genuinely had no idea what it was about. I don't know what the others ones are about either other than the paddleboard was about sewage in the water (I think).
you may know what the policy is/was..., but you are only 1 vote.
I am only giving my honest opinion. I see the Unknown Stuntman's daily PR stunts and they look like fun, but I never know what the policy proposal is....more Wipeout parks for kids?
I think part of the problem is the Lib Dems aren't in the main debates, so he can't then reinforce the increased exposure with what the policies are behind it.
I agree there. Maybe if they get third place in Westminster again things may change, but he can only play the game as it stands. He can't take his ball away and sulk.
Someone tell him court jester is no longer a position in government.
He's having fun. People like having fun, and generally like seeing other people having fun.
His two main opponents look as though their idea of 'fun' would connect with, at best, 0.1% of the population.
Good on Davey. The Lib Dems need some media exposure, and this is a good way of doing it.
That would be fine (for me) if he were attracting my attention to tell me something important. As far as I can tell he's emptying a bucket of water over his head so I'll watch him sit in a bath of baked beans. It's purposeless. If it works for him, good luck to him.
Leon doing live commentary on the weather in London while in Ukraine is downright WEIRD.
FWIW, it's 17c here. Slightly chillier than one would desire perhaps but it makes sod all difference when I'm sat in the office during the working week. Better than a heatwave any day.
Conservative 160 Labour 280 Liberal Democrat 75 Reform UK 77 Other 89 Undecided 181
Published VI Con 23 Lab 41 LD 10 Ref 12 Green 6 Others 7
2019 GE
Conservative 314 Labour 265 Liberal Democrat 81 Green 19 SNP 32 Other 31
I've never seen data presented in this way and it seems very misleading
Well its the Raw Date table so thats how Survation presented it
I literally sent the link in a later post and still you try to make out its not and spout some bollocks about seats which is nothing to do with my post
Grow up and click on the Survation Data Table from their GMB Poll
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.
Sorry for doxing you. Miss.
Close enough
So close he has visited Belgravia I think
Of course. Where I used to live it was 10 minute walk away!
Been following all your posts Malc. You are very conservative in your values and outlook arn’t you?
I am indeed, A conservative with a heart, with no time for lazy slackers , selfish gits and ne'er do wells.
So do you have a Scottish Nationalist party for people with Conservative instincts and outlook?
The one in coalition with those Greens certainly couldn’t have been, could it?
Someone tell him court jester is no longer a position in government.
He's having fun. People like having fun, and generally like seeing other people having fun.
His two main opponents look as though their idea of 'fun' would connect with, at best, 0.1% of the population.
Good on Davey. The Lib Dems need some media exposure, and this is a good way of doing it.
Wait until the campaign reaches EU day, when he'll hop on a small boat to France to highlight the Lib Dem policy on youth mobility with EU member states.
Evel Knievel style jump from the white cliff of Dover to highlight how hard it is to travel to Europe these days?
A circus canon is what he needs, on top of the cliffs at Dover and aimed at the French.
Does anyone else think there's basically nothing left for the Tories to be able to meaningfully increase their vote share from here?
We've had all the big announcements. It's not really appealing to anyone. It seems like the only way it can go from here is down, especially if Rishi keeps making gaffes.
There appears to have been a big pivot to 'Don't give Keir a supermajority!' in the last 24 hours. I don't know effective this will be. They are waving the White Flag, whereas from the other 3 non-Labour parties:
Davey can say "Vote for me, former Tories, and I'll be your sensible LOTO"
Farage has already been saying "Keir Starmer is going to be PM" and repeating that "I have a 5 year plan to be the new real opposition."
The Greens can attract much more of a 'noble' protest vote if the election already feels like a foregone - attracting votes from discontented Labour voters, too.
And all of the above are helped by the fact that 'Keir Starmer will be PM!' just isn't scaring a lot of the non-Labour vote like Corbyn or even the threats of Miliband/Sturgeon 'coalition of chaos' did.
I think what will be decisive, is how much the tactical vote message cuts through. It might even be in the mutual interest of the Lib Dems, ReformUK AND the Greens to all use the 'Keir Starmer is going to be PM' line and see if the combined effect turns people away from CON/LAB like never before.
