Nice header, but why do you/we focus on the bad polls for the Tories?
I accept that Ipsos and Survation have some pedigree, but Varian, JLP and MiC are all solid enough and members of the BPC. I appreciate that even they are not so great for the Blue team, but they do at least feed a little life into what otherwise would be the dried out corpse of the outgoing government.
The question is why are we seeing such a wide divergence (the gap between 18% and 25% is vast in statistical terms). Is it methodology, sampling, weighting, re-allocation of Don't Knows?
I pointed to a huge discrepency in the over 65 vote shares between More In Common (40% for the Conservatives) and R&W (25%).
JL Partners has 43% Conservative share among the over 65s which explains its higher Conservative VI.
I saw something on Twitter that was saying some pollsters were accounting for some of the older Tory vote dying off since 2019, and some weren’t.
Didn’t look into it too much but that could explain a lot if it differs between pollsters?
Just occurred to me this year might see three remarkable and potentially epochal political events in the west
The total destruction of the British Tories An absolute parliamentary majority for the hard/far right in France The re-election of POTUS Trump: and this time he means it
Perhaps we are all being simplistic in our analyses of political evolutions. Its not just a “rightwards surge” but nor is it “a nuanced mixed picture”
It’s not mixed at all. The voters are reaching for evermore extreme solutions and radical punishments. Mostly that’s far/hard right to punish incumbents but absolutely not always: see the UK
But everywhere there is anger and a willingness to think the unthinkable
Voting Labour after 14 years of Conservative government is hardly thinking the unthinkable.
Unfortunately 95% of what Leon posts is drivel.
The 5% is the small fraction of travelogue that doesn’t fall into the same category.
Nice header, but why do you/we focus on the bad polls for the Tories?
I accept that Ipsos and Survation have some pedigree, but Varian, JLP and MiC are all solid enough and members of the BPC. I appreciate that even they are not so great for the Blue team, but they do at least feed a little life into what otherwise would be the dried out corpse of the outgoing government.
The question is why are we seeing such a wide divergence (the gap between 18% and 25% is vast in statistical terms). Is it methodology, sampling, weighting, re-allocation of Don't Knows?
I pointed to a huge discrepency in the over 65 vote shares between More In Common (40% for the Conservatives) and R&W (25%).
JL Partners has 43% Conservative share among the over 65s which explains its higher Conservative VI.
I saw something on Twitter that was saying some pollsters were accounting for some of the older Tory vote dying off since 2019, and some weren’t.
Didn’t look into it too much but that could explain a lot if it differs between pollsters?
And equally could explain why some pollsters are over estimating Tory votes...
On preparing for the evening, my default setting is BBC for these things. Like poor, poor Rishi we don't have Sky, so I guess my other option will be ITN?
I'll have a PB tab open as well ofc.
ITN is far, far superior to the BBC and has been for years. That BBC now have the hopeless LauraK as 'anchorwoman' can only add to their irrepressible malaise.
Meanwhile, ITN have Ozzy and Ballzy – two of the finest political pundits and a great double act.
DYOR.
Based on previous elections:
ITV tend to announce many of the results faster - they don't wait for the declarations - albeit this time around there may be less in it where there are fewer safe seats. The other side of that though is that they show fewer declarations in favour of studio chat.
BBC (and Sky) have the results as they are declared and as a result tend to show a lot more declarations live, and have the numbers in line with each other.
I think in the past ITN has had to backtrack on the odd estimated result. In the overall scheme of things, especially if there is a landslide, but for constituency betting it is unhelpful.
I’ll probably flick between the two and settle on who is least irritating. No adverts is always a big draw for BBC though.
My memory is there are no ads on any of them (including Sky and ITN)?
Yes, I always find Sky on election night MUCH better than the Beeb, and they cancel their advertising on election night and go advert free.
IIRC, Postal votes were about 1 in every 5 in 2019 GE.
1) Do we have a rough sense on what it will be this year? Probably higher post COVID?
2) Can we guess roughly how many ballots have already been cast? I have a few older relatives who sent theirs off the day after they received them - I imagine a lot of postal voters do the same?
Interesting to consider that a lot of things like Gamblegate / Putingate might not be in the minds of voters who have already cast their ballots…
Yes, about 20% of voters are postal or proxy ones.
At a GE the turnout of postal voters tends to be about 80% whereas of other voters about 60%.
Such that by the count about 25% of the votes are postal ones.
Half of postal voters tend to vote straight away, a quarter post at the last minute or take their PV to the polling station on the day, and a quarter are in between.
So likely somewhere between 12.5%-15% of the total votes are already cast.
On preparing for the evening, my default setting is BBC for these things. Like poor, poor Rishi we don't have Sky, so I guess my other option will be ITN?
I'll have a PB tab open as well ofc.
ITN is far, far superior to the BBC and has been for years. That BBC now have the hopeless LauraK as 'anchorwoman' can only add to their irrepressible malaise.
Meanwhile, ITN have Ozzy and Ballzy – two of the finest political pundits and a great double act.
DYOR.
Based on previous elections:
ITV tend to announce many of the results faster - they don't wait for the declarations - albeit this time around there may be less in it where there are fewer safe seats. The other side of that though is that they show fewer declarations in favour of studio chat.
BBC (and Sky) have the results as they are declared and as a result tend to show a lot more declarations live, and have the numbers in line with each other.
I think in the past ITN has had to backtrack on the odd estimated result. In the overall scheme of things, especially if there is a landslide, but for constituency betting it is unhelpful.
I’ll probably flick between the two and settle on who is least irritating. No adverts is always a big draw for BBC though.
My memory is there are no ads on any of them (including Sky and ITN)?
Yes, I always find Sky on election night MUCH better than the Beeb, and they cancel their advertising on election night and go advert free.
North Korea's Central Military Commission announced that North Korea would join forces with the Russian military. And as part of the North Korea and Russia military alliance, the North Korean Army engineer unit would be dispatched to Donetsk, Ukraine, which remains occupied by Russia. It will be dispatched as early as next month... https://x.com/jurgen_nauditt/status/1805871124388983109
And the next target for Ukrainian ATACMS will be ...
What time next month does this N K army engineer unit defect to the Ukrainian side?
On preparing for the evening, my default setting is BBC for these things. Like poor, poor Rishi we don't have Sky, so I guess my other option will be ITN?
I'll have a PB tab open as well ofc.
ITN is far, far superior to the BBC and has been for years. That BBC now have the hopeless LauraK as 'anchorwoman' can only add to their irrepressible malaise.
Meanwhile, ITN have Ozzy and Ballzy – two of the finest political pundits and a great double act.
DYOR.
Based on previous elections:
ITV tend to announce many of the results faster - they don't wait for the declarations - albeit this time around there may be less in it where there are fewer safe seats. The other side of that though is that they show fewer declarations in favour of studio chat.
BBC (and Sky) have the results as they are declared and as a result tend to show a lot more declarations live, and have the numbers in line with each other.
I think in the past ITN has had to backtrack on the odd estimated result. In the overall scheme of things, especially if there is a landslide, but for constituency betting it is unhelpful.
I’ll probably flick between the two and settle on who is least irritating. No adverts is always a big draw for BBC though.
My memory is there are no ads on any of them (including Sky and ITN)?
Yes, I always find Sky on election night MUCH better than the Beeb, and they cancel their advertising on election night and go advert free.
If Labour scrap the 25% pension tax free lump sum in their post election "emergency" budget then I'm handing in my notice pronto so I'm gone by 5th April.
On topic - I said a long time ago that the only threat to Lab was a third party surge. A repetition of 2010 when an uninspiring opposition failed to seal the deal against a very tired and rather unpopular government.
Why - despite Reform's progress - has that not happened? 1) Mr Sunak. 2) The quality of the Con campaign compared to Lab in 2010 (Brown's mistakes mainly did not impact his core vote). 3) Reform are taking Con voters and right-wing anti-Con voters while Clegg took voters from all over but mostly centrist anti-Lab voters.
Lastly, the Clegg-gasm took the LDs into the lead in the polls and into the 30%s. Farage has managed a couple of distant second places and has only once touched 20% outside of PP.
So can Reform take seats? Yes. Possibly rather more than anyone is factoring in. I suspect a lot of past rock-solid Con seats are now Con/Lab/Ref contests and probabilities suggest Ref will come out on top in places. They have no campaign here but I can absolutely see how they might beat Truss if the Con vote splits around 50:50. However, there is no sign that they will impact on the Lab victory to any meaningful degree. The Alliance polled 23% in 1983 and how many seats did they win - despite having incumbents, a strong local council base and a large and experienced campaigning membership?
Just occurred to me this year might see three remarkable and potentially epochal political events in the west
The total destruction of the British Tories An absolute parliamentary majority for the hard/far right in France The re-election of POTUS Trump: and this time he means it
Perhaps we are all being simplistic in our analyses of political evolutions. Its not just a “rightwards surge” but nor is it “a nuanced mixed picture”
It’s not mixed at all. The voters are reaching for evermore extreme solutions and radical punishments. Mostly that’s far/hard right to punish incumbents but absolutely not always: see the UK
But everywhere there is anger and a willingness to think the unthinkable
Let us reach for the extreme solution of ... Sir Keir Starmer.
I know you’re not the sharpest but reducing the Tories to 7 seats is quite the radical act
Not voting Tory - which is what you're talking about - isn't a radical act at all. (Unless you're voting RefUK instead.)
It's a fairly extreme consequence of FPTP, but has little or nothing to do with any sort of thinking the unthinkable type radicalism.
I thought you were sharper than that. Evidently not.
The polls are pointing to an extreme solution
Nah.
This is you applying your own pre-determined weltanschuung to the British people kicking out the tories after 14 years, the final 5 of which have been a shambles.
None of us voting to do so share your worldview, thanks.
Nice header, but why do you/we focus on the bad polls for the Tories?
I accept that Ipsos and Survation have some pedigree, but Varian, JLP and MiC are all solid enough and members of the BPC. I appreciate that even they are not so great for the Blue team, but they do at least feed a little life into what otherwise would be the dried out corpse of the outgoing government.
The question is why are we seeing such a wide divergence (the gap between 18% and 25% is vast in statistical terms). Is it methodology, sampling, weighting, re-allocation of Don't Knows?
I pointed to a huge discrepency in the over 65 vote shares between More In Common (40% for the Conservatives) and R&W (25%).
JL Partners has 43% Conservative share among the over 65s which explains its higher Conservative VI.
I saw something on Twitter that was saying some pollsters were accounting for some of the older Tory vote dying off since 2019, and some weren’t.
Didn’t look into it too much but that could explain a lot if it differs between pollsters?
The bigger issue for the MRPs is that the census data they use to back-project their poll findings and analysis onto each constituency are often quite old.
If Labour scrap the 25% pension tax free lump sum in their post election "emergency" budget then I'm handing in my notice pronto so I'm gone by 5th April.
That would screw over a lot of people's plans for paying off mortgages etc so I expect they'll do it along with stitching us up with a 70 retirement age
If Labour scrap the 25% pension tax free lump sum in their post election "emergency" budget then I'm handing in my notice pronto so I'm gone by 5th April.
Don't worry, I'm sure Putin can find someone else to hire to tell us why the West is so awful and we should just let him annex Ukraine.
On preparing for the evening, my default setting is BBC for these things. Like poor, poor Rishi we don't have Sky, so I guess my other option will be ITN?
I'll have a PB tab open as well ofc.
ITN is far, far superior to the BBC and has been for years. That BBC now have the hopeless LauraK as 'anchorwoman' can only add to their irrepressible malaise.
Meanwhile, ITN have Ozzy and Ballzy – two of the finest political pundits and a great double act.
DYOR.
Based on previous elections:
ITV tend to announce many of the results faster - they don't wait for the declarations - albeit this time around there may be less in it where there are fewer safe seats. The other side of that though is that they show fewer declarations in favour of studio chat.
BBC (and Sky) have the results as they are declared and as a result tend to show a lot more declarations live, and have the numbers in line with each other.
I think in the past ITN has had to backtrack on the odd estimated result. In the overall scheme of things, especially if there is a landslide, but for constituency betting it is unhelpful.
I’ll probably flick between the two and settle on who is least irritating. No adverts is always a big draw for BBC though.
My memory is there are no ads on any of them (including Sky and ITN)?
Yes, I always find Sky on election night MUCH better than the Beeb, and they cancel their advertising on election night and go advert free.
Yes agree it's way better, ITV also better IMHO.
I’ll be heading back up to Surrey next week and we’ll watch ITV on the tv and I’ll have Sky News on my MacBook with one earpiece in. And probably half an eye on pb.com too!
I gave up on the BBC last time. They were worse than tortoises.
Financing local Government is one of those issues which nobody, if they've got any sense, wants to go anywhere near. The fact we are dealing with a hastily imposed settlement brought in as a result of the overthrow of Margaret Thatcher speaks volumes.
30+ years on and the consequences of that stupidity are clear. We have a banding system which bears little or no resemblance to the value of the properties to which it relates and the main reason for its creation - to allow local authorities to fund themselves without having to rely on central Government largesse - has also failed to be addressed.
In some authorites, up to two thirds of expenditure is on the provision of care for vulnerable adults and children as well on children with Special Education Needs (SEN). SEN referrals have increased exponentially since the end of lockdown but the provision of suitable teaching accommodation and the supply of qualified teachers has not. The funding of transport for SEN children is a particular area of concern with many authorities cutting it for children over sixteen.
The central question is what do you want local councils to do? In theory, adult social care could be taken out of local authority control and run by a national care agency which would ensure adequate levels of residential care, specialist (including dementia) care and domiciliary care across the country based on the maxim the older population should be treated with respect and dignity and the care offer should provide that. At the same time, the agency should be promoting in-family care where possible and acting as a positive help for carers of all ages and types. Caring should be viewed as a vital part of family life and carers should be encouraged as much as possible (employers hsould be given huge tax breaks to employ carers).
How do you fund the rest of local Government? With the pressure off in terms of care, other functions can be looked at - we need local community hubs where a range of services and advice are available and very often just a place for the lonely and the alone to go and meet other people. This needs to be a 24 hour a day, seven day a week service provision - the message being if you're lonely, you don't have to be alone.
How this society deals with the alone and the lonely is reprehensible and a shame to us all. Sport, for example, should be leading on this getting people out and about providing free or discounted admission so those who have no social life can have the opportunity to live a little.
Back to funding? @Sandpit rails against property taxation and the truth is there is no fair form of local Government funding. The truth is those with high value properties are doing very well out of the current system and any changes will disadvantage them (and they will whinge) and benefit the providers of Council Tax software (who won't).
Easy. Abolish local government. Everything gets run from the centre and everyone gets the same. Massive efficiencies are made.
The cherry on the top is killing off local politics, so that local busybodies never get any power.
As I'm sure your tongue is firmly in your cheek, let's play.
You'd have a National Refuse Collection Service presumably, a National Library Service, a National Fire Service, a National Police Service, a National Street Cleaning Service and a National Parking Management Agency and bring all locally-owned land and property assets under the Property Services Agency.
Can't quite see these efficiency savings.
No doubt somebody will pipe up about getting Planning abolished except for "national guidelines" - let's define those guidelines, shall we? Let's allow huge overdevelopment in one area and no development in another. Can you imagine recruiting the hundreds of civil servants required to adopt the National Plan - they could be recruited from all the local Planning departments perhaps?
On preparing for the evening, my default setting is BBC for these things. Like poor, poor Rishi we don't have Sky, so I guess my other option will be ITN?
I'll have a PB tab open as well ofc.
ITN is far, far superior to the BBC and has been for years. That BBC now have the hopeless LauraK as 'anchorwoman' can only add to their irrepressible malaise.
Meanwhile, ITN have Ozzy and Ballzy – two of the finest political pundits and a great double act.
DYOR.
I feel sorry for ITV. They have to be so much better than the BBC to overcome people's general inertia/assumption that ITV are johnny-come-lately amateurs/feeling that the BBC 'must' be the place for this sort of thing/people's tellies defaulting to BBC1. And they are so much better, even factoring into account the bewildered idiocy of Robert Peston. And still the BBC win.
This is all so true. I find it baffling however that anyone could watch the inane ramblings of the unbearable walking press release LauraK and not conclude that the state broadcaster has fallen a long way since the days of John Cole and Professor Tony King.
I'll be going with ITV, with the occasional jump to Sky and BBC if they start rambling.
However, for the 10pm exit poll I shall be on BBC as this is a bit of a ritual.
