politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Now most LAB leadership votes are in Osborne moves to under

notme said:

first

Hilariously The Mirror had it as £500BILLION (their capitals, not mine)...

Nearly as crap as yesterday's Sunday Times, which described the poet Phillip Larkin as being "Hull-born" and a former poet laureate. Both completely wrong. Indeed, he famously turned down the laureate job.

Ms Cyclefree,

"I thought Islamists disliked tombs and any sort of memorial and worshipping of them or at them. Hence IS destruction of the same. The Saudis don't even have tombs for their kings."

I expect you're right but three months of Osama spouting off is worth avoiding, even if the Septics had some secrets they might not want revealed.

Re Ozzie, “What did he mean by that?” 19th century Austrian diplomat Metternich is said to have asked of Talleyrand when he heard the French statesman had died.

Osborne also never does things without a political reason.

The Mirror are innumerate? Shocking.

I must say how much I'm enjoying watching Labour supporters tie themselves into knots trying to explain away Comrade Corbyn's comments about Bin Laden and ISIS, and he hasn't even won yet, so God knows what Labour supporters will be having to whitewash if Corbyn does win.

rottenborough said:

notme said:

first

Hilariously The Mirror had it as £500BILLION (their capitals, not mine)...

Nearly as crap as yesterday's Sunday Times, which described the poet Phillip Larkin as being "Hull-born" and a former poet laureate. Both completely wrong. Indeed, he famously turned down the laureate job.

Both of these are really, really, really poor. Disappointing.

It's all going to be down to the zeitgeist in 2020. Will we be enjoying a hippy revival with flowers adorning rifle barrels and Jeremy wearing beads and smoking dope........

........or will the dark side have taken root with the the blackest of the black Gideon at the helm....

I'm not sure they're going to hit him with everything they've got yet. The best outcome for the Tories is a Corbyn whose tenure is not so utterly disastrous that he's unseated before 2020 in favour of a fresh new face such as Dan Jarvis. The Tories will want to do enough to maintain a small poll lead for the next few years, and then really go after Corbyn in the six months ahead of the GE.

However, the only trouble is that as Leader of the Opposition Corbyn is going to have to do a lot of regular, high profile interviews - and the chances of at least one going catastrophically wrong every few months or so have to be quite high. In short, regardless of Submarine George's master plan, I think the Corbyn leadership will implode of its own accord quite quickly. Whether Labour can then recover enough to seriously challenge the Tories is going to be the key question. It's why I think the outcome of the Deputy leadership election is rather more important than most people have realised; if Creasy gets it, I think there is still some hope for Labour. Obviously, if it's Watson, there is none.

felix said:

rottenborough said:

Isn't there a risk that if Tories push too hard, Lab will ditch him way before 2020?

You mean like their timely removals of Foot/Brown/Miliband?

Seems to be a feeling in Labour that this time they will ditch a potential loser a year or two out from GE. I can't see JC lasting the course myself and have started betting on his replacement, although I cling to a "fantasy" that Yvette will still pull victory from defeat.

This, in my view, is the big lesson for the left to learn from the right: be absolutely ruthless and disciplined in taking down your opponents, don't try to take the higher ground. Of course, it's not as easy when you don't have The Sun, The Telegraph and The Daily Mail on your side to do the dirty work, but it's necessary.

The Conservative Party and its members are also helped by their sheer hyper-partisanship, a loathing of Labour that transcends any political views and an obsession with power. There's a reason that Osborne willing to burn £500m of the public purse to win a political point and introduce brutal benefit sanctions that do little except hurt the poor and most vulnerable in society for little more than a headline or two.

notme said:

first

Hilariously The Mirror had it as £500BILLION (their capitals, not mine)...

And here we thought Piers "Doctor Evil" Morgan was a thing of the past at the Mirror?

Oliver_PB said:

This, in my view, is the big lesson that the left: be absolutely ruthless and disciplined in taking down your opponents, don't try to take the higher ground. Of course, it's not as easy when you don't have The Sun, The Telegraph and The Daily Mail on your side to do the dirty work, but it's necessarily.

