The Isle of Wight is being split in two for this election. I was just thinking it would be funny if one of the seats went to the Greens and the other to RefUK.
That could lead to a Korea style partition.
More Cyprus surely. Island and all that. Maybe with a tiny bit of British crown territory somewhere near the Needles.
A surprising number of divided islands now I come to think of it. Timor, Borneo, Papua, Ireland, Hispaniola. Probably more I've forgotten.
Hope you're feeling better - heard you had some ill health.
Our local tory mp hasn't given up. Still paying to get leaflets delivered but suspect his time is up.
Thanks, yes - had a stroke 8 weeks ago. Pretty much back to normal now except for a need to sleep for an hour most afternoons, and occasional struggles with memory.
That's pretty much where I'm at now! Keep on keeping on..
Blimey, PBers have been through the wars on the health front.
Hope you all look after yourselves.
Just to make it absolutely clear, I increasingly like (but don't usually get) a nap of an afternoon and have an occasional memory fart! The latter is a bit more concerning as my mother's side of the family have a strong incidence of dementia, but fit can ye dae. Nevertheless thanks for kind thoughts.
Jeez, TUD, I had no idea you'd been so poorly. I'm also having to massively readjust my idea of how old you are - I'd guessed you were late 40s. Best wishes for a continued recovery. All sorts of advice out there about staving off dementia but I'd be lying if I said I knew which ones worked best! But staying mentally (and physically) active and good oral hygiene strikes me as good advice whether it works or not.
Interdental toothbrushes are great for oral hygiene. My dentist got me using them a couple of years ago. They're far more effective and easy to use than dental floss, and my gums have become noticeably healthier. Hopefully this is also helping to keep potentially dementia-inducing oral bacterial out of my bloodstream.
I'm...just... so... glad... Rishi Sunak.. called an early...eleecczzzzzzzz.....
Is this the only GE in history where everyone in the Conservative Party has given up?
Whilst the campaign has been spectacularly inept, I just have this feeling that there must have been some issue buried deep down to make him cut and run in this way.
I do think it might well be the King. If Sunak was told there was a considerable risk KCIII would die during an autumn election campaign, then we won't hear about it until after KCIII passes away, but it would probably make people think more kindly of Sunak. He went unprepared into an election campaign to ease the concerns of the Monarch.
Though the Tories should have been well-prepared for an election at any time.
Doesn't pass the smell test for me. Even Tories are not venal enough to bet on the date of an election caused by the King's health concerns and it's impossible to be that exact.
And Davey has shown repeatedly that getting wet in an election campaign is not of itself a problem, it's how you get wet.
Ed is all right. He has fun!
There's a large number of sub-posties who would love to have been having fun getting wet. Instead, they were being locked up for 23 hours a day because Ed Davey was considerably incurious.
The same could be said of every Minister responsible for the PO, from Peter Mandelson onwards, with the exception of Norman Lamb, who genuinely tried to help but was moved on before he could achieve much.
Davey was demonised in the wake of the TV series. This was unfair, but it's politics and I have no issue with that. On a sophisticated Site like this however, I would expect a more balanced view to prevail, especially in the light of the contributions on the subject by such experts on the matter as Ms Cyclefree.
Davey did at least have a meeting with Sir Alan Bates, even if nothing came of it,
A very balanced response. Those Tories wondering why they have become so unpopular and lacking in friends should use this exchange as a point of learning. Many politically neutral people believe that the Lib Dem’s did the right thing for the country by stepping in to a huge problem and trying to help sort the country out in 2010. As a ‘reward’ they were shafted by the Tories in 2015. The attempts to smear Davey are falling on increasingly deaf ears because people understand that many Tories have similar (or in many cases more important) questions to answer about the post office scandal and the electorate have heard enough of lies from a party where senior officials think it’s fine to use insider information to make a few quid out of betting. There is some truth in the old advice to be careful who you abuse on the way up because one day you might need them on the way down. The Tories have lost everyone who would work with them and now seem to be losing the electorate as well. That is likely to mean a few very, very difficult years for them indeed.
I'm...just... so... glad... Rishi Sunak.. called an early...eleecczzzzzzzz.....
Is this the only GE in history where everyone in the Conservative Party has given up?
Whilst the campaign has been spectacularly inept, I just have this feeling that there must have been some issue buried deep down to make him cut and run in this way.
I do think it might well be the King. If Sunak was told there was a considerable risk KCIII would die during an autumn election campaign, then we won't hear about it until after KCIII passes away, but it would probably make people think more kindly of Sunak. He went unprepared into an election campaign to ease the concerns of the Monarch.
Though the Tories should have been well-prepared for an election at any time.
Doesn't pass the smell test for me. Even Tories are not venal enough to bet on the date of an election caused by the King's health concerns and it's impossible to be that exact.
And Davey has shown repeatedly that getting wet in an election campaign is not of itself a problem, it's how you get wet.
Ed is all right. He has fun!
There's a large number of sub-posties who would love to have been having fun getting wet. Instead, they were being locked up for 23 hours a day because Ed Davey was considerably incurious.
The same could be said of every Minister responsible for the PO, from Peter Mandelson onwards, with the exception of Norman Lamb, who genuinely tried to help but was moved on before he could achieve much.
Davey was demonised in the wake of the TV series. This was unfair, but it's politics and I have no issue with that. On a sophisticated Site like this however, I would expect a more balanced view to prevail, especially in the light of the contributions on the subject by such experts on the matter as Ms Cyclefree.
Davey did at least have a meeting with Sir Alan Bates, even if nothing came of it,
Let's see how he fares before the Committee next month.
I'm...just... so... glad... Rishi Sunak.. called an early...eleecczzzzzzzz.....
Is this the only GE in history where everyone in the Conservative Party has given up?
Whilst the campaign has been spectacularly inept, I just have this feeling that there must have been some issue buried deep down to make him cut and run in this way.
I do think it might well be the King. If Sunak was told there was a considerable risk KCIII would die during an autumn election campaign, then we won't hear about it until after KCIII passes away, but it would probably make people think more kindly of Sunak. He went unprepared into an election campaign to ease the concerns of the Monarch.
Though the Tories should have been well-prepared for an election at any time.
Doesn't pass the smell test for me. Even Tories are not venal enough to bet on the date of an election caused by the King's health concerns and it's impossible to be that exact.
And Davey has shown repeatedly that getting wet in an election campaign is not of itself a problem, it's how you get wet.
Ed is all right. He has fun!
There's a large number of sub-posties who would love to have been having fun getting wet. Instead, they were being locked up for 23 hours a day because Ed Davey was considerably incurious.
The same could be said of every Minister responsible for the PO, from Peter Mandelson onwards, with the exception of Norman Lamb, who genuinely tried to help but was moved on before he could achieve much.
Davey was demonised in the wake of the TV series. This was unfair, but it's politics and I have no issue with that. On a sophisticated Site like this however, I would expect a more balanced view to prevail, especially in the light of the contributions on the subject by such experts on the matter as Ms Cyclefree.
Davey did at least have a meeting with Sir Alan Bates, even if nothing came of it,
Let's see how he fares before the Committee next month.
The LOTO at the PO inquiry? That should be interesting.
There are going to be an awful lot of seats (quite possibly 100+) where Labour win with a majority significantly smaller than Reform's votes.
B StE is just about on the cusp according to Baxter. It's the 77th safest Tory seat, so if it is truly marginal, we are probably looking at fewer than 100 Conservative MPs in the new House.
I think a big reason why the Tories are losing this time is the 2019 result was artificially inflated. For all the talk of ‘where Sunak went wrong’ we must remember that:
- Many 2019 Tory voters would never normally vote Tory, but ‘lent’ them their vote to ‘Get Brexit done’. Once we had left the EU they were happy to go back to Labour or other parties, particularly once the 2nd Ref idea was killed. See the 2017 vs 2019 Labour result for some (imperfect) evidence of the latter.
- Many moderate voters were put off by fears of a Corbyn Government, whereas they’re fine with Starmer. Starmer might be less popular with the youth/left but this largely only affects seats that Labour would win anyway.
- Lib Dems were advocating for 2nd Ref/Rejoin EU in 2019. Now they’re only saying ‘Single Market rejoin’ which doesn’t alienate Tory voters in Lib Dem Marginals.
- The Brexit Party stood down in Tory-held seats in 2019. REFUK is not doing so this time. This is a huge understated factor.
^ The above 4 reasons mean that even before you look at Partygate, Liz Truss, D-Day Gate, Wagergate, Inflation, Immigration, elderly Tory voters dying, Boris’ Johnson’s personal popularity being higher than Truss/Sunak… or anything else that has actually happened between 2019-2024 - the ‘baseline’ of the 2024 result was artificially low.
Boris’ 365 Tory seats on 43.6% was in some ways inflated by the above. Pandemic CON polling of >50% was more a ‘rally round the flag’ effect as we saw mirrored in other countries worldwide - but it may have made the 43.6% look more real.
I’m not defending Sunak’s record at all - I just don’t think he had much of a hope to begin with of preventing a Labour victory.
Overall I think it’s much easier to rationalise <100 Tory seats if you believe that a chunk of that 43.6% wasn’t going to vote Tory again, even if Sunak ran a good campaign - Because then the fall in seats and votes to 19% ish is not as steep a drop as it might seem!
Hope you're feeling better - heard you had some ill health.
Our local tory mp hasn't given up. Still paying to get leaflets delivered but suspect his time is up.
Thanks, yes - had a stroke 8 weeks ago. Pretty much back to normal now except for a need to sleep for an hour most afternoons, and occasional struggles with memory.
That's pretty much where I'm at now! Keep on keeping on..
Blimey, PBers have been through the wars on the health front.
Hope you all look after yourselves.
Just to make it absolutely clear, I increasingly like (but don't usually get) a nap of an afternoon and have an occasional memory fart! The latter is a bit more concerning as my mother's side of the family have a strong incidence of dementia, but fit can ye dae. Nevertheless thanks for kind thoughts.
Jeez, TUD, I had no idea you'd been so poorly. I'm also having to massively readjust my idea of how old you are - I'd guessed you were late 40s. Best wishes for a continued recovery. All sorts of advice out there about staving off dementia but I'd be lying if I said I knew which ones worked best! But staying mentally (and physically) active and good oral hygiene strikes me as good advice whether it works or not.
Thanks, but there’s life in the scabby old dog yet! However I think for most folk who tool along in reasonably good health there comes a precipice when a few things can hit you at once. Dementia is the one thing I fear more than anything so I probably fixate a bit too much on that.
The Isle of Wight is being split in two for this election. I was just thinking it would be funny if one of the seats went to the Greens and the other to RefUK.
That could lead to a Korea style partition.
More Cyprus surely. Island and all that. Maybe with a tiny bit of British crown territory somewhere near the Needles.
A surprising number of divided islands now I come to think of it. Timor, Borneo, Papua, Ireland, Hispaniola. Probably more I've forgotten.
Actually surprisingly few. There's also Tierra del Fuego, and I think somewhere in the Baltic, but I think that's all.
The Isle of Wight is being split in two for this election. I was just thinking it would be funny if one of the seats went to the Greens and the other to RefUK.
That could lead to a Korea style partition.
More Cyprus surely. Island and all that. Maybe with a tiny bit of British crown territory somewhere near the Needles.
A surprising number of divided islands now I come to think of it. Timor, Borneo, Papua, Ireland, Hispaniola. Probably more I've forgotten.
Actually surprisingly few. There's also Tierra del Fuego, and I think somewhere in the Baltic, but I think that's all.
The Isle of Wight is being split in two for this election. I was just thinking it would be funny if one of the seats went to the Greens and the other to RefUK.
That could lead to a Korea style partition.
More Cyprus surely. Island and all that. Maybe with a tiny bit of British crown territory somewhere near the Needles.
A surprising number of divided islands now I come to think of it. Timor, Borneo, Papua, Ireland, Hispaniola. Probably more I've forgotten.