If the message that 'The Tories have lost anyway' gets real cut through then we might see some weird things happen on election day.
I haven't seen a single political advert this campaign unless it's been linked to on here but that doesn't surprise me.
Labour have spent the last four years telling voters like me that we shouldn't support them. I'm not in the market for what Conservatives or Reform are selling and Lib Dems and Greens don't have the money.
I actually logged into Facebook yesterday for the first time in years, and there were three posts from the Conservatives at the top of my feed. Needless to say, I don't follow them so they must have been particularly poorly-targetted paid ads.
I always thought they prided themselves on the efficiency of their online ad spend, but it would have required a negative CPM for these ads to have been good value!
Someone tell him court jester is no longer a position in government.
He's having fun. People like having fun, and generally like seeing other people having fun.
His two main opponents look as though their idea of 'fun' would connect with, at best, 0.1% of the population.
Good on Davey. The Lib Dems need some media exposure, and this is a good way of doing it.
That would be fine (for me) if he were attracting my attention to tell me something important. As far as I can tell he's emptying a bucket of water over his head so I'll watch him sit in a bath of baked beans. It's purposeless. If it works for him, good luck to him.
It has a purpose: the media are mentioning the Lib Dems. Sadly, the media give far too much attention to the Conservatives and Labour, with an outsized chunk given to radical outliers such as Reform. The Lib Dems get squeezed.
Like today: people are rightly concerned with water quality, something today's stunt goes towards highlighting.
IMV it's an interesting gambit, and one that will probably only work for one election cycle.
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
FFS Survation publish the raw numbers for stated 2019 VI too.
I literally sent the link are you thick or what
If you dont understand how to read or interpret raw tables just keep quiet and stop spouting nonsense.
Piece of advice don't bet on the GE if you cant tell the difference between raw numbers VI and seat projections as they are 3 separate things and muddling them up like you could be very expensive,
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?"
Someone tell him court jester is no longer a position in government.
He's having fun. People like having fun, and generally like seeing other people having fun.
His two main opponents look as though their idea of 'fun' would connect with, at best, 0.1% of the population.
Good on Davey. The Lib Dems need some media exposure, and this is a good way of doing it.
Given that Starmer’s idea of fun is watching Arsenal, you have a point. As for Sunak I assume that for relaxation he counts pound coins.
OKC, hope you enjoyed your anniversary and had a small glass to celebrate.
We did indeed, Malc. Excellent meal at a nearby pub with one of our bridesmaids, her husband and two other people who were there on the day. One of the advantages of going to the pub is that I can have draught beer!
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
FFS Survation publish the raw numbers for stated 2019 VI too.
I literally sent the link are you thick or what
If you dont understand how to read or interpret raw tables just keep quiet and stop spouting nonsense.
Piece of advice don't bet on the GE if you cant tell the difference between raw numbers VI and seat projections as they are 3 separate things and muddling them up like you could be very expensive,
OGH used to occasionally highlight figures like this when he thought the DKs were high.
Someone tell him court jester is no longer a position in government.
He's having fun. People like having fun, and generally like seeing other people having fun.
His two main opponents look as though their idea of 'fun' would connect with, at best, 0.1% of the population.
Good on Davey. The Lib Dems need some media exposure, and this is a good way of doing it.
That would be fine (for me) if he were attracting my attention to tell me something important. As far as I can tell he's emptying a bucket of water over his head so I'll watch him sit in a bath of baked beans. It's purposeless. If it works for him, good luck to him.
It has a purpose: the media are mentioning the Lib Dems. Sadly, the media give far too much attention to the Conservatives and Labour, with an outsized chunk given to radical outliers such as Reform. The Lib Dems get squeezed.
Like today: people are rightly concerned with water quality, something today's stunt goes towards highlighting.
IMV it's an interesting gambit, and one that will probably only work for one election cycle.