Just occurred to me this year might see three remarkable and potentially epochal political events in the west
The total destruction of the British Tories An absolute parliamentary majority for the hard/far right in France The re-election of POTUS Trump: and this time he means it
Perhaps we are all being simplistic in our analyses of political evolutions. Its not just a “rightwards surge” but nor is it “a nuanced mixed picture”
It’s not mixed at all. The voters are reaching for evermore extreme solutions and radical punishments. Mostly that’s far/hard right to punish incumbents but absolutely not always: see the UK
But everywhere there is anger and a willingness to think the unthinkable
Voting Labour after 14 years of Conservative government is hardly thinking the unthinkable.
Unfortunately 95% of what Leon posts is drivel.
The 5% is the small fraction of travelogue that doesn’t fall into the same category.
Sturgeon's law. Applies to pretty well all of us, I'm afraid.
Financing local Government is one of those issues which nobody, if they've got any sense, wants to go anywhere near. The fact we are dealing with a hastily imposed settlement brought in as a result of the overthrow of Margaret Thatcher speaks volumes.
30+ years on and the consequences of that stupidity are clear. We have a banding system which bears little or no resemblance to the value of the properties to which it relates and the main reason for its creation - to allow local authorities to fund themselves without having to rely on central Government largesse - has also failed to be addressed.
In some authorites, up to two thirds of expenditure is on the provision of care for vulnerable adults and children as well on children with Special Education Needs (SEN). SEN referrals have increased exponentially since the end of lockdown but the provision of suitable teaching accommodation and the supply of qualified teachers has not. The funding of transport for SEN children is a particular area of concern with many authorities cutting it for children over sixteen.
The central question is what do you want local councils to do? In theory, adult social care could be taken out of local authority control and run by a national care agency which would ensure adequate levels of residential care, specialist (including dementia) care and domiciliary care across the country based on the maxim the older population should be treated with respect and dignity and the care offer should provide that. At the same time, the agency should be promoting in-family care where possible and acting as a positive help for carers of all ages and types. Caring should be viewed as a vital part of family life and carers should be encouraged as much as possible (employers hsould be given huge tax breaks to employ carers).
How do you fund the rest of local Government? With the pressure off in terms of care, other functions can be looked at - we need local community hubs where a range of services and advice are available and very often just a place for the lonely and the alone to go and meet other people. This needs to be a 24 hour a day, seven day a week service provision - the message being if you're lonely, you don't have to be alone.
How this society deals with the alone and the lonely is reprehensible and a shame to us all. Sport, for example, should be leading on this getting people out and about providing free or discounted admission so those who have no social life can have the opportunity to live a little.
Back to funding? @Sandpit rails against property taxation and the truth is there is no fair form of local Government funding. The truth is those with high value properties are doing very well out of the current system and any changes will disadvantage them (and they will whinge) and benefit the providers of Council Tax software (who won't).
Easy. Abolish local government. Everything gets run from the centre and everyone gets the same. Massive efficiencies are made.
The cherry on the top is killing off local politics, so that local busybodies never get any power.
As I'm sure your tongue is firmly in your cheek, let's play.
You'd have a National Refuse Collection Service presumably, a National Library Service, a National Fire Service, a National Police Service, a National Street Cleaning Service and a National Parking Management Agency and bring all locally-owned land and property assets under the Property Services Agency.
Can't quite see these efficiency savings.
No doubt somebody will pipe up about getting Planning abolished except for "national guidelines" - let's define those guidelines, shall we? Let's allow huge overdevelopment in one area and no development in another. Can you imagine recruiting the hundreds of civil servants required to adopt the National Plan - they could be recruited from all the local Planning departments perhaps?
Japan manages national plans just fine.
Set the regulations of the law, then let people do what they please within the law.
If Labour scrap the 25% pension tax free lump sum in their post election "emergency" budget then I'm handing in my notice pronto so I'm gone by 5th April.
Already been ruled out - although the 25% is limited to the 25% of the old pension limit.
Nice header, but why do you/we focus on the bad polls for the Tories?
I accept that Ipsos and Survation have some pedigree, but Varian, JLP and MiC are all solid enough and members of the BPC. I appreciate that even they are not so great for the Blue team, but they do at least feed a little life into what otherwise would be the dried out corpse of the outgoing government.
The question is why are we seeing such a wide divergence (the gap between 18% and 25% is vast in statistical terms). Is it methodology, sampling, weighting, re-allocation of Don't Knows?
I pointed to a huge discrepency in the over 65 vote shares between More In Common (40% for the Conservatives) and R&W (25%).
JL Partners has 43% Conservative share among the over 65s which explains its higher Conservative VI.
I saw something on Twitter that was saying some pollsters were accounting for some of the older Tory vote dying off since 2019, and some weren’t.
Didn’t look into it too much but that could explain a lot if it differs between pollsters?
The bigger issue for the MRPs is that the census data they use to back-project their poll findings and analysis onto each constituency are often quite old.
When you look at by-election swings, the Lib Dems have mahoosively outperformed Labour (Even though Labour had some very good swings this parliament). I think the yellows could be in for a very good night indeed.
North Korea's Central Military Commission announced that North Korea would join forces with the Russian military. And as part of the North Korea and Russia military alliance, the North Korean Army engineer unit would be dispatched to Donetsk, Ukraine, which remains occupied by Russia. It will be dispatched as early as next month... https://x.com/jurgen_nauditt/status/1805871124388983109
Under fire in a muddy trench in Donetsk being a step up from life in North Korea.
Financing local Government is one of those issues which nobody, if they've got any sense, wants to go anywhere near. The fact we are dealing with a hastily imposed settlement brought in as a result of the overthrow of Margaret Thatcher speaks volumes.
30+ years on and the consequences of that stupidity are clear. We have a banding system which bears little or no resemblance to the value of the properties to which it relates and the main reason for its creation - to allow local authorities to fund themselves without having to rely on central Government largesse - has also failed to be addressed.
In some authorites, up to two thirds of expenditure is on the provision of care for vulnerable adults and children as well on children with Special Education Needs (SEN). SEN referrals have increased exponentially since the end of lockdown but the provision of suitable teaching accommodation and the supply of qualified teachers has not. The funding of transport for SEN children is a particular area of concern with many authorities cutting it for children over sixteen.
The central question is what do you want local councils to do? In theory, adult social care could be taken out of local authority control and run by a national care agency which would ensure adequate levels of residential care, specialist (including dementia) care and domiciliary care across the country based on the maxim the older population should be treated with respect and dignity and the care offer should provide that. At the same time, the agency should be promoting in-family care where possible and acting as a positive help for carers of all ages and types. Caring should be viewed as a vital part of family life and carers should be encouraged as much as possible (employers hsould be given huge tax breaks to employ carers).
How do you fund the rest of local Government? With the pressure off in terms of care, other functions can be looked at - we need local community hubs where a range of services and advice are available and very often just a place for the lonely and the alone to go and meet other people. This needs to be a 24 hour a day, seven day a week service provision - the message being if you're lonely, you don't have to be alone.
How this society deals with the alone and the lonely is reprehensible and a shame to us all. Sport, for example, should be leading on this getting people out and about providing free or discounted admission so those who have no social life can have the opportunity to live a little.
Back to funding? @Sandpit rails against property taxation and the truth is there is no fair form of local Government funding. The truth is those with high value properties are doing very well out of the current system and any changes will disadvantage them (and they will whinge) and benefit the providers of Council Tax software (who won't).
Easy. Abolish local government. Everything gets run from the centre and everyone gets the same. Massive efficiencies are made.
The cherry on the top is killing off local politics, so that local busybodies never get any power.
As I'm sure your tongue is firmly in your cheek, let's play.
You'd have a National Refuse Collection Service presumably, a National Library Service, a National Fire Service, a National Police Service, a National Street Cleaning Service and a National Parking Management Agency and bring all locally-owned land and property assets under the Property Services Agency.
Can't quite see these efficiency savings.
No doubt somebody will pipe up about getting Planning abolished except for "national guidelines" - let's define those guidelines, shall we? Let's allow huge overdevelopment in one area and no development in another. Can you imagine recruiting the hundreds of civil servants required to adopt the National Plan - they could be recruited from all the local Planning departments perhaps?
I wouldn't go so far as to nationalise it all but the council and district system needs binning. Everywhere should be unitary.
I mean what have I got now
A national constituency (Fair enough) Regional mayor County council District council Parish council.
It's ridiculous not to knock at least one of those out and I'd go for the county expanding the district to a North Notts unitary.
..Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has rejected calls for politicians to be banned from betting on politics, arguing that the gambling scandal was about behaviour rather than the rules...
Am I the only one who thinks there's a good chance the exit poll will be less right than usual this year? Simply cause this one's surely gonna be harder to sample than all the recent ones.
(I wouldn't claim to say in which way it'll be wrong)
Financing local Government is one of those issues which nobody, if they've got any sense, wants to go anywhere near. The fact we are dealing with a hastily imposed settlement brought in as a result of the overthrow of Margaret Thatcher speaks volumes.
30+ years on and the consequences of that stupidity are clear. We have a banding system which bears little or no resemblance to the value of the properties to which it relates and the main reason for its creation - to allow local authorities to fund themselves without having to rely on central Government largesse - has also failed to be addressed.
In some authorites, up to two thirds of expenditure is on the provision of care for vulnerable adults and children as well on children with Special Education Needs (SEN). SEN referrals have increased exponentially since the end of lockdown but the provision of suitable teaching accommodation and the supply of qualified teachers has not. The funding of transport for SEN children is a particular area of concern with many authorities cutting it for children over sixteen.
The central question is what do you want local councils to do? In theory, adult social care could be taken out of local authority control and run by a national care agency which would ensure adequate levels of residential care, specialist (including dementia) care and domiciliary care across the country based on the maxim the older population should be treated with respect and dignity and the care offer should provide that. At the same time, the agency should be promoting in-family care where possible and acting as a positive help for carers of all ages and types. Caring should be viewed as a vital part of family life and carers should be encouraged as much as possible (employers hsould be given huge tax breaks to employ carers).
How do you fund the rest of local Government? With the pressure off in terms of care, other functions can be looked at - we need local community hubs where a range of services and advice are available and very often just a place for the lonely and the alone to go and meet other people. This needs to be a 24 hour a day, seven day a week service provision - the message being if you're lonely, you don't have to be alone.
How this society deals with the alone and the lonely is reprehensible and a shame to us all. Sport, for example, should be leading on this getting people out and about providing free or discounted admission so those who have no social life can have the opportunity to live a little.
Back to funding? @Sandpit rails against property taxation and the truth is there is no fair form of local Government funding. The truth is those with high value properties are doing very well out of the current system and any changes will disadvantage them (and they will whinge) and benefit the providers of Council Tax software (who won't).
Easy. Abolish local government. Everything gets run from the centre and everyone gets the same. Massive efficiencies are made.
The cherry on the top is killing off local politics, so that local busybodies never get any power.
As I'm sure your tongue is firmly in your cheek, let's play.
You'd have a National Refuse Collection Service presumably, a National Library Service, a National Fire Service, a National Police Service, a National Street Cleaning Service and a National Parking Management Agency and bring all locally-owned land and property assets under the Property Services Agency.
Can't quite see these efficiency savings.
No doubt somebody will pipe up about getting Planning abolished except for "national guidelines" - let's define those guidelines, shall we? Let's allow huge overdevelopment in one area and no development in another. Can you imagine recruiting the hundreds of civil servants required to adopt the National Plan - they could be recruited from all the local Planning departments perhaps?
It sounds rather like the creation of ICL (by Tony Benn IIRC???) were the govt of the day "raided" various IT dept.s up and down the country and produced the "British IBM". The main problem was that many of the "recruits" were not the finest members of their respective organisations who knew a good clearing out opportunity when they saw one...
ICL did some good stuff, but there was always a slightly "naff" feel to their kit.
IIRC, Postal votes were about 1 in every 5 in 2019 GE.
1) Do we have a rough sense on what it will be this year? Probably higher post COVID?
2) Can we guess roughly how many ballots have already been cast? I have a few older relatives who sent theirs off the day after they received them - I imagine a lot of postal voters do the same?
Interesting to consider that a lot of things like Gamblegate / Putingate might not be in the minds of voters who have already cast their ballots…
The other day I guesstimated 25% of votes will be by post. Two reasons for increase:
1. More registered for postal votes because of Covid as you suggest (that's why we have them). 2. Lower overall turnout (perhaps?), resulting in the postal voters being a greater chunk of the total.
North Korea's Central Military Commission announced that North Korea would join forces with the Russian military. And as part of the North Korea and Russia military alliance, the North Korean Army engineer unit would be dispatched to Donetsk, Ukraine, which remains occupied by Russia. It will be dispatched as early as next month... https://x.com/jurgen_nauditt/status/1805871124388983109
Under fire in a muddy trench in Donetsk being a step up from life in North Korea.
Defections to "the West" must surely be a possibility. I assume army engineers are probably much more privileged than most in NK but still, double bonus of escaping your own dictatorship and escaping the trenches alive.
North Korea's Central Military Commission announced that North Korea would join forces with the Russian military. And as part of the North Korea and Russia military alliance, the North Korean Army engineer unit would be dispatched to Donetsk, Ukraine, which remains occupied by Russia. It will be dispatched as early as next month... https://x.com/jurgen_nauditt/status/1805871124388983109
Looks to me that the Russians are desperate for warm bodies too.
Nice header, but why do you/we focus on the bad polls for the Tories?
I accept that Ipsos and Survation have some pedigree, but Varian, JLP and MiC are all solid enough and members of the BPC. I appreciate that even they are not so great for the Blue team, but they do at least feed a little life into what otherwise would be the dried out corpse of the outgoing government.
The question is why are we seeing such a wide divergence (the gap between 18% and 25% is vast in statistical terms). Is it methodology, sampling, weighting, re-allocation of Don't Knows?
I pointed to a huge discrepency in the over 65 vote shares between More In Common (40% for the Conservatives) and R&W (25%).
JL Partners has 43% Conservative share among the over 65s which explains its higher Conservative VI.
I saw something on Twitter that was saying some pollsters were accounting for some of the older Tory vote dying off since 2019, and some weren’t.
Didn’t look into it too much but that could explain a lot if it differs between pollsters?
The bigger issue for the MRPs is that the census data they use to back-project their poll findings and analysis onto each constituency are often quite old.
When you look at by-election swings, the Lib Dems have mahoosively outperformed Labour (Even though Labour had some very good swings this parliament). I think the yellows could be in for a very good night indeed.
I dare not jinx it but getting my hopes up. Done that too often.
I'll be relieved if we go above 20 seats, happy if we get 25+ and delirious if we beat the SNP into 3rd place.
Financing local Government is one of those issues which nobody, if they've got any sense, wants to go anywhere near. The fact we are dealing with a hastily imposed settlement brought in as a result of the overthrow of Margaret Thatcher speaks volumes.
30+ years on and the consequences of that stupidity are clear. We have a banding system which bears little or no resemblance to the value of the properties to which it relates and the main reason for its creation - to allow local authorities to fund themselves without having to rely on central Government largesse - has also failed to be addressed.
In some authorites, up to two thirds of expenditure is on the provision of care for vulnerable adults and children as well on children with Special Education Needs (SEN). SEN referrals have increased exponentially since the end of lockdown but the provision of suitable teaching accommodation and the supply of qualified teachers has not. The funding of transport for SEN children is a particular area of concern with many authorities cutting it for children over sixteen.
The central question is what do you want local councils to do? In theory, adult social care could be taken out of local authority control and run by a national care agency which would ensure adequate levels of residential care, specialist (including dementia) care and domiciliary care across the country based on the maxim the older population should be treated with respect and dignity and the care offer should provide that. At the same time, the agency should be promoting in-family care where possible and acting as a positive help for carers of all ages and types. Caring should be viewed as a vital part of family life and carers should be encouraged as much as possible (employers hsould be given huge tax breaks to employ carers).
How do you fund the rest of local Government? With the pressure off in terms of care, other functions can be looked at - we need local community hubs where a range of services and advice are available and very often just a place for the lonely and the alone to go and meet other people. This needs to be a 24 hour a day, seven day a week service provision - the message being if you're lonely, you don't have to be alone.
How this society deals with the alone and the lonely is reprehensible and a shame to us all. Sport, for example, should be leading on this getting people out and about providing free or discounted admission so those who have no social life can have the opportunity to live a little.
Back to funding? @Sandpit rails against property taxation and the truth is there is no fair form of local Government funding. The truth is those with high value properties are doing very well out of the current system and any changes will disadvantage them (and they will whinge) and benefit the providers of Council Tax software (who won't).
Easy. Abolish local government. Everything gets run from the centre and everyone gets the same. Massive efficiencies are made.
The cherry on the top is killing off local politics, so that local busybodies never get any power.