Actually surprisingly few. There's also Tierra del Fuego, and I think somewhere in the Baltic, but I think that's all.
The Isle of Wight is being split in two for this election. I was just thinking it would be funny if one of the seats went to the Greens and the other to RefUK.
That could lead to a Korea style partition.
More Cyprus surely. Island and all that. Maybe with a tiny bit of British crown territory somewhere near the Needles.
A surprising number of divided islands now I come to think of it. Timor, Borneo, Papua, Ireland, Hispaniola. Probably more I've forgotten.
Actually surprisingly few. There's also Tierra del Fuego, and I think somewhere in the Baltic, but I think that's all.
On a foggy Fenland day, with the lantern of the cathedral rising above the silvery mist, the Isle of Ely is shared between the kingdom of England and the kingdom of Heaven
https://www.iaindale.com/articles/is-starmergeddon-coming-for-the-tories ..If what I am hearing is right, CCHQ has more or less given up the ghost. I have heard of three candidates in Tory held seats with majorities of between four and six thousand, who have been ordered to shut down their campaigns and redeploy themselves to help cabinet ministers with majorities in excess of 20,000. And if they refuse, their computer logins to the party systems are cancelled and they’re told they won’t remain on the candidates list after the election...
I wonder how someone in (say) Steve Baker's position would feel about that ?
True or not, I'm not at a point in my life where I give a shit about Steve Baker's feelings
He's not going to experience a Charles Kennedy moment after losing his seat but I do worry for him.
Obviously, one has to feel some human sympathy for people in these sorts of circumstances - the nature of elections is that some people win and some lose, but it obviously affects people in different ways.
However, I do wonder whether it will all be a bit of a relief for some of those MPs who lose. Westminster isn't necessarily great for people's mental health, and the mood among Tories who remain after 4th July is unlikely to be that great. A bit of time with family, taking a holiday and so on may not be the worst outcome.
Kennedy was a different case, of course. Being an MP was his whole life from a very young age, he'd been having issues over a period of time, his marriage had ended and so on. It remains extremely sad.
In 2010, I expected to lose, and had ramped up my spare-time involvement in translation in anticipation, as well as putting out feelers for other jobs - I assume many Tory MPs have done something similar. To my astonishment I nearly won, which would have been fun (Broxtowe started as a very safe Tory seat when I won it in 1997), but also would have made it much harder to find another job in 2015 after another 5 years. I think it'd be unusual, though, not to have any job options at all after a stretch in Parliament.
I wonder if anyone has compiled a database of what the outgoing cohort of MPs did for a living before Parliament?
I suspect that many were political animals of some sort (SpAd, party worker, Union organiser etc), and that lawyers are over-represented in Parliament compared to the general population, as are public-sector workers. We do all know one who was a bookmaker!
43% of new Conservative MPs elected in 2019 were councillors, 25% were in business/commerce, 9% political/social/policy researchers and 8% lawyers.
52% of new Labour MPs elected in 2019 were councillors, 12% trade union officials, 9.5% political/social/policy researchers and 8% lawyers.
52% of new SNP MPs were councillors, 62% political/social/policy researchers, 16% in business/commerce and 6% party officials.
36% of new LD MPs were councillors, 18% in business/commerce, 18% political/social/policy researchers and 9% lawyers and 9% teachers or academics.
Interesting but I don't quite get it. Councillors are not paid right? So were those who were previously councillors (43% Con, 52% Lab) also doing other jobs?
Also, the numbers in that table on page 26 of that paper don't add up.
I get paid about £4 an hour. There’s a stipend or whatever that cover the costs of travel and very basic living. £5k per year. It’s doable if the Mrs works.
The Isle of Wight is being split in two for this election. I was just thinking it would be funny if one of the seats went to the Greens and the other to RefUK.
That could lead to a Korea style partition.
More Cyprus surely. Island and all that. Maybe with a tiny bit of British crown territory somewhere near the Needles.
A surprising number of divided islands now I come to think of it. Timor, Borneo, Papua, Ireland, Hispaniola. Probably more I've forgotten.
Actually surprisingly few. There's also Tierra del Fuego, and I think somewhere in the Baltic, but I think that's all.
The Isle of Wight is being split in two for this election. I was just thinking it would be funny if one of the seats went to the Greens and the other to RefUK.
That could lead to a Korea style partition.
More Cyprus surely. Island and all that. Maybe with a tiny bit of British crown territory somewhere near the Needles.
A surprising number of divided islands now I come to think of it. Timor, Borneo, Papua, Ireland, Hispaniola. Probably more I've forgotten.
Actually surprisingly few. There's also Tierra del Fuego, and I think somewhere in the Baltic, but I think that's all.
On a foggy Fenland day, with the lantern of the cathedral rising above the silvery mist, the Isle of Ely is shared between the kingdom of England and the kingdom of Heaven
And it has that effect now.
God knows what effect it had on your standard issue medieval fenlander.
That's a very different pattern from the rest of the country given it's movement since April. Reform not up at all, barely any movement in Conservative. It does suggest the Tories will do relatively much better in London than elsewhere.
It's also hard to see Tories on 19% nationally if on 22% in London imo, 22% London would be more in line with 25% nationally would be the assumption I worked from. They'd hold 8 to 12 on that polling in London
Well yes, but why does this London poll trump all the other national ones?
I think a big reason why the Tories are losing this time is the 2019 result was artificially inflated. For all the talk of ‘where Sunak went wrong’ we must remember that:
- Many 2019 Tory voters would never normally vote Tory, but ‘lent’ them their vote to ‘Get Brexit done’. Once we had left the EU they were happy to go back to Labour or other parties, particularly once the 2nd Ref idea was killed. See the 2017 vs 2019 Labour result for some (imperfect) evidence of the latter.
- Many moderate voters were put off by fears of a Corbyn Government, whereas they’re fine with Starmer. Starmer might be less popular with the youth/left but this largely only affects seats that Labour would win anyway.
- Lib Dems were advocating for 2nd Ref/Rejoin EU in 2019. Now they’re only saying ‘Single Market rejoin’ which doesn’t alienate Tory voters in Lib Dem Marginals.
- The Brexit Party stood down in Tory-held seats in 2019. REFUK is not doing so this time. This is a huge understated factor.
^ The above 4 reasons mean that even before you look at Partygate, Liz Truss, D-Day Gate, Wagergate, Inflation, Immigration, elderly Tory voters dying, Boris’ Johnson’s personal popularity being higher than Truss/Sunak… or anything else that has actually happened between 2019-2024 - the ‘baseline’ of the 2024 result was artificially low.
Boris’ 365 Tory seats on 43.6% was in some ways inflated by the above. Pandemic CON polling of >50% was more a ‘rally round the flag’ effect as we saw mirrored in other countries worldwide - but it may have made the 43.6% look more real.
I’m not defending Sunak’s record at all - I just don’t think he had much of a hope to begin with of preventing a Labour victory.
Overall I think it’s much easier to rationalise
I concur preventing a Labour win was likely beyond him when he took over (without Labour cocking up). But, I don't think it was particularly difficult to be aiming for the 175-250 seat bands rather than the 50-150 bands. He had to choose one of centrist or populist and then focus on delivery rather than daily headlines.
Hope you're feeling better - heard you had some ill health.
Our local tory mp hasn't given up. Still paying to get leaflets delivered but suspect his time is up.
Thanks, yes - had a stroke 8 weeks ago. Pretty much back to normal now except for a need to sleep for an hour most afternoons, and occasional struggles with memory.
That's pretty much where I'm at now! Keep on keeping on..
Blimey, PBers have been through the wars on the health front.
Hope you all look after yourselves.
Just to make it absolutely clear, I increasingly like (but don't usually get) a nap of an afternoon and have an occasional memory fart! The latter is a bit more concerning as my mother's side of the family have a strong incidence of dementia, but fit can ye dae. Nevertheless thanks for kind thoughts.
Jeez, TUD, I had no idea you'd been so poorly. I'm also having to massively readjust my idea of how old you are - I'd guessed you were late 40s. Best wishes for a continued recovery. All sorts of advice out there about staving off dementia but I'd be lying if I said I knew which ones worked best! But staying mentally (and physically) active and good oral hygiene strikes me as good advice whether it works or not.
Thanks, but there’s life in the scabby old dog yet! However I think for most folk who tool along in reasonably good health there comes a precipice when a few things can hit you at once. Dementia is the one thing I fear more than anything so I probably fixate a bit too much on that.
Best of luck, I hope your fears are unrealised
They say that after the age of 60, smoking is probably a net positive, as it seems to fend off dementia - or so my chain smoking Dad would say, and TBF he puffed away until he conked out at 88 - with all his marbles
My mum the resolute non smoker is less lucky
I also think travel is good (it’s one reason I do so much of it). It keeps you physically and mentally fit because every day is a series of Sudoku tests and a sequence of weights, as you work out how to park in Paris or order octopus in Managua, and as you lug your bags about, endlessly…
There are going to be an awful lot of seats (quite possibly 100+) where Labour win with a majority significantly smaller than Reform's votes.
B StE is just about on the cusp according to Baxter. It's the 77th safest Tory seat, so if it is truly marginal, we are probably looking at fewer than 100 Conservative MPs in the new House.
Which is the sense check that Alistair points out in the piece upthread. The public data crunching is consistent with the the parties seem to be doing on the ground. It points to the Conservatives being an error range either side of 100 seats, not 150 or 200.
The Isle of Wight is being split in two for this election. I was just thinking it would be funny if one of the seats went to the Greens and the other to RefUK.
That could lead to a Korea style partition.
More Cyprus surely. Island and all that. Maybe with a tiny bit of British crown territory somewhere near the Needles.
A surprising number of divided islands now I come to think of it. Timor, Borneo, Papua, Ireland, Hispaniola. Probably more I've forgotten.
Actually surprisingly few. There's also Tierra del Fuego, and I think somewhere in the Baltic, but I think that's all.
The Isle of Wight is being split in two for this election. I was just thinking it would be funny if one of the seats went to the Greens and the other to RefUK.
That could lead to a Korea style partition.
More Cyprus surely. Island and all that. Maybe with a tiny bit of British crown territory somewhere near the Needles.
A surprising number of divided islands now I come to think of it. Timor, Borneo, Papua, Ireland, Hispaniola. Probably more I've forgotten.
Actually surprisingly few. There's also Tierra del Fuego, and I think somewhere in the Baltic, but I think that's all.
On a foggy Fenland day, with the lantern of the cathedral rising above the silvery mist, the Isle of Ely is shared between the kingdom of England and the kingdom of Heaven
And it has that effect now.
God knows what effect it had on your standard issue medieval fenlander.
The great Gothic cathedrals of Europe - and Ely is one of the best - are arguably the greatest artistic achievements of humanity. And yes, if they can silence us by their noom now, imagine what they did to a 14th century pilgrim used to a mud hut
Libdems are favs to win in 57 seats. SNP are favs to win in 18 seats.
Bookies' current o/u line for the Nats is 21.5. value on the underside? Not sure.
Thanks Paul.
The interesting thing about that LD figure is that is exactly the same as the buy price on the spreads.
IPSOS is significantly lower on the LD figure than other models/MRPS. As an example they have the Tories holding Newbury - everyone else thinks it is going yellow. Torbay is another IPSOS hold, going yellow elsewhere.
I'm...just... so... glad... Rishi Sunak.. called an early...eleecczzzzzzzz.....
Is this the only GE in history where everyone in the Conservative Party has given up?
Whilst the campaign has been spectacularly inept, I just have this feeling that there must have been some issue buried deep down to make him cut and run in this way.
I do think it might well be the King. If Sunak was told there was a considerable risk KCIII would die during an autumn election campaign, then we won't hear about it until after KCIII passes away, but it would probably make people think more kindly of Sunak. He went unprepared into an election campaign to ease the concerns of the Monarch.
Though the Tories should have been well-prepared for an election at any time.
Doesn't pass the smell test for me. Even Tories are not venal enough to bet on the date of an election caused by the King's health concerns and it's impossible to be that exact.