I get his idea, I just don't think it works. As a plan he should have mixed it with, for example, being on podium tomorrow for the debate. Any message is getting drowned and he is becoming 'that comedy stunt guy' I accept I could be wrong and it works for them but thats how I've seen it
Afternoons? You want to know what to do in the afternoons? Ah, my friend, afternoons are for sitting on Deribasovskaya street, like Pushkin and Babel, like Nabokov and Nijinsky, like Akhmatova and Gogol and Eisenstein, and sipping a Ten Spritz, in the sunlight gently filtering through the poplars, as you listen to the talk of war, and love, and war
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.
The Sun wants to back a winner. It is a weather vane. Blowing with the wind.
Afternoons? You want to know what to do in the afternoons? Ah, my friend, afternoons are for sitting on Deribasovskaya street, like Pushkin and Babel, like Nabokov and Nijinsky, like Akhmatova and Gogol and Eisenstein, and sipping a Ten Spritz, in the sunlight gently filtering through the poplars, as you listen to the talk of war, and love, and war
Or go down Spoons for a glass of the very authentic, Spanish beer, Madri.
Someone tell him court jester is no longer a position in government.
He's having fun. People like having fun, and generally like seeing other people having fun.
His two main opponents look as though their idea of 'fun' would connect with, at best, 0.1% of the population.
Good on Davey. The Lib Dems need some media exposure, and this is a good way of doing it.
That would be fine (for me) if he were attracting my attention to tell me something important. As far as I can tell he's emptying a bucket of water over his head so I'll watch him sit in a bath of baked beans. It's purposeless. If it works for him, good luck to him.
It has a purpose: the media are mentioning the Lib Dems. Sadly, the media give far too much attention to the Conservatives and Labour, with an outsized chunk given to radical outliers such as Reform. The Lib Dems get squeezed.
Like today: people are rightly concerned with water quality, something today's stunt goes towards highlighting.
IMV it's an interesting gambit, and one that will probably only work for one election cycle.
Trouble is, number of dips he's had, if Davey doesn't catch something soon then the public are going to shrug and think 'well, water quality can't be that bad afterall!' :
Someone tell him court jester is no longer a position in government.
He's having fun. People like having fun, and generally like seeing other people having fun.
His two main opponents look as though their idea of 'fun' would connect with, at best, 0.1% of the population.
Good on Davey. The Lib Dems need some media exposure, and this is a good way of doing it.
That would be fine (for me) if he were attracting my attention to tell me something important. As far as I can tell he's emptying a bucket of water over his head so I'll watch him sit in a bath of baked beans. It's purposeless. If it works for him, good luck to him.
It has a purpose: the media are mentioning the Lib Dems. Sadly, the media give far too much attention to the Conservatives and Labour, with an outsized chunk given to radical outliers such as Reform. The Lib Dems get squeezed.
Like today: people are rightly concerned with water quality, something today's stunt goes towards highlighting.
IMV it's an interesting gambit, and one that will probably only work for one election cycle.
I get his idea, I just don't think it works. As a plan he should have mixed it with, for example, being on podium tomorrow for the debate. Any message is getting drowned and he is becoming 'that comedy stunt guy' I accept I could be wrong and it works for them but thats how I've seen it
I do think you are massively in the minority on this. Davey appears to be getting more cut through than any Lib Dem campaign since Clegg 2010 (though not on that level yet!). A lot of that is likely because the Tories are much weaker too - but it is still a good showing so far.
In terms of appearing on the debate stage - I somewhat agree. I was quite impressed with Daisy Cooper in the last debate though.
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?
ITS NOT MPS ITS RESPONDENTS STOP CONFIRMING YOU ARE AN IDIOT WHO CANT READ DATA TABLES
SKS will likely listen though once safely in No 10 and he can leave aside his Blair tribute act he used to win over former Tory voters in Middle England.
Ideologically SKS is closer to Labour leaders like Wilson, Kinnock, Smith, Brown, Ed Miliband etc in wanting to expand the size of the state and raise taxes than he is to Blair who was more of a fiscal conservative and economically centrist. Even if SKS is not as far left as a Corbyn or Foot.
I see Reeves has already refused to rule out raising capital gains tax as Chancellor
Someone tell him court jester is no longer a position in government.
He's having fun. People like having fun, and generally like seeing other people having fun.
His two main opponents look as though their idea of 'fun' would connect with, at best, 0.1% of the population.