As I'm sure your tongue is firmly in your cheek, let's play.
You'd have a National Refuse Collection Service presumably, a National Library Service, a National Fire Service, a National Police Service, a National Street Cleaning Service and a National Parking Management Agency and bring all locally-owned land and property assets under the Property Services Agency.
Can't quite see these efficiency savings.
No doubt somebody will pipe up about getting Planning abolished except for "national guidelines" - let's define those guidelines, shall we? Let's allow huge overdevelopment in one area and no development in another. Can you imagine recruiting the hundreds of civil servants required to adopt the National Plan - they could be recruited from all the local Planning departments perhaps?
The council and district system needs binning. Everywhere should be unitary.
That's a different question and I broadly agree.
The problem is not everywhere is the same. One example I'll offer is Surrey - 1 county council and 11 district and borough councils.
I suspect the County would like to take over the districts and boroughs as happened in Cornwall.
The districts and boroughs (and of course the "twin hat" councillors of all parties) aren't huge on that idea and favour three authorities, a West, a Mid and an East of about 350,000 each which is about the size of a London Borough and the Government's preferred size for a local authority.
Issues? The County would have to take on the key functions of refuse collection, council tax and crematoria/leisure management. If the County were split up, you'd need to build the three new authorities from the ground up and divvy up the County assets accordingly. You could continue to use three of the District Council buildings as HQ buildings and just sell the main County HQ.
If the County took on everything, the chances are they'd keep the eleven structures in the short term (it's what I would do) and migrate to, for example, a single Council Tax service using a single collection software system over a 3-5 year period.
Just occurred to me this year might see three remarkable and potentially epochal political events in the west
The total destruction of the British Tories An absolute parliamentary majority for the hard/far right in France The re-election of POTUS Trump: and this time he means it
Perhaps we are all being simplistic in our analyses of political evolutions. Its not just a “rightwards surge” but nor is it “a nuanced mixed picture”
It’s not mixed at all. The voters are reaching for evermore extreme solutions and radical punishments. Mostly that’s far/hard right to punish incumbents but absolutely not always: see the UK
But everywhere there is anger and a willingness to think the unthinkable
Let's hope people chill out a bit then and start thinking inside the box. It's there for a reason.
Oh sure the same failed policies as before. No disrespect but living in Hampstead doesnt imply you have any real thirst for a change in the status quo outside woke virtue signalling.
If I'm into virtue signalling how come my Labour sticker is small and on an upstairs window?
Maybe your next door neighbours are greens.
Not sure tbh. But a previous resident (and I'm not making this up) used to have a life-size cardboard cut-out of David Cameron in his hallway. I almost passed out when I first saw it. We ended up getting on ok, amazingly, and I was sad when he decided to move out. His politics were driven, as so many Tories do tend to say, by the merits of "aspiration". And this chap didn't just talk the talk on that. He bought a place in Hertfordshire because he wanted a detached house with its own driveway.
Nice header, but why do you/we focus on the bad polls for the Tories?
I accept that Ipsos and Survation have some pedigree, but Varian, JLP and MiC are all solid enough and members of the BPC. I appreciate that even they are not so great for the Blue team, but they do at least feed a little life into what otherwise would be the dried out corpse of the outgoing government.
The question is why are we seeing such a wide divergence (the gap between 18% and 25% is vast in statistical terms). Is it methodology, sampling, weighting, re-allocation of Don't Knows?
I pointed to a huge discrepency in the over 65 vote shares between More In Common (40% for the Conservatives) and R&W (25%).
JL Partners has 43% Conservative share among the over 65s which explains its higher Conservative VI.
I saw something on Twitter that was saying some pollsters were accounting for some of the older Tory vote dying off since 2019, and some weren’t.
Didn’t look into it too much but that could explain a lot if it differs between pollsters?
The bigger issue for the MRPs is that the census data they use to back-project their poll findings and analysis onto each constituency are often quite old.
When you look at by-election swings, the Lib Dems have mahoosively outperformed Labour (Even though Labour had some very good swings this parliament). I think the yellows could be in for a very good night indeed.
I dare not jinx it but getting my hopes up. Done that too often.
I'll be relieved if we go above 20 seats, happy if we get 25+ and delirious if we beat the SNP into 3rd place.
I worry for you when the LDs beat the Tories into 2nd.
..Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has rejected calls for politicians to be banned from betting on politics, arguing that the gambling scandal was about behaviour rather than the rules...
BBC R4 WATO reporting Davey on the other hand seems not so keen.
Financing local Government is one of those issues which nobody, if they've got any sense, wants to go anywhere near. The fact we are dealing with a hastily imposed settlement brought in as a result of the overthrow of Margaret Thatcher speaks volumes.
30+ years on and the consequences of that stupidity are clear. We have a banding system which bears little or no resemblance to the value of the properties to which it relates and the main reason for its creation - to allow local authorities to fund themselves without having to rely on central Government largesse - has also failed to be addressed.
In some authorites, up to two thirds of expenditure is on the provision of care for vulnerable adults and children as well on children with Special Education Needs (SEN). SEN referrals have increased exponentially since the end of lockdown but the provision of suitable teaching accommodation and the supply of qualified teachers has not. The funding of transport for SEN children is a particular area of concern with many authorities cutting it for children over sixteen.
The central question is what do you want local councils to do? In theory, adult social care could be taken out of local authority control and run by a national care agency which would ensure adequate levels of residential care, specialist (including dementia) care and domiciliary care across the country based on the maxim the older population should be treated with respect and dignity and the care offer should provide that. At the same time, the agency should be promoting in-family care where possible and acting as a positive help for carers of all ages and types. Caring should be viewed as a vital part of family life and carers should be encouraged as much as possible (employers hsould be given huge tax breaks to employ carers).
How do you fund the rest of local Government? With the pressure off in terms of care, other functions can be looked at - we need local community hubs where a range of services and advice are available and very often just a place for the lonely and the alone to go and meet other people. This needs to be a 24 hour a day, seven day a week service provision - the message being if you're lonely, you don't have to be alone.
How this society deals with the alone and the lonely is reprehensible and a shame to us all. Sport, for example, should be leading on this getting people out and about providing free or discounted admission so those who have no social life can have the opportunity to live a little.
Back to funding? @Sandpit rails against property taxation and the truth is there is no fair form of local Government funding. The truth is those with high value properties are doing very well out of the current system and any changes will disadvantage them (and they will whinge) and benefit the providers of Council Tax software (who won't).
Easy. Abolish local government. Everything gets run from the centre and everyone gets the same. Massive efficiencies are made.
The cherry on the top is killing off local politics, so that local busybodies never get any power.
As I'm sure your tongue is firmly in your cheek, let's play.
You'd have a National Refuse Collection Service presumably, a National Library Service, a National Fire Service, a National Police Service, a National Street Cleaning Service and a National Parking Management Agency and bring all locally-owned land and property assets under the Property Services Agency.
Can't quite see these efficiency savings.
No doubt somebody will pipe up about getting Planning abolished except for "national guidelines" - let's define those guidelines, shall we? Let's allow huge overdevelopment in one area and no development in another. Can you imagine recruiting the hundreds of civil servants required to adopt the National Plan - they could be recruited from all the local Planning departments perhaps?
It sounds rather like the creation of ICL (by Tony Benn IIRC???) were the govt of the day "raided" various IT dept.s up and down the country and produced the "British IBM". The main problem was that many of the "recruits" were not the finest members of their respective organisations who knew a good clearing out opportunity when they saw one...
ICL did some good stuff, but there was always a slightly "naff" feel to their kit.
You say that, but at least by the time Fujitsu bought it, they started building software of incomparable quality, so good they were happy to testify to its bug free nature in court.
North Korea's Central Military Commission announced that North Korea would join forces with the Russian military. And as part of the North Korea and Russia military alliance, the North Korean Army engineer unit would be dispatched to Donetsk, Ukraine, which remains occupied by Russia. It will be dispatched as early as next month... https://x.com/jurgen_nauditt/status/1805871124388983109
Under fire in a muddy trench in Donetsk being a step up from life in North Korea.
Defections to "the West" must surely be a possibility. I assume army engineers are probably much more privileged than most in NK but still, double bonus of escaping your own dictatorship and escaping the trenches alive.
I am sure that those sent to the front will be told that their families in NK will pay dearly if they defect on the battlefield.
On preparing for the evening, my default setting is BBC for these things. Like poor, poor Rishi we don't have Sky, so I guess my other option will be ITN?
I'll have a PB tab open as well ofc.
ITN is far, far superior to the BBC and has been for years. That BBC now have the hopeless LauraK as 'anchorwoman' can only add to their irrepressible malaise.
Meanwhile, ITN have Ozzy and Ballzy – two of the finest political pundits and a great double act.
DYOR.
Based on previous elections:
ITV tend to announce many of the results faster - they don't wait for the declarations - albeit this time around there may be less in it where there are fewer safe seats. The other side of that though is that they show fewer declarations in favour of studio chat.
BBC (and Sky) have the results as they are declared and as a result tend to show a lot more declarations live, and have the numbers in line with each other.
I think in the past ITN has had to backtrack on the odd estimated result. In the overall scheme of things, especially if there is a landslide, but for constituency betting it is unhelpful.
I’ll probably flick between the two and settle on who is least irritating. No adverts is always a big draw for BBC though.
My memory is there are no ads on any of them (including Sky and ITN)?
Yes, I always find Sky on election night MUCH better than the Beeb, and they cancel their advertising on election night and go advert free.
Sky is quicker but the BBC more reliable.
BBC end up spending too much time wibbling rather than reporting and analysing results.
IIRC, Postal votes were about 1 in every 5 in 2019 GE.
1) Do we have a rough sense on what it will be this year? Probably higher post COVID?
2) Can we guess roughly how many ballots have already been cast? I have a few older relatives who sent theirs off the day after they received them - I imagine a lot of postal voters do the same?
Interesting to consider that a lot of things like Gamblegate / Putingate might not be in the minds of voters who have already cast their ballots…
The other day I guesstimated 25% of votes will be by post. Two reasons for increase:
1. More registered for postal votes because of Covid as you suggest (that's why we have them). 2. Lower overall turnout (perhaps?), resulting in the postal voters being a greater chunk of the total.
North Korea's Central Military Commission announced that North Korea would join forces with the Russian military. And as part of the North Korea and Russia military alliance, the North Korean Army engineer unit would be dispatched to Donetsk, Ukraine, which remains occupied by Russia. It will be dispatched as early as next month... https://x.com/jurgen_nauditt/status/1805871124388983109
Looks to me that the Russians are desperate for warm bodies too.
The worry is that involving North Korea might be calculated to bring in China, as NK's longstanding champion.
Financing local Government is one of those issues which nobody, if they've got any sense, wants to go anywhere near. The fact we are dealing with a hastily imposed settlement brought in as a result of the overthrow of Margaret Thatcher speaks volumes.
30+ years on and the consequences of that stupidity are clear. We have a banding system which bears little or no resemblance to the value of the properties to which it relates and the main reason for its creation - to allow local authorities to fund themselves without having to rely on central Government largesse - has also failed to be addressed.
In some authorites, up to two thirds of expenditure is on the provision of care for vulnerable adults and children as well on children with Special Education Needs (SEN). SEN referrals have increased exponentially since the end of lockdown but the provision of suitable teaching accommodation and the supply of qualified teachers has not. The funding of transport for SEN children is a particular area of concern with many authorities cutting it for children over sixteen.
The central question is what do you want local councils to do? In theory, adult social care could be taken out of local authority control and run by a national care agency which would ensure adequate levels of residential care, specialist (including dementia) care and domiciliary care across the country based on the maxim the older population should be treated with respect and dignity and the care offer should provide that. At the same time, the agency should be promoting in-family care where possible and acting as a positive help for carers of all ages and types. Caring should be viewed as a vital part of family life and carers should be encouraged as much as possible (employers hsould be given huge tax breaks to employ carers).
How do you fund the rest of local Government? With the pressure off in terms of care, other functions can be looked at - we need local community hubs where a range of services and advice are available and very often just a place for the lonely and the alone to go and meet other people. This needs to be a 24 hour a day, seven day a week service provision - the message being if you're lonely, you don't have to be alone.
How this society deals with the alone and the lonely is reprehensible and a shame to us all. Sport, for example, should be leading on this getting people out and about providing free or discounted admission so those who have no social life can have the opportunity to live a little.
Back to funding? @Sandpit rails against property taxation and the truth is there is no fair form of local Government funding. The truth is those with high value properties are doing very well out of the current system and any changes will disadvantage them (and they will whinge) and benefit the providers of Council Tax software (who won't).
Easy. Abolish local government. Everything gets run from the centre and everyone gets the same. Massive efficiencies are made.
The cherry on the top is killing off local politics, so that local busybodies never get any power.
As I'm sure your tongue is firmly in your cheek, let's play.
You'd have a National Refuse Collection Service presumably, a National Library Service, a National Fire Service, a National Police Service, a National Street Cleaning Service and a National Parking Management Agency and bring all locally-owned land and property assets under the Property Services Agency.
Can't quite see these efficiency savings.
No doubt somebody will pipe up about getting Planning abolished except for "national guidelines" - let's define those guidelines, shall we? Let's allow huge overdevelopment in one area and no development in another. Can you imagine recruiting the hundreds of civil servants required to adopt the National Plan - they could be recruited from all the local Planning departments perhaps?
My tongue is in my cheek, but still let’s pick on some of those:
- We should have one national, or a small number of regional, police force(s) with CT and serious and organised crime hived off into the NCA, taking the opportunity to break up the Met. Same with the fire brigade. They have no scale at present.
- See no reason not to have a library service run nationally. Would allow for a much tighter supply chain.
- Parking could be centralised and app driven.
The problem is social care, truly local amenities (like parks), and local roads, where some local sense matters.
So my realistic proposal is “radically de-scope local Gvt, probably by consolidation into regions instead of boroughs/counties, but keeping some parish functions”.
On preparing for the evening, my default setting is BBC for these things. Like poor, poor Rishi we don't have Sky, so I guess my other option will be ITN?
I'll have a PB tab open as well ofc.
ITN is far, far superior to the BBC and has been for years. That BBC now have the hopeless LauraK as 'anchorwoman' can only add to their irrepressible malaise.
Meanwhile, ITN have Ozzy and Ballzy – two of the finest political pundits and a great double act.
DYOR.
Based on previous elections:
ITV tend to announce many of the results faster - they don't wait for the declarations - albeit this time around there may be less in it where there are fewer safe seats. The other side of that though is that they show fewer declarations in favour of studio chat.
BBC (and Sky) have the results as they are declared and as a result tend to show a lot more declarations live, and have the numbers in line with each other.
I think in the past ITN has had to backtrack on the odd estimated result. In the overall scheme of things, especially if there is a landslide, but for constituency betting it is unhelpful.
I’ll probably flick between the two and settle on who is least irritating. No adverts is always a big draw for BBC though.
My memory is there are no ads on any of them (including Sky and ITN)?
Yes, I always find Sky on election night MUCH better than the Beeb, and they cancel their advertising on election night and go advert free.
Sky is quicker but the BBC more reliable.
BBC end up spending too much time wibbling rather than reporting and analysing results.
But the quality of discussion is better.
Have sky on mute for the latest declarations and listen to BBC for the debate, analysis and any corrections
North Korea's Central Military Commission announced that North Korea would join forces with the Russian military. And as part of the North Korea and Russia military alliance, the North Korean Army engineer unit would be dispatched to Donetsk, Ukraine, which remains occupied by Russia. It will be dispatched as early as next month... https://x.com/jurgen_nauditt/status/1805871124388983109
Under fire in a muddy trench in Donetsk being a step up from life in North Korea.
Defections to "the West" must surely be a possibility. I assume army engineers are probably much more privileged than most in NK but still, double bonus of escaping your own dictatorship and escaping the trenches alive.
I am sure that those sent to the front will be told that their families in NK will pay dearly if they defect on the battlefield.
There are quite large numbers of defectors to South Korea (and illegal emigrants to China) every year, so I don't think that will keep things watertight.
Am I the only one who thinks there's a good chance the exit poll will be less right than usual this year? Simply cause this one's surely gonna be harder to sample than all the recent ones.
(I wouldn't claim to say in which way it'll be wrong)
I think they're sensible enough to have a broad enough sample to pick up the changes fine.
The suggestion that Labour's vote will be very efficient, and so winning margins in lots of seats will be much smaller than normal, will mean that translating vote changes into seat changes will have much higher uncertainty. So, if 15 seats either way are normally won with a winning margin of 2% or less, then you might expect that to be 30 seats this time.