And Davey has shown repeatedly that getting wet in an election campaign is not of itself a problem, it's how you get wet.
Ed is all right. He has fun!
There's a large number of sub-posties who would love to have been having fun getting wet. Instead, they were being locked up for 23 hours a day because Ed Davey was considerably incurious.
The same could be said of every Minister responsible for the PO, from Peter Mandelson onwards, with the exception of Norman Lamb, who genuinely tried to help but was moved on before he could achieve much.
Davey was demonised in the wake of the TV series. This was unfair, but it's politics and I have no issue with that. On a sophisticated Site like this however, I would expect a more balanced view to prevail, especially in the light of the contributions on the subject by such experts on the matter as Ms Cyclefree.
Davey did at least have a meeting with Sir Alan Bates, even if nothing came of it,
Let's see how he fares before the Committee next month.
I'm...just... so... glad... Rishi Sunak.. called an early...eleecczzzzzzzz.....
Is this the only GE in history where everyone in the Conservative Party has given up?
Whilst the campaign has been spectacularly inept, I just have this feeling that there must have been some issue buried deep down to make him cut and run in this way.
I do think it might well be the King. If Sunak was told there was a considerable risk KCIII would die during an autumn election campaign, then we won't hear about it until after KCIII passes away, but it would probably make people think more kindly of Sunak. He went unprepared into an election campaign to ease the concerns of the Monarch.
Though the Tories should have been well-prepared for an election at any time.
Doesn't pass the smell test for me. Even Tories are not venal enough to bet on the date of an election caused by the King's health concerns and it's impossible to be that exact.
And Davey has shown repeatedly that getting wet in an election campaign is not of itself a problem, it's how you get wet.
Ed is all right. He has fun!
There's a large number of sub-posties who would love to have been having fun getting wet. Instead, they were being locked up for 23 hours a day because Ed Davey was considerably incurious.
The same could be said of every Minister responsible for the PO, from Peter Mandelson onwards, with the exception of Norman Lamb, who genuinely tried to help but was moved on before he could achieve much.
Davey was demonised in the wake of the TV series. This was unfair, but it's politics and I have no issue with that. On a sophisticated Site like this however, I would expect a more balanced view to prevail, especially in the light of the contributions on the subject by such experts on the matter as Ms Cyclefree.
Davey did at least have a meeting with Sir Alan Bates, even if nothing came of it,
Let's see how he fares before the Committee next month.
The LOTO at the PO inquiry? That should be interesting.
Well, we had the PM at the Covid enquiry explaining how he'd lost his WhatsApp messages.
That's a very different pattern from the rest of the country given it's movement since April. Reform not up at all, barely any movement in Conservative. It does suggest the Tories will do relatively much better in London than elsewhere.
It's also hard to see Tories on 19% nationally if on 22% in London imo, 22% London would be more in line with 25% nationally would be the assumption I worked from. They'd hold 8 to 12 on that polling in London
Well yes, but why does this London poll trump all the other national ones?
It doesn't. But it is one piece of evidence to consider. It might be wrong. The national polling might be wrong. But this regional poll is more a fit to the MRP VIs than the Generic polling VIs. We get to find out in 10 days
I think a big reason why the Tories are losing this time is the 2019 result was artificially inflated. For all the talk of ‘where Sunak went wrong’ we must remember that:
- Many 2019 Tory voters would never normally vote Tory, but ‘lent’ them their vote to ‘Get Brexit done’. Once we had left the EU they were happy to go back to Labour or other parties, particularly once the 2nd Ref idea was killed. See the 2017 vs 2019 Labour result for some (imperfect) evidence of the latter.
- Many moderate voters were put off by fears of a Corbyn Government, whereas they’re fine with Starmer. Starmer might be less popular with the youth/left but this largely only affects seats that Labour would win anyway.
- Lib Dems were advocating for 2nd Ref/Rejoin EU in 2019. Now they’re only saying ‘Single Market rejoin’ which doesn’t alienate Tory voters in Lib Dem Marginals.
- The Brexit Party stood down in Tory-held seats in 2019. REFUK is not doing so this time. This is a huge understated factor.
^ The above 4 reasons mean that even before you look at Partygate, Liz Truss, D-Day Gate, Wagergate, Inflation, Immigration, elderly Tory voters dying, Boris’ Johnson’s personal popularity being higher than Truss/Sunak… or anything else that has actually happened between 2019-2024 - the ‘baseline’ of the 2024 result was artificially low.
Boris’ 365 Tory seats on 43.6% was in some ways inflated by the above. Pandemic CON polling of >50% was more a ‘rally round the flag’ effect as we saw mirrored in other countries worldwide - but it may have made the 43.6% look more real.
I’m not defending Sunak’s record at all - I just don’t think he had much of a hope to begin with of preventing a Labour victory.
Overall I think it’s much easier to rationalise
The Lib Dems were advocating for straight "revoke Art 50" in 2019. Which is why I resigned from the party. I had major differences with posters on here regarding whether a 2nd Ref was democratic (I maintain it would have been) but I have no hesitation in saying that a straight revoke without a Referendum would have been undemocratic. It was also electorally stupid.
So many posrers bemoan the fact that SKS is uncharismatic, even boring. I would suggest that the best PM outside of wartime in the 20th century,Clem Atlee, was uncharismatic, maybr boring ( remember Churchill's quip ''An empty taxi drew up and Mr Atlee got out) if SKS is as boring and effective as Atlee I will go with that
The Isle of Wight is being split in two for this election. I was just thinking it would be funny if one of the seats went to the Greens and the other to RefUK.
That could lead to a Korea style partition.
More Cyprus surely. Island and all that. Maybe with a tiny bit of British crown territory somewhere near the Needles.
A surprising number of divided islands now I come to think of it. Timor, Borneo, Papua, Ireland, Hispaniola. Probably more I've forgotten.
Actually surprisingly few. There's also Tierra del Fuego, and I think somewhere in the Baltic, but I think that's all.
The Isle of Wight is being split in two for this election. I was just thinking it would be funny if one of the seats went to the Greens and the other to RefUK.
That could lead to a Korea style partition.
More Cyprus surely. Island and all that. Maybe with a tiny bit of British crown territory somewhere near the Needles.
A surprising number of divided islands now I come to think of it. Timor, Borneo, Papua, Ireland, Hispaniola. Probably more I've forgotten.
Actually surprisingly few. There's also Tierra del Fuego, and I think somewhere in the Baltic, but I think that's all.
On a foggy Fenland day, with the lantern of the cathedral rising above the silvery mist, the Isle of Ely is shared between the kingdom of England and the kingdom of Heaven
And it has that effect now.
God knows what effect it had on your standard issue medieval fenlander.
The great Gothic cathedrals of Europe - and Ely is one of the best - are arguably the greatest artistic achievements of humanity. And yes, if they can silence us by their noom now, imagine what they did to a 14th century pilgrim used to a mud hut
It looks as if the Lib Dems really are within cooee of coming second, and any Alliance MPs might be critical, since there’s potential to share the whip in the Commons as they do already in the Lords.
There are going to be an awful lot of seats (quite possibly 100+) where Labour win with a majority significantly smaller than Reform's votes.
B StE is just about on the cusp according to Baxter. It's the 77th safest Tory seat, so if it is truly marginal, we are probably looking at fewer than 100 Conservative MPs in the new House.
Baxter/EC current prediction is indeed 76 seats for the Tories. BstE the new bellwether. Tory since a by election just before the Battle of Maldon in 991.
The Isle of Wight is being split in two for this election. I was just thinking it would be funny if one of the seats went to the Greens and the other to RefUK.
That could lead to a Korea style partition.
More Cyprus surely. Island and all that. Maybe with a tiny bit of British crown territory somewhere near the Needles.
A surprising number of divided islands now I come to think of it. Timor, Borneo, Papua, Ireland, Hispaniola. Probably more I've forgotten.
I think that's all of them. The list starts to make divided islands seem like the norm, and Britain wasn't far from joining it, and may yet do so in our lifetime (most of us have got at least most of a generation left in us, I think).
I'm...just... so... glad... Rishi Sunak.. called an early...eleecczzzzzzzz.....
Is this the only GE in history where everyone in the Conservative Party has given up?
Whilst the campaign has been spectacularly inept, I just have this feeling that there must have been some issue buried deep down to make him cut and run in this way.
I do think it might well be the King. If Sunak was told there was a considerable risk KCIII would die during an autumn election campaign, then we won't hear about it until after KCIII passes away, but it would probably make people think more kindly of Sunak. He went unprepared into an election campaign to ease the concerns of the Monarch.
Though the Tories should have been well-prepared for an election at any time.
Doesn't pass the smell test for me. Even Tories are not venal enough to bet on the date of an election caused by the King's health concerns and it's impossible to be that exact.
And Davey has shown repeatedly that getting wet in an election campaign is not of itself a problem, it's how you get wet.
Ed is all right. He has fun!
There's a large number of sub-posties who would love to have been having fun getting wet. Instead, they were being locked up for 23 hours a day because Ed Davey was considerably incurious.
The same could be said of every Minister responsible for the PO, from Peter Mandelson onwards, with the exception of Norman Lamb, who genuinely tried to help but was moved on before he could achieve much.
Davey was demonised in the wake of the TV series. This was unfair, but it's politics and I have no issue with that. On a sophisticated Site like this however, I would expect a more balanced view to prevail, especially in the light of the contributions on the subject by such experts on the matter as Ms Cyclefree.
Davey did at least have a meeting with Sir Alan Bates, even if nothing came of it,
Let's see how he fares before the Committee next month.
I'm...just... so... glad... Rishi Sunak.. called an early...eleecczzzzzzzz.....
Is this the only GE in history where everyone in the Conservative Party has given up?
Whilst the campaign has been spectacularly inept, I just have this feeling that there must have been some issue buried deep down to make him cut and run in this way.
I do think it might well be the King. If Sunak was told there was a considerable risk KCIII would die during an autumn election campaign, then we won't hear about it until after KCIII passes away, but it would probably make people think more kindly of Sunak. He went unprepared into an election campaign to ease the concerns of the Monarch.
Though the Tories should have been well-prepared for an election at any time.
Doesn't pass the smell test for me. Even Tories are not venal enough to bet on the date of an election caused by the King's health concerns and it's impossible to be that exact.
And Davey has shown repeatedly that getting wet in an election campaign is not of itself a problem, it's how you get wet.
Ed is all right. He has fun!
There's a large number of sub-posties who would love to have been having fun getting wet. Instead, they were being locked up for 23 hours a day because Ed Davey was considerably incurious.
The same could be said of every Minister responsible for the PO, from Peter Mandelson onwards, with the exception of Norman Lamb, who genuinely tried to help but was moved on before he could achieve much.
Davey was demonised in the wake of the TV series. This was unfair, but it's politics and I have no issue with that. On a sophisticated Site like this however, I would expect a more balanced view to prevail, especially in the light of the contributions on the subject by such experts on the matter as Ms Cyclefree.
Davey did at least have a meeting with Sir Alan Bates, even if nothing came of it,
Let's see how he fares before the Committee next month.
The LOTO at the PO inquiry? That should be interesting.
Well, we had the PM at the Covid enquiry explaining how he'd lost his WhatsApp messages.
Something that also affected politicians in Scotland and Wales at their enquiries.
https://www.iaindale.com/articles/is-starmergeddon-coming-for-the-tories ..If what I am hearing is right, CCHQ has more or less given up the ghost. I have heard of three candidates in Tory held seats with majorities of between four and six thousand, who have been ordered to shut down their campaigns and redeploy themselves to help cabinet ministers with majorities in excess of 20,000. And if they refuse, their computer logins to the party systems are cancelled and they’re told they won’t remain on the candidates list after the election...
I wonder how someone in (say) Steve Baker's position would feel about that ?
True or not, I'm not at a point in my life where I give a shit about Steve Baker's feelings
He's not going to experience a Charles Kennedy moment after losing his seat but I do worry for him.