Good on Davey. The Lib Dems need some media exposure, and this is a good way of doing it.
That would be fine (for me) if he were attracting my attention to tell me something important. As far as I can tell he's emptying a bucket of water over his head so I'll watch him sit in a bath of baked beans. It's purposeless. If it works for him, good luck to him.
It has a purpose: the media are mentioning the Lib Dems. Sadly, the media give far too much attention to the Conservatives and Labour, with an outsized chunk given to radical outliers such as Reform. The Lib Dems get squeezed.
Like today: people are rightly concerned with water quality, something today's stunt goes towards highlighting.
IMV it's an interesting gambit, and one that will probably only work for one election cycle.
Trouble is, number of dips he's had, if Davey doesn't catch something soon then the public are going to shrug and think 'well, water quality can't be that bad afterall!' :
Christ, imagine if he caught something and died in the early hours of the 5th not knowing his sacrifice had lead the Libs to a shock victory. They would have to rename Pyrrhic victories as Daveyian victories.
In normal times, Jenkyns using a picture of Farage on her campaign literature would generate a much stronger response from CCHQ than it has done.
The thing is, if she had defected to Reform at 3:59pm on Friday as we thought she might, she might have a much better chance of re-election than she does now.
Afternoons? You want to know what to do in the afternoons? Ah, my friend, afternoons are for sitting on Deribasovskaya street, like Pushkin and Babel, like Nabokov and Nijinsky, like Akhmatova and Gogol and Eisenstein, and sipping a Ten Spritz, in the sunlight gently filtering through the poplars, as you listen to the talk of war, and love, and war
Or go down Spoons for a glass of the very authentic, Spanish beer, Madri.
Something I heard the other day, oh I am not drinking that fake stuff, I want a proper Spanish beer, San Miguel....
For those that don't know, its originally Filipino, and in the UK its made by Carlsberg.
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
You’re desperate to learn the wrong lesson, yet after election day it’s quite likely that this ‘divided right’ narrative will take root, just as ‘divided left’ took root after Labour’s 1983 debacle. Yet both are wrong - research is clear that had the SDP disappeared from 1983’s election, Labour would have lost by even more, and there’s no doubt this time that if Reform simply disappeared from the ballot paper, the Tories would still be thrown out on their ear.
Afternoons? You want to know what to do in the afternoons? Ah, my friend, afternoons are for sitting on Deribasovskaya street, like Pushkin and Babel, like Nabokov and Nijinsky, like Akhmatova and Gogol and Eisenstein, and sipping a Ten Spritz, in the sunlight gently filtering through the poplars, as you listen to the talk of war, and love, and war
Or go down Spoons for a glass of the very authentic, Spanish beer, Madri.
Something I heard the other day, oh I am not drinking that fake stuff, I want a proper Spanish beer, San Miguel....
For those that don't know, its originally Filipino, and in the UK its made by Carlsberg.
All those lagers taste identical in any case. Nobody would be able to tell Carlsberg, Madri, San Miguel etc etc etc apart in a blind tasting.
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?
I took my Dad to a sports bar showing one of the 2019 Ashes Test matches for an agreeably boozy lunch after a morning walk along the Water of Leith, once, yes.
Apparently humans are also inconsistent. Surprise!
We have established your irrationality and inconsistency now, for which I thank you.
I find the whole thing Sky Sports Refuse-ism bizarre – but it is undoubtably A Thing. And there are millions like you. You are not at all unusual in this regard.
Why bizarre?
Some people really dislike the legacy of Murdoch in general.
Some dislike what the Big Money has done to football in particular.
Some refuse to pay what they see as rip off prices.
Does anyone else think there's basically nothing left for the Tories to be able to meaningfully increase their vote share from here?
We've had all the big announcements. It's not really appealing to anyone. It seems like the only way it can go from here is down, especially if Rishi keeps making gaffes.
There appears to have been a big pivot to 'Don't give Keir a supermajority!' in the last 24 hours. I don't know effective this will be. They are waving the White Flag, whereas from the other 3 non-Labour parties:
Davey can say "Vote for me, former Tories, and I'll be your sensible LOTO"
Farage has already been saying "Keir Starmer is going to be PM" and repeating that "I have a 5 year plan to be the new real opposition."
