Meanwhile I see that Andy Burnham is doing his best to appease the Daily Mail.
I always said he was a mercurial chancer.
Andy Burnham is the most odious little rat I think I've ever seen in British politics, which is saying something. A person utterly devoid of principles who would push anyone under a train to further his own ends. I'm still seething with anger at this "Labour" Government for whom I so mistakenly and bitterly voted.
((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 9m Just to add to the chaos I'm now being told by multiple sources from different parties that canvass returns for Makerfield show Restore significantly outperforming the 7% revealed in the Times poll. I suspect that's what's underpinning the current Reform meltdown.
Well, if you want to base a betting strategy based on canvass returns, good luck with that.
Depends who is asking the question - but I suspect the idea anyone has a clue what is happening there prior to the result being announced is lying to themselves
Isn’t there a history of parties saying - “our canvassing returns are much better than the polling” and falling flat on election day?
Almost everything that is leaked is leaked for a reason, and that reason is usually the important bit of the story.
It suits Restore to have a story in the press that they are doing better than expected. Paradoxically, it suits Reform to concur. As long as they are in second place, that's fine- if you want to make Burnham sad, you must vote Reform, you can't leave it to chance or indulge your true wishes.
Remember- it's a two horse race.
(Isn't the standard Lib Dem by-election playbook to announce that they are in an incredibly close second to the hated incumbent party just before polls open? Often, they go on to win at a canter.)
It's a shame Reclaim can't play in Makerfield as well, with Laurence Fox performing his stuff.
Then, we'd have the three Rs.
Risible, Ridiculous, and Rank ?
Rectum
Ressurection, Revelation, Remembrance.
...Resolution, Revolution
R Class battleships:
Resolution Ramillies Royal Sovereign Royal Oak Revenge
Renown Class battlecruisers:
Renown Repulse
(Narrator: Sunil missed the fact that Taz and Viewcode were swapping names of Dalek stories. There was a fad in the 1980s for Dalek Stories beginning with "R" and Chibnall resurrected - hah! - it for Jodie's episodes)
Meanwhile I see that Andy Burnham is doing his best to appease the Daily Mail.
I always said he was a mercurial chancer.
Andy Burnham is the most odious little rat I think I've ever seen in British politics, which is saying something. A person utterly devoid of principles who would push anyone under a train to further his own ends. I'm still seething with anger at this "Labour" Government for whom I so mistakenly and bitterly voted.
Restore have never wanted anything to do with this area. But now someone born with a silver spoon in their mouth is trying to lie about the only working class local man in the race.
I want net negative immigration.
Never mind the politics of it, this is a really amusing remark. Restore have never wanted anything to do with this area. Throughout its whole history, which is - what? 3 months?
((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 9m Just to add to the chaos I'm now being told by multiple sources from different parties that canvass returns for Makerfield show Restore significantly outperforming the 7% revealed in the Times poll. I suspect that's what's underpinning the current Reform meltdown.
Well, if you want to base a betting strategy based on canvass returns, good luck with that.
Depends who is asking the question - but I suspect the idea anyone has a clue what is happening there prior to the result being announced is lying to themselves
Canvassing (done properly) should give you a fair indication of your own support.
It will tell you nothing about opposition support, still less how the vote is breaking down among opposition parties. So believe nothing about twitter reports showing any kind of breakdown between parties - somebody is just lying.
I haven’t canvassed in the current multi-party environment, but in olden, simpler, times, a good LibDem canvasser could get a reasonably accurate read on Tory support versus Labour. For Tory canvassers in wards where the LibDems might be competitive, it was more difficult, since what do you make of a door closed in your face?
Top of the class, assuming you knew and didn’t look it up…
There's been a recent Rest is History episode about it. When your opponents are begging you to retreat to avoid slaughter and saying they won't shoot you if you do then you really need to reevaluate your military strategy
Meanwhile I see that Andy Burnham is doing his best to appease the Daily Mail.
I always said he was a mercurial chancer.
Andy Burnham is the most odious little rat I think I've ever seen in British politics, which is saying something. A person utterly devoid of principles who would push anyone under a train to further his own ends. I'm still seething with anger at this "Labour" Government for whom I so mistakenly and bitterly voted.
Who are you quoting?
I believe that was Heathener on Streeting, a few threads back ? "I bitterly voted" is an interesting construction.