Obviously, one has to feel some human sympathy for people in these sorts of circumstances - the nature of elections is that some people win and some lose, but it obviously affects people in different ways.
However, I do wonder whether it will all be a bit of a relief for some of those MPs who lose. Westminster isn't necessarily great for people's mental health, and the mood among Tories who remain after 4th July is unlikely to be that great. A bit of time with family, taking a holiday and so on may not be the worst outcome.
Kennedy was a different case, of course. Being an MP was his whole life from a very young age, he'd been having issues over a period of time, his marriage had ended and so on. It remains extremely sad.
In 2010, I expected to lose, and had ramped up my spare-time involvement in translation in anticipation, as well as putting out feelers for other jobs - I assume many Tory MPs have done something similar. To my astonishment I nearly won, which would have been fun (Broxtowe started as a very safe Tory seat when I won it in 1997), but also would have made it much harder to find another job in 2015 after another 5 years. I think it'd be unusual, though, not to have any job options at all after a stretch in Parliament.
I wonder if anyone has compiled a database of what the outgoing cohort of MPs did for a living before Parliament?
I suspect that many were political animals of some sort (SpAd, party worker, Union organiser etc), and that lawyers are over-represented in Parliament compared to the general population, as are public-sector workers. We do all know one who was a bookmaker!
43% of new Conservative MPs elected in 2019 were councillors, 25% were in business/commerce, 9% political/social/policy researchers and 8% lawyers.
52% of new Labour MPs elected in 2019 were councillors, 12% trade union officials, 9.5% political/social/policy researchers and 8% lawyers.
52% of new SNP MPs were councillors, 62% political/social/policy researchers, 16% in business/commerce and 6% party officials.
36% of new LD MPs were councillors, 18% in business/commerce, 18% political/social/policy researchers and 9% lawyers and 9% teachers or academics.
Interesting but I don't quite get it. Councillors are not paid right? So were those who were previously councillors (43% Con, 52% Lab) also doing other jobs?
Also, the numbers in that table on page 26 of that paper don't add up.
Councillors get an allowance if on district, county, unitary or London borough and can earn up to £30-50k if on the Cabinet of a County Council, Unitary Council or London Borough. Some will have other jobs but not all and many will be self employed or politicial researchers/SPADs as their other job
Hope you're feeling better - heard you had some ill health.
Our local tory mp hasn't given up. Still paying to get leaflets delivered but suspect his time is up.
Thanks, yes - had a stroke 8 weeks ago. Pretty much back to normal now except for a need to sleep for an hour most afternoons, and occasional struggles with memory.
That's pretty much where I'm at now! Keep on keeping on..
Blimey, PBers have been through the wars on the health front.
Hope you all look after yourselves.
Just to make it absolutely clear, I increasingly like (but don't usually get) a nap of an afternoon and have an occasional memory fart! The latter is a bit more concerning as my mother's side of the family have a strong incidence of dementia, but fit can ye dae. Nevertheless thanks for kind thoughts.
Jeez, TUD, I had no idea you'd been so poorly. I'm also having to massively readjust my idea of how old you are - I'd guessed you were late 40s. Best wishes for a continued recovery. All sorts of advice out there about staving off dementia but I'd be lying if I said I knew which ones worked best! But staying mentally (and physically) active and good oral hygiene strikes me as good advice whether it works or not.
Thanks, but there’s life in the scabby old dog yet! However I think for most folk who tool along in reasonably good health there comes a precipice when a few things can hit you at once. Dementia is the one thing I fear more than anything so I probably fixate a bit too much on that.
Divvie, sorry to hear the news, keep ploughing on and stay healthy.
That's a very different pattern from the rest of the country given it's movement since April. Reform not up at all, barely any movement in Conservative. It does suggest the Tories will do relatively much better in London than elsewhere.
It's also hard to see Tories on 19% nationally if on 22% in London imo, 22% London would be more in line with 25% nationally would be the assumption I worked from. They'd hold 8 to 12 on that polling in London
Well yes, but why does this London poll trump all the other national ones?
Incumbancy is split in London. Tories can blame Khan for all the ills of the world.
The Isle of Wight is being split in two for this election. I was just thinking it would be funny if one of the seats went to the Greens and the other to RefUK.
That could lead to a Korea style partition.
More Cyprus surely. Island and all that. Maybe with a tiny bit of British crown territory somewhere near the Needles.
A surprising number of divided islands now I come to think of it. Timor, Borneo, Papua, Ireland, Hispaniola. Probably more I've forgotten.
There are lots more.
Market, and that island in North America that now gives Canada a land border with Greenland/Denmark (?)
Hope you're feeling better - heard you had some ill health.
Our local tory mp hasn't given up. Still paying to get leaflets delivered but suspect his time is up.
Thanks, yes - had a stroke 8 weeks ago. Pretty much back to normal now except for a need to sleep for an hour most afternoons, and occasional struggles with memory.
That's pretty much where I'm at now! Keep on keeping on..
Blimey, PBers have been through the wars on the health front.
Hope you all look after yourselves.
Just to make it absolutely clear, I increasingly like (but don't usually get) a nap of an afternoon and have an occasional memory fart! The latter is a bit more concerning as my mother's side of the family have a strong incidence of dementia, but fit can ye dae. Nevertheless thanks for kind thoughts.
Jeez, TUD, I had no idea you'd been so poorly. I'm also having to massively readjust my idea of how old you are - I'd guessed you were late 40s. Best wishes for a continued recovery. All sorts of advice out there about staving off dementia but I'd be lying if I said I knew which ones worked best! But staying mentally (and physically) active and good oral hygiene strikes me as good advice whether it works or not.
Thanks, but there’s life in the scabby old dog yet! However I think for most folk who tool along in reasonably good health there comes a precipice when a few things can hit you at once. Dementia is the one thing I fear more than anything so I probably fixate a bit too much on that.
Best of luck, I hope your fears are unrealised
They say that after the age of 60, smoking is probably a net positive, as it seems to fend off dementia - or so my chain smoking Dad would say, and TBF he puffed away until he conked out at 88 - with all his marbles
My mum the resolute non smoker is less lucky
I also think travel is good (it’s one reason I do so much of it). It keeps you physically and mentally fit because every day is a series of Sudoku tests and a sequence of weights, as you work out how to park in Paris or order octopus in Managua, and as you lug your bags about, endlessly…
Mr. Leon, while not quite mud huts, it was startling to learn (Ian Mortimer's Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England) that the cookery equipment/utensils of a peasant's house were often worth more than the house itself.
Comparing prices over that length of time is nigh on impossible because the price of labour was so low whereas the price of objects was so high.
The Isle of Wight is being split in two for this election. I was just thinking it would be funny if one of the seats went to the Greens and the other to RefUK.
That could lead to a Korea style partition.
More Cyprus surely. Island and all that. Maybe with a tiny bit of British crown territory somewhere near the Needles.
A surprising number of divided islands now I come to think of it. Timor, Borneo, Papua, Ireland, Hispaniola. Probably more I've forgotten.
Actually surprisingly few. There's also Tierra del Fuego, and I think somewhere in the Baltic, but I think that's all.
I'm...just... so... glad... Rishi Sunak.. called an early...eleecczzzzzzzz.....
Is this the only GE in history where everyone in the Conservative Party has given up?
Whilst the campaign has been spectacularly inept, I just have this feeling that there must have been some issue buried deep down to make him cut and run in this way.
I do think it might well be the King. If Sunak was told there was a considerable risk KCIII would die during an autumn election campaign, then we won't hear about it until after KCIII passes away, but it would probably make people think more kindly of Sunak. He went unprepared into an election campaign to ease the concerns of the Monarch.
Though the Tories should have been well-prepared for an election at any time.
Doesn't pass the smell test for me. Even Tories are not venal enough to bet on the date of an election caused by the King's health concerns and it's impossible to be that exact.
And Davey has shown repeatedly that getting wet in an election campaign is not of itself a problem, it's how you get wet.
Ed is all right. He has fun!
There's a large number of sub-posties who would love to have been having fun getting wet. Instead, they were being locked up for 23 hours a day because Ed Davey was considerably incurious.
The same could be said of every Minister responsible for the PO, from Peter Mandelson onwards, with the exception of Norman Lamb, who genuinely tried to help but was moved on before he could achieve much.
Davey was demonised in the wake of the TV series. This was unfair, but it's politics and I have no issue with that. On a sophisticated Site like this however, I would expect a more balanced view to prevail, especially in the light of the contributions on the subject by such experts on the matter as Ms Cyclefree.
Davey did at least have a meeting with Sir Alan Bates, even if nothing came of it,
A very balanced response. Those Tories wondering why they have become so unpopular and lacking in friends should use this exchange as a point of learning. Many politically neutral people believe that the Lib Dem’s did the right thing for the country by stepping in to a huge problem and trying to help sort the country out in 2010. As a ‘reward’ they were shafted by the Tories in 2015. The attempts to smear Davey are falling on increasingly deaf ears because people understand that many Tories have similar (or in many cases more important) questions to answer about the post office scandal and the electorate have heard enough of lies from a party where senior officials think it’s fine to use insider information to make a few quid out of betting. There is some truth in the old advice to be careful who you abuse on the way up because one day you might need them on the way down. The Tories have lost everyone who would work with them and now seem to be losing the electorate as well. That is likely to mean a few very, very difficult years for them indeed.
Let's be clear. Davey, and the other two LibDem junior ministers at Business, were preceded or followed by NINETEEN Tory or Labour junior minsters who did just as little to help subpostmasters between 1999 and 2024 - and haven't been pilloried by the Tory tabloids. Unlike Blair, no LibDem changed the law to put the burden of proof onto defendants when subpostmasters were falsely accused of theft on the basis of crap software. Unlike the National Federation of Subpostmasters on June 21, no LibDem has sat in the inquiry insisting the only culprit is Post Office management for not defending Horizon robustly enough.
Hope you're feeling better - heard you had some ill health.
Our local tory mp hasn't given up. Still paying to get leaflets delivered but suspect his time is up.
Thanks, yes - had a stroke 8 weeks ago. Pretty much back to normal now except for a need to sleep for an hour most afternoons, and occasional struggles with memory.
That's pretty much where I'm at now! Keep on keeping on..
Blimey, PBers have been through the wars on the health front.
Hope you all look after yourselves.
Just to make it absolutely clear, I increasingly like (but don't usually get) a nap of an afternoon and have an occasional memory fart! The latter is a bit more concerning as my mother's side of the family have a strong incidence of dementia, but fit can ye dae. Nevertheless thanks for kind thoughts.
Jeez, TUD, I had no idea you'd been so poorly. I'm also having to massively readjust my idea of how old you are - I'd guessed you were late 40s. Best wishes for a continued recovery. All sorts of advice out there about staving off dementia but I'd be lying if I said I knew which ones worked best! But staying mentally (and physically) active and good oral hygiene strikes me as good advice whether it works or not.
Interdental toothbrushes are great for oral hygiene. My dentist got me using them a couple of years ago. They're far more effective and easy to use than dental floss, and my gums have become noticeably healthier. Hopefully this is also helping to keep potentially dementia-inducing oral bacterial out of my bloodstream.
When I was first introduced to them it was basically stabbing yourself in the gum with a wire. But they've improved since then, and I really like the silicon covered ones - and I think I've noticed a difference from using them.
“The next Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland owns set after set of only two outfits; he says that he doesn’t dream, he doesn’t have a favourite novel or poem; he speaks about himself in the third person.”
Hope you're feeling better - heard you had some ill health.
Our local tory mp hasn't given up. Still paying to get leaflets delivered but suspect his time is up.
Thanks, yes - had a stroke 8 weeks ago. Pretty much back to normal now except for a need to sleep for an hour most afternoons, and occasional struggles with memory.
That's pretty much where I'm at now! Keep on keeping on..
Blimey, PBers have been through the wars on the health front.
Hope you all look after yourselves.