The Conservative Party and its members are also helped by their sheer hyper-partisanship, a loathing of Labour that transcends any political views and an obsession with power. There's a reason that Osborne willing to burn £500m of the public purse to win a political point.

Had a good lunch, Mr. PB?

SimonStClare said:

Much as I admire Andrew Sparrow, surely the Faslane debacle has been an ongoing situation for the past year and has more to do with Scotland and the SNP than Jeremy Corbyn?

I agree.

SNP 'You never keep your referendum promises'

UK: 'Here's one we made - Faslane gets all the UK subs'

SNP: 'Its nae fair, we dinna want it....just gie us the money'

There's no pleasing some folk.......

Plato said:

I've been impressed by the discipline of the Tories - maybe they're all too busy pointing and laughing to feel the need to help...

It is either discipline or the Tories are as baffled as everybody else by what Labour appears to be about to do.

CD13 said:

Sorry to go off topic but there’s a programme on Multiverses on BBC2 this coming Wednesday. Horizon does dumb down a lot but surely they can’t mess this one up.

There are several varieties of multiverse but they must all confront the issue of infinity.
There are an infinite number of me writing these very words in an infinite number of universes. William of Ockham (or rather an infinite number of William of Ockhams) must be spinning in their graves, but it does explain why this universe could be exquisitely made for human existence.

Will they add in ten or eleven dimensions and have a go at when time began. I’m not convinced by Hawking’s analogy of the South Pole – where you can’t go any further south so that’s where south begins. If you go below the globe, there’s still an infinite space for south.

If nothing else, it will mess up your head as effectively as infinities mess up mathematics.

OK, I'll get my anorak.

Sounds interesting. There was a fascinating TV film by the Eels lead singer about his Dad, inventor of idea of parallel universes on a few years ago.

As to Horizon. My other half has got bored of me complaining about its dummying down. Bring back Paul Vaughan I say.

Plato said:

An apocalypse of hyperbole there.

Oliver_PB said:

This, in my view, is the big lesson for the left to learn from the right: be absolutely ruthless and disciplined in taking down your opponents, don't try to take the higher ground. Of course, it's not as easy when you don't have The Sun, The Telegraph and The Daily Mail on your side to do the dirty work, but it's necessary.

The Conservative Party and its members are also helped by their sheer hyper-partisanship, a loathing of Labour that transcends any political views and an obsession with power. There's a reason that Osborne willing to burn £500m of the public purse to win a political point and introduce brutal benefit sanctions that do little except hurt the poor and most vulnerable in society for little more than a headline or two.

Being lectured on partisanship by members of a party where "being a Tory in disguise" in the number one insult.

The number one lesson? People always think they're right.

Mr. Llama, there might even be a universe where you acknowledge Hannibal's undoubted superiority over Caesar.

Describing it as a plot to 'frame' him seems designed to be open to interpretation, giving framing someone is often about deceiving others, when it might also be meant as framing the debate, which need not involve any deceit, even if it is designed to push a narrative.

Oliver_PB said:

The Conservative Party and its members are also helped by their sheer hyper-partisanship, a loathing of Labour that transcends any political views /blockquote>
That is certainly nothing unique when it comes to political parties, particularly ones which actually compete for power (though oddly the extremist fringe ones are worst of all). I see the Tories accused of ruthlessness as a more unique attribute than their partisanship, which it is pointless to debate if they are worse examples of than their opponents, as the key is both have elements of it without question.

Morris_Dancer said:

Miss Plato, doesn't take much.

Brown's whining about the union included a nice line about the evils of English nationalism.

.....

The lack of self-awareness was not unexpected, but remains monumental.

I noticed a report about Mr Brown's 'Tories breaking up the Union' complaint but didn't have time to read it. Was it the proposed investment in Faslane that provoked him into saying it?

MikeK said:

This is not much of an attack on C, and this sort of news can rebound on O when the whole plan is revealed.

Blockhead, worked out why a smart phone without a contract may be useful to a migrant yet?

rottenborough said:

Isn't there a risk that if Tories push too hard, Lab will ditch him way before 2020?