The Greens can attract much more of a 'noble' protest vote if the election already feels like a foregone - attracting votes from discontented Labour voters, too.
And all of the above are helped by the fact that 'Keir Starmer will be PM!' just isn't scaring a lot of the non-Labour vote like Corbyn or even the threats of Miliband/Sturgeon 'coalition of chaos' did.
I think what will be decisive, is how much the tactical vote message cuts through. It might even be in the mutual interest of the Lib Dems, ReformUK AND the Greens to all use the 'Keir Starmer is going to be PM' line and see if the combined effect turns people away from CON/LAB like never before.
If the message that 'The Tories have lost anyway' gets real cut through then we might see some weird things happen on election day.
The "supermajority" thing is particularly strange - most people will think it sounds like a vaguely technical term but not know what it means. They might as well say 'Don't give Keir a lap joint flange!' for all the good it will do them.
They'd do better with "Wipe the grin off Keir's face!", which might at least get the core vote out.
Speaking of which... have we had any reports from activists about their mood? If the Tories struggle to mount a GOTV operation, it could drive the differential turnout even further against them. It'll be interesting to see if postal vote renewals are down significantly this year.
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.
I actually think the election will be no worse for the DUP than 2010 when they lost 2 seats. Indeed they may only lose E Belfast to the Alliance and South Antrim to the UUP as TUV are not contesting Upper Bann which SF are targeting.
DUP are not contesting Fermanagh and Tyrone either, nor are TUV, so that could be a UUP gain from SF as SF won it by less than 100 votes in 2019 and Labour Alternative and Aontu are standing
Afternoons? You want to know what to do in the afternoons? Ah, my friend, afternoons are for sitting on Deribasovskaya street, like Pushkin and Babel, like Nabokov and Nijinsky, like Akhmatova and Gogol and Eisenstein, and sipping a Ten Spritz, in the sunlight gently filtering through the poplars, as you listen to the talk of war, and love, and war
Or go down Spoons for a glass of the very authentic, Spanish beer, Madri.
Something I heard the other day, oh I am not drinking that fake stuff, I want a proper Spanish beer, San Miguel....
For those that don't know, its originally Filipino, and in the UK its made by Carlsberg.
All those lagers taste identical in any case. Nobody would be able to tell Carlsberg, Madri, San Miguel etc etc etc apart in a blind tasting.
Its used to be a bit of a joke oh you are drinking pissy beer like Carling or Fosters, you want a decent continental lager, but as you say all the lagers owned by AB InBev, Heineken or Calsberg are the same weak tasteless piss. Can be quite refreshing on a warm day, but not much more than that.
I fear I might have started another what pizza chain is better debate...
Someone tell him court jester is no longer a position in government.
He's having fun. People like having fun, and generally like seeing other people having fun.
His two main opponents look as though their idea of 'fun' would connect with, at best, 0.1% of the population.
Good on Davey. The Lib Dems need some media exposure, and this is a good way of doing it.
Wait until the campaign reaches EU day, when he'll hop on a small boat to France to highlight the Lib Dem policy on youth mobility with EU member states.
Evel Knievel style jump from the white cliff of Dover to highlight how hard it is to travel to Europe these days?
A circus canon is what he needs, on top of the cliffs at Dover and aimed at the French.
I think Armstrong and Miller have already done that.
Does anyone else think there's basically nothing left for the Tories to be able to meaningfully increase their vote share from here?
We've had all the big announcements. It's not really appealing to anyone. It seems like the only way it can go from here is down, especially if Rishi keeps making gaffes.
There appears to have been a big pivot to 'Don't give Keir a supermajority!' in the last 24 hours. I don't know effective this will be. They are waving the White Flag, whereas from the other 3 non-Labour parties:
Davey can say "Vote for me, former Tories, and I'll be your sensible LOTO"
Farage has already been saying "Keir Starmer is going to be PM" and repeating that "I have a 5 year plan to be the new real opposition."
The Greens can attract much more of a 'noble' protest vote if the election already feels like a foregone - attracting votes from discontented Labour voters, too.