Just to make it absolutely clear, I increasingly like (but don't usually get) a nap of an afternoon and have an occasional memory fart! The latter is a bit more concerning as my mother's side of the family have a strong incidence of dementia, but fit can ye dae. Nevertheless thanks for kind thoughts.
Jeez, TUD, I had no idea you'd been so poorly. I'm also having to massively readjust my idea of how old you are - I'd guessed you were late 40s. Best wishes for a continued recovery. All sorts of advice out there about staving off dementia but I'd be lying if I said I knew which ones worked best! But staying mentally (and physically) active and good oral hygiene strikes me as good advice whether it works or not.
Thanks, but there’s life in the scabby old dog yet! However I think for most folk who tool along in reasonably good health there comes a precipice when a few things can hit you at once. Dementia is the one thing I fear more than anything so I probably fixate a bit too much on that.
Best of luck, I hope your fears are unrealised
They say that after the age of 60, smoking is probably a net positive, as it seems to fend off dementia - or so my chain smoking Dad would say, and TBF he puffed away until he conked out at 88 - with all his marbles
My mum the resolute non smoker is less lucky
I also think travel is good (it’s one reason I do so much of it). It keeps you physically and mentally fit because every day is a series of Sudoku tests and a sequence of weights, as you work out how to park in Paris or order octopus in Managua, and as you lug your bags about, endlessly…
I'm...just... so... glad... Rishi Sunak.. called an early...eleecczzzzzzzz.....
Is this the only GE in history where everyone in the Conservative Party has given up?
Whilst the campaign has been spectacularly inept, I just have this feeling that there must have been some issue buried deep down to make him cut and run in this way.
I do think it might well be the King. If Sunak was told there was a considerable risk KCIII would die during an autumn election campaign, then we won't hear about it until after KCIII passes away, but it would probably make people think more kindly of Sunak. He went unprepared into an election campaign to ease the concerns of the Monarch.
Though the Tories should have been well-prepared for an election at any time.
Doesn't pass the smell test for me. Even Tories are not venal enough to bet on the date of an election caused by the King's health concerns and it's impossible to be that exact.
And Davey has shown repeatedly that getting wet in an election campaign is not of itself a problem, it's how you get wet.
Ed is all right. He has fun!
There's a large number of sub-posties who would love to have been having fun getting wet. Instead, they were being locked up for 23 hours a day because Ed Davey was considerably incurious.
The same could be said of every Minister responsible for the PO, from Peter Mandelson onwards, with the exception of Norman Lamb, who genuinely tried to help but was moved on before he could achieve much.
Davey was demonised in the wake of the TV series. This was unfair, but it's politics and I have no issue with that. On a sophisticated Site like this however, I would expect a more balanced view to prevail, especially in the light of the contributions on the subject by such experts on the matter as Ms Cyclefree.
Davey did at least have a meeting with Sir Alan Bates, even if nothing came of it,
Let's see how he fares before the Committee next month.
I'm...just... so... glad... Rishi Sunak.. called an early...eleecczzzzzzzz.....
Is this the only GE in history where everyone in the Conservative Party has given up?
Whilst the campaign has been spectacularly inept, I just have this feeling that there must have been some issue buried deep down to make him cut and run in this way.
I do think it might well be the King. If Sunak was told there was a considerable risk KCIII would die during an autumn election campaign, then we won't hear about it until after KCIII passes away, but it would probably make people think more kindly of Sunak. He went unprepared into an election campaign to ease the concerns of the Monarch.
Though the Tories should have been well-prepared for an election at any time.
Doesn't pass the smell test for me. Even Tories are not venal enough to bet on the date of an election caused by the King's health concerns and it's impossible to be that exact.
And Davey has shown repeatedly that getting wet in an election campaign is not of itself a problem, it's how you get wet.
Ed is all right. He has fun!
There's a large number of sub-posties who would love to have been having fun getting wet. Instead, they were being locked up for 23 hours a day because Ed Davey was considerably incurious.
The same could be said of every Minister responsible for the PO, from Peter Mandelson onwards, with the exception of Norman Lamb, who genuinely tried to help but was moved on before he could achieve much.
Davey was demonised in the wake of the TV series. This was unfair, but it's politics and I have no issue with that. On a sophisticated Site like this however, I would expect a more balanced view to prevail, especially in the light of the contributions on the subject by such experts on the matter as Ms Cyclefree.
Davey did at least have a meeting with Sir Alan Bates, even if nothing came of it,
Let's see how he fares before the Committee next month.
The LOTO at the PO inquiry? That should be interesting.
Well, we had the PM at the Covid enquiry explaining how he'd lost his WhatsApp messages.
We are getting to the 'political end' of the Inquiry, but note the Inquiry's terms of reference were set by Civil Servants, so don't expect the Civil Service to be exposed by much scrutiny. Their political masters will, I expect, mostly take the line 'We were lied to', which is probably true but wouldn't really tell the whole story.
Jo Swinson is also due to appear. My reading of the story so far suggests she is an a more awkward spot than Sir Ed.
The Isle of Wight is being split in two for this election. I was just thinking it would be funny if one of the seats went to the Greens and the other to RefUK.
That could lead to a Korea style partition.
More Cyprus surely. Island and all that. Maybe with a tiny bit of British crown territory somewhere near the Needles.
A surprising number of divided islands now I come to think of it. Timor, Borneo, Papua, Ireland, Hispaniola. Probably more I've forgotten.
St Martin/Maarten in the Caribbean - French/Dutch
The way they agreed to define the border there is quite amusing got a French bloke and a Dutch geezer to stand back to back then walk around the coastline until they met again, as I understand it.
Mr. Leon, while not quite mud huts, it was startling to learn (Ian Mortimer's Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England) that the cookery equipment/utensils of a peasant's house were often worth more than the house itself.
Comparing prices over that length of time is nigh on impossible because the price of labour was so low whereas the price of objects was so high.
And they had so few objects
You’d get wills mentioning someone’s “five spoons and a kettle”
Imagine showing them a smartphone. It would be something BEYOND magic
“So yes through this box you can look at any other human in the world and talk to them. Also it contains all of human knowledge and can capture frozen images of everything you see and play you music of infinite variety and help you solve any problem. With this small metal box you become God”
Having a smartphone in 1372 would turn you into a god. Omniscient and omnipresent
No Tory is truly safe. This is as the Americans call it a wave election. Which torys will be left when the tide is out? Well see
The Gillingham and St Pancreas polls back that up - Labour will get massive swings in Tory safe seats, losing ground in Labour safe seats.
If that pattern's repeated across the country it's going to make the first declarations interesting - Labour doing worse than expected maybe in those early seats?
Houghton and Sunderland South will be one of the first handful of seats to declare. In 2019, the shares were:
I can easily imagine a 2024 result along the lines of:
LAB 43% RFM 33% CON 11% GRN 9% LDM 4%
Massive Reform surge, but not close to winning, Labour will below expectations - not looking like they're about to be swept to a landslide majority - Tory vote disintegrated, Green protest votes, anti-Corbyn votes for the Lib Dems going back to Labour.
Edit: And if it presages a very efficient vote distribution it could end up with 500 seats on barely 40% of the votes.
Mr. Leon, while not quite mud huts, it was startling to learn (Ian Mortimer's Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England) that the cookery equipment/utensils of a peasant's house were often worth more than the house itself.
Comparing prices over that length of time is nigh on impossible because the price of labour was so low whereas the price of objects was so high.
And they had so few objects
You’d get wills mentioning someone’s “five spoons and a kettle”
Imagine showing them a smartphone. It would be something BEYOND magic
And of course there was the very famous Elizabethean writer who left his wife his second best bed.
Hope you're feeling better - heard you had some ill health.
Our local tory mp hasn't given up. Still paying to get leaflets delivered but suspect his time is up.
Thanks, yes - had a stroke 8 weeks ago. Pretty much back to normal now except for a need to sleep for an hour most afternoons, and occasional struggles with memory.
That's pretty much where I'm at now! Keep on keeping on..
Blimey, PBers have been through the wars on the health front.
Hope you all look after yourselves.
Just to make it absolutely clear, I increasingly like (but don't usually get) a nap of an afternoon and have an occasional memory fart! The latter is a bit more concerning as my mother's side of the family have a strong incidence of dementia, but fit can ye dae. Nevertheless thanks for kind thoughts.
Jeez, TUD, I had no idea you'd been so poorly. I'm also having to massively readjust my idea of how old you are - I'd guessed you were late 40s. Best wishes for a continued recovery. All sorts of advice out there about staving off dementia but I'd be lying if I said I knew which ones worked best! But staying mentally (and physically) active and good oral hygiene strikes me as good advice whether it works or not.
Thanks, but there’s life in the scabby old dog yet! However I think for most folk who tool along in reasonably good health there comes a precipice when a few things can hit you at once. Dementia is the one thing I fear more than anything so I probably fixate a bit too much on that.
Best of luck, I hope your fears are unrealised
They say that after the age of 60, smoking is probably a net positive, as it seems to fend off dementia - or so my chain smoking Dad would say, and TBF he puffed away until he conked out at 88 - with all his marbles
My mum the resolute non smoker is less lucky
I also think travel is good (it’s one reason I do so much of it). It keeps you physically and mentally fit because every day is a series of Sudoku tests and a sequence of weights, as you work out how to park in Paris or order octopus in Managua, and as you lug your bags about, endlessly…
“The next Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland owns set after set of only two outfits; he says that he doesn’t dream, he doesn’t have a favourite novel or poem; he speaks about himself in the third person.”
The first of those is odd but something I can happily get on board with and indeed have moved towards as I've got older - when I find a clothing item I like, I tend to buy several of them. The problem is, of course, when clothing manufacturers - who are addicted to novelty - change their product.
I don't know that I have a favourite novel or poem. I don't think that's odd. I mean, if I was to take a day or so to try to list all the books or poems I'd ever read, I could probably rank them, but I don't have one to hand. And fiction isn't a big part of my life.
Not dreaming is odd indeed. Does anyone else here not dream? That strikes me as being so singular as worthy of study by a psychologist. I mean, I don't think I particularly benefit from my dreams, but I have them - it's part of the human condition. Part of the mammalian condition, I'd suggest.
Talking about yourself in the third person is also very odd, but affected odd. You can only really carry that off if you're a fictional sitcom character like the Fonz, or Terry out of Brooklyn 911.And SKS is neither of those.
Hope you're feeling better - heard you had some ill health.
Our local tory mp hasn't given up. Still paying to get leaflets delivered but suspect his time is up.
Thanks, yes - had a stroke 8 weeks ago. Pretty much back to normal now except for a need to sleep for an hour most afternoons, and occasional struggles with memory.
That's pretty much where I'm at now! Keep on keeping on..
Blimey, PBers have been through the wars on the health front.
Hope you all look after yourselves.
Just to make it absolutely clear, I increasingly like (but don't usually get) a nap of an afternoon and have an occasional memory fart! The latter is a bit more concerning as my mother's side of the family have a strong incidence of dementia, but fit can ye dae. Nevertheless thanks for kind thoughts.
Jeez, TUD, I had no idea you'd been so poorly. I'm also having to massively readjust my idea of how old you are - I'd guessed you were late 40s. Best wishes for a continued recovery. All sorts of advice out there about staving off dementia but I'd be lying if I said I knew which ones worked best! But staying mentally (and physically) active and good oral hygiene strikes me as good advice whether it works or not.
Thanks, but there’s life in the scabby old dog yet! However I think for most folk who tool along in reasonably good health there comes a precipice when a few things can hit you at once. Dementia is the one thing I fear more than anything so I probably fixate a bit too much on that.
Best of luck, I hope your fears are unrealised
They say that after the age of 60, smoking is probably a net positive, as it seems to fend off dementia - or so my chain smoking Dad would say, and TBF he puffed away until he conked out at 88 - with all his marbles
My mum the resolute non smoker is less lucky
I also think travel is good (it’s one reason I do so much of it). It keeps you physically and mentally fit because every day is a series of Sudoku tests and a sequence of weights, as you work out how to park in Paris or order octopus in Managua, and as you lug your bags about, endlessly…
No Tory is truly safe. This is as the Americans call it a wave election. Which torys will be left when the tide is out? Well see
The Gillingham and St Pancreas polls back that up - Labour will get massive swings in Tory safe seats, losing ground in Labour safe seats.