I'm in several minds about what their tactics should be, and what they actually are. If they feel merely electing Corbyn will do enough damage to Labour, or that nothing they do will impact how quickly Labour get rid of him but that they can cement the public view of him early on, they should go as hard as possible right away. If they worry about their own troubles down the road when they might prefer Corbyn as leader vs another candidate, maybe they need to let him secure his position as leader and leave it to his internal opponents to create trouble.

Oliver_PB said:

This, in my view, is the big lesson for the left to learn from the right: be absolutely ruthless and disciplined in taking down your opponents, don't try to take the higher ground. Of course, it's not as easy when you don't have The Sun, The Telegraph and The Daily Mail on your side to do the dirty work, but it's necessary.

The Conservative Party and its members are also helped by their sheer hyper-partisanship, a loathing of Labour that transcends any political views and an obsession with power. There's a reason that Osborne willing to burn £500m of the public purse to win a political point and introduce brutal benefit sanctions that do little except hurt the poor and most vulnerable in society for little more than a headline or two.

You still believe the benefits culture helps the poor? I would have thought it would obvious by now to everyone that it has a negative effect on working class communities.

''The trouble with Horizon physics and astronomy...''

The general conclusion seems to be that our already unimaginably vast and complex universe is more unimaginably vast and complex than we previously thought. Way more. Unimaginably more.

Which is fine as far as it goes but....

HurstLlama said:

Oliver_PB said:

This, in my view, is the big lesson that the left: be absolutely ruthless and disciplined in taking down your opponents, don't try to take the higher ground. Of course, it's not as easy when you don't have The Sun, The Telegraph and The Daily Mail on your side to do the dirty work, but it's necessarily.

The Conservative Party and its members are also helped by their sheer hyper-partisanship, a loathing of Labour that transcends any political views and an obsession with power. There's a reason that Osborne willing to burn £500m of the public purse to win a political point.

Had a good lunch, Mr. PB?

Wow, hyper-partisanship, that's a new high for hyperbole from you. I grant you the loathing bit though.

frpenkridge said:

The trouble with Horizon physics and astronomy programmes is that they would rather spend their budget sending a team over to California or South America to film a scientist driving his car up a mountain than to make a serious attempt to simplify difficult topics. For all their resources, they fall way behind 5-minute U tube videos on the structure of the atom, for example.

Surely the structure of atoms is straightforward, even I sort of understand it - neutrons protons and electrons whizzing round. Its when someone tries to explain sub atomic particles, quarks and strings and whatnot that complexity really sets in and peoples eyes glaze over..

CD13 said:

Sorry to go off topic but there’s a programme on Multiverses on BBC2 this coming Wednesday. Horizon does dumb down a lot but surely they can’t mess this one up.

There are several varieties of multiverse but they must all confront the issue of infinity.
There are an infinite number of me writing these very words in an infinite number of universes. William of Ockham (or rather an infinite number of William of Ockhams) must be spinning in their graves, but it does explain why this universe could be exquisitely made for human existence.

Will they add in ten or eleven dimensions and have a go at when time began. I’m not convinced by Hawking’s analogy of the South Pole – where you can’t go any further south so that’s where south begins. If you go below the globe, there’s still an infinite space for south.

If nothing else, it will mess up your head as effectively as infinities mess up mathematics.

OK, I'll get my anorak.

Do you mean that at least some of the other you's writing those words in other universes are necessarily writing in a universe that isn't exquisitely made for human existence?

SeanT said:

Jeremy Corbyn doesn't need framing. He does it all by himself. He autoframes. That is his peculiar genius, and Labour's specific nightmare.

The Tories are going to present him as soft on terror - and all they need do is quote his own words back at him.

And if the polls are to be believed, the day after the 14th anniversary of 9/11, Labour will elect as leader someone who thinks that the death of the mastermind behind that attack was a "tragedy".

AnneJGP said:

CD13 said:

Sorry to go off topic but there’s a programme on Multiverses on BBC2 this coming Wednesday. Horizon does dumb down a lot but surely they can’t mess this one up.

