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The State of the Union, Week 6 – politicalbetting.com

You could change ‘state’ to ‘stasis’ in the title, and you wouldn’t be far wrong: hardly any movement since last week, which is exactly how I started off last week’s comments. So, what movement has there been?
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However expecting the Trumpdozer.
As no sign of any movement and early voting already started then it looks on balance to be Trump 2.0.
Hope I am wrong.
Now arguably it is a suboptimal situation to have a two-tier education system. But of all the pressing needs to address in education, this doesn't seem to be anywhere close to the top of the list. It is there because it is important to the activists.
Ditto foxhunting in 1997 (replace animal welfare for education). Though Lab came in in 1997 with rather more of a plan than Lab in 2024.
48 Dem
2 Ind
50 GOP.
A Democrat majority is
51 Dem
2 Ind
47 GOP
This is particularly important if you're betting on the result.
I *think* all the GOP senators are properly GOP and not caucusing independents. Joe Manchin is not going for re-election so WV reverts to a straight Dem-GOP battle.
Clearly, really unpleasant Republicans DO get re-elected. Just, maybe not this year.
Granted it seems to have merely delayed things a couple of months so the infighting starts now..
And there is plenty of scope for infighting because of a lot of MPs will be discovering that thanks to the size of Labour's majority they have no chance of promotion in the next 4 years so will just be backbench lobby fodder and last chance social workers for their constituents.
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The UK is seeing more deaths than births (ie natural population shrinkage) for the first time since the 1970s (pandemic aside obviously) www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopula...
https://bsky.app/profile/torstenbell.bsky.social/post/3l5ygm6sy452f
Both he and Cruz are still more likely than not to be re-elected, but neither are certainties, as you say.
No one really knows - though some are still doing the stupid, and weighting by recalled 2019 vote.
Jenrick sabotaged his Tory leadership chances at conference, survey of members suggests, with Cleverly rising fast
Conservative members were more likely to be turned off by what they saw of Robert Jenrick at the party conference than impressed, a survey suggests.
Jenrick arrived at the conference as the clear bookmakers’ favourite. But, according to a ConservativeHome survey of Tory members, only 23% of them said that what happened at conference made them more likely to support him – and 43% said they were less likely to support him afterwards.
Tom Tugendhat experienced a similar loss of support – but he is expected to be out of the contest by the end of today anyway as the candidate most likely to be eliminated in today’s ballot of MPs.
Conservative members favour Kemi Badenoch for next leader, according to numerous ConHome surveys, and proper polling, but 35% of respondents said conference made them less likely to support her, while 30% said the opposite.
The survey suggests the big winner was James Cleverly. Some 55% of Tories said conference made him a more attractive candidate, while only 14% said it didn’t.
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NB: PB gets a mention downstream!
Seems value.
Eg in Scotland that’s 45,000 births and 65,000 deaths
Is Scotland dying out? Or is this a data glitch
England has a slightly more immigrant heavy population so should have slightly higher birth rates for the same age profile as the other nations, but it's not quite enough to outweigh Norn's slightly younger population *I think !
ISTR a few years ago England's birth rate was being propped up by immigrants with more children, though I don't know if this is still true.
45k births, 65k deaths
Almost one and a half times as many deaths as births
Has anyone told Farage?
https://labour.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Labour-MANIFESTO-UK-2024.pdf
There are 19 pages with dozens of policies, including a page on education.
VAT on Private schools is not even mentioned. How can you believe it was their only policy? The answer is simply that it is the obsession of the right wing media, not the obsession of Labour.
We should have let Covid take out all the wrinklies and avoided any lockdown
EDIT: look at this: the population of Scotland has been static for years while England has grown. So once your growth of the baby boom years has worked through - which it now has - a birth rate of 1.3 leads to pretty rapid decline.
This is the orthodoxy.
"Multitasking"....