If that pattern's repeated across the country it's going to make the first declarations interesting - Labour doing worse than expected maybe in those early seats?
Houghton and Sunderland South will be one of the first handful of seats to declare. In 2019, the shares were:
I can easily imagine a 2024 result along the lines of:
LAB 43% RFM 33% CON 11% GRN 9% LDM 4%
Massive Reform surge, but not close to winning, Labour will below expectations - not looking like they're about to be swept to a landslide majority - Tory vote disintegrated, Green protest votes, anti-Corbyn votes for the Lib Dems going back to Labour.
Edit: And if it presages a very efficient vote distribution it could end up with 500 seats on barely 40% of the votes.
The Isle of Wight is being split in two for this election. I was just thinking it would be funny if one of the seats went to the Greens and the other to RefUK.
That could lead to a Korea style partition.
More Cyprus surely. Island and all that. Maybe with a tiny bit of British crown territory somewhere near the Needles.
A surprising number of divided islands now I come to think of it. Timor, Borneo, Papua, Ireland, Hispaniola. Probably more I've forgotten.
St Martin/Maarten in the Caribbean - French/Dutch
The way they agreed to define the border there is quite amusing got a French bloke and a Dutch geezer to stand back to back then walk around the coastline until they met again, as I understand it.
ISTR a similar arrangement between French and Spanish on Hispaniola (though this was something I read over 40 years ago at primary school and have never heard referenced since - so perhaps there is some crossing of wires going on.)
Hope you're feeling better - heard you had some ill health.
Our local tory mp hasn't given up. Still paying to get leaflets delivered but suspect his time is up.
Thanks, yes - had a stroke 8 weeks ago. Pretty much back to normal now except for a need to sleep for an hour most afternoons, and occasional struggles with memory.
That's pretty much where I'm at now! Keep on keeping on..
Blimey, PBers have been through the wars on the health front.
Hope you all look after yourselves.
Just to make it absolutely clear, I increasingly like (but don't usually get) a nap of an afternoon and have an occasional memory fart! The latter is a bit more concerning as my mother's side of the family have a strong incidence of dementia, but fit can ye dae. Nevertheless thanks for kind thoughts.
Jeez, TUD, I had no idea you'd been so poorly. I'm also having to massively readjust my idea of how old you are - I'd guessed you were late 40s. Best wishes for a continued recovery. All sorts of advice out there about staving off dementia but I'd be lying if I said I knew which ones worked best! But staying mentally (and physically) active and good oral hygiene strikes me as good advice whether it works or not.
Thanks, but there’s life in the scabby old dog yet! However I think for most folk who tool along in reasonably good health there comes a precipice when a few things can hit you at once. Dementia is the one thing I fear more than anything so I probably fixate a bit too much on that.
Best of luck, I hope your fears are unrealised
They say that after the age of 60, smoking is probably a net positive, as it seems to fend off dementia - or so my chain smoking Dad would say, and TBF he puffed away until he conked out at 88 - with all his marbles
My mum the resolute non smoker is less lucky
I also think travel is good (it’s one reason I do so much of it). It keeps you physically and mentally fit because every day is a series of Sudoku tests and a sequence of weights, as you work out how to park in Paris or order octopus in Managua, and as you lug your bags about, endlessly…
I think a big reason why the Tories are losing this time is the 2019 result was artificially inflated. For all the talk of ‘where Sunak went wrong’ we must remember that:
- Many 2019 Tory voters would never normally vote Tory, but ‘lent’ them their vote to ‘Get Brexit done’. Once we had left the EU they were happy to go back to Labour or other parties, particularly once the 2nd Ref idea was killed. See the 2017 vs 2019 Labour result for some (imperfect) evidence of the latter.
- Many moderate voters were put off by fears of a Corbyn Government, whereas they’re fine with Starmer. Starmer might be less popular with the youth/left but this largely only affects seats that Labour would win anyway.
- Lib Dems were advocating for 2nd Ref/Rejoin EU in 2019. Now they’re only saying ‘Single Market rejoin’ which doesn’t alienate Tory voters in Lib Dem Marginals.
- The Brexit Party stood down in Tory-held seats in 2019. REFUK is not doing so this time. This is a huge understated factor.
^ The above 4 reasons mean that even before you look at Partygate, Liz Truss, D-Day Gate, Wagergate, Inflation, Immigration, elderly Tory voters dying, Boris’ Johnson’s personal popularity being higher than Truss/Sunak… or anything else that has actually happened between 2019-2024 - the ‘baseline’ of the 2024 result was artificially low.
Boris’ 365 Tory seats on 43.6% was in some ways inflated by the above. Pandemic CON polling of >50% was more a ‘rally round the flag’ effect as we saw mirrored in other countries worldwide - but it may have made the 43.6% look more real.
I’m not defending Sunak’s record at all - I just don’t think he had much of a hope to begin with of preventing a Labour victory.
Overall I think it’s much easier to rationalise
Whilst I largely agree with that it would be, at worst, responsible for a baseline of 35% and not the low 20s as we currently have.
For that, we have the individuals you mention to thank.
“The next Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland owns set after set of only two outfits; he says that he doesn’t dream, he doesn’t have a favourite novel or poem; he speaks about himself in the third person.”
The first of those is odd but something I can happily get on board with and indeed have moved towards as I've got older - when I find a clothing item I like, I tend to buy several of them. The problem is, of course, when clothing manufacturers - who are addicted to novelty - change their product.
I don't know that I have a favourite novel or poem. I don't think that's odd. I mean, if I was to take a day or so to try to list all the books or poems I'd ever read, I could probably rank them, but I don't have one to hand. And fiction isn't a big part of my life.
Not dreaming is odd indeed. Does anyone else here not dream? That strikes me as being so singular as worthy of study by a psychologist. I mean, I don't think I particularly benefit from my dreams, but I have them - it's part of the human condition. Part of the mammalian condition, I'd suggest.
Talking about yourself in the third person is also very odd, but affected odd. You can only really carry that off if you're a fictional sitcom character like the Fonz, or Terry out of Brooklyn 911.And SKS is neither of those.
Yes I agree. First two are just quirks (I’m similar on clothes I like now)
But the last two are decidedly strange, and a little unsettling
Mr. Leon, while not quite mud huts, it was startling to learn (Ian Mortimer's Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England) that the cookery equipment/utensils of a peasant's house were often worth more than the house itself.
Comparing prices over that length of time is nigh on impossible because the price of labour was so low whereas the price of objects was so high.
And they had so few objects
You’d get wills mentioning someone’s “five spoons and a kettle”
Imagine showing them a smartphone. It would be something BEYOND magic
“So yes through this box you can look at any other human in the world and talk to them. Also it contains all of human knowledge and can capture frozen images of everything you see and play you music of infinite variety and help you solve any problem. With this small metal box you become God”
Having a smartphone in 1372 would turn you into a god. Omniscient and omnipresent
Small problem with finding a signal, not to mention recharging.
No Tory is truly safe. This is as the Americans call it a wave election. Which torys will be left when the tide is out? Well see
The Gillingham and St Pancreas polls back that up - Labour will get massive swings in Tory safe seats, losing ground in Labour safe seats.
If that pattern's repeated across the country it's going to make the first declarations interesting - Labour doing worse than expected maybe in those early seats?
Houghton and Sunderland South will be one of the first handful of seats to declare. In 2019, the shares were:
I can easily imagine a 2024 result along the lines of:
LAB 43% RFM 33% CON 11% GRN 9% LDM 4%
Massive Reform surge, but not close to winning, Labour will below expectations - not looking like they're about to be swept to a landslide majority - Tory vote disintegrated, Green protest votes, anti-Corbyn votes for the Lib Dems going back to Labour.
Edit: And if it presages a very efficient vote distribution it could end up with 500 seats on barely 40% of the votes.
That result would be worse for Labour, better for Reform, better for Green and worse for the Tories generally (Better for them than with Yougov)
“The next Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland owns set after set of only two outfits; he says that he doesn’t dream, he doesn’t have a favourite novel or poem; he speaks about himself in the third person.”
Mr. Leon, while not quite mud huts, it was startling to learn (Ian Mortimer's Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England) that the cookery equipment/utensils of a peasant's house were often worth more than the house itself.
Comparing prices over that length of time is nigh on impossible because the price of labour was so low whereas the price of objects was so high.
And they had so few objects
You’d get wills mentioning someone’s “five spoons and a kettle”
Imagine showing them a smartphone. It would be something BEYOND magic
“So yes through this box you can look at any other human in the world and talk to them. Also it contains all of human knowledge and can capture frozen images of everything you see and play you music of infinite variety and help you solve any problem. With this small metal box you become God”
Having a smartphone in 1372 would turn you into a god. Omniscient and omnipresent
Though I suspect you'd struggle to get a signal. And even assuming you could get one, every Wikipedia page would be summed up as 'God did it.'
Mr. Leon, while not quite mud huts, it was startling to learn (Ian Mortimer's Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England) that the cookery equipment/utensils of a peasant's house were often worth more than the house itself.
Comparing prices over that length of time is nigh on impossible because the price of labour was so low whereas the price of objects was so high.
And they had so few objects
You’d get wills mentioning someone’s “five spoons and a kettle”
Imagine showing them a smartphone. It would be something BEYOND magic
“So yes through this box you can look at any other human in the world and talk to them. Also it contains all of human knowledge and can capture frozen images of everything you see and play you music of infinite variety and help you solve any problem. With this small metal box you become God”
Having a smartphone in 1372 would turn you into a god. Omniscient and omnipresent
Depends on the signal, shirley?
(A smartphone with no signal but with a solar charger would still be an instrument of magic, though.)
The Isle of Wight is being split in two for this election. I was just thinking it would be funny if one of the seats went to the Greens and the other to RefUK.
That could lead to a Korea style partition.
More Cyprus surely. Island and all that. Maybe with a tiny bit of British crown territory somewhere near the Needles.
A surprising number of divided islands now I come to think of it. Timor, Borneo, Papua, Ireland, Hispaniola. Probably more I've forgotten.
Actually surprisingly few. There's also Tierra del Fuego, and I think somewhere in the Baltic, but I think that's all.
Then you think wrongly!
Yes, in my defence I rowed back quite quickly from this in a subsequent post. The answer appears to be 18-ish.
Ice presumably doesn't count. So it must be Greenland. The tricky bit is remembering the precise current status of Greenland, as an independent state or part of Denmark ...
Libdems are favs to win in 57 seats. SNP are favs to win in 18 seats.
Bookies' current o/u line for the Nats is 21.5. value on the underside? Not sure.
Thanks Paul.
The interesting thing about that LD figure is that is exactly the same as the buy price on the spreads.
IPSOS is significantly lower on the LD figure than other models/MRPS. As an example they have the Tories holding Newbury - everyone else thinks it is going yellow. Torbay is another IPSOS hold, going yellow elsewhere.
Ooh, goodie. Had a few quid on the Yellows to win Torbay. [Don't tell Marquee Mark.]
“The next Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland owns set after set of only two outfits; he says that he doesn’t dream, he doesn’t have a favourite novel or poem; he speaks about himself in the third person.”
The first of those is odd but something I can happily get on board with and indeed have moved towards as I've got older - when I find a clothing item I like, I tend to buy several of them. The problem is, of course, when clothing manufacturers - who are addicted to novelty - change their product.
I don't know that I have a favourite novel or poem. I don't think that's odd. I mean, if I was to take a day or so to try to list all the books or poems I'd ever read, I could probably rank them, but I don't have one to hand. And fiction isn't a big part of my life.