There are several varieties of multiverse but they must all confront the issue of infinity.
There are an infinite number of me writing these very words in an infinite number of universes. William of Ockham (or rather an infinite number of William of Ockhams) must be spinning in their graves, but it does explain why this universe could be exquisitely made for human existence.

Will they add in ten or eleven dimensions and have a go at when time began. I’m not convinced by Hawking’s analogy of the South Pole – where you can’t go any further south so that’s where south begins. If you go below the globe, there’s still an infinite space for south.

If nothing else, it will mess up your head as effectively as infinities mess up mathematics.

OK, I'll get my anorak.

Do you mean that at least some of the other you's writing those words in other universes are necessarily writing in a universe that isn't exquisitely made for human existence?

How would a human know whether their universe was exquisitely made for human existence? In what way would their experience of life differ from a human living in one that was?

taffys said:

''The trouble with Horizon physics and astronomy...''

The general conclusion seems to be that our already unimaginably vast and complex universe is more unimaginably vast and complex than we previously thought. Way more. Unimaginably more.

Which is fine as far as it goes but....

The best explanation of the size of the universe, at least the best that is understandable by normal people, probably comes from that remarkable publication, The Encyclopedia Galatica and it goes like this:

“Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space...”

CarlottaVance said:

SimonStClare said:

Much as I admire Andrew Sparrow, surely the Faslane debacle has been an ongoing situation for the past year and has more to do with Scotland and the SNP than Jeremy Corbyn?

I agree.

SNP 'You never keep your referendum promises'

UK: 'Here's one we made - Faslane gets all the UK subs'

SNP: 'Its nae fair, we dinna want it....just gie us the money'

There's no pleasing some folk.......

Nasty Tories just want to be loved

richardDodd said:

I bet the people in Faslane and area who are going to be employed for the foreseeable are delighted about Osbornes announcement..

LOL, on the ball as ever

Plato said:

I will keep a watch on PEye next week for it. I'd forgotten about the Times saying JPII was a non-Catholic Pope.

The Times isn't quite as bad as the Gruaniad for spelling errors, but it's getting there. Subs seem to be in very short supply across newspapers today. The Mail regularly has double-pastes of text.

I don't think sub-editors exist any more, at least not in the old sense. Papers are coming to resemble blogs that chum together and buy a photocopier.

If five of us got together, set up a website, cut-and-pasted Reuters/AP articles and filled out the rest with catastrophically dumbfuck opinion pieces ("Patrick Stewart: totally over the top – but impossible not to love"), we'd produce something that was indistinguishable from the Grauniad or Torygraph.

HurstLlama said:

taffys said:

''The trouble with Horizon physics and astronomy...''

The general conclusion seems to be that our already unimaginably vast and complex universe is more unimaginably vast and complex than we previously thought. Way more. Unimaginably more.

Which is fine as far as it goes but....

The best explanation of the size of the universe, at least the best that is understandable by normal people, probably comes from that remarkable publication, The Encyclopedia Galatica and it goes like this:

“Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space...”

Some comments on this site are so amazingly primitive that the authors must still think that digital watches are a pretty neat idea.

The announcement is a simple one for the government of the UK to make. There is nothing machiavellian about it. The whole issue is totally mainstream and could have easily been made by say Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling.

Nightmarish image of a pallid Osborne against a sinister black military background. I've always liked him but this cockiness is alarming.

HurstLlama said:

taffys said:

''The trouble with Horizon physics and astronomy...''

The general conclusion seems to be that our already unimaginably vast and complex universe is more unimaginably vast and complex than we previously thought. Way more. Unimaginably more.

Which is fine as far as it goes but....

The best explanation of the size of the universe, at least the best that is understandable by normal people, probably comes from that remarkable publication, The Encyclopedia Galatica and it goes like this:

“Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space...”

That quote works equally well for Scotland, at least if you're walking it. You reach Edinburgh, which everyone thinks must be near the end, only to find there are hundreds of miles still to go to reach that pimple on Scotland's bum called John O'Groats. (*)

When I had my recent injury the nearest A&E was three hours away by car. Scotland's mind-boggingly vast, albeit beautiful.