And all of the above are helped by the fact that 'Keir Starmer will be PM!' just isn't scaring a lot of the non-Labour vote like Corbyn or even the threats of Miliband/Sturgeon 'coalition of chaos' did.
I think what will be decisive, is how much the tactical vote message cuts through. It might even be in the mutual interest of the Lib Dems, ReformUK AND the Greens to all use the 'Keir Starmer is going to be PM' line and see if the combined effect turns people away from CON/LAB like never before.
If the message that 'The Tories have lost anyway' gets real cut through then we might see some weird things happen on election day.
Two things.
One. The manifesto is still the point at which Labour can blow it. So it's not all over yet.
Two. I think your latter points are why it's important that Labour uses the manifesto to pivot from a negative message about how awful the Tories have been to an optimistic message about how Labour will start to put things right, as @TimS has argued.
That then gives people something to vote for, specifically a reason to vote Labour, as opposed to Lib Dem/Reform/Green.
I don't know if Starmer can pull the pivot off. I'm not sure if his emotional register includes optimism. If he did, though, it really would boost Labour towards the top-end of the current forecasts.
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?
I took my Dad to a sports bar showing one of the 2019 Ashes Test matches for an agreeably boozy lunch after a morning walk along the Water of Leith, once, yes.
Apparently humans are also inconsistent. Surprise!
We have established your irrationality and inconsistency now, for which I thank you.
I find the whole thing Sky Sports Refuse-ism bizarre – but it is undoubtably A Thing. And there are millions like you. You are not at all unusual in this regard.
Why bizarre?
Some people really dislike the legacy of Murdoch in general.
Some dislike what the Big Money has done to football in particular.
Some refuse to pay what they see as rip off prices.
Some, like me, don’t watch football.
If you don't like football/sport in general than it's perfectly rational not to subscribe to Sky.
If you do like sport then Comcast (not Murdoch) owned Sky Sports is pretty much essential.
I don't like what Big Money has done to football either –– but that's a wider issue that includes state-owned clubs etc not just Sky.
Comments
What we have now is a cocktail of anti-intellectualism, which is the wrong interpretation of our traditional liberty of thought and scepticism, with commercialism. The fact that British reality TV formats and strictly genre dramas have been some of the most internationally commercially successful since the 1990's does not mean that our broadcast sector is any longer particularly highly artistically regarded, compared to what it was. Do we really want to be known for exporting Big Brother and huge numbers of similar formats around the world?
The confusion is all yours.
Heating oil is expensive, simply because of the transportation costs (particularly if coming over by ferry), and then you have a doubling in prices following Ukraine (despite our plentiful domestic production). There is no price cap for oil
That's why renewables are such an opportunity for rural areas once it gets going properly. And unlike for the rest of the population, you can actually insulate yourself from global energy markets using domestic wind etc.
The fact that cars aren't ships, and the fact that even fossil-fuel consuming ships have batteries and electricity is neither here nor there.
On the broader point, that there are lots of undecideds. It's about 19.6% in that poll, whereas Survation's final 2019 poll, which was pretty accurate, still had 14.7% saying undecided. So there's definitely more, but not really the kind of difference that would suggest this election's polls will go wrong.
Been following all your posts Malc. You are very conservative in your values and outlook arn’t you?
And Big Brother was Dutch btw.
https://x.com/PolitlcsUK/status/1800817920311726294
No idea what policy it is highlighting.
What troubles me is that the whole web of intrigue is so vast and complex that as soon as you reach into one part you are drawn into the rest. And they all blame each other. Vennells will say it was the lawyers, the lawyers will say it was the Board, they all blame Fujitsu, and of course they all operated with the full consent of the shareholder. I agree though that keeping it as small & simple as possible is in principle the right way to go. (For a good example of the wrong way and how it failed, I refer you to the Maxwell case, which I expect you know all about.)
Another problem is the status of some of the suspects. It's probably considered ok to go for the likes of Vennells, van den Bogerd and the wretched Jarnail Singh, but are we going to see Brian Altman in the dock? Or even Angela Perkins, wife of the former Foreign Secretary? That would be a nice curve ball for PM Starmer.