Presently at Shrewsbury on our train to Aberystwyth and this is the first post I have read
Just want to send you my best wishes as a fellow 'creaky' octogenarian and that at times we just need to enjoy the simple things in life and let the intensity of politics and the disaster of wars rest from our mind for a wee bit
I think of myself as quite indecisive, but I think I'd blush at that timescale.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/oct/08/lower-thames-crossing-decision-delayed-tunnel
Still think the third umpire’s decision on the Woakes catch was a shocker.
And its been remarkably consistent.
104k births in 1964
Deaths have been broadly level for last 50 years.
50 - 65k per year.
This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who has been to Scotlands main belt.
Poor people, born in poor housing, who smoke, drink and have a poor diet without much exercise die earlier.
Who'd a thought.
The movements of the last couple of weeks in the US are minimal. The national lead stretched for Harris last week but contracted this. Trump made a tiny amount of ground in state polls last week but lost that and more this week. The earliest signs for the coming week suggest a continuing edge towards Harris. That could change though and its all very much within the margin of error
England’s first job now, avoiding the follow-on whilst keeping up the run rate.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/fixing-the-foundations-public-spending-audit-2024-25/fixing-the-foundations-public-spending-audit-2024-25-html
So we now have a date of early May for when the spending review will be finished..
Arguably we are halfway there already.
I assume these will not be eaten on the mosque's premises, but still strikes me as a bit of an 'interesting' choice for the day trip!
The former PM oversaw a luxury makeover of the apartment which he took over from Theresa May and her husband Phillip
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/10/08/boris-johnson-downing-street-crack-den-refurbishment/ (£££)
Apparently Theresa May was coked off her tits when she ran through that wheatfield.
He really enjoyed the trip; his first significant contact with Hinduism.
i think such trips should be encouraged, to all religions.
Ukraine
Hong Kong
Students
Each widely supported by the right and the government at the time until they added up the numbers.
The non controlled part is a small but very visible fraction.
“All credit to Starmer, finally an appointment that makes sense - if the goal is *give away British territory because your human rights lawyer mates say 'there's no alternative'*, then makes sense to hire the expert on surrendering to the IRA.
This came to my desk in No10. I said: tell the FO and Cabinet Office lawyers to fuck off, no way, no discussion.
Boris in 2021 like on everything backtracked and started this surrender. Cleverley took dictation like the perfect NPC-minister...
*The system is working as intended* - and the logical thing for the system to do is put Powell in as NSA, institutionalise *surrender to international lawyers* & bring clarity across the deep state.”
https://x.com/dominic2306/status/1843601671701598403?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw
Ball in hand, foot on ground.
reminder of no sweets, chocolates, unhealthy foods etc in lunch boxes tickled me a few years ago when one of our kids went on a school trip to Cadbury's world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZhD4G7ENSY (16mins)
They must be getting fed up with City’s legal bollocks and the Premier League know that their product without Man City would be fine but without the big names would be largely worthless.
*The two nearest ones we liked both happened to be CofE
hallucinationserrors AIs make daily. There is some evidence now that their accuracy might not get better, and may even get worse – as AIs increasingly use the (error-ridden) output of other AIs as their corpus of information."Trump and those like him make a deal with the most resentful citizens in society: Keep us up in the penthouses, and we’ll harass your enemies on your behalf. We’ll punish the people you want punished. In the end, however, the joke is always on the voters."
I like that.
Report used by Labour to support private school VAT raid written by minister’s friend
Matthew Pennycook was best man at wedding of Luke Sibieta - who authored IFS report on plans
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/10/07/report-used-laboursupport-private-school-vat-close-friend/
Move could raise the Treasury more than £6bn in lead up to Budget
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/tax/reeves-urged-scrap-free-prescriptions-60-65-year-olds/
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/03/israel-gaza-ai-database-hamas-airstrikes
Align it to State pension age.
I had Turkey bacon when on holiday in Dubai and it was ace.
The turkey ham might be a nice novelty when you’re on holiday, but you quickly get sick of it.
One of the elderly lady members was told by her husband not to attend!. She did, though!
Haven't googled it. Seems fairer to align there.
We can't afford these sort of nice freebies.