The exit poll is normally said to be accurate to within +/- 15 seats, so this effect might take that accuracy to +/- 30 seats.
On preparing for the evening, my default setting is BBC for these things. Like poor, poor Rishi we don't have Sky, so I guess my other option will be ITN?
I'll have a PB tab open as well ofc.
ITN is far, far superior to the BBC and has been for years. That BBC now have the hopeless LauraK as 'anchorwoman' can only add to their irrepressible malaise.
Meanwhile, ITN have Ozzy and Ballzy – two of the finest political pundits and a great double act.
DYOR.
Based on previous elections:
ITV tend to announce many of the results faster - they don't wait for the declarations - albeit this time around there may be less in it where there are fewer safe seats. The other side of that though is that they show fewer declarations in favour of studio chat.
BBC (and Sky) have the results as they are declared and as a result tend to show a lot more declarations live, and have the numbers in line with each other.
I think in the past ITN has had to backtrack on the odd estimated result. In the overall scheme of things, especially if there is a landslide, but for constituency betting it is unhelpful.
I’ll probably flick between the two and settle on who is least irritating. No adverts is always a big draw for BBC though.
My memory is there are no ads on any of them (including Sky and ITN)?
Yes, I always find Sky on election night MUCH better than the Beeb, and they cancel their advertising on election night and go advert free.
Sky is quicker but the BBC more reliable.
BBC end up spending too much time wibbling rather than reporting and analysing results.
But the quality of discussion is better.
Have sky on mute for the latest declarations and listen to BBC for the debate, analysis and any corrections
I'm going BBC for exit poll, then try Sky, flick between the two and settle on the better one once they've both had a chance to show their wares.
On preparing for the evening, my default setting is BBC for these things. Like poor, poor Rishi we don't have Sky, so I guess my other option will be ITN?
I'll have a PB tab open as well ofc.
ITN is far, far superior to the BBC and has been for years. That BBC now have the hopeless LauraK as 'anchorwoman' can only add to their irrepressible malaise.
Meanwhile, ITN have Ozzy and Ballzy – two of the finest political pundits and a great double act.
DYOR.
Based on previous elections:
ITV tend to announce many of the results faster - they don't wait for the declarations - albeit this time around there may be less in it where there are fewer safe seats. The other side of that though is that they show fewer declarations in favour of studio chat.
BBC (and Sky) have the results as they are declared and as a result tend to show a lot more declarations live, and have the numbers in line with each other.
I think in the past ITN has had to backtrack on the odd estimated result. In the overall scheme of things, especially if there is a landslide, but for constituency betting it is unhelpful.
I’ll probably flick between the two and settle on who is least irritating. No adverts is always a big draw for BBC though.
My memory is there are no ads on any of them (including Sky and ITN)?
Yes, I always find Sky on election night MUCH better than the Beeb, and they cancel their advertising on election night and go advert free.
Sky is quicker but the BBC more reliable.
BBC end up spending too much time wibbling rather than reporting and analysing results.
But the quality of discussion is better.
Have sky on mute for the latest declarations and listen to BBC for the debate, analysis and any corrections
Sorry but LauraK will make the BBC unwatchable
I suspect I will be watching ITV during the night and hoping they don't do estimated results.
North Korea's Central Military Commission announced that North Korea would join forces with the Russian military. And as part of the North Korea and Russia military alliance, the North Korean Army engineer unit would be dispatched to Donetsk, Ukraine, which remains occupied by Russia. It will be dispatched as early as next month... https://x.com/jurgen_nauditt/status/1805871124388983109
Looks to me that the Russians are desperate for warm bodies too.
They keep on managing to find them without having to anger the Muscovy core. There's an estimate of 3,000 Nepalis fighting for the Russians, for example.
Financing local Government is one of those issues which nobody, if they've got any sense, wants to go anywhere near. The fact we are dealing with a hastily imposed settlement brought in as a result of the overthrow of Margaret Thatcher speaks volumes.
30+ years on and the consequences of that stupidity are clear. We have a banding system which bears little or no resemblance to the value of the properties to which it relates and the main reason for its creation - to allow local authorities to fund themselves without having to rely on central Government largesse - has also failed to be addressed.
In some authorites, up to two thirds of expenditure is on the provision of care for vulnerable adults and children as well on children with Special Education Needs (SEN). SEN referrals have increased exponentially since the end of lockdown but the provision of suitable teaching accommodation and the supply of qualified teachers has not. The funding of transport for SEN children is a particular area of concern with many authorities cutting it for children over sixteen.
The central question is what do you want local councils to do? In theory, adult social care could be taken out of local authority control and run by a national care agency which would ensure adequate levels of residential care, specialist (including dementia) care and domiciliary care across the country based on the maxim the older population should be treated with respect and dignity and the care offer should provide that. At the same time, the agency should be promoting in-family care where possible and acting as a positive help for carers of all ages and types. Caring should be viewed as a vital part of family life and carers should be encouraged as much as possible (employers hsould be given huge tax breaks to employ carers).
How do you fund the rest of local Government? With the pressure off in terms of care, other functions can be looked at - we need local community hubs where a range of services and advice are available and very often just a place for the lonely and the alone to go and meet other people. This needs to be a 24 hour a day, seven day a week service provision - the message being if you're lonely, you don't have to be alone.
How this society deals with the alone and the lonely is reprehensible and a shame to us all. Sport, for example, should be leading on this getting people out and about providing free or discounted admission so those who have no social life can have the opportunity to live a little.
Back to funding? @Sandpit rails against property taxation and the truth is there is no fair form of local Government funding. The truth is those with high value properties are doing very well out of the current system and any changes will disadvantage them (and they will whinge) and benefit the providers of Council Tax software (who won't).
Easy. Abolish local government. Everything gets run from the centre and everyone gets the same. Massive efficiencies are made.
The cherry on the top is killing off local politics, so that local busybodies never get any power.
As I'm sure your tongue is firmly in your cheek, let's play.
You'd have a National Refuse Collection Service presumably, a National Library Service, a National Fire Service, a National Police Service, a National Street Cleaning Service and a National Parking Management Agency and bring all locally-owned land and property assets under the Property Services Agency.
Can't quite see these efficiency savings.
No doubt somebody will pipe up about getting Planning abolished except for "national guidelines" - let's define those guidelines, shall we? Let's allow huge overdevelopment in one area and no development in another. Can you imagine recruiting the hundreds of civil servants required to adopt the National Plan - they could be recruited from all the local Planning departments perhaps?
It sounds rather like the creation of ICL (by Tony Benn IIRC???) were the govt of the day "raided" various IT dept.s up and down the country and produced the "British IBM". The main problem was that many of the "recruits" were not the finest members of their respective organisations who knew a good clearing out opportunity when they saw one...
ICL did some good stuff, but there was always a slightly "naff" feel to their kit.
You say that, but at least by the time Fujitsu bought it, they started building software of incomparable quality, so good they were happy to testify to its bug free nature in court.
They should have stuck to producing hardware. I always found their software a bit "Bleugh!".
I always felt that IBM's languages and job control were archaic, but I preferred them to ICL's rather quirky stuff.
I had always assumed that the software development side of the business came from Fujitsu as the ICL of old never really bothered with such stuff.
On preparing for the evening, my default setting is BBC for these things. Like poor, poor Rishi we don't have Sky, so I guess my other option will be ITN?
I'll have a PB tab open as well ofc.
ITN is far, far superior to the BBC and has been for years. That BBC now have the hopeless LauraK as 'anchorwoman' can only add to their irrepressible malaise.
Meanwhile, ITN have Ozzy and Ballzy – two of the finest political pundits and a great double act.
DYOR.
Based on previous elections:
ITV tend to announce many of the results faster - they don't wait for the declarations - albeit this time around there may be less in it where there are fewer safe seats. The other side of that though is that they show fewer declarations in favour of studio chat.
BBC (and Sky) have the results as they are declared and as a result tend to show a lot more declarations live, and have the numbers in line with each other.
I think in the past ITN has had to backtrack on the odd estimated result. In the overall scheme of things, especially if there is a landslide, but for constituency betting it is unhelpful.
I’ll probably flick between the two and settle on who is least irritating. No adverts is always a big draw for BBC though.
My memory is there are no ads on any of them (including Sky and ITN)?
Yes, I always find Sky on election night MUCH better than the Beeb, and they cancel their advertising on election night and go advert free.
Sky is quicker but the BBC more reliable.
BBC end up spending too much time wibbling rather than reporting and analysing results.
But the quality of discussion is better.
Have sky on mute for the latest declarations and listen to BBC for the debate, analysis and any corrections
You do realise Kuenssberg is presenting? You might as well have Sunak hosting.
North Korea's Central Military Commission announced that North Korea would join forces with the Russian military. And as part of the North Korea and Russia military alliance, the North Korean Army engineer unit would be dispatched to Donetsk, Ukraine, which remains occupied by Russia. It will be dispatched as early as next month... https://x.com/jurgen_nauditt/status/1805871124388983109
Looks to me that the Russians are desperate for warm bodies too.
They keep on managing to find them without having to anger the Muscovy core. There's an estimate of 3,000 Nepalis fighting for the Russians, for example.
Really? Why? Is it just for a big bag of money? Or is there more to it than that?
North Korea's Central Military Commission announced that North Korea would join forces with the Russian military. And as part of the North Korea and Russia military alliance, the North Korean Army engineer unit would be dispatched to Donetsk, Ukraine, which remains occupied by Russia. It will be dispatched as early as next month... https://x.com/jurgen_nauditt/status/1805871124388983109
Looks to me that the Russians are desperate for warm bodies too.
The worry is that involving North Korea might be calculated to bring in China, as NK's longstanding champion.
I do question the fitness of the average Korean infantryman.
On preparing for the evening, my default setting is BBC for these things. Like poor, poor Rishi we don't have Sky, so I guess my other option will be ITN?
I'll have a PB tab open as well ofc.
ITN is far, far superior to the BBC and has been for years. That BBC now have the hopeless LauraK as 'anchorwoman' can only add to their irrepressible malaise.
Meanwhile, ITN have Ozzy and Ballzy – two of the finest political pundits and a great double act.
DYOR.
Based on previous elections:
ITV tend to announce many of the results faster - they don't wait for the declarations - albeit this time around there may be less in it where there are fewer safe seats. The other side of that though is that they show fewer declarations in favour of studio chat.
BBC (and Sky) have the results as they are declared and as a result tend to show a lot more declarations live, and have the numbers in line with each other.
I think in the past ITN has had to backtrack on the odd estimated result. In the overall scheme of things, especially if there is a landslide, but for constituency betting it is unhelpful.
I’ll probably flick between the two and settle on who is least irritating. No adverts is always a big draw for BBC though.
My memory is there are no ads on any of them (including Sky and ITN)?
Yes, I always find Sky on election night MUCH better than the Beeb, and they cancel their advertising on election night and go advert free.
Sky is quicker but the BBC more reliable.
BBC end up spending too much time wibbling rather than reporting and analysing results.
But the quality of discussion is better.
Have sky on mute for the latest declarations and listen to BBC for the debate, analysis and any corrections
You do realise Kuenssberg is presenting? You might as well have Sunak hosting.
Well, he will need a new job shortly..... Might as well start early
North Korea's Central Military Commission announced that North Korea would join forces with the Russian military. And as part of the North Korea and Russia military alliance, the North Korean Army engineer unit would be dispatched to Donetsk, Ukraine, which remains occupied by Russia. It will be dispatched as early as next month... https://x.com/jurgen_nauditt/status/1805871124388983109
Looks to me that the Russians are desperate for warm bodies too.
The worry is that involving North Korea might be calculated to bring in China, as NK's longstanding champion.
It's possible that it's been done with China's permission/support/behest and that it's a way for China to provide more support for Russia covertly.
If North Korea is freelancing then my greater concern is what they'll be getting from Russia in return.
North Korea's Central Military Commission announced that North Korea would join forces with the Russian military. And as part of the North Korea and Russia military alliance, the North Korean Army engineer unit would be dispatched to Donetsk, Ukraine, which remains occupied by Russia. It will be dispatched as early as next month... https://x.com/jurgen_nauditt/status/1805871124388983109
Looks to me that the Russians are desperate for warm bodies too.
The worry is that involving North Korea might be calculated to bring in China, as NK's longstanding champion.
I do question the fitness of the average Korean infantryman.
My impression is that the army is the one sector in Nth Korea that is well-fed. Other citizens not so much.
On preparing for the evening, my default setting is BBC for these things. Like poor, poor Rishi we don't have Sky, so I guess my other option will be ITN?
I'll have a PB tab open as well ofc.
ITN is far, far superior to the BBC and has been for years. That BBC now have the hopeless LauraK as 'anchorwoman' can only add to their irrepressible malaise.
Meanwhile, ITN have Ozzy and Ballzy – two of the finest political pundits and a great double act.
DYOR.
Based on previous elections:
ITV tend to announce many of the results faster - they don't wait for the declarations - albeit this time around there may be less in it where there are fewer safe seats. The other side of that though is that they show fewer declarations in favour of studio chat.
BBC (and Sky) have the results as they are declared and as a result tend to show a lot more declarations live, and have the numbers in line with each other.
I think in the past ITN has had to backtrack on the odd estimated result. In the overall scheme of things, especially if there is a landslide, but for constituency betting it is unhelpful.
I’ll probably flick between the two and settle on who is least irritating. No adverts is always a big draw for BBC though.
My memory is there are no ads on any of them (including Sky and ITN)?
Yes, I always find Sky on election night MUCH better than the Beeb, and they cancel their advertising on election night and go advert free.
Sky is quicker but the BBC more reliable.
BBC end up spending too much time wibbling rather than reporting and analysing results.
They do. And you can guarantee that they will have a load of boring old farts wittering on about what comes next for the Conservatives, whilst missing the unfolding drama.
The BBC’s coverage nowadays is atrocious in every respect.
North Korea's Central Military Commission announced that North Korea would join forces with the Russian military. And as part of the North Korea and Russia military alliance, the North Korean Army engineer unit would be dispatched to Donetsk, Ukraine, which remains occupied by Russia. It will be dispatched as early as next month... https://x.com/jurgen_nauditt/status/1805871124388983109
Looks to me that the Russians are desperate for warm bodies too.
They keep on managing to find them without having to anger the Muscovy core. There's an estimate of 3,000 Nepalis fighting for the Russians, for example.
Really? Why? Is it just for a big bag of money? Or is there more to it than that?
Quite a lot of people from the subcontinent have gone to Russia for the promise of work, and then find themselves coerced to fight for Russia. Some will have accepted a military mercenary contact openly.
Financing local Government is one of those issues which nobody, if they've got any sense, wants to go anywhere near. The fact we are dealing with a hastily imposed settlement brought in as a result of the overthrow of Margaret Thatcher speaks volumes.
30+ years on and the consequences of that stupidity are clear. We have a banding system which bears little or no resemblance to the value of the properties to which it relates and the main reason for its creation - to allow local authorities to fund themselves without having to rely on central Government largesse - has also failed to be addressed.
In some authorites, up to two thirds of expenditure is on the provision of care for vulnerable adults and children as well on children with Special Education Needs (SEN). SEN referrals have increased exponentially since the end of lockdown but the provision of suitable teaching accommodation and the supply of qualified teachers has not. The funding of transport for SEN children is a particular area of concern with many authorities cutting it for children over sixteen.
The central question is what do you want local councils to do? In theory, adult social care could be taken out of local authority control and run by a national care agency which would ensure adequate levels of residential care, specialist (including dementia) care and domiciliary care across the country based on the maxim the older population should be treated with respect and dignity and the care offer should provide that. At the same time, the agency should be promoting in-family care where possible and acting as a positive help for carers of all ages and types. Caring should be viewed as a vital part of family life and carers should be encouraged as much as possible (employers hsould be given huge tax breaks to employ carers).
How do you fund the rest of local Government? With the pressure off in terms of care, other functions can be looked at - we need local community hubs where a range of services and advice are available and very often just a place for the lonely and the alone to go and meet other people. This needs to be a 24 hour a day, seven day a week service provision - the message being if you're lonely, you don't have to be alone.
How this society deals with the alone and the lonely is reprehensible and a shame to us all. Sport, for example, should be leading on this getting people out and about providing free or discounted admission so those who have no social life can have the opportunity to live a little.
Back to funding? @Sandpit rails against property taxation and the truth is there is no fair form of local Government funding. The truth is those with high value properties are doing very well out of the current system and any changes will disadvantage them (and they will whinge) and benefit the providers of Council Tax software (who won't).
Easy. Abolish local government. Everything gets run from the centre and everyone gets the same. Massive efficiencies are made.
The cherry on the top is killing off local politics, so that local busybodies never get any power.