Not dreaming is odd indeed. Does anyone else here not dream? That strikes me as being so singular as worthy of study by a psychologist. I mean, I don't think I particularly benefit from my dreams, but I have them - it's part of the human condition. Part of the mammalian condition, I'd suggest.
Talking about yourself in the third person is also very odd, but affected odd. You can only really carry that off if you're a fictional sitcom character like the Fonz, or Terry out of Brooklyn 911.And SKS is neither of those.
Not dreaming - I didn't dream for about 12 years.
Oddly enough I started dreaming again recently - still not often, but sometimes which is more than I was doing. Whether its change of diet, lifestyle, career or something else behind that I'm not sure.
Mr. Leon, while not quite mud huts, it was startling to learn (Ian Mortimer's Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England) that the cookery equipment/utensils of a peasant's house were often worth more than the house itself.
Comparing prices over that length of time is nigh on impossible because the price of labour was so low whereas the price of objects was so high.
And they had so few objects
You’d get wills mentioning someone’s “five spoons and a kettle”
Imagine showing them a smartphone. It would be something BEYOND magic
“So yes through this box you can look at any other human in the world and talk to them. Also it contains all of human knowledge and can capture frozen images of everything you see and play you music of infinite variety and help you solve any problem. With this small metal box you become God”
Having a smartphone in 1372 would turn you into a god. Omniscient and omnipresent
One of my driving daydreams is imagining Brunel (*) suddenly appears in the car with me as I'm driving, and imagining the reaction to everything in the car - and he sees outside.
The thing is, Btunel would probably come to terms with it fairly easily. He would understand steam engines to a certain degree, and the structures he sees. Electricity was known to him, as was the telegraph. What would he think of the radio, let alone what they say on it? Lorries? What happens if he looked into the sky and saw a plane, or a helicopter?
But if you go further back in history, it'd be harder for people to come to terms with what they see and experience.
Mr. Leon, while not quite mud huts, it was startling to learn (Ian Mortimer's Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England) that the cookery equipment/utensils of a peasant's house were often worth more than the house itself.
Comparing prices over that length of time is nigh on impossible because the price of labour was so low whereas the price of objects was so high.
And they had so few objects
You’d get wills mentioning someone’s “five spoons and a kettle”
Imagine showing them a smartphone. It would be something BEYOND magic
“So yes through this box you can look at any other human in the world and talk to them. Also it contains all of human knowledge and can capture frozen images of everything you see and play you music of infinite variety and help you solve any problem. With this small metal box you become God”
Having a smartphone in 1372 would turn you into a god. Omniscient and omnipresent
Depends on the signal, shirley?
(A smartphone with no signal but with a solar charger would still be an instrument of magic, though.)
And a free instant barbecue when the local priests got to hear about it.
We do. He was very eloquent. He gave me the word “penelopising” which is now my daughter’s favourite word
Also the reason for his departure - incendiary anger at Brexit causing him to lose his rag with PBers to an alarming extent - has surely subsided. Indeed he could be on here enjoyably gloating at the Brexiteers’ downfall
One of his biggies was the potential threat to medicines supply (I believe for his partner). Recent times we are indeed struggling for some medicines, although, as with everything post Brexit, its not just down to Brexit.
The Isle of Wight is being split in two for this election. I was just thinking it would be funny if one of the seats went to the Greens and the other to RefUK.
That could lead to a Korea style partition.
More Cyprus surely. Island and all that. Maybe with a tiny bit of British crown territory somewhere near the Needles.
A surprising number of divided islands now I come to think of it. Timor, Borneo, Papua, Ireland, Hispaniola. Probably more I've forgotten.
Mr. Leon, while not quite mud huts, it was startling to learn (Ian Mortimer's Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England) that the cookery equipment/utensils of a peasant's house were often worth more than the house itself.
Comparing prices over that length of time is nigh on impossible because the price of labour was so low whereas the price of objects was so high.
And they had so few objects
You’d get wills mentioning someone’s “five spoons and a kettle”
Imagine showing them a smartphone. It would be something BEYOND magic
“So yes through this box you can look at any other human in the world and talk to them. Also it contains all of human knowledge and can capture frozen images of everything you see and play you music of infinite variety and help you solve any problem. With this small metal box you become God”
Having a smartphone in 1372 would turn you into a god. Omniscient and omnipresent
One of my driving daydreams is imagining Brunel (*) suddenly appears in the car with me as I'm driving, and imagining the reaction to everything in the car - and he sees outside.
The thing is, Btunel would probably come to terms with it fairly easily. He would understand steam engines to a certain degree, and the structures he sees. Electricity was known to him, as was the telegraph. What would he think of the radio, let alone what they say on it? Lorries? What happens if he looked into the sky and saw a plane, or a helicopter?
But if you go further back in history, it'd be harder for people to come to terms with what they see and experience.
(*) Sometimes other people, e.g. Hooke.
A subtler issue might be the notion of major corporations, countrywide-integrated operation and management. Though IKB would have a head start here as well - his dad's work for the RN (Portsmouth Block Mills, Chatham sawmill ...) and his own on the GWR would familiarise him with the notion, both state and privately owned.
Ice presumably doesn't count. So it must be Greenland. The tricky bit is remembering the precise current status of Greenland, as an independent state or part of Denmark ...
Mr. Leon, while not quite mud huts, it was startling to learn (Ian Mortimer's Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England) that the cookery equipment/utensils of a peasant's house were often worth more than the house itself.
Comparing prices over that length of time is nigh on impossible because the price of labour was so low whereas the price of objects was so high.
And they had so few objects
You’d get wills mentioning someone’s “five spoons and a kettle”
Imagine showing them a smartphone. It would be something BEYOND magic
“So yes through this box you can look at any other human in the world and talk to them. Also it contains all of human knowledge and can capture frozen images of everything you see and play you music of infinite variety and help you solve any problem. With this small metal box you become God”
Having a smartphone in 1372 would turn you into a god. Omniscient and omnipresent
Depends on the signal, shirley?
(A smartphone with no signal but with a solar charger would still be an instrument of magic, though.)
And a free instant barbecue when the local priests got to hear about it.
I think I would take a modern mountain bike to 1372 rather than a smartphone.
I mean, you can mostly see how it works, so it isn't magic. And it requires no other infrastructure.
But try getting the local blacksmith to manufacture the parts...
“The next Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland owns set after set of only two outfits; he says that he doesn’t dream, he doesn’t have a favourite novel or poem; he speaks about himself in the third person.”
The first of those is odd but something I can happily get on board with and indeed have moved towards as I've got older - when I find a clothing item I like, I tend to buy several of them. The problem is, of course, when clothing manufacturers - who are addicted to novelty - change their product.
I don't know that I have a favourite novel or poem. I don't think that's odd. I mean, if I was to take a day or so to try to list all the books or poems I'd ever read, I could probably rank them, but I don't have one to hand. And fiction isn't a big part of my life.
Not dreaming is odd indeed. Does anyone else here not dream? That strikes me as being so singular as worthy of study by a psychologist. I mean, I don't think I particularly benefit from my dreams, but I have them - it's part of the human condition. Part of the mammalian condition, I'd suggest.
Talking about yourself in the third person is also very odd, but affected odd. You can only really carry that off if you're a fictional sitcom character like the Fonz, or Terry out of Brooklyn 911.And SKS is neither of those.
Not dreaming - I didn't dream for about 12 years.
Oddly enough I started dreaming again recently - still not often, but sometimes which is more than I was doing. Whether its change of diet, lifestyle, career or something else behind that I'm not sure.
AFAIUI, it's actually quite likely that you and SKS did/do dream - you just don't wake up during your dreams. The only dreams you remember are the ones you wake during. I don't know whether I envy you or not. On one hand, dreams are sometimes entertaining. But waking up from a not-dream is a rare and pleasant experience which presumably you had/SKS has all the time. It can't be more than once a month I wake up having not been dreaming.
“The next Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland owns set after set of only two outfits; he says that he doesn’t dream, he doesn’t have a favourite novel or poem; he speaks about himself in the third person.”
The first of those is odd but something I can happily get on board with and indeed have moved towards as I've got older - when I find a clothing item I like, I tend to buy several of them. The problem is, of course, when clothing manufacturers - who are addicted to novelty - change their product.
I don't know that I have a favourite novel or poem. I don't think that's odd. I mean, if I was to take a day or so to try to list all the books or poems I'd ever read, I could probably rank them, but I don't have one to hand. And fiction isn't a big part of my life.
Not dreaming is odd indeed. Does anyone else here not dream? That strikes me as being so singular as worthy of study by a psychologist. I mean, I don't think I particularly benefit from my dreams, but I have them - it's part of the human condition. Part of the mammalian condition, I'd suggest.
Talking about yourself in the third person is also very odd, but affected odd. You can only really carry that off if you're a fictional sitcom character like the Fonz, or Terry out of Brooklyn 911.And SKS is neither of those.
Not dreaming - I didn't dream for about 12 years.
Oddly enough I started dreaming again recently - still not often, but sometimes which is more than I was doing. Whether its change of diet, lifestyle, career or something else behind that I'm not sure.
When I was on SSRIs I stopped dreaming. Then discontinuation hit and for a while I couldn’t quite figure out what was a dream and what was a memory.
We do. He was very eloquent. He gave me the word “penelopising” which is now my daughter’s favourite word
Also the reason for his departure - incendiary anger at Brexit causing him to lose his rag with PBers to an alarming extent - has surely subsided. Indeed he could be on here enjoyably gloating at the Brexiteers’ downfall
One of his biggies was the potential threat to medicines supply (I believe for his partner). Recent times we are indeed struggling for some medicines, although, as with everything post Brexit, its not just down to Brexit.
Yep - there's an awful lot of seeking profit rather than public good involved as well..
Mr. Leon, while not quite mud huts, it was startling to learn (Ian Mortimer's Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England) that the cookery equipment/utensils of a peasant's house were often worth more than the house itself.
Comparing prices over that length of time is nigh on impossible because the price of labour was so low whereas the price of objects was so high.
And they had so few objects
You’d get wills mentioning someone’s “five spoons and a kettle”
Imagine showing them a smartphone. It would be something BEYOND magic
“So yes through this box you can look at any other human in the world and talk to them. Also it contains all of human knowledge and can capture frozen images of everything you see and play you music of infinite variety and help you solve any problem. With this small metal box you become God”
Having a smartphone in 1372 would turn you into a god. Omniscient and omnipresent
Depends on the signal, shirley?
(A smartphone with no signal but with a solar charger would still be an instrument of magic, though.)
And a free instant barbecue when the local priests got to hear about it.
I think I would take a modern mountain bike to 1372 rather than a smartphone.
I mean, you can mostly see how it works, so it isn't magic. And it requires no other infrastructure.
But try getting the local blacksmith to manufacture the parts...
How would it work if lubricated with the fat skimmed off boiling mutton potage?
Mr. Leon, while not quite mud huts, it was startling to learn (Ian Mortimer's Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England) that the cookery equipment/utensils of a peasant's house were often worth more than the house itself.
Comparing prices over that length of time is nigh on impossible because the price of labour was so low whereas the price of objects was so high.
And they had so few objects
You’d get wills mentioning someone’s “five spoons and a kettle”
Imagine showing them a smartphone. It would be something BEYOND magic
“So yes through this box you can look at any other human in the world and talk to them. Also it contains all of human knowledge and can capture frozen images of everything you see and play you music of infinite variety and help you solve any problem. With this small metal box you become God”
Having a smartphone in 1372 would turn you into a god. Omniscient and omnipresent
Depends on the signal, shirley?
(A smartphone with no signal but with a solar charger would still be an instrument of magic, though.)
And a free instant barbecue when the local priests got to hear about it.
I think I would take a modern mountain bike to 1372 rather than a smartphone.
I mean, you can mostly see how it works, so it isn't magic. And it requires no other infrastructure.
But try getting the local blacksmith to manufacture the parts...
How would it work if lubricated with the fat skimmed off boiling mutton potage?
Isn't that what we all have to use now? None of this nasty mineral oil.