(*) John O'Groats is an absolutely hideous place. Anyone sane would end their walk or cycle at the lighthouse on Duncasby Head ...

JosiasJessop said:

HurstLlama said:

frpenkridge said:

The trouble with Horizon physics and astronomy programmes is that they would rather spend their budget sending a team over to California or South America to film a scientist driving his car up a mountain than to make a serious attempt to simplify difficult topics. For all their resources, they fall way behind 5-minute U tube videos on the structure of the atom, for example.

Surely the structure of atoms is straightforward, even I sort of understand it - neutrons protons and electrons whizzing round. Its when someone tries to explain sub atomic particles, quarks and strings and whatnot that complexity really sets in and peoples eyes glaze over..

At a basic level it is straightforward: protons, neutrons and electrons. However isotopes are slightly more complex, and it took me rather too long at school to get my head around valances.

So even the basics hide significant (but beautiful) complexity.

I've never really understood string theory, even after trying on several occasions. That is, aside from one glorious evening sitting at the bar in the Baron of Beef, when an astrophysicist took me through it, and I understood. It was a magical moment. It made sense.

By the time I had sobered up the next morning, that moment of clarity had disappeared in a mist of strange quarks, muons and gluons.

I think this holds true for virtually everything: basic levels are simple, but go deeper - as you must to be an expert - and a world of complexity lurks waiting for you.

So sub-atomic physics is only comprehensible when you are pissed. That might explain a few things but one would have thought the subject would be more popular. "Six pints of HSB please, Miss, I have a lecture to go to this afternoon"

Oliver_PB said:

SeanT said:

nihilistic horror.

There's a lot of words you could use to describe ISIS's actions, but "nihilistic" certainly isn't one of them!

I know what you mean, but arguably SeanT uses the word correctly here. They won't be happy until there is only one person left, who will then die. Like Nazism, ISIS seems to be a credo whose idee fixe is making larger and larger categories of people to kill. It's the universal enemy.

People once pondered the paradox of the universal solvent: what bottle would you keep it in? Similarly, ISIS is the universal enemy: sooner or later, it will try to kill you, regardless of your stance. It's an expression of the mammalian urge to kill, untrammeled by conscience or empathy

Mr Llama,

“Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space...”

If Horizon is on form, that explanation will take you most of the way through the programme.

Luckyguy1983 said:

I don't see that spending 500 million on a worthless figleaf is terribly likely to undermine the opposition.

It is if the popular view is that renewing Trident is not a 'worthless fig leaf....'

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2013/07/16/public-support-nuclear-weapons/

HurstLlama said:

AnneJGP said:

CD13 said:

Sorry to go off topic but there’s a programme on Multiverses on BBC2 this coming Wednesday. Horizon does dumb down a lot but surely they can’t mess this one up.

There are several varieties of multiverse but they must all confront the issue of infinity.
There are an infinite number of me writing these very words in an infinite number of universes. William of Ockham (or rather an infinite number of William of Ockhams) must be spinning in their graves, but it does explain why this universe could be exquisitely made for human existence.

Will they add in ten or eleven dimensions and have a go at when time began. I’m not convinced by Hawking’s analogy of the South Pole – where you can’t go any further south so that’s where south begins. If you go below the globe, there’s still an infinite space for south.

If nothing else, it will mess up your head as effectively as infinities mess up mathematics.

OK, I'll get my anorak.

Do you mean that at least some of the other you's writing those words in other universes are necessarily writing in a universe that isn't exquisitely made for human existence?

How would a human know whether their universe was exquisitely made for human existence? In what way would their experience of life differ from a human living in one that was?

Well, the statement - that this universe is very precise about factors that make it possible for life of the animal/human sort to arise - is quite commonly heard.

I doubt (from my position of total ignorance) that any one factor could be different without affecting at least some of the others. Too far off-beam & we couldn't be here, I gather (but something else with cognitive powers might be?).

But it's quite easy to see ways in which experience of life could differ - even the difference between a temperate climate like ours & a hostile one like Antarctica or the Middle East carries an indication. I shudder with horror at the idea of 30-degree temps, never mind 40-degs.