As I'm sure your tongue is firmly in your cheek, let's play.
You'd have a National Refuse Collection Service presumably, a National Library Service, a National Fire Service, a National Police Service, a National Street Cleaning Service and a National Parking Management Agency and bring all locally-owned land and property assets under the Property Services Agency.
Can't quite see these efficiency savings.
No doubt somebody will pipe up about getting Planning abolished except for "national guidelines" - let's define those guidelines, shall we? Let's allow huge overdevelopment in one area and no development in another. Can you imagine recruiting the hundreds of civil servants required to adopt the National Plan - they could be recruited from all the local Planning departments perhaps?
The council and district system needs binning. Everywhere should be unitary.
That's a different question and I broadly agree.
The problem is not everywhere is the same. One example I'll offer is Surrey - 1 county council and 11 district and borough councils.
I suspect the County would like to take over the districts and boroughs as happened in Cornwall.
The districts and boroughs (and of course the "twin hat" councillors of all parties) aren't huge on that idea and favour three authorities, a West, a Mid and an East of about 350,000 each which is about the size of a London Borough and the Government's preferred size for a local authority.
Issues? The County would have to take on the key functions of refuse collection, council tax and crematoria/leisure management. If the County were split up, you'd need to build the three new authorities from the ground up and divvy up the County assets accordingly. You could continue to use three of the District Council buildings as HQ buildings and just sell the main County HQ.
If the County took on everything, the chances are they'd keep the eleven structures in the short term (it's what I would do) and migrate to, for example, a single Council Tax service using a single collection software system over a 3-5 year period.
None of it is pain or cost free.
Why do we need politicians for refuse collection?
Just determine what collection is appropriate then put it out to tender. Why do we need busybodies in the middle?
We could abolish the local councils and save a fortune and I doubt many people besides those interested in careers there would notice the difference.
Nice header, but why do you/we focus on the bad polls for the Tories?
I accept that Ipsos and Survation have some pedigree, but Varian, JLP and MiC are all solid enough and members of the BPC. I appreciate that even they are not so great for the Blue team, but they do at least feed a little life into what otherwise would be the dried out corpse of the outgoing government.
The question is why are we seeing such a wide divergence (the gap between 18% and 25% is vast in statistical terms). Is it methodology, sampling, weighting, re-allocation of Don't Knows?
I pointed to a huge discrepency in the over 65 vote shares between More In Common (40% for the Conservatives) and R&W (25%).
JL Partners has 43% Conservative share among the over 65s which explains its higher Conservative VI.
I saw something on Twitter that was saying some pollsters were accounting for some of the older Tory vote dying off since 2019, and some weren’t.
Didn’t look into it too much but that could explain a lot if it differs between pollsters?
The bigger issue for the MRPs is that the census data they use to back-project their poll findings and analysis onto each constituency are often quite old.
When you look at by-election swings, the Lib Dems have mahoosively outperformed Labour (Even though Labour had some very good swings this parliament). I think the yellows could be in for a very good night indeed.
I dare not jinx it but getting my hopes up. Done that too often.
I'll be relieved if we go above 20 seats, happy if we get 25+ and delirious if we beat the SNP into 3rd place.
I worry for you when the LDs beat the Tories into 2nd.
Yes I still think this bet at 4.5 is stunning value. If tactical voting is anything like all the indications suggest it will be, the LDs should have a good shot at getting over the line.
On preparing for the evening, my default setting is BBC for these things. Like poor, poor Rishi we don't have Sky, so I guess my other option will be ITN?
I'll have a PB tab open as well ofc.
ITN is far, far superior to the BBC and has been for years. That BBC now have the hopeless LauraK as 'anchorwoman' can only add to their irrepressible malaise.
Meanwhile, ITN have Ozzy and Ballzy – two of the finest political pundits and a great double act.
DYOR.
Based on previous elections:
ITV tend to announce many of the results faster - they don't wait for the declarations - albeit this time around there may be less in it where there are fewer safe seats. The other side of that though is that they show fewer declarations in favour of studio chat.
BBC (and Sky) have the results as they are declared and as a result tend to show a lot more declarations live, and have the numbers in line with each other.
I think in the past ITN has had to backtrack on the odd estimated result. In the overall scheme of things, especially if there is a landslide, but for constituency betting it is unhelpful.
I’ll probably flick between the two and settle on who is least irritating. No adverts is always a big draw for BBC though.
My memory is there are no ads on any of them (including Sky and ITN)?
Yes, I always find Sky on election night MUCH better than the Beeb, and they cancel their advertising on election night and go advert free.
Sky is quicker but the BBC more reliable.
BBC end up spending too much time wibbling rather than reporting and analysing results.
But the quality of discussion is better.
Have sky on mute for the latest declarations and listen to BBC for the debate, analysis and any corrections
You do realise Kuenssberg is presenting? You might as well have Sunak hosting.
I think a useful measure will be what politicians they have with them. I am assuming the following will be appearing in the studio on at least one channel:
Ed Balls, George Osborne, Alistair Campbell, David Frost, Rory Stewart, Richard Tice, Caroline Lucas, Andy Burnham, Andy Street. Might they also attempt to get Dominic Cummings? Or Owen Jones?
There will inevitably be interviews live from counts during the night with the likes of JRM, Daisy Cooper, Wes Streeting, Jess Phillips, Stephen Flynn, Nigel Farage
North Korea's Central Military Commission announced that North Korea would join forces with the Russian military. And as part of the North Korea and Russia military alliance, the North Korean Army engineer unit would be dispatched to Donetsk, Ukraine, which remains occupied by Russia. It will be dispatched as early as next month... https://x.com/jurgen_nauditt/status/1805871124388983109
Looks to me that the Russians are desperate for warm bodies too.
The worry is that involving North Korea might be calculated to bring in China, as NK's longstanding champion.
It's possible that it's been done with China's permission/support/behest and that it's a way for China to provide more support for Russia covertly.
If North Korea is freelancing then my greater concern is what they'll be getting from Russia in return.
Financing local Government is one of those issues which nobody, if they've got any sense, wants to go anywhere near. The fact we are dealing with a hastily imposed settlement brought in as a result of the overthrow of Margaret Thatcher speaks volumes.
30+ years on and the consequences of that stupidity are clear. We have a banding system which bears little or no resemblance to the value of the properties to which it relates and the main reason for its creation - to allow local authorities to fund themselves without having to rely on central Government largesse - has also failed to be addressed.
In some authorites, up to two thirds of expenditure is on the provision of care for vulnerable adults and children as well on children with Special Education Needs (SEN). SEN referrals have increased exponentially since the end of lockdown but the provision of suitable teaching accommodation and the supply of qualified teachers has not. The funding of transport for SEN children is a particular area of concern with many authorities cutting it for children over sixteen.
The central question is what do you want local councils to do? In theory, adult social care could be taken out of local authority control and run by a national care agency which would ensure adequate levels of residential care, specialist (including dementia) care and domiciliary care across the country based on the maxim the older population should be treated with respect and dignity and the care offer should provide that. At the same time, the agency should be promoting in-family care where possible and acting as a positive help for carers of all ages and types. Caring should be viewed as a vital part of family life and carers should be encouraged as much as possible (employers hsould be given huge tax breaks to employ carers).
How do you fund the rest of local Government? With the pressure off in terms of care, other functions can be looked at - we need local community hubs where a range of services and advice are available and very often just a place for the lonely and the alone to go and meet other people. This needs to be a 24 hour a day, seven day a week service provision - the message being if you're lonely, you don't have to be alone.
How this society deals with the alone and the lonely is reprehensible and a shame to us all. Sport, for example, should be leading on this getting people out and about providing free or discounted admission so those who have no social life can have the opportunity to live a little.
Back to funding? @Sandpit rails against property taxation and the truth is there is no fair form of local Government funding. The truth is those with high value properties are doing very well out of the current system and any changes will disadvantage them (and they will whinge) and benefit the providers of Council Tax software (who won't).
Easy. Abolish local government. Everything gets run from the centre and everyone gets the same. Massive efficiencies are made.
The cherry on the top is killing off local politics, so that local busybodies never get any power.
As I'm sure your tongue is firmly in your cheek, let's play.
You'd have a National Refuse Collection Service presumably, a National Library Service, a National Fire Service, a National Police Service, a National Street Cleaning Service and a National Parking Management Agency and bring all locally-owned land and property assets under the Property Services Agency.
Can't quite see these efficiency savings.
No doubt somebody will pipe up about getting Planning abolished except for "national guidelines" - let's define those guidelines, shall we? Let's allow huge overdevelopment in one area and no development in another. Can you imagine recruiting the hundreds of civil servants required to adopt the National Plan - they could be recruited from all the local Planning departments perhaps?
I wouldn't go so far as to nationalise it all but the council and district system needs binning. Everywhere should be unitary.
I mean what have I got now
A national constituency (Fair enough) Regional mayor County council District council Parish council.
It's ridiculous not to knock at least one of those out and I'd go for the county expanding the district to a North Notts unitary.
Fully agree with the notion that we have too many layers - it probably stops a lot of people engaging with politics because it makes it confusing for the layman.
Financing local Government is one of those issues which nobody, if they've got any sense, wants to go anywhere near. The fact we are dealing with a hastily imposed settlement brought in as a result of the overthrow of Margaret Thatcher speaks volumes.
30+ years on and the consequences of that stupidity are clear. We have a banding system which bears little or no resemblance to the value of the properties to which it relates and the main reason for its creation - to allow local authorities to fund themselves without having to rely on central Government largesse - has also failed to be addressed.
In some authorites, up to two thirds of expenditure is on the provision of care for vulnerable adults and children as well on children with Special Education Needs (SEN). SEN referrals have increased exponentially since the end of lockdown but the provision of suitable teaching accommodation and the supply of qualified teachers has not. The funding of transport for SEN children is a particular area of concern with many authorities cutting it for children over sixteen.
The central question is what do you want local councils to do? In theory, adult social care could be taken out of local authority control and run by a national care agency which would ensure adequate levels of residential care, specialist (including dementia) care and domiciliary care across the country based on the maxim the older population should be treated with respect and dignity and the care offer should provide that. At the same time, the agency should be promoting in-family care where possible and acting as a positive help for carers of all ages and types. Caring should be viewed as a vital part of family life and carers should be encouraged as much as possible (employers hsould be given huge tax breaks to employ carers).
How do you fund the rest of local Government? With the pressure off in terms of care, other functions can be looked at - we need local community hubs where a range of services and advice are available and very often just a place for the lonely and the alone to go and meet other people. This needs to be a 24 hour a day, seven day a week service provision - the message being if you're lonely, you don't have to be alone.
How this society deals with the alone and the lonely is reprehensible and a shame to us all. Sport, for example, should be leading on this getting people out and about providing free or discounted admission so those who have no social life can have the opportunity to live a little.
Back to funding? @Sandpit rails against property taxation and the truth is there is no fair form of local Government funding. The truth is those with high value properties are doing very well out of the current system and any changes will disadvantage them (and they will whinge) and benefit the providers of Council Tax software (who won't).
Easy. Abolish local government. Everything gets run from the centre and everyone gets the same. Massive efficiencies are made.
The cherry on the top is killing off local politics, so that local busybodies never get any power.
As I'm sure your tongue is firmly in your cheek, let's play.
You'd have a National Refuse Collection Service presumably, a National Library Service, a National Fire Service, a National Police Service, a National Street Cleaning Service and a National Parking Management Agency and bring all locally-owned land and property assets under the Property Services Agency.
Can't quite see these efficiency savings.
No doubt somebody will pipe up about getting Planning abolished except for "national guidelines" - let's define those guidelines, shall we? Let's allow huge overdevelopment in one area and no development in another. Can you imagine recruiting the hundreds of civil servants required to adopt the National Plan - they could be recruited from all the local Planning departments perhaps?
The council and district system needs binning. Everywhere should be unitary.
That's a different question and I broadly agree.
The problem is not everywhere is the same. One example I'll offer is Surrey - 1 county council and 11 district and borough councils.
I suspect the County would like to take over the districts and boroughs as happened in Cornwall.
The districts and boroughs (and of course the "twin hat" councillors of all parties) aren't huge on that idea and favour three authorities, a West, a Mid and an East of about 350,000 each which is about the size of a London Borough and the Government's preferred size for a local authority.
Issues? The County would have to take on the key functions of refuse collection, council tax and crematoria/leisure management. If the County were split up, you'd need to build the three new authorities from the ground up and divvy up the County assets accordingly. You could continue to use three of the District Council buildings as HQ buildings and just sell the main County HQ.
If the County took on everything, the chances are they'd keep the eleven structures in the short term (it's what I would do) and migrate to, for example, a single Council Tax service using a single collection software system over a 3-5 year period.
None of it is pain or cost free.
I don't see it.
For some services District Councils are already way too big.
I was working for Oswestry Council when Hazel Blears unitised Shropshire, and some aspects of it were a mess. Much local knowledge / sympathy was just lost.
I'd be interested to see a comparison / contrast of say UK vs France, where much is at the level of Mairie, of which there are 35,000 - not dissimilar to the number of Parishes here. And we know how little power they have.
On preparing for the evening, my default setting is BBC for these things. Like poor, poor Rishi we don't have Sky, so I guess my other option will be ITN?
I'll have a PB tab open as well ofc.
ITN is far, far superior to the BBC and has been for years. That BBC now have the hopeless LauraK as 'anchorwoman' can only add to their irrepressible malaise.
Meanwhile, ITN have Ozzy and Ballzy – two of the finest political pundits and a great double act.
DYOR.
Based on previous elections:
ITV tend to announce many of the results faster - they don't wait for the declarations - albeit this time around there may be less in it where there are fewer safe seats. The other side of that though is that they show fewer declarations in favour of studio chat.
BBC (and Sky) have the results as they are declared and as a result tend to show a lot more declarations live, and have the numbers in line with each other.
I think in the past ITN has had to backtrack on the odd estimated result. In the overall scheme of things, especially if there is a landslide, but for constituency betting it is unhelpful.
I’ll probably flick between the two and settle on who is least irritating. No adverts is always a big draw for BBC though.
My memory is there are no ads on any of them (including Sky and ITN)?
Yes, I always find Sky on election night MUCH better than the Beeb, and they cancel their advertising on election night and go advert free.
Sky is quicker but the BBC more reliable.
BBC end up spending too much time wibbling rather than reporting and analysing results.
But the quality of discussion is better.
Have sky on mute for the latest declarations and listen to BBC for the debate, analysis and any corrections
You do realise Kuenssberg is presenting? You might as well have Sunak hosting.
Well, he will need a new job shortly..... Might as well start early
I like Clive Myrie, on the other hand - he will be an excellent anchor.
On Laura Kuenssberg, while I’m hardly a fan, I can’t seem to find the same rancour towards her that apparently everyone else does.
Nice header, but why do you/we focus on the bad polls for the Tories?
I accept that Ipsos and Survation have some pedigree, but Varian, JLP and MiC are all solid enough and members of the BPC. I appreciate that even they are not so great for the Blue team, but they do at least feed a little life into what otherwise would be the dried out corpse of the outgoing government.
The question is why are we seeing such a wide divergence (the gap between 18% and 25% is vast in statistical terms). Is it methodology, sampling, weighting, re-allocation of Don't Knows?
I pointed to a huge discrepency in the over 65 vote shares between More In Common (40% for the Conservatives) and R&W (25%).
JL Partners has 43% Conservative share among the over 65s which explains its higher Conservative VI.
I saw something on Twitter that was saying some pollsters were accounting for some of the older Tory vote dying off since 2019, and some weren’t.
Didn’t look into it too much but that could explain a lot if it differs between pollsters?
The bigger issue for the MRPs is that the census data they use to back-project their poll findings and analysis onto each constituency are often quite old.
When you look at by-election swings, the Lib Dems have mahoosively outperformed Labour (Even though Labour had some very good swings this parliament). I think the yellows could be in for a very good night indeed.
I dare not jinx it but getting my hopes up. Done that too often.
I'll be relieved if we go above 20 seats, happy if we get 25+ and delirious if we beat the SNP into 3rd place.
I worry for you when the LDs beat the Tories into 2nd.
Yes I still think this bet at 4.5 is stunning value. If tactical voting is anything like all the indications suggest it will be, the LDs should have a good shot at getting over the line.
Not a chance. Even on the MRPs which generally show worse seat numbers than UNS the Tories are generally getting comfortably over 100 seats. And there remain at least 2 or 3 percentage points of Reform left to squeeze even if the Ref vote holds up much higher than in recent local elections.
On preparing for the evening, my default setting is BBC for these things. Like poor, poor Rishi we don't have Sky, so I guess my other option will be ITN?