“The next Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland owns set after set of only two outfits; he says that he doesn’t dream, he doesn’t have a favourite novel or poem; he speaks about himself in the third person.”
Ben Gartside @BenGartside · 16h Scoop: HS2 cancellation will mean fares increase between London and the north to reduce travellers amid capacity problems.
There will be 8% fewer seats on future trains after the high-speed line was scrapped, and prices are set to go up to reduce demand
The Isle of Wight is being split in two for this election. I was just thinking it would be funny if one of the seats went to the Greens and the other to RefUK.
That could lead to a Korea style partition.
More Cyprus surely. Island and all that. Maybe with a tiny bit of British crown territory somewhere near the Needles.
A surprising number of divided islands now I come to think of it. Timor, Borneo, Papua, Ireland, Hispaniola. Probably more I've forgotten.
Actually surprisingly few. There's also Tierra del Fuego, and I think somewhere in the Baltic, but I think that's all.
The Isle of Wight is being split in two for this election. I was just thinking it would be funny if one of the seats went to the Greens and the other to RefUK.
That could lead to a Korea style partition.
More Cyprus surely. Island and all that. Maybe with a tiny bit of British crown territory somewhere near the Needles.
A surprising number of divided islands now I come to think of it. Timor, Borneo, Papua, Ireland, Hispaniola. Probably more I've forgotten.
Actually surprisingly few. There's also Tierra del Fuego, and I think somewhere in the Baltic, but I think that's all.
On a foggy Fenland day, with the lantern of the cathedral rising above the silvery mist, the Isle of Ely is shared between the kingdom of England and the kingdom of Heaven
And it has that effect now.
God knows what effect it had on your standard issue medieval fenlander.
I think the same way about Salisbury cathedral (and particularly the spire).
“The next Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland owns set after set of only two outfits; he says that he doesn’t dream, he doesn’t have a favourite novel or poem; he speaks about himself in the third person.”
The first of those is odd but something I can happily get on board with and indeed have moved towards as I've got older - when I find a clothing item I like, I tend to buy several of them. The problem is, of course, when clothing manufacturers - who are addicted to novelty - change their product.
I don't know that I have a favourite novel or poem. I don't think that's odd. I mean, if I was to take a day or so to try to list all the books or poems I'd ever read, I could probably rank them, but I don't have one to hand. And fiction isn't a big part of my life.
Not dreaming is odd indeed. Does anyone else here not dream? That strikes me as being so singular as worthy of study by a psychologist. I mean, I don't think I particularly benefit from my dreams, but I have them - it's part of the human condition. Part of the mammalian condition, I'd suggest.
Talking about yourself in the third person is also very odd, but affected odd. You can only really carry that off if you're a fictional sitcom character like the Fonz, or Terry out of Brooklyn 911.And SKS is neither of those.
Not dreaming - I didn't dream for about 12 years.
Oddly enough I started dreaming again recently - still not often, but sometimes which is more than I was doing. Whether its change of diet, lifestyle, career or something else behind that I'm not sure.
AFAIUI, it's actually quite likely that you and SKS did/do dream - you just don't wake up during your dreams. The only dreams you remember are the ones you wake during. I don't know whether I envy you or not. On one hand, dreams are sometimes entertaining. But waking up from a not-dream is a rare and pleasant experience which presumably you had/SKS has all the time. It can't be more than once a month I wake up having not been dreaming.
How odd. I very seldom dream. I did have a dream the other night, and before that it must have been about six months.
Comments
Many politically neutral people believe that the Lib Dem’s did the right thing for the country by stepping in to a huge problem and trying to help sort the country out in 2010. As a ‘reward’ they were shafted by the Tories in 2015.
The attempts to smear Davey are falling on increasingly deaf ears because people understand that many Tories have similar (or in many cases more important) questions to answer about the post office scandal and the electorate have heard enough of lies from a party where senior officials think it’s fine to use insider information to make a few quid out of betting.
There is some truth in the old advice to be careful who you abuse on the way up because one day you might need them on the way down. The Tories have lost everyone who would work with them and now seem to be losing the electorate as well. That is likely to mean a few very, very difficult years for them indeed.
Ungoliant - no
- Many 2019 Tory voters would never normally vote Tory, but ‘lent’ them their vote to ‘Get Brexit done’. Once we had left the EU they were happy to go back to Labour or other parties, particularly once the 2nd Ref idea was killed. See the 2017 vs 2019 Labour result for some (imperfect) evidence of the latter.
- Many moderate voters were put off by fears of a Corbyn Government, whereas they’re fine with Starmer. Starmer might be less popular with the youth/left but this largely only affects seats that Labour would win anyway.
- Lib Dems were advocating for 2nd Ref/Rejoin EU in 2019. Now they’re only saying ‘Single Market rejoin’ which doesn’t alienate Tory voters in Lib Dem Marginals.
- The Brexit Party stood down in Tory-held seats in 2019. REFUK is not doing so this time. This is a huge understated factor.
^ The above 4 reasons mean that even before you look at Partygate, Liz Truss, D-Day Gate, Wagergate, Inflation, Immigration, elderly Tory voters dying, Boris’ Johnson’s personal popularity being higher than Truss/Sunak… or anything else that has actually happened between 2019-2024 - the ‘baseline’ of the 2024 result was artificially low.
Boris’ 365 Tory seats on 43.6% was in some ways inflated by the above. Pandemic CON polling of >50% was more a ‘rally round the flag’ effect as we saw mirrored in other countries worldwide - but it may have made the 43.6% look more real.
I’m not defending Sunak’s record at all - I just don’t think he had much of a hope to begin with of preventing a Labour victory.
Overall I think it’s much easier to rationalise <100 Tory seats if you believe that a chunk of that 43.6% wasn’t going to vote Tory again, even if Sunak ran a good campaign - Because then the fall in seats and votes to 19% ish is not as steep a drop as it might seem!
However I think for most folk who tool along in reasonably good health there comes a precipice when a few things can hit you at once. Dementia is the one thing I fear more than anything so I probably fixate a bit too much on that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syvash
I don’t have a deal of usable blocks of time.
His guess looks eminently plausible.
God knows what effect it had on your standard issue medieval fenlander.
They say that after the age of 60, smoking is probably a net positive, as it seems to fend off dementia - or so my chain smoking Dad would say, and TBF he puffed away until he conked out at 88 - with all his marbles
My mum the resolute non smoker is less lucky
I also think travel is good (it’s one reason I do so much of it). It keeps you physically and mentally fit because every day is a series of Sudoku tests and a sequence of weights, as you work out how to park in Paris or order octopus in Managua, and as you lug your bags about, endlessly…
The interesting thing about that LD figure is that is exactly the same as the buy price on the spreads.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1R-AChxDPCIm2kpSJrbwr4pzE_auzeYm__hZukaloLow/edit?usp=sharing
It's bonkers. But still it moves.
We get to find out in 10 days
It looks as if the Lib Dems really are within cooee of coming second, and any Alliance MPs might be critical, since there’s potential to share the whip in the Commons as they do already in the Lords.
It’s not surprising Farage is throwing a strop, because this might be the first time a right wing newspaper has properly gone after him in twenty years
https://x.com/cjayanetti/status/1804988832590462993
Market, and that island in North America that now gives Canada a land border with Greenland/Denmark (?)
Now I think it's very possible that the Tory party are on 90 +/- 70 depending on how many Tory voters actually turn out and vote...
https://www.alzheimers.org.uk/about-dementia/managing-the-risk-of-dementia/reduce-your-risk-of-dementia/smoking
But I'll throw you a bone. There are theories that viagra is linked to dementia prevention
https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2024-06-07-sildenafil-viagra-improves-brain-blood-flow-and-could-help-prevent-dementia
Comparing prices over that length of time is nigh on impossible because the price of labour was so low whereas the price of objects was so high.
“The next Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland owns set after set of only two outfits; he says that he doesn’t dream, he doesn’t have a favourite novel or poem; he speaks about himself in the third person.”
https://x.com/pimlico_journal/status/1805186253718954416?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw
Great win a bet in the pub question. Canada has land borders with which countries?
Jo Swinson is also due to appear. My reading of the story so far suggests she is an a more awkward spot than Sir Ed.
Their testimony comes after the election.
You’d get wills mentioning someone’s “five spoons and a kettle”
Imagine showing them a smartphone. It would be something BEYOND magic
“So yes through this box you can look at any other human in the world and talk to them. Also it contains all of human knowledge and can capture frozen images of everything you see and play you music of infinite variety and help you solve any problem. With this small metal box you become God”
Having a smartphone in 1372 would turn you into a god. Omniscient and omnipresent
https://x.com/Savanta_UK/status/1805185928509403289
LAB 40.7%
CON 32.9%
BXP 15.5%
LDM 5.8%
GRN 2.8%
UKP 2.3%
I can easily imagine a 2024 result along the lines of:
LAB 43%
RFM 33%
CON 11%
GRN 9%
LDM 4%
Massive Reform surge, but not close to winning, Labour will below expectations - not looking like they're about to be swept to a landslide majority - Tory vote disintegrated, Green protest votes, anti-Corbyn votes for the Lib Dems going back to Labour.
Edit: And if it presages a very efficient vote distribution it could end up with 500 seats on barely 40% of the votes.
I don't know that I have a favourite novel or poem. I don't think that's odd. I mean, if I was to take a day or so to try to list all the books or poems I'd ever read, I could probably rank them, but I don't have one to hand. And fiction isn't a big part of my life.
Not dreaming is odd indeed. Does anyone else here not dream? That strikes me as being so singular as worthy of study by a psychologist. I mean, I don't think I particularly benefit from my dreams, but I have them - it's part of the human condition. Part of the mammalian condition, I'd suggest.
Talking about yourself in the third person is also very odd, but affected odd. You can only really carry that off if you're a fictional sitcom character like the Fonz, or Terry out of Brooklyn 911.And SKS is neither of those.
You’ll have to tear my puerile sense of humour from my cold dead fingers.
For that, we have the individuals you mention to thank.
But the last two are decidedly strange, and a little unsettling
EC
LAB CON RFM LIB GRN OTH
56.5 16.6 17.7 5.2 4.0 0.0
YG
LAB CON RFM LIB GRN NAT OTH
55% 8% 24% 6% 6% 0% 0%
New Statesman MRP (22nd)
LAB CON RFM LIB GRN NAT
52.1% 22.7% 17.4% 4.5% 3.3% 0.0%
IPSOS
LAB CON RFM LIB GRN NAT OTH
54% 16% 20% 4% 5% 0 0
(A smartphone with no signal but with a solar charger would still be an instrument of magic, though.)
Oddly enough I started dreaming again recently - still not often, but sometimes which is more than I was doing. Whether its change of diet, lifestyle, career or something else behind that I'm not sure.
The thing is, Btunel would probably come to terms with it fairly easily. He would understand steam engines to a certain degree, and the structures he sees. Electricity was known to him, as was the telegraph. What would he think of the radio, let alone what they say on it? Lorries? What happens if he looked into the sky and saw a plane, or a helicopter?
But if you go further back in history, it'd be harder for people to come to terms with what they see and experience.
(*) Sometimes other people, e.g. Hooke.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jun/21/labour-drafts-options-for-wealth-taxes-to-unlock-funds-for-public-services
(I See this has been done)
I mean, you can mostly see how it works, so it isn't magic. And it requires no other infrastructure.
But try getting the local blacksmith to manufacture the parts...
I don't know whether I envy you or not. On one hand, dreams are sometimes entertaining. But waking up from a not-dream is a rare and pleasant experience which presumably you had/SKS has all the time. It can't be more than once a month I wake up having not been dreaming.
Ben Gartside
@BenGartside
·
16h
Scoop: HS2 cancellation will mean fares increase between London and the north to reduce travellers amid capacity problems.
There will be 8% fewer seats on future trains after the high-speed line was scrapped, and prices are set to go up to reduce demand
https://x.com/BenGartside/status/1804950585919091180
I very seldom dream.
I did have a dream the other night, and before that it must have been about six months.