Surprisingly, Ms C is rather more bullish than me on that one. She thinks Starmer would go for it regardless. Her relative pessimism is based more on the time factor, and the sclerotic ways of The Plod.
Well, we'll see. It is indeed an opportunity.
Our energy bills would be a lot lower if we'd spent the last decade building as much onshore wind power as we could.
Frankly at this stage only @bigjohnowls can clarify. Not even an SKS fan could explain.
In comparison, I have had some Labour ads on YouTube, and they are very clear and to the point. Boring, but clear.
Labour is likely to be the main beneficiary, with 24% of this group saying they may switch to Labour, compared with 12% for the SNP. The Conservative vote looks soft, with 55% of those intending to vote Conservative saying they may change their mind – and those voters would be most likely to switch to Labour
His two main opponents look as though their idea of 'fun' would connect with, at best, 0.1% of the population.
Good on Davey. The Lib Dems need some media exposure, and this is a good way of doing it.
or is that Refect to DeFuk?
On the question of what it says about our neighbours that these mainly reality and highly formulaic formats are running riot there too, that's a fair question. But again, I would look to our nearest neighbours, as I started with. They've preserved often much higher intellectual standards on the main terrestrial channels, and I would say their culture is the better for it.
Labour have spent the last four years telling voters like me that we shouldn't support them. I'm not in the market for what Conservatives or Reform are selling and Lib Dems and Greens don't have the money.
I saw this clip of the unknown stuntman, I genuinely had no idea what it was about. I don't know what the others ones are about either other than the paddleboard was about sewage in the water (I think). I presume the Lib Dems are promising to clear it up or something?
I'd prefer if every inch of viable land in and around the central belt and perhaps Fife and the Lothians was covered in turbines if it meant that the Cairngorms, West Highlands and so on were protected. Shouting "NIMBY SCUM" doesn't quite capture the subtleties of this.
If they are negative they could be cathode-ine
I think part of the problem is the Lib Dems aren't in the main debates, so he can't then reinforce the increased exposure with what the policies are behind it.
If it works for him, good luck to him.
FWIW, it's 17c here. Slightly chillier than one would desire perhaps but it makes sod all difference when I'm sat in the office during the working week. Better than a heatwave any day.
I literally sent the link in a later post and still you try to make out its not and spout some bollocks about seats which is nothing to do with my post
Grow up and click on the Survation Data Table from their GMB Poll
The one in coalition with those Greens certainly couldn’t have been, could it?
- Tory Manifesto is already launched
- Lib Dem Manifesto is already launched
- Green today
- Labour coming tomorrow
- REFUK coming Monday 17th
Does anyone else think there's basically nothing left for the Tories to be able to meaningfully increase their vote share from here?We've had all the big announcements. It's not really appealing to anyone. It seems like the only way it can go from here is down, especially if Rishi keeps making gaffes.
There appears to have been a big pivot to 'Don't give Keir a supermajority!' in the last 24 hours. I don't know effective this will be. They are waving the White Flag, whereas from the other 3 non-Labour parties:
- Davey can say "Vote for me, former Tories, and I'll be your sensible LOTO"
- Farage has already been saying "Keir Starmer is going to be PM" and repeating that "I have a 5 year plan to be the new real opposition."
- The Greens can attract much more of a 'noble' protest vote if the election already feels like a foregone - attracting votes from discontented Labour voters, too.
And all of the above are helped by the fact that 'Keir Starmer will be PM!' just isn't scaring a lot of the non-Labour vote like Corbyn or even the threats of Miliband/Sturgeon 'coalition of chaos' did.I think what will be decisive, is how much the tactical vote message cuts through. It might even be in the mutual interest of the Lib Dems, ReformUK AND the Greens to all use the 'Keir Starmer is going to be PM' line and see if the combined effect turns people away from CON/LAB like never before.
If the message that 'The Tories have lost anyway' gets real cut through then we might see some weird things happen on election day.
Guardian Media Group announces appointment of Amber de Botton as chief communications officer
..Amber became director of communications at 10 Downing Street where she was in charge of the UK Government’s communications strategy...
https://www.theguardian.com/gnm-press-office/article/2024/jun/12/guardian-media-group-announces-appointment-of-amber-de-botton-as-chief-communications-officer
I always thought they prided themselves on the efficiency of their online ad spend, but it would have required a negative CPM for these ads to have been good value!