I'll have a PB tab open as well ofc.
ITN is far, far superior to the BBC and has been for years. That BBC now have the hopeless LauraK as 'anchorwoman' can only add to their irrepressible malaise.
Meanwhile, ITN have Ozzy and Ballzy – two of the finest political pundits and a great double act.
DYOR.
Based on previous elections:
ITV tend to announce many of the results faster - they don't wait for the declarations - albeit this time around there may be less in it where there are fewer safe seats. The other side of that though is that they show fewer declarations in favour of studio chat.
BBC (and Sky) have the results as they are declared and as a result tend to show a lot more declarations live, and have the numbers in line with each other.
I think in the past ITN has had to backtrack on the odd estimated result. In the overall scheme of things, especially if there is a landslide, but for constituency betting it is unhelpful.
I’ll probably flick between the two and settle on who is least irritating. No adverts is always a big draw for BBC though.
My memory is there are no ads on any of them (including Sky and ITN)?
Yes, I always find Sky on election night MUCH better than the Beeb, and they cancel their advertising on election night and go advert free.
Sky is quicker but the BBC more reliable.
BBC end up spending too much time wibbling rather than reporting and analysing results.
The BBC seem to think it’s important to educate everyone how the election works. Which is laudable in its own way, but then you realise that they seem to think everyone who is watching has just arrived from planet zog and doesn’t know what a constituency or a poll is, when I rather suspect people who are committed enough to watching election results come in overnight are slightly more clued up on this politics lark than that.
On preparing for the evening, my default setting is BBC for these things. Like poor, poor Rishi we don't have Sky, so I guess my other option will be ITN?
I'll have a PB tab open as well ofc.
ITN is far, far superior to the BBC and has been for years. That BBC now have the hopeless LauraK as 'anchorwoman' can only add to their irrepressible malaise.
Meanwhile, ITN have Ozzy and Ballzy – two of the finest political pundits and a great double act.
DYOR.
Based on previous elections:
ITV tend to announce many of the results faster - they don't wait for the declarations - albeit this time around there may be less in it where there are fewer safe seats. The other side of that though is that they show fewer declarations in favour of studio chat.
BBC (and Sky) have the results as they are declared and as a result tend to show a lot more declarations live, and have the numbers in line with each other.
I think in the past ITN has had to backtrack on the odd estimated result. In the overall scheme of things, especially if there is a landslide, but for constituency betting it is unhelpful.
I’ll probably flick between the two and settle on who is least irritating. No adverts is always a big draw for BBC though.
My memory is there are no ads on any of them (including Sky and ITN)?
Yes, I always find Sky on election night MUCH better than the Beeb, and they cancel their advertising on election night and go advert free.
Sky is quicker but the BBC more reliable.
BBC end up spending too much time wibbling rather than reporting and analysing results.
But the quality of discussion is better.
Have sky on mute for the latest declarations and listen to BBC for the debate, analysis and any corrections
You do realise Kuenssberg is presenting? You might as well have Sunak hosting.
I think a useful measure will be what politicians they have with them. I am assuming the following will be appearing in the studio on at least one channel:
Ed Balls, George Osborne, Alistair Campbell, David Frost, Rory Stewart, Richard Tice, Caroline Lucas, Andy Burnham, Andy Street. Might they also attempt to get Dominic Cummings? Or Owen Jones?
There will inevitably be interviews live from counts during the night with the likes of JRM, Daisy Cooper, Wes Streeting, Jess Phillips, Stephen Flynn, Nigel Farage
Financing local Government is one of those issues which nobody, if they've got any sense, wants to go anywhere near. The fact we are dealing with a hastily imposed settlement brought in as a result of the overthrow of Margaret Thatcher speaks volumes.
30+ years on and the consequences of that stupidity are clear. We have a banding system which bears little or no resemblance to the value of the properties to which it relates and the main reason for its creation - to allow local authorities to fund themselves without having to rely on central Government largesse - has also failed to be addressed.
In some authorites, up to two thirds of expenditure is on the provision of care for vulnerable adults and children as well on children with Special Education Needs (SEN). SEN referrals have increased exponentially since the end of lockdown but the provision of suitable teaching accommodation and the supply of qualified teachers has not. The funding of transport for SEN children is a particular area of concern with many authorities cutting it for children over sixteen.
The central question is what do you want local councils to do? In theory, adult social care could be taken out of local authority control and run by a national care agency which would ensure adequate levels of residential care, specialist (including dementia) care and domiciliary care across the country based on the maxim the older population should be treated with respect and dignity and the care offer should provide that. At the same time, the agency should be promoting in-family care where possible and acting as a positive help for carers of all ages and types. Caring should be viewed as a vital part of family life and carers should be encouraged as much as possible (employers hsould be given huge tax breaks to employ carers).
How do you fund the rest of local Government? With the pressure off in terms of care, other functions can be looked at - we need local community hubs where a range of services and advice are available and very often just a place for the lonely and the alone to go and meet other people. This needs to be a 24 hour a day, seven day a week service provision - the message being if you're lonely, you don't have to be alone.
How this society deals with the alone and the lonely is reprehensible and a shame to us all. Sport, for example, should be leading on this getting people out and about providing free or discounted admission so those who have no social life can have the opportunity to live a little.
Back to funding? @Sandpit rails against property taxation and the truth is there is no fair form of local Government funding. The truth is those with high value properties are doing very well out of the current system and any changes will disadvantage them (and they will whinge) and benefit the providers of Council Tax software (who won't).
I’ll disagree with ‘rails against’, but the point remains, that any property taxation based on an absolute, rather than relative to the local area, value of property, will create way more problems than it solves, make living in London even more expensive than it is now for the lower-paid, and make local authories even more dependent than they are already on central government. Meanwhile, the old Alastair Meeks attitude, that the rest of the country is being supported by London so they can all go eat dirt when it comes to spending, becomes even more prevalent.
Financing local Government is one of those issues which nobody, if they've got any sense, wants to go anywhere near. The fact we are dealing with a hastily imposed settlement brought in as a result of the overthrow of Margaret Thatcher speaks volumes.
30+ years on and the consequences of that stupidity are clear. We have a banding system which bears little or no resemblance to the value of the properties to which it relates and the main reason for its creation - to allow local authorities to fund themselves without having to rely on central Government largesse - has also failed to be addressed.
In some authorites, up to two thirds of expenditure is on the provision of care for vulnerable adults and children as well on children with Special Education Needs (SEN). SEN referrals have increased exponentially since the end of lockdown but the provision of suitable teaching accommodation and the supply of qualified teachers has not. The funding of transport for SEN children is a particular area of concern with many authorities cutting it for children over sixteen.
The central question is what do you want local councils to do? In theory, adult social care could be taken out of local authority control and run by a national care agency which would ensure adequate levels of residential care, specialist (including dementia) care and domiciliary care across the country based on the maxim the older population should be treated with respect and dignity and the care offer should provide that. At the same time, the agency should be promoting in-family care where possible and acting as a positive help for carers of all ages and types. Caring should be viewed as a vital part of family life and carers should be encouraged as much as possible (employers hsould be given huge tax breaks to employ carers).
How do you fund the rest of local Government? With the pressure off in terms of care, other functions can be looked at - we need local community hubs where a range of services and advice are available and very often just a place for the lonely and the alone to go and meet other people. This needs to be a 24 hour a day, seven day a week service provision - the message being if you're lonely, you don't have to be alone.
How this society deals with the alone and the lonely is reprehensible and a shame to us all. Sport, for example, should be leading on this getting people out and about providing free or discounted admission so those who have no social life can have the opportunity to live a little.
Back to funding? @Sandpit rails against property taxation and the truth is there is no fair form of local Government funding. The truth is those with high value properties are doing very well out of the current system and any changes will disadvantage them (and they will whinge) and benefit the providers of Council Tax software (who won't).
Easy. Abolish local government. Everything gets run from the centre and everyone gets the same. Massive efficiencies are made.
The cherry on the top is killing off local politics, so that local busybodies never get any power.
As I'm sure your tongue is firmly in your cheek, let's play.
You'd have a National Refuse Collection Service presumably, a National Library Service, a National Fire Service, a National Police Service, a National Street Cleaning Service and a National Parking Management Agency and bring all locally-owned land and property assets under the Property Services Agency.
Can't quite see these efficiency savings.
No doubt somebody will pipe up about getting Planning abolished except for "national guidelines" - let's define those guidelines, shall we? Let's allow huge overdevelopment in one area and no development in another. Can you imagine recruiting the hundreds of civil servants required to adopt the National Plan - they could be recruited from all the local Planning departments perhaps?
The council and district system needs binning. Everywhere should be unitary.
That's a different question and I broadly agree.
The problem is not everywhere is the same. One example I'll offer is Surrey - 1 county council and 11 district and borough councils.
I suspect the County would like to take over the districts and boroughs as happened in Cornwall.
The districts and boroughs (and of course the "twin hat" councillors of all parties) aren't huge on that idea and favour three authorities, a West, a Mid and an East of about 350,000 each which is about the size of a London Borough and the Government's preferred size for a local authority.
Issues? The County would have to take on the key functions of refuse collection, council tax and crematoria/leisure management. If the County were split up, you'd need to build the three new authorities from the ground up and divvy up the County assets accordingly. You could continue to use three of the District Council buildings as HQ buildings and just sell the main County HQ.
If the County took on everything, the chances are they'd keep the eleven structures in the short term (it's what I would do) and migrate to, for example, a single Council Tax service using a single collection software system over a 3-5 year period.
None of it is pain or cost free.
I don't see it.
For some services District Councils are already way too big.
I was working for Oswestry Council when Hazel Blears unitised Shropshire, and some aspects of it were a mess. Much local knowledge / sympathy was just lost.
I'd be interested to see a comparison / contrast of say UK vs France, where much is at the level of Mairie, of which there are 35,000 - not dissimilar to the number of Parishes here. And we know how little power they have.
You can see similar issues in County Durham where things get waved through because they don't impact the people on the planning committee so another retail park in Bishop Auckland gets built because the councillors for Durham don't care.
North Yorkshire are starting to see similar issues but they haven't being going long enough yet...
North Korea's Central Military Commission announced that North Korea would join forces with the Russian military. And as part of the North Korea and Russia military alliance, the North Korean Army engineer unit would be dispatched to Donetsk, Ukraine, which remains occupied by Russia. It will be dispatched as early as next month... https://x.com/jurgen_nauditt/status/1805871124388983109
Looks to me that the Russians are desperate for warm bodies too.
They keep on managing to find them without having to anger the Muscovy core. There's an estimate of 3,000 Nepalis fighting for the Russians, for example.
Really? Why? Is it just for a big bag of money? Or is there more to it than that?
I hard something about Nepalis some time ago. The British Ghurkas are tiny in number compared to those in the Indian army, and joining either the British or Indian militaries are a major thing for many young Nepali men. Ones who do not make it often become soldiers for other people; sometimes other militaries such as Singapore or Brunei, but often anyone who will have them. Then there are ex-soldiers as well.
Just occurred to me this year might see three remarkable and potentially epochal political events in the west
The total destruction of the British Tories An absolute parliamentary majority for the hard/far right in France The re-election of POTUS Trump: and this time he means it
Perhaps we are all being simplistic in our analyses of political evolutions. Its not just a “rightwards surge” but nor is it “a nuanced mixed picture”
It’s not mixed at all. The voters are reaching for evermore extreme solutions and radical punishments. Mostly that’s far/hard right to punish incumbents but absolutely not always: see the UK
But everywhere there is anger and a willingness to think the unthinkable
Let's hope people chill out a bit then and start thinking inside the box. It's there for a reason.
Oh sure the same failed policies as before. No disrespect but living in Hampstead doesnt imply you have any real thirst for a change in the status quo outside woke virtue signalling.
If I'm into virtue signalling how come my Labour sticker is small and on an upstairs window?
When people throw virtue signalling as an accusation, 9 times out of 10 they’re just showing that they’re incapable of countenancing altruism.
Is tipping virtue signalling?
This question cost my office an hour of intense discussion. Lots of dredged up economic theory. How about buying a big issue?
Yes. And I love it. During the brief periods in my life when I was on over £50k I used to make a point of it. Even now I still make a point of tipping, and call the support staff sir and ma'am and doff my cap. People have shitty lives and a little bit of nice goes a long way.
@bryanglick Fujitsu's Gareth Jenkins at the #PostOfficeInquiry represents an archetype recognisable to anyone who's worked in IT - the grumpy old techy.
Worked for one company for ages. Knows his stuff and respected for his knowledge, but a bit of a pain in the butt to deal with... (1/5)
North Korea's Central Military Commission announced that North Korea would join forces with the Russian military. And as part of the North Korea and Russia military alliance, the North Korean Army engineer unit would be dispatched to Donetsk, Ukraine, which remains occupied by Russia. It will be dispatched as early as next month... https://x.com/jurgen_nauditt/status/1805871124388983109
Looks to me that the Russians are desperate for warm bodies too.
They keep on managing to find them without having to anger the Muscovy core. There's an estimate of 3,000 Nepalis fighting for the Russians, for example.
Really? Why? Is it just for a big bag of money? Or is there more to it than that?
I hard something about Nepalis some time ago. The British Ghurkas are tiny in number compared to those in the Indian army, and joining either the British or Indian militaries are a major thing for many young Nepali men. Ones who do not make it often become soldiers for other people; sometimes other militaries such as Singapore or Brunei, but often anyone who will have them. Then there are ex-soldiers as well.
I have ex-Gurkhas occasionally helping out with jobs on the vineyard. We're not far from Folkestone barracks where the regiment is based. They always bring very nice smelling curries with them in tiffin boxes.
District in Busan offers 1 mil. won just for starting romantic relationship
https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/culture/2024/06/262_377501.html As the central and local governments across Korea are experimenting with new policy ideas to encourage couples to get married and have babies to boost the country’s persistently low birthrate, one district office in Busan is offering 1 million won ($720) just for initiating a romantic relationship through its matchmaking event.
According to the southern port city’s Saha District Office on Wednesday, the supplementary budget bill for its mass blind-dating event for “single Korean and foreign men and women” was passed by the district council recently.
The event, scheduled for October, is intended for young people, aged 23 and 43, who live or work in the district.
If a man and a woman decide to start a romantic relationship after the event, 1 million won will be given to the couple. If they hold a “sang-gyeon-rye,” or a meeting of family members (arranged typically before the wedding), the couple will be offered an additional 2 million won. If they get married, another big bonus of 20 million won will be awarded.
The district office said it will provide additional support for their housing for up to five years.
Specific rules and the scale of the event have not been revealed yet...
@bryanglick Fujitsu's Gareth Jenkins at the #PostOfficeInquiry represents an archetype recognisable to anyone who's worked in IT - the grumpy old techy.
Worked for one company for ages. Knows his stuff and respected for his knowledge, but a bit of a pain in the butt to deal with... (1/5)
Except he was made the expert witness because no one wanted to work with him so it was an easy way to sideline him...
North Korea's Central Military Commission announced that North Korea would join forces with the Russian military. And as part of the North Korea and Russia military alliance, the North Korean Army engineer unit would be dispatched to Donetsk, Ukraine, which remains occupied by Russia. It will be dispatched as early as next month... https://x.com/jurgen_nauditt/status/1805871124388983109
Looks to me that the Russians are desperate for warm bodies too.
They keep on managing to find them without having to anger the Muscovy core. There's an estimate of 3,000 Nepalis fighting for the Russians, for example.
Really? Why? Is it just for a big bag of money? Or is there more to it than that?
I hard something about Nepalis some time ago. The British Ghurkas are tiny in number compared to those in the Indian army, and joining either the British or Indian militaries are a major thing for many young Nepali men. Ones who do not make it often become soldiers for other people; sometimes other militaries such as Singapore or Brunei, but often anyone who will have them. Then there are ex-soldiers as well.
I was told it worked like this, when I was there
1) Join the British Ghurkas 2) If you can't, join the Singapore Ghurkas 3) If you can't, join the Indian Ghurkas 4) If you can't, join the Nepali Ghurkas 5) If you can't, join the Nepali regular army 6) If you can't, join the Nepali police
The context was why the locals had little regard for the quality of their police force.
Financing local Government is one of those issues which nobody, if they've got any sense, wants to go anywhere near. The fact we are dealing with a hastily imposed settlement brought in as a result of the overthrow of Margaret Thatcher speaks volumes.
30+ years on and the consequences of that stupidity are clear. We have a banding system which bears little or no resemblance to the value of the properties to which it relates and the main reason for its creation - to allow local authorities to fund themselves without having to rely on central Government largesse - has also failed to be addressed.
