It’s difficult to make predictions, especially about the future… – politicalbetting.com
It’s difficult to make predictions, especially about the future… – politicalbetting.com
…so said Niels Bohr. Or Karl Kristian Steincke, or a Danish proverb – take your pick. In any event, PB posters found it rather tough to make accurate predictions this year.
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Big thanks to BenPointer for doing all the hard work on this competition.
Pleased to get the inflation spot on. I think, could be wrong, that I called Trump as well.
13th for me. Seems fitting.
A good year for the Lib Dems, and for me personally.
Surely she should be allowed to return, albeit for trial on complicity in war crimes, embezzlement etc?
https://x.com/JeffBezos/status/1872824935732916265?t=fktYUdAujjEzbkQc_MNRnQ
Quite a rumble.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/dec/27/godfather-of-ai-raises-odds-of-the-technology-wiping-out-humanity-over-next-30-years?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
Incidentally, at the risk of saying Beetleguese the picture in the header looks AI, but a rather good example.
I didn't enter as I knew my score would be zero. Nothing heroic about not having a go!
Edited to correct autocorrect.
(Or am I being played
Update: Found it. Bloody people using more than one tab in a spreasheet.
Having found it, I don't want to know ! 72nd equal - I was too pessimistic for the Lab majority by some way, and too pessimistic for the deficit by about £20 bn.
Ukraine the Latest. This is each weekday around the Ukraine War. 30-60 minutes, and running since the start - they are now at day 1038, which will be episode 750 approx. The format is
"Military News" (10 minutes),
"Political News" (10 minutes),
1 or 2 Interviews or Features (15-30 minutes - Today's is an interview with a beautician turned explosive ordnance educator now working for their Ukraine Christmas Charity, Humanity & Inclusion, with background cat). They have a wide variety of interviewees over time, from top politicians or military to people like today's. Host is a stand-in associate for Christmas.
"Final Thoughts" - today's participant reflections.
Their favourite final question is: "Is there anything we have not asked about which you think our listeners ought to know?", which is a good consistent bulwark against open-ended anti silo/unconscious editorial bias.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJnf_DDTfIVCYlsANGtNkzMeM9Fdmqzxr
Battle Lines
Roughly weekly, sometimes with specials. Deeper focuses on particular subjects. Conflict, military and sometimes related politics. Recently quite a lot around the Middle East. 30 minutes.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJnf_DDTfIVAif-vifC6F2aoPB8GIw6dk
You found Perfectly Normal, which is Allison Pearson and Liam Halligan.
There is also the Daily T, which is Camilla Tominey and Kamal (I think) Ahmed.
The Telegraph's own index page of podcasts, free to view, is here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/podcasts/
HTH
He threatened legal action against David Cameron when Dave rightly called UKIP 'fruitcakes and loonies - and closet racists mostly.'
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2006/apr/06/conservatives.politicalcolumnists
Sri Lanka had the Kiwis on the ropes with a 120 opening partnership. They have then lost six wickets adding just 34 runs and need 19 from 8 balls.
Congratulations No Offence Alan on your predictions for this year
Maybe I was thinking about Farage being all fart and no follow through.
That means Kemi can get the Tories back over 200 MPs at the general election with FPTP without winning back a single voter the Tories have lost to Labour, the LDs or Reform
https://x.com/sundersays/status/1872941235381649673?s=46&t=fJymV-V84rexmlQMLXHHJQ
Is there an objective way to score the entrants on the left/right spectrum?
It would be fascinating to see if that is correlated with predictive accuracy and 80 or so is a reasonable sample size for a simple r^2.
A few more MP, and big business donor defections - the latter don't even have great reasons of either loyalty or ideology not to jump - could become a self-reinforcing trend.
"You can't win a majority starting with only five seats" might be true - but what if it's thirty ? Or more ?
And you have several years to spend £100m, before election restrictions ...
My Reform MP, the Leeanderthal Man, says things in his style of populist politics that sometimes get him sued by protagonists (imo he's sometimes wrong, and occasionally right), then he hangs tough and they end up giving up and going away.
I can recall two from the last year or two - there may be others:
Jack Monroe, which we all know about.
Michael Hollis Senior, who is the dad of one of our local dodgy Councillors Tom Hollis (10 year criminal record, multiple convictions - all on the official record), whom (Tom) has recently been reappointed as Ashfield Council Deputy Leader by Jason Zadrozny. Anderson made some front-footed comments on Facebook around alleged planning irregularities. I will not quote the claims here.