((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 9m Just to add to the chaos I'm now being told by multiple sources from different parties that canvass returns for Makerfield show Restore significantly outperforming the 7% revealed in the Times poll. I suspect that's what's underpinning the current Reform meltdown.
Well, if you want to base a betting strategy based on canvass returns, good luck with that.
Depends who is asking the question - but I suspect the idea anyone has a clue what is happening there prior to the result being announced is lying to themselves
Isn’t there a history of parties saying - “our canvassing returns are much better than the polling” and falling flat on election day?
Almost everything that is leaked is leaked for a reason, and that reason is usually the important bit of the story.
It suits Restore to have a story in the press that they are doing better than expected. Paradoxically, it suits Reform to concur. As long as they are in second place, that's fine- if you want to make Burnham sad, you must vote Reform, you can't leave it to chance or indulge your true wishes.
Remember- it's a two horse race.
(Isn't the standard Lib Dem by-election playbook to announce that they are in an incredibly close second to the hated incumbent party just before polls open? Often, they go on to win at a canter.)
If Restore were 2% shouty nutters then this would be great for Reform as you describe. But looks increasingly like they are 12% shouty nutters and the extra 10% has been topsliced off Reform's nutters.
We still have weeks to go and we already have the supposed main challenger to Burnham pledging he wants mass deportations of brown people. Imagine what they will be saying in the run up to polling day:
Make Makerfield White Again Deport the Rapists, Save your Daughters Andy Burnham wants to impose Sharia Law
OT - Vance will run for President. Full stop. His 'sponsors' didn't get him where he is to let him duck out now.
He, however, will only become President if Trump vacates the position ahead of schedule (for whatever reason).
That depends on whose schedule you are talking.
Vance (and the mega money behind him) will be looking at the second anniversary of Trump's second inauguraton - and not moving before. That could give us close on 10 years of Vance (the rump of Trump's term plus 4 years plus 4 years).
((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 9m Just to add to the chaos I'm now being told by multiple sources from different parties that canvass returns for Makerfield show Restore significantly outperforming the 7% revealed in the Times poll. I suspect that's what's underpinning the current Reform meltdown.
Well, if you want to base a betting strategy based on canvass returns, good luck with that.
Depends who is asking the question - but I suspect the idea anyone has a clue what is happening there prior to the result being announced is lying to themselves
Canvassing (done properly) should give you a fair indication of your own support.
It will tell you nothing about opposition support, still less how the vote is breaking down among opposition parties. So believe nothing about twitter reports showing any kind of breakdown between parties - somebody is just lying.
I haven’t canvassed in the current multi-party environment, but in olden, simpler, times, a good LibDem canvasser could get a reasonably accurate read on Tory support versus Labour. For Tory canvassers in wards where the LibDems might be competitive, it was more difficult, since what do you make of a door closed in your face?
My experience as an LD activist (1990s) was that I hardly ever found a Tory - so I always marked wouldn't say as Tory on the basis that Labour supporters were proud to identify themselves as such (when there was a Tory government).
The one Tory I remember vividly was in 1997 in Kingston (Richmond Park bit) when the man called back through the letterbox "I'm a Conservative, old chap. But you're going to win. Good man, Ashdown."
((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 9m Just to add to the chaos I'm now being told by multiple sources from different parties that canvass returns for Makerfield show Restore significantly outperforming the 7% revealed in the Times poll. I suspect that's what's underpinning the current Reform meltdown.
Well, if you want to base a betting strategy based on canvass returns, good luck with that.
Depends who is asking the question - but I suspect the idea anyone has a clue what is happening there prior to the result being announced is lying to themselves
Canvassing (done properly) should give you a fair indication of your own support.
It will tell you nothing about opposition support, still less how the vote is breaking down among opposition parties. So believe nothing about twitter reports showing any kind of breakdown between parties - somebody is just lying.
I haven’t canvassed in the current multi-party environment, but in olden, simpler, times, a good LibDem canvasser could get a reasonably accurate read on Tory support versus Labour. For Tory canvassers in wards where the LibDems might be competitive, it was more difficult, since what do you make of a door closed in your face?
Put them down as a LibDem. Labour voters usually happily tell you. Even had one bloke who said "BNP mate. I'm a racist."
It's the LibDems who make a virtue of being hate-filled anti-Tories.