In some authorites, up to two thirds of expenditure is on the provision of care for vulnerable adults and children as well on children with Special Education Needs (SEN). SEN referrals have increased exponentially since the end of lockdown but the provision of suitable teaching accommodation and the supply of qualified teachers has not. The funding of transport for SEN children is a particular area of concern with many authorities cutting it for children over sixteen.
The central question is what do you want local councils to do? In theory, adult social care could be taken out of local authority control and run by a national care agency which would ensure adequate levels of residential care, specialist (including dementia) care and domiciliary care across the country based on the maxim the older population should be treated with respect and dignity and the care offer should provide that. At the same time, the agency should be promoting in-family care where possible and acting as a positive help for carers of all ages and types. Caring should be viewed as a vital part of family life and carers should be encouraged as much as possible (employers hsould be given huge tax breaks to employ carers).
How do you fund the rest of local Government? With the pressure off in terms of care, other functions can be looked at - we need local community hubs where a range of services and advice are available and very often just a place for the lonely and the alone to go and meet other people. This needs to be a 24 hour a day, seven day a week service provision - the message being if you're lonely, you don't have to be alone.
How this society deals with the alone and the lonely is reprehensible and a shame to us all. Sport, for example, should be leading on this getting people out and about providing free or discounted admission so those who have no social life can have the opportunity to live a little.
Back to funding? @Sandpit rails against property taxation and the truth is there is no fair form of local Government funding. The truth is those with high value properties are doing very well out of the current system and any changes will disadvantage them (and they will whinge) and benefit the providers of Council Tax software (who won't).
Easy. Abolish local government. Everything gets run from the centre and everyone gets the same. Massive efficiencies are made.
The cherry on the top is killing off local politics, so that local busybodies never get any power.
As I'm sure your tongue is firmly in your cheek, let's play.
You'd have a National Refuse Collection Service presumably, a National Library Service, a National Fire Service, a National Police Service, a National Street Cleaning Service and a National Parking Management Agency and bring all locally-owned land and property assets under the Property Services Agency.
Can't quite see these efficiency savings.
No doubt somebody will pipe up about getting Planning abolished except for "national guidelines" - let's define those guidelines, shall we? Let's allow huge overdevelopment in one area and no development in another. Can you imagine recruiting the hundreds of civil servants required to adopt the National Plan - they could be recruited from all the local Planning departments perhaps?
The council and district system needs binning. Everywhere should be unitary.
That's a different question and I broadly agree.
The problem is not everywhere is the same. One example I'll offer is Surrey - 1 county council and 11 district and borough councils.
I suspect the County would like to take over the districts and boroughs as happened in Cornwall.
The districts and boroughs (and of course the "twin hat" councillors of all parties) aren't huge on that idea and favour three authorities, a West, a Mid and an East of about 350,000 each which is about the size of a London Borough and the Government's preferred size for a local authority.
Issues? The County would have to take on the key functions of refuse collection, council tax and crematoria/leisure management. If the County were split up, you'd need to build the three new authorities from the ground up and divvy up the County assets accordingly. You could continue to use three of the District Council buildings as HQ buildings and just sell the main County HQ.
If the County took on everything, the chances are they'd keep the eleven structures in the short term (it's what I would do) and migrate to, for example, a single Council Tax service using a single collection software system over a 3-5 year period.
None of it is pain or cost free.
Why do we need politicians for refuse collection?
Just determine what collection is appropriate then put it out to tender. Why do we need busybodies in the middle?
We could abolish the local councils and save a fortune and I doubt many people besides those interested in careers there would notice the difference.
What if I wanted a Labour bin collection not a Tory one. How would I get that if there were a Tory government?
Financing local Government is one of those issues which nobody, if they've got any sense, wants to go anywhere near. The fact we are dealing with a hastily imposed settlement brought in as a result of the overthrow of Margaret Thatcher speaks volumes.
30+ years on and the consequences of that stupidity are clear. We have a banding system which bears little or no resemblance to the value of the properties to which it relates and the main reason for its creation - to allow local authorities to fund themselves without having to rely on central Government largesse - has also failed to be addressed.
In some authorites, up to two thirds of expenditure is on the provision of care for vulnerable adults and children as well on children with Special Education Needs (SEN). SEN referrals have increased exponentially since the end of lockdown but the provision of suitable teaching accommodation and the supply of qualified teachers has not. The funding of transport for SEN children is a particular area of concern with many authorities cutting it for children over sixteen.
The central question is what do you want local councils to do? In theory, adult social care could be taken out of local authority control and run by a national care agency which would ensure adequate levels of residential care, specialist (including dementia) care and domiciliary care across the country based on the maxim the older population should be treated with respect and dignity and the care offer should provide that. At the same time, the agency should be promoting in-family care where possible and acting as a positive help for carers of all ages and types. Caring should be viewed as a vital part of family life and carers should be encouraged as much as possible (employers hsould be given huge tax breaks to employ carers).
How do you fund the rest of local Government? With the pressure off in terms of care, other functions can be looked at - we need local community hubs where a range of services and advice are available and very often just a place for the lonely and the alone to go and meet other people. This needs to be a 24 hour a day, seven day a week service provision - the message being if you're lonely, you don't have to be alone.
How this society deals with the alone and the lonely is reprehensible and a shame to us all. Sport, for example, should be leading on this getting people out and about providing free or discounted admission so those who have no social life can have the opportunity to live a little.
Back to funding? @Sandpit rails against property taxation and the truth is there is no fair form of local Government funding. The truth is those with high value properties are doing very well out of the current system and any changes will disadvantage them (and they will whinge) and benefit the providers of Council Tax software (who won't).
Easy. Abolish local government. Everything gets run from the centre and everyone gets the same. Massive efficiencies are made.
The cherry on the top is killing off local politics, so that local busybodies never get any power.
As I'm sure your tongue is firmly in your cheek, let's play.
You'd have a National Refuse Collection Service presumably, a National Library Service, a National Fire Service, a National Police Service, a National Street Cleaning Service and a National Parking Management Agency and bring all locally-owned land and property assets under the Property Services Agency.
Can't quite see these efficiency savings.
No doubt somebody will pipe up about getting Planning abolished except for "national guidelines" - let's define those guidelines, shall we? Let's allow huge overdevelopment in one area and no development in another. Can you imagine recruiting the hundreds of civil servants required to adopt the National Plan - they could be recruited from all the local Planning departments perhaps?
The council and district system needs binning. Everywhere should be unitary.
That's a different question and I broadly agree.
The problem is not everywhere is the same. One example I'll offer is Surrey - 1 county council and 11 district and borough councils.
I suspect the County would like to take over the districts and boroughs as happened in Cornwall.
The districts and boroughs (and of course the "twin hat" councillors of all parties) aren't huge on that idea and favour three authorities, a West, a Mid and an East of about 350,000 each which is about the size of a London Borough and the Government's preferred size for a local authority.
Issues? The County would have to take on the key functions of refuse collection, council tax and crematoria/leisure management. If the County were split up, you'd need to build the three new authorities from the ground up and divvy up the County assets accordingly. You could continue to use three of the District Council buildings as HQ buildings and just sell the main County HQ.
If the County took on everything, the chances are they'd keep the eleven structures in the short term (it's what I would do) and migrate to, for example, a single Council Tax service using a single collection software system over a 3-5 year period.
None of it is pain or cost free.
I don't see it.
For some services District Councils are already way too big.
I was working for Oswestry Council when Hazel Blears unitised Shropshire, and some aspects of it were a mess. Much local knowledge / sympathy was just lost.
I'd be interested to see a comparison / contrast of say UK vs France, where much is at the level of Mairie, of which there are 35,000 - not dissimilar to the number of Parishes here. And we know how little power they have.
You can see similar issues in County Durham where things get waved through because they don't impact the people on the planning committee so another retail park in Bishop Auckland gets built because the councillors for Durham don't care.
North Yorkshire are starting to see similar issues but they haven't being going long enough yet...
Labour is going to change the planning process. So presumably local decisions are going out, so it will not matter how big the planning authority is?
Financing local Government is one of those issues which nobody, if they've got any sense, wants to go anywhere near. The fact we are dealing with a hastily imposed settlement brought in as a result of the overthrow of Margaret Thatcher speaks volumes.
30+ years on and the consequences of that stupidity are clear. We have a banding system which bears little or no resemblance to the value of the properties to which it relates and the main reason for its creation - to allow local authorities to fund themselves without having to rely on central Government largesse - has also failed to be addressed.
In some authorites, up to two thirds of expenditure is on the provision of care for vulnerable adults and children as well on children with Special Education Needs (SEN). SEN referrals have increased exponentially since the end of lockdown but the provision of suitable teaching accommodation and the supply of qualified teachers has not. The funding of transport for SEN children is a particular area of concern with many authorities cutting it for children over sixteen.
The central question is what do you want local councils to do? In theory, adult social care could be taken out of local authority control and run by a national care agency which would ensure adequate levels of residential care, specialist (including dementia) care and domiciliary care across the country based on the maxim the older population should be treated with respect and dignity and the care offer should provide that. At the same time, the agency should be promoting in-family care where possible and acting as a positive help for carers of all ages and types. Caring should be viewed as a vital part of family life and carers should be encouraged as much as possible (employers hsould be given huge tax breaks to employ carers).
How do you fund the rest of local Government? With the pressure off in terms of care, other functions can be looked at - we need local community hubs where a range of services and advice are available and very often just a place for the lonely and the alone to go and meet other people. This needs to be a 24 hour a day, seven day a week service provision - the message being if you're lonely, you don't have to be alone.
How this society deals with the alone and the lonely is reprehensible and a shame to us all. Sport, for example, should be leading on this getting people out and about providing free or discounted admission so those who have no social life can have the opportunity to live a little.
Back to funding? @Sandpit rails against property taxation and the truth is there is no fair form of local Government funding. The truth is those with high value properties are doing very well out of the current system and any changes will disadvantage them (and they will whinge) and benefit the providers of Council Tax software (who won't).
I’ll disagree with ‘rails against’, but the point remains, that any property taxation based on an absolute, rather than relative to the local area, value of property, will create way more problems than it solves, make living in London even more expensive than it is now for the lower-paid, and make local authories even more dependent than they are already on central government. Meanwhile, the old Alastair Meeks attitude, that the rest of the country is being supported by London so they can all go eat dirt when it comes to spending, becomes even more prevalent.
Why shouldn't local council funding come from central government?
Local council expenditure overwhelmingly comes from central government diktats already.
Picture of the day, taken from the LGA (with a title page I disagree with for what its worth).
Where does every £1 in local spending go? Public health and Adult social care - 46p - Why not the Department of Health and Social Care? Children's Social Care - 22p - Why not the Department of Health and Social Care, or Department of Education? Environmental and regulatory services - 10p - Again national regulations, so why not national expenditure? Highways and Transport services - 4p - Since fuel duty and other taxes goes to HMRC, HMRC absolutely should be paying for this out of that revenue! Housing (4p) and planning (2p) - should be national too. Set the law, then let people do as they please.
Not sure what central and other (7p) covers. If its the cost of keeping this level of bureaucracy going, then bin it and save the money!
What's truly local? Culture (4p) maybe, although we do have a culture department and the Lottery etc for helping fund that too.
Just get rid of the bureaucrats. People always say what can you cut, here's an entire level of things that can be abolished entirely.
Nice header, but why do you/we focus on the bad polls for the Tories?
I accept that Ipsos and Survation have some pedigree, but Varian, JLP and MiC are all solid enough and members of the BPC. I appreciate that even they are not so great for the Blue team, but they do at least feed a little life into what otherwise would be the dried out corpse of the outgoing government.
The question is why are we seeing such a wide divergence (the gap between 18% and 25% is vast in statistical terms). Is it methodology, sampling, weighting, re-allocation of Don't Knows?
I pointed to a huge discrepency in the over 65 vote shares between More In Common (40% for the Conservatives) and R&W (25%).
JL Partners has 43% Conservative share among the over 65s which explains its higher Conservative VI.
I saw something on Twitter that was saying some pollsters were accounting for some of the older Tory vote dying off since 2019, and some weren’t.
Didn’t look into it too much but that could explain a lot if it differs between pollsters?
The bigger issue for the MRPs is that the census data they use to back-project their poll findings and analysis onto each constituency are often quite old.
When you look at by-election swings, the Lib Dems have mahoosively outperformed Labour (Even though Labour had some very good swings this parliament). I think the yellows could be in for a very good night indeed.
I dare not jinx it but getting my hopes up. Done that too often.
I'll be relieved if we go above 20 seats, happy if we get 25+ and delirious if we beat the SNP into 3rd place.
I worry for you when the LDs beat the Tories into 2nd.
Yes I still think this bet at 4.5 is stunning value. If tactical voting is anything like all the indications suggest it will be, the LDs should have a good shot at getting over the line.
Not a chance. Even on the MRPs which generally show worse seat numbers than UNS the Tories are generally getting comfortably over 100 seats. And there remain at least 2 or 3 percentage points of Reform left to squeeze even if the Ref vote holds up much higher than in recent local elections.
I would agree with that.
I can see a scenario where the Tories only just get over 100 seats but I do think they’ll get over 100. If they have a cataclysmic night I could see them fall to 80. I’m not quite so sure I can see the apocalyptic below-LDs result that some polls suggest on UNS - I think their vote will hold up too much in certain constituencies for that. I think that sort of result is unlikely right now.
Why don't we just bin it and replace it with a tax on the imputed rental value of the property?
Trying to think of a suitable name....
I'm old enough to remember when such things, maybe called "rates" - shall we try that?, were decried by the Conservative Party government of the day as unfair to the well off Tory voting householder.
That’s what happens when a totally ignorant media, led for some reason by daily briefings from a QANGO in the middle of an election campaign, decide that a story is a story.
I’d absolutely love to see a list of people with Lobby passes who bet on the election date.
Financing local Government is one of those issues which nobody, if they've got any sense, wants to go anywhere near. The fact we are dealing with a hastily imposed settlement brought in as a result of the overthrow of Margaret Thatcher speaks volumes.
30+ years on and the consequences of that stupidity are clear. We have a banding system which bears little or no resemblance to the value of the properties to which it relates and the main reason for its creation - to allow local authorities to fund themselves without having to rely on central Government largesse - has also failed to be addressed.
In some authorites, up to two thirds of expenditure is on the provision of care for vulnerable adults and children as well on children with Special Education Needs (SEN). SEN referrals have increased exponentially since the end of lockdown but the provision of suitable teaching accommodation and the supply of qualified teachers has not. The funding of transport for SEN children is a particular area of concern with many authorities cutting it for children over sixteen.
The central question is what do you want local councils to do? In theory, adult social care could be taken out of local authority control and run by a national care agency which would ensure adequate levels of residential care, specialist (including dementia) care and domiciliary care across the country based on the maxim the older population should be treated with respect and dignity and the care offer should provide that. At the same time, the agency should be promoting in-family care where possible and acting as a positive help for carers of all ages and types. Caring should be viewed as a vital part of family life and carers should be encouraged as much as possible (employers hsould be given huge tax breaks to employ carers).
How do you fund the rest of local Government? With the pressure off in terms of care, other functions can be looked at - we need local community hubs where a range of services and advice are available and very often just a place for the lonely and the alone to go and meet other people. This needs to be a 24 hour a day, seven day a week service provision - the message being if you're lonely, you don't have to be alone.
How this society deals with the alone and the lonely is reprehensible and a shame to us all. Sport, for example, should be leading on this getting people out and about providing free or discounted admission so those who have no social life can have the opportunity to live a little.
Back to funding? @Sandpit rails against property taxation and the truth is there is no fair form of local Government funding. The truth is those with high value properties are doing very well out of the current system and any changes will disadvantage them (and they will whinge) and benefit the providers of Council Tax software (who won't).
Easy. Abolish local government. Everything gets run from the centre and everyone gets the same. Massive efficiencies are made.
The cherry on the top is killing off local politics, so that local busybodies never get any power.
As I'm sure your tongue is firmly in your cheek, let's play.
You'd have a National Refuse Collection Service presumably, a National Library Service, a National Fire Service, a National Police Service, a National Street Cleaning Service and a National Parking Management Agency and bring all locally-owned land and property assets under the Property Services Agency.
Can't quite see these efficiency savings.
No doubt somebody will pipe up about getting Planning abolished except for "national guidelines" - let's define those guidelines, shall we? Let's allow huge overdevelopment in one area and no development in another. Can you imagine recruiting the hundreds of civil servants required to adopt the National Plan - they could be recruited from all the local Planning departments perhaps?
The council and district system needs binning. Everywhere should be unitary.