India - might be interesting and important.
Australia - who gives a fuck.
Canada - see Australia.
Germany - possible AfD surge. Could finish Leon off with excitement at his time of life.
Locals - will Dura retain his seat on the Parish Council despite or because of the eco-anarchist electoral platform? I did advocate "direct action" against a local housing development which proved surprisingly popular with the derelict old tories who live round here so I reckon I am in.
All other politicians will have noted this.
Farage can’t believe his luck.
Though his real name - Alexander Pocklington - is delightfully like an adjacent character in a pith helmet out of Agatha Christie or Biggles.
If not, she's toast.
...
While the exact number of affected customers is not yet known, investigations thus far have shown that “a large number of individuals were geolocated in the Washington, DC and Virginia area”, she said.
The goal was to identify which phones were linked to government targets and then conduct espionage and intelligence gathering on text messages and calls.
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3292548/us-unveils-sweeping-cybersecurity-measures-over-alleged-china-backed-salt-typhoon-campaign
Note also that while America is tightening protection of health data, Britain is giving it away!
Kudos and congrats to Alan. I'm pleased to share the silver medal position with such esteemed PB'ers
There could have been a bonus half point for predicting not Biden....
But Drach has an incredible work habit - putting out hours of consistently top quality video every week. He's now a regular expert on Times Radio - which is not bad for a self-taught historian.
Recently there was an interview with him - 50 minutes - about how he does his research, and his methodology is of basically academic standard:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aS2PZOz4rsk
He's now up to 8000+ naval history and speculative questions having been quite carefully answered in his "dry dock" series. It's like Honest John for cars, who built his brand on Q/A . Source: https://www.drachinifel.co.uk/the-channel
https://www.drachinifel.co.uk/s/DD-001to301.xlsx
Here's seven areas:
How many UK by-elections in 2025
How many Reform MPs by year end/defections various
Who leads the Tories
Changes in the cabinet
Reform to lead in a proper poll, and how many
Tories to go under 20; Reform to go over 29 at least once
Trump resignations various/fate of Musk
Of course, we'd all like to think we would be, but would we?
It was his version of Hillary Clinton's deplorables.
Former Trump ambassador to Denmark on Greenland: The idea that little Denmark can afford to defend Greenland is preposterous. They can't afford to defend and develop it... What President Trump is suggesting is common sense solution.
The Conservative base is a retired older woman in a higher social grade who owns their house outright and voted remain. Reform/UKIP base is in some ways the opposite - low social grade, younger, voted leave, renting, male.
A weak man placed in the post of absolute dictator, commanding the loyalty of less than a fifth of his country ...
Congratulations to No Offence Alan and thanks to Benpointer; I'll try and sort myself out to enter the next competition, although as my forecast of the GE date would still be in the future, I'm not too confident. At the moment, too, my survival to 31/12/2025 has to be slightly doubtful.
I think that is fairly realistic, and I for one am quite happy with Kemi and not concerned she has Farage threatening legal action, as it is very important to this conservative that the two parties are not seen as one identity
There are many writing Kemi off , but they are not her audience and she has barely been in the job a few weeks
I expect that as 2025 progresses the extremes of the Trump Presidency and Musk's financial backing for Farage will not play as well for either him or Reform, but also I cannot see a boost for Labour as the dire economic position post Reeves miscalculated budget manifests itself
As long as Kemi retains the support of conservatives, [and she headed the last conhome table], then she will be OK
I expect reform to do well in red seats in the locals but it looks as if labour are considering cancelling some of these locals which is bizarre
Anyway, I may be a lone voice in support of Kemi, but I do think Farage and Reform during 2025 will face a difficult time with their support for Trump and Musk
Yes, not Biden should have been worth something. That would have bumped me towards the podium.
Still, rules are rules and I'm happy with a top quartile finish in such a tough field.
Too many impossible things keep happening
Too many of us still can't embrace that the impossible is now not just possible but likely...
And the wind farm blades are barely turning today and for many days in December as well
We are probably underestimating how much Musk will weigh in on the next British GE and what a profound effect it will have. He saw how the flattery and money formula worked with DJT and he clearly liked both the process and the outcome so why wouldn't he put his man in No.10?