(In my experience. And a reminder that in 2019, our canvassing of the Totnes constiutiency (as it then was) showed our actual vote to be within 0.1% of the canvass return. So I'm not exactly a rookie at this!)
((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 9m Just to add to the chaos I'm now being told by multiple sources from different parties that canvass returns for Makerfield show Restore significantly outperforming the 7% revealed in the Times poll. I suspect that's what's underpinning the current Reform meltdown.
Well, if you want to base a betting strategy based on canvass returns, good luck with that.
Depends who is asking the question - but I suspect the idea anyone has a clue what is happening there prior to the result being announced is lying to themselves
Isn’t there a history of parties saying - “our canvassing returns are much better than the polling” and falling flat on election day?
Almost everything that is leaked is leaked for a reason, and that reason is usually the important bit of the story.
It suits Restore to have a story in the press that they are doing better than expected. Paradoxically, it suits Reform to concur. As long as they are in second place, that's fine- if you want to make Burnham sad, you must vote Reform, you can't leave it to chance or indulge your true wishes.
Remember- it's a two horse race.
(Isn't the standard Lib Dem by-election playbook to announce that they are in an incredibly close second to the hated incumbent party just before polls open? Often, they go on to win at a canter.)
If Restore were 2% shouty nutters then this would be great for Reform as you describe. But looks increasingly like they are 12% shouty nutters and the extra 10% has been topsliced off Reform's nutters.
We still have weeks to go and we already have the supposed main challenger to Burnham pledging he wants mass deportations of brown people. Imagine what they will be saying in the run up to polling day:
Make Makerfield White Again Deport the Rapists, Save your Daughters Andy Burnham wants to impose Sharia Law
etc
Is Andy Burnham a secret Muslim?
Andy Burnham is a not-so-secret Muslim.
etc.
If he escapes eye-witness accounts of being seen on Epstein Island, he'll have got off lightly with (anti-)socia media.
Meanwhile I see that Andy Burnham is doing his best to appease the Daily Mail.
I always said he was a mercurial chancer.
Andy Burnham is the most odious little rat I think I've ever seen in British politics, which is saying something. A person utterly devoid of principles who would push anyone under a train to further his own ends. I'm still seething with anger at this "Labour" Government for whom I so mistakenly and bitterly voted.
Who are you quoting?
I believe that was Heathener on Streeting, a few threads back ? "I bitterly voted" is an interesting construction.
Back before the GE, Heathener professed a desire to vote tactically to see the Tories removed from her seat, but when she received lots of informed advice from PB’ers that this would mean voting LibDem, she simply ignored it and argued that Labour was set to win. How she worked this out, who knows, but in the event her (now former) seat has a LibDem MP and Labour trailed along with 15%.
Part of me is glad that we're moving past the polite charade of Reform and getting properly into the movement. The two things jumping out are the endless attacks on Zia Yusuf from Restore supporters, and now the same people decrying Lowe attending his son's wedding which supposedly had Halal on the reception menu as his new daughter-in-law is allegedly Libyan in origin.
Here's the thing. Decent people can be moulded slightly and have their petty parochial bigotries amplified, but I think that only gets you so far. Demanding the mass deportation of your neighbours is surely too far, and yet that is now where Kenyon is. Zusuf has also proposed mass deportation, and surely he must know that he would eventually be on their list.
I have faith in the British people not to vote fascist. As they will demonstrate in Makerfield in a few weeks time.
I want to share your faith Rochdale but I keep coming back to the thought that 'demanding the mass deportation of your neighbours' turned out to be not a step too far in Germany in the 1930s.
Are British people intrinsically more decent than German people? I don't think so.
I hear you. But there's three big differences:
1) An economic slump as opposed to an economic crisis. No wheelbarrows of cash needed to buy bread here 2) No Hitler to lead the movement. Pint-sized Tommeh would love the job, but he's a cockwomble rather than a fuhrer 3) A big chunk of the patriotism this lot lionise is fighting nazis. Harder to demand people join the blackshirts to defend British Values like fighting blackshirts
I'm not as bullish but I am ever so carefully tiptoeing towards the first inklings of the trace of a feeling that we might just possibly have seen the peak of this stuff.
I see the May temperature has reached 35 degrees in London. Commisserations to those in the capital.