That's a different question and I broadly agree.
The problem is not everywhere is the same. One example I'll offer is Surrey - 1 county council and 11 district and borough councils.
I suspect the County would like to take over the districts and boroughs as happened in Cornwall.
The districts and boroughs (and of course the "twin hat" councillors of all parties) aren't huge on that idea and favour three authorities, a West, a Mid and an East of about 350,000 each which is about the size of a London Borough and the Government's preferred size for a local authority.
Issues? The County would have to take on the key functions of refuse collection, council tax and crematoria/leisure management. If the County were split up, you'd need to build the three new authorities from the ground up and divvy up the County assets accordingly. You could continue to use three of the District Council buildings as HQ buildings and just sell the main County HQ.
If the County took on everything, the chances are they'd keep the eleven structures in the short term (it's what I would do) and migrate to, for example, a single Council Tax service using a single collection software system over a 3-5 year period.
None of it is pain or cost free.
I don't see it.
For some services District Councils are already way too big.
I was working for Oswestry Council when Hazel Blears unitised Shropshire, and some aspects of it were a mess. Much local knowledge / sympathy was just lost.
I'd be interested to see a comparison / contrast of say UK vs France, where much is at the level of Mairie, of which there are 35,000 - not dissimilar to the number of Parishes here. And we know how little power they have.
You can see similar issues in County Durham where things get waved through because they don't impact the people on the planning committee so another retail park in Bishop Auckland gets built because the councillors for Durham don't care.
North Yorkshire are starting to see similar issues but they haven't being going long enough yet...
All the more reason to nationalise it. Everything anyone wants to build should be waved through.
Get rid of the NIMBY scum standing in the way of development.
Financing local Government is one of those issues which nobody, if they've got any sense, wants to go anywhere near. The fact we are dealing with a hastily imposed settlement brought in as a result of the overthrow of Margaret Thatcher speaks volumes.
30+ years on and the consequences of that stupidity are clear. We have a banding system which bears little or no resemblance to the value of the properties to which it relates and the main reason for its creation - to allow local authorities to fund themselves without having to rely on central Government largesse - has also failed to be addressed.
In some authorites, up to two thirds of expenditure is on the provision of care for vulnerable adults and children as well on children with Special Education Needs (SEN). SEN referrals have increased exponentially since the end of lockdown but the provision of suitable teaching accommodation and the supply of qualified teachers has not. The funding of transport for SEN children is a particular area of concern with many authorities cutting it for children over sixteen.
The central question is what do you want local councils to do? In theory, adult social care could be taken out of local authority control and run by a national care agency which would ensure adequate levels of residential care, specialist (including dementia) care and domiciliary care across the country based on the maxim the older population should be treated with respect and dignity and the care offer should provide that. At the same time, the agency should be promoting in-family care where possible and acting as a positive help for carers of all ages and types. Caring should be viewed as a vital part of family life and carers should be encouraged as much as possible (employers hsould be given huge tax breaks to employ carers).
How do you fund the rest of local Government? With the pressure off in terms of care, other functions can be looked at - we need local community hubs where a range of services and advice are available and very often just a place for the lonely and the alone to go and meet other people. This needs to be a 24 hour a day, seven day a week service provision - the message being if you're lonely, you don't have to be alone.
How this society deals with the alone and the lonely is reprehensible and a shame to us all. Sport, for example, should be leading on this getting people out and about providing free or discounted admission so those who have no social life can have the opportunity to live a little.
Back to funding? @Sandpit rails against property taxation and the truth is there is no fair form of local Government funding. The truth is those with high value properties are doing very well out of the current system and any changes will disadvantage them (and they will whinge) and benefit the providers of Council Tax software (who won't).
Easy. Abolish local government. Everything gets run from the centre and everyone gets the same. Massive efficiencies are made.
The cherry on the top is killing off local politics, so that local busybodies never get any power.
As I'm sure your tongue is firmly in your cheek, let's play.
You'd have a National Refuse Collection Service presumably, a National Library Service, a National Fire Service, a National Police Service, a National Street Cleaning Service and a National Parking Management Agency and bring all locally-owned land and property assets under the Property Services Agency.
Can't quite see these efficiency savings.
No doubt somebody will pipe up about getting Planning abolished except for "national guidelines" - let's define those guidelines, shall we? Let's allow huge overdevelopment in one area and no development in another. Can you imagine recruiting the hundreds of civil servants required to adopt the National Plan - they could be recruited from all the local Planning departments perhaps?
The council and district system needs binning. Everywhere should be unitary.
That's a different question and I broadly agree.
The problem is not everywhere is the same. One example I'll offer is Surrey - 1 county council and 11 district and borough councils.
I suspect the County would like to take over the districts and boroughs as happened in Cornwall.
The districts and boroughs (and of course the "twin hat" councillors of all parties) aren't huge on that idea and favour three authorities, a West, a Mid and an East of about 350,000 each which is about the size of a London Borough and the Government's preferred size for a local authority.
Issues? The County would have to take on the key functions of refuse collection, council tax and crematoria/leisure management. If the County were split up, you'd need to build the three new authorities from the ground up and divvy up the County assets accordingly. You could continue to use three of the District Council buildings as HQ buildings and just sell the main County HQ.
If the County took on everything, the chances are they'd keep the eleven structures in the short term (it's what I would do) and migrate to, for example, a single Council Tax service using a single collection software system over a 3-5 year period.
None of it is pain or cost free.
I don't see it.
For some services District Councils are already way too big.
I was working for Oswestry Council when Hazel Blears unitised Shropshire, and some aspects of it were a mess. Much local knowledge / sympathy was just lost.
I'd be interested to see a comparison / contrast of say UK vs France, where much is at the level of Mairie, of which there are 35,000 - not dissimilar to the number of Parishes here. And we know how little power they have.
You can see similar issues in County Durham where things get waved through because they don't impact the people on the planning committee so another retail park in Bishop Auckland gets built because the councillors for Durham don't care.
North Yorkshire are starting to see similar issues but they haven't being going long enough yet...
Labour is going to change the planning process. So presumably local decisions are going out, so it will not matter how big the planning authority is?
Um, you've got a massive leap in logic there.
All I've seen so far is some focus on improving how nationally important schemes can be implemented without wasting billions of paperwork no one will ever read in its entirety.
Comments
Didn’t look into it too much but that could explain a lot if it differs between pollsters?
The 5% is the small fraction of travelogue that doesn’t fall into the same category.
At a GE the turnout of postal voters tends to be about 80% whereas of other voters about 60%.
Such that by the count about 25% of the votes are postal ones.
Half of postal voters tend to vote straight away, a quarter post at the last minute or take their PV to the polling station on the day, and a quarter are in between.
So likely somewhere between 12.5%-15% of the total votes are already cast.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/property/overlooked-county-new-commuter-favourite/
Why - despite Reform's progress - has that not happened? 1) Mr Sunak. 2) The quality of the Con campaign compared to Lab in 2010 (Brown's mistakes mainly did not impact his core vote). 3) Reform are taking Con voters and right-wing anti-Con voters while Clegg took voters from all over but mostly centrist anti-Lab voters.
Lastly, the Clegg-gasm took the LDs into the lead in the polls and into the 30%s. Farage has managed a couple of distant second places and has only once touched 20% outside of PP.
So can Reform take seats? Yes. Possibly rather more than anyone is factoring in. I suspect a lot of past rock-solid Con seats are now Con/Lab/Ref contests and probabilities suggest Ref will come out on top in places. They have no campaign here but I can absolutely see how they might beat Truss if the Con vote splits around 50:50. However, there is no sign that they will impact on the Lab victory to any meaningful degree. The Alliance polled 23% in 1983 and how many seats did they win - despite having incumbents, a strong local council base and a large and experienced campaigning membership?
Why don't we just bin it and replace it with a tax on the imputed rental value of the property?
Trying to think of a suitable name....
This is you applying your own pre-determined weltanschuung to the British people kicking out the tories after 14 years, the final 5 of which have been a shambles.
None of us voting to do so share your worldview, thanks.
I gave up on the BBC last time. They were worse than tortoises.
You'd have a National Refuse Collection Service presumably, a National Library Service, a National Fire Service, a National Police Service, a National Street Cleaning Service and a National Parking Management Agency and bring all locally-owned land and property assets under the Property Services Agency.
Can't quite see these efficiency savings.
No doubt somebody will pipe up about getting Planning abolished except for "national guidelines" - let's define those guidelines, shall we? Let's allow huge overdevelopment in one area and no development in another. Can you imagine recruiting the hundreds of civil servants required to adopt the National Plan - they could be recruited from all the local Planning departments perhaps?
However, for the 10pm exit poll I shall be on BBC as this is a bit of a ritual.
Applies to pretty well all of us, I'm afraid.
Leon's probably better than most.
Set the regulations of the law, then let people do what they please within the law.
Its the liberal thing to do.
I mean what have I got now
A national constituency (Fair enough)
Regional mayor
County council
District council
Parish council.
It's ridiculous not to knock at least one of those out and I'd go for the county expanding the district to a North Notts unitary.
https://x.com/politlcsuk/status/1805889641771413738
..Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has rejected calls for politicians to be banned from betting on politics, arguing that the gambling scandal was about behaviour rather than the rules...
(I wouldn't claim to say in which way it'll be wrong)
ICL did some good stuff, but there was always a slightly "naff" feel to their kit.
1. More registered for postal votes because of Covid as you suggest (that's why we have them).
2. Lower overall turnout (perhaps?), resulting in the postal voters being a greater chunk of the total.
"I won't get out of Beds for less than £100k a year."
I'll be relieved if we go above 20 seats, happy if we get 25+ and delirious if we beat the SNP into 3rd place.
The problem is not everywhere is the same. One example I'll offer is Surrey - 1 county council and 11 district and borough councils.
I suspect the County would like to take over the districts and boroughs as happened in Cornwall.
The districts and boroughs (and of course the "twin hat" councillors of all parties) aren't huge on that idea and favour three authorities, a West, a Mid and an East of about 350,000 each which is about the size of a London Borough and the Government's preferred size for a local authority.
Issues? The County would have to take on the key functions of refuse collection, council tax and crematoria/leisure management. If the County were split up, you'd need to build the three new authorities from the ground up and divvy up the County assets accordingly. You could continue to use three of the District Council buildings as HQ buildings and just sell the main County HQ.
If the County took on everything, the chances are they'd keep the eleven structures in the short term (it's what I would do) and migrate to, for example, a single Council Tax service using a single collection software system over a 3-5 year period.
None of it is pain or cost free.
- We should have one national, or a small number of regional, police force(s) with CT and serious and organised crime hived off into the NCA, taking the opportunity to break up the Met. Same with the fire brigade. They have no scale at present.
- See no reason not to have a library service run nationally. Would allow for a much tighter supply chain.
- Parking could be centralised and app driven.
The problem is social care, truly local amenities (like parks), and local roads, where some local sense matters.
So my realistic proposal is “radically de-scope local Gvt, probably by consolidation into regions instead of boroughs/counties, but keeping some parish functions”.
Have sky on mute for the latest declarations and listen to BBC for the debate, analysis and any corrections
The suggestion that Labour's vote will be very efficient, and so winning margins in lots of seats will be much smaller than normal, will mean that translating vote changes into seat changes will have much higher uncertainty. So, if 15 seats either way are normally won with a winning margin of 2% or less, then you might expect that to be 30 seats this time.
The exit poll is normally said to be accurate to within +/- 15 seats, so this effect might take that accuracy to +/- 30 seats.
Unless I've forgotten, that is.
Remind us of anyone?
I suspect I will be watching ITV during the night and hoping they don't do estimated results.
I always felt that IBM's languages and job control were archaic, but I preferred them to ICL's rather quirky stuff.
I had always assumed that the software development side of the business came from Fujitsu as the ICL of old never really bothered with such stuff.
If North Korea is freelancing then my greater concern is what they'll be getting from Russia in return.
The BBC’s coverage nowadays is atrocious in every respect.
Just determine what collection is appropriate then put it out to tender. Why do we need busybodies in the middle?
We could abolish the local councils and save a fortune and I doubt many people besides those interested in careers there would notice the difference.
One of the best guides to train travel: ManInSeat61.
https://www.seat61.com/
Worcester Woman
Bed-Pan Man
Various archetypal voters from elections past who were supposed to be the ones who would determine the result.
Ed Balls, George Osborne, Alistair Campbell, David Frost, Rory Stewart, Richard Tice, Caroline Lucas, Andy Burnham, Andy Street. Might they also attempt to get Dominic Cummings? Or Owen Jones?
There will inevitably be interviews live from counts during the night with the likes of JRM, Daisy Cooper, Wes Streeting, Jess Phillips, Stephen Flynn, Nigel Farage
For some services District Councils are already way too big.
I was working for Oswestry Council when Hazel Blears unitised Shropshire, and some aspects of it were a mess. Much local knowledge / sympathy was just lost.
I'd be interested to see a comparison / contrast of say UK vs France, where much is at the level of Mairie, of which there are 35,000 - not dissimilar to the number of Parishes here. And we know how little power they have.
Here is an outline of the French setup.
https://portal.cor.europa.eu/divisionpowers/Pages/France-Introduction.aspx .
I think we need to take off the spectacles of obsessive centralisation in some respects.
On Laura Kuenssberg, while I’m hardly a fan, I can’t seem to find the same rancour towards her that apparently everyone else does.
North Yorkshire are starting to see similar issues but they haven't being going long enough yet...
https://x.com/bryanglick/status/1805948707864527211
@bryanglick
Fujitsu's Gareth Jenkins at the #PostOfficeInquiry represents an archetype recognisable to anyone who's worked in IT - the grumpy old techy.
Worked for one company for ages. Knows his stuff and respected for his knowledge, but a bit of a pain in the butt to deal with... (1/5)
https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2024/06/281_377459.html
District in Busan offers 1 mil. won just for starting romantic relationship
https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/culture/2024/06/262_377501.html
As the central and local governments across Korea are experimenting with new policy ideas to encourage couples to get married and have babies to boost the country’s persistently low birthrate, one district office in Busan is offering 1 million won ($720) just for initiating a romantic relationship through its matchmaking event.
According to the southern port city’s Saha District Office on Wednesday, the supplementary budget bill for its mass blind-dating event for “single Korean and foreign men and women” was passed by the district council recently.
The event, scheduled for October, is intended for young people, aged 23 and 43, who live or work in the district.
If a man and a woman decide to start a romantic relationship after the event, 1 million won will be given to the couple. If they hold a “sang-gyeon-rye,” or a meeting of family members (arranged typically before the wedding), the couple will be offered an additional 2 million won. If they get married, another big bonus of 20 million won will be awarded.
The district office said it will provide additional support for their housing for up to five years.
Specific rules and the scale of the event have not been revealed yet...
1) Join the British Ghurkas
2) If you can't, join the Singapore Ghurkas
3) If you can't, join the Indian Ghurkas
4) If you can't, join the Nepali Ghurkas
5) If you can't, join the Nepali regular army
6) If you can't, join the Nepali police
The context was why the locals had little regard for the quality of their police force.
We could be headed for the situation that Scotland is a stronghold for the Tories, relatively.
Local council expenditure overwhelmingly comes from central government diktats already.
Picture of the day, taken from the LGA (with a title page I disagree with for what its worth).
Where does every £1 in local spending go?
Public health and Adult social care - 46p - Why not the Department of Health and Social Care?
Children's Social Care - 22p - Why not the Department of Health and Social Care, or Department of Education?
Environmental and regulatory services - 10p - Again national regulations, so why not national expenditure?
Highways and Transport services - 4p - Since fuel duty and other taxes goes to HMRC, HMRC absolutely should be paying for this out of that revenue!
Housing (4p) and planning (2p) - should be national too. Set the law, then let people do as they please.
Not sure what central and other (7p) covers. If its the cost of keeping this level of bureaucracy going, then bin it and save the money!
What's truly local? Culture (4p) maybe, although we do have a culture department and the Lottery etc for helping fund that too.
Just get rid of the bureaucrats. People always say what can you cut, here's an entire level of things that can be abolished entirely.
I can see a scenario where the Tories only just get over 100 seats but I do think they’ll get over 100. If they have a cataclysmic night I could see them fall to 80. I’m not quite so sure I can see the apocalyptic below-LDs result that some polls suggest on UNS - I think their vote will hold up too much in certain constituencies for that. I think that sort of result is unlikely right now.
I’d absolutely love to see a list of people with Lobby passes who bet on the election date.
Get rid of the NIMBY scum standing in the way of development.
All I've seen so far is some focus on improving how nationally important schemes can be implemented without wasting billions of paperwork no one will ever read in its entirety.