Like today: people are rightly concerned with water quality, something today's stunt goes towards highlighting.
IMV it's an interesting gambit, and one that will probably only work for one election cycle.
I literally sent the link are you thick or what
If you dont understand how to read or interpret raw tables just keep quiet and stop spouting nonsense.
Piece of advice don't bet on the GE if you cant tell the difference between raw numbers VI and seat projections as they are 3 separate things and muddling them up like you could be very expensive,
George tried to hire her when he was Chancellor.
Amber's husband was a Labour candidate in 2010 and worked on David Miliband's leadership bid.
One of the advantages of going to the pub is that I can have draught beer!
Edit - Or was it Ed Miliband's wife?
Lest we forget scummy vile cretins that worked for Gordon Brown tried to smear both of them.
I accept I could be wrong and it works for them but thats how I've seen it
Hope that helps
https://www.ft.com/content/4e723daa-7955-4712-b74d-391a403b9d6d
You look at the chart though and All Item inflation looks very sticky at over 3% i.e. including food / energy, that stuff everybody needs every day.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/other/labour-should-leave-room-to-raise-taxes-says-neil-kinnock/ar-BB1o4ZQ0?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=U531&cvid=5a2001d707e14a699ea0cb3f32729a6a&ei=9
In terms of appearing on the debate stage - I somewhat agree. I was quite impressed with Daisy Cooper in the last debate though.
https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/tories-water-down-key-national-service-plan-a-day-after-manifesto-launch/
Strong and stable.
Ideologically SKS is closer to Labour leaders like Wilson, Kinnock, Smith, Brown, Ed Miliband etc in wanting to expand the size of the state and raise taxes than he is to Blair who was more of a fiscal conservative and economically centrist. Even if SKS is not as far left as a Corbyn or Foot.
I see Reeves has already refused to rule out raising capital gains tax as Chancellor
In normal times, Jenkyns using a picture of Farage on her campaign literature would generate a much stronger response from CCHQ than it has done.
The thing is, if she had defected to Reform at 3:59pm on Friday as we thought she might, she might have a much better chance of re-election than she does now.
For those that don't know, its originally Filipino, and in the UK its made by Carlsberg.
Hope so looking forward to him catching water in a bucket dressed as a penguin
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=stuart+hall+laughing#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:8fe858c1,vid:Z2t5WP1uYAI,st:0
Some people really dislike the legacy of Murdoch in general.
Some dislike what the Big Money has done to football in particular.
Some refuse to pay what they see as rip off prices.
Some, like me, don’t watch football.
They'd do better with "Wipe the grin off Keir's face!", which might at least get the core vote out.
Speaking of which... have we had any reports from activists about their mood? If the Tories struggle to mount a GOTV operation, it could drive the differential turnout even further against them. It'll be interesting to see if postal vote renewals are down significantly this year.
DUP are not contesting Fermanagh and Tyrone either, nor are TUV, so that could be a UUP gain from SF as SF won it by less than 100 votes in 2019 and Labour Alternative and Aontu are standing
I fear I might have started another what pizza chain is better debate...
https://images.app.goo.gl/S6weEwMWjJNNWzPk6
One. The manifesto is still the point at which Labour can blow it. So it's not all over yet.
Two. I think your latter points are why it's important that Labour uses the manifesto to pivot from a negative message about how awful the Tories have been to an optimistic message about how Labour will start to put things right, as @TimS has argued.
That then gives people something to vote for, specifically a reason to vote Labour, as opposed to Lib Dem/Reform/Green.
I don't know if Starmer can pull the pivot off. I'm not sure if his emotional register includes optimism. If he did, though, it really would boost Labour towards the top-end of the current forecasts.
If you do like sport then Comcast (not Murdoch) owned Sky Sports is pretty much essential.
I don't like what Big Money has done to football either –– but that's a wider issue that includes state-owned clubs etc not just Sky.
£30/month to indulge a passion/hobby is peanuts.