There doesn't seem to have been much comment on the previous record - which has now been topped - was 32.8C, which was set in 1922 and 1944. What was the excuse for the bonkers heat in those years if not climate change?
Who'll be the first candidate in Makerfield to cry "climate hoax!"?
The worst thing about this weather is all the people using Celsius.
It's 89 degrees for a sensible reason - because that number *sounds hot*. Your stupid 30-something nonsense is not relatable, and you probably only use it because weren't good enough at rebelling against the system when at school.
Restore have never wanted anything to do with this area. But now someone born with a silver spoon in their mouth is trying to lie about the only working class local man in the race.
I want net negative immigration.
He’s a moron . With an ageing population and low birth rate whose going to pay for the increase in pensioners.
Ah, yes. The immigration ponzi scheme. "Keep importing more people, because without population growth, we can't afford to look after the old people already here."
It's a complete falacy, because it doesn't account for the infrastructure costs of increasing the population. Every extra person has a one off infrastructure cost when they arrive, needing extra infrastructure putting in place for their housing, transport, hospitals, schools, water, electricity etc, etc.
Currently, we've got a country with the infrastructure fit for ~55 milion people, and a reality of ~70 million people. It will be much cheaper to prevent immigration almost entirely and let the population drift back down to ~55 million over the next 20-30 years, than build all the missing infrastructure.
It will be much easier to solve the house price crisis by reducing demand (it will take time, but it will happen) than by allowing Barretts to concrete over every square inch of the countryside. It would be cheaper not to have to build HS2, because rail demand stopped increasing. It would be cheaper not to have to build loads of new reservoirs, because water demand (broadly static per person) stops increasing. Etc etc.
This is of course not racism. It's economics. But the cheap nanny's and Deliveroo every night crowd like shouting racism rather than engage with the argument, because their case is very weak.
The logical conclusion of your line of reasoning is that we should have a population of zero, then there will be no infrastructure costs and everything will be great. This is silly and demonstrates the flaw in your reasoning.
What you've missed is that every extra person generates economic value, which is enough (on average) to pay for their required infrastructure costs. Indeed, with efficiency savings resulting from larger numbers, each new person requires a lower per capita infrastructure cost.
Your analysis also makes no distinction between new people arriving through immigration and new people being born. (Generally, the people arriving through immigration have lower lifetime costs as we don't have to pay for their early years and education.)
Your analysis also misses the importance of the age mix of the population. A population of 55 million but with 25% over 65 (a possible future for the UK) is very different to a population of 55 million but with 15% over 65 (which was the UK's past, 40 years ago, approximately). The latter is much more sustainable.
I think you've missed that I'm primarily talking about infrastructure capex costs, because that's elephant in the room the pro immigration lobby misses.
If the population count is stable, there is very little need for new infrastructure.
Take water, because it's an easy example. If an average person uses say 10,000 gallons a year (I've no idea of the actual qty!) there will be an amount of reservoir capacity required to support that over the dryest part of the summer. We built enough reservoir capacity for this times 55-60 million people years ago. It's done, dusted, paid for. There are still ongoing costs - pumping, repairs, maintenance, but we're not having to keep buying up land to build dams and flood valleys to keep supplying water to those 55-60 million people.
Add ten million extra people to the mix, and suddenly we don't have enough capacity any more. Short term we fudge things with demand management eg hosepipe bans, but the only real solution is to build more capacity. And that is hideously expensive.
The same thing applies to roads, schools, housing, electricity etc. As we increase the population, we increase the amount of physical infrastructure required, which means that every immigrant comes with a massive one off cost. Most of them will never earn enough in their lifetimes to pay for it.
This would apply just as much if we had a massive baby boom working through the system - the effects are just as undesirable - but we don't, so it's immigration that's our problem.
To make things worse, because we can't afford to buy all the extra infrastructure we need, we're perennially trying to save money by running our systems at 110% capacity, then wondering why all our public services are rubbish.
There would be no advantage to allowing the population to drop below much the numbers for which we have the infrastructure, as that Capex is already spent.
None of this is new - China went for the one child policy in the 70s because they realised it was far cheaper to reduce the population than build the missing infrastructure. It was cruel and heartless, and they royally stuffed it up by allowing sex selective abortion (thus creating a whopping male-female imbalance, which is causing them huge social problems now), but the core numbers logic worked. We don't have any need to be so cruel and heartless, demographics are naturally going to do this for us, providing we don't just fill the gap in with immigration.
At some point, when we're down to say a population 50 million, we may want to seriously look at increasing immigration again if the birth rate remains low - but that's a problem to consider once we've got the population numbers back to a sensible level again, not an argument to keep increasing population numbers now.
Comments
It suits Restore to have a story in the press that they are doing better than expected. Paradoxically, it suits Reform to concur. As long as they are in second place, that's fine- if you want to make Burnham sad, you must vote Reform, you can't leave it to chance or indulge your true wishes.
Remember- it's a two horse race.
(Isn't the standard Lib Dem by-election playbook to announce that they are in an incredibly close second to the hated incumbent party just before polls open? Often, they go on to win at a canter.)
"I bitterly voted" is an interesting construction.
We still have weeks to go and we already have the supposed main challenger to Burnham pledging he wants mass deportations of brown people. Imagine what they will be saying in the run up to polling day:
Make Makerfield White Again
Deport the Rapists, Save your Daughters
Andy Burnham wants to impose Sharia Law
etc
Vance (and the mega money behind him) will be looking at the second anniversary of Trump's second inauguraton - and not moving before. That could give us close on 10 years of Vance (the rump of Trump's term plus 4 years plus 4 years).
The one Tory I remember vividly was in 1997 in Kingston (Richmond Park bit) when the man called back through the letterbox "I'm a Conservative, old chap. But you're going to win. Good man, Ashdown."
It's the LibDems who make a virtue of being hate-filled anti-Tories.
(In my experience. And a reminder that in 2019, our canvassing of the Totnes constiutiency (as it then was) showed our actual vote to be within 0.1% of the canvass return. So I'm not exactly a rookie at this!)
NEW THREAD
Andy Burnham is a not-so-secret Muslim.
etc.
If he escapes eye-witness accounts of being seen on Epstein Island, he'll have got off lightly with (anti-)socia media.
There doesn't seem to have been much comment on the previous record - which has now been topped - was 32.8C, which was set in 1922 and 1944. What was the excuse for the bonkers heat in those years if not climate change?
Who'll be the first candidate in Makerfield to cry "climate hoax!"?
It's 89 degrees for a sensible reason - because that number *sounds hot*. Your stupid 30-something nonsense is not relatable, and you probably only use it because weren't good enough at rebelling against the system when at school.
If the population count is stable, there is very little need for new infrastructure.
Take water, because it's an easy example. If an average person uses say 10,000 gallons a year (I've no idea of the actual qty!) there will be an amount of reservoir capacity required to support that over the dryest part of the summer. We built enough reservoir capacity for this times 55-60 million people years ago. It's done, dusted, paid for. There are still ongoing costs - pumping, repairs, maintenance, but we're not having to keep buying up land to build dams and flood valleys to keep supplying water to those 55-60 million people.
Add ten million extra people to the mix, and suddenly we don't have enough capacity any more. Short term we fudge things with demand management eg hosepipe bans, but the only real solution is to build more capacity. And that is hideously expensive.
The same thing applies to roads, schools, housing, electricity etc. As we increase the population, we increase the amount of physical infrastructure required, which means that every immigrant comes with a massive one off cost. Most of them will never earn enough in their lifetimes to pay for it.
This would apply just as much if we had a massive baby boom working through the system - the effects are just as undesirable - but we don't, so it's immigration that's our problem.
To make things worse, because we can't afford to buy all the extra infrastructure we need, we're perennially trying to save money by running our systems at 110% capacity, then wondering why all our public services are rubbish.
There would be no advantage to allowing the population to drop below much the numbers for which we have the infrastructure, as that Capex is already spent.
None of this is new - China went for the one child policy in the 70s because they realised it was far cheaper to reduce the population than build the missing infrastructure. It was cruel and heartless, and they royally stuffed it up by allowing sex selective abortion (thus creating a whopping male-female imbalance, which is causing them huge social problems now), but the core numbers logic worked. We don't have any need to be so cruel and heartless, demographics are naturally going to do this for us, providing we don't just fill the gap in with immigration.
At some point, when we're down to say a population 50 million, we may want to seriously look at increasing immigration again if the birth rate remains low - but that's a problem to consider once we've got the population numbers back to a sensible level again, not an argument to keep increasing population numbers now.