Categories
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Nick Palmer says both sides in the referendum have got to s
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Nick Palmer says both sides in the referendum have got to stop sounding so gloomy
It’s been widely observed that the referendum campaign is a contest between negatives. Vote Remain because leaving would reduce the country to smouldering ashes, or Vote Leave because remaining would doom us to surrender to Brussels bureaucrats forever. The impression given is that we have a choice of extremely bearish scenarios, with little hope either way.
0
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
Cameron has already massively overplayed his hand. The people he needs to persuade just aren't persuaded that we NEED to be in the EU, making it better. We can walk away, and the rest of the EU can then make it as crap as they want...
But a bigger problem to someone going positive is the Labour leadership, as only they can go positive and try to reach large numbers of people. If they are indeed keen on the EU for positive reasons, I've not seen it very often, so either Nick is wrong, which I have no reason to believe, or they have deliberately played it down as they don't think their voters feel the same way. I recall my impression of the sides at the last Euros was that the Tories and Labour both tried to present as though they didn't like the EU, presumably as that was more popular among their own voters. So suddenly getting positive about the EU, rather than just 'Well, we may as well stay as it is too big a risk to leave' would seem less effective than it might once have been.
A few fairly positive speeches are being made (see e.g. the one linked to by Alan Johnson in the header - click on the word "speeches") but the press don't think they're very interesting, so they're not reported.
Who are the best-known people who think you should vote Leave?
1. Nigel Farage
2. Boris Johnson
3. George Galloway
4. Donald Trump
Do you trust the judgment of any of them in deciding what's safest for Britain?
Lance Forman was on BBC News and put forward the view that the positive side for out is that if we want the 21st century to be Britain's then we need to be nibble and be out.
Regarding Nick's "This means giving Alan Johnson a prominent role. He’s making plenty of speeches but they aren’t being reported." problem is that Alan is very short of the understanding of what the positives of the EU are beyond the few bullet points he is given by the PR. When challenged Alan does not have the depth of knowledge to defend each facile argument he makes be it on the "3 million" or the "security" or "immigration". But as I do want LEAVE I would welcome Alan to be made the leading man....
PS Has Alan actually made positive points for REMAIN?
Nonetheless, Remain need to do something to counter this, or they will lose.
For the first time Remain are realising its not the foregone conclusion they presumed. Don't sound so negative, says Nick, so what are the positives for Remain?
Once again I'll tell you, Leave wins on a small turnout, lethargy and complacency loses it for the Inners.
It's superbly acted. Jonathan Pryce, Lena Headey, and Maisie Williams are especially good.
It's very gripping. Scene after scene comes off well, with high production values. But.....
The brutality is really turned up to 11. Some viewers may actually cease to care very much about the outcome. Season 5 comes close to glorifying cruelty, IMHO. Horrible things happen in the books, but several characters do have redeeming features, which just aren't shown in the series.
This is where Nick loses it, writes a thread header beseeching people to be positive then immediately reverts to type. Pathetic, quite frankly.
I have to disagree with SeanF though, the show has characters with some sympathetic moments and traits that aren't in the books, simply by virtue of us seeing things from their perspectives in a way you don't in the books. Counter to that it is more horrifying to witness some of the more brutal moments when depicted on screen, but then they were at the point in the books when the horror and brutality seemed at its peak in many ways (it was toward the end of book 5, where the series is and is slightly past in some ways, that I felt glimmers of hope began to reemerge).
One group says the EU is horrible, but they'll do horrible things to us if we Leave. The other says, the EU is horrible, so we should Leave.
Edit- oops, why didn't I keep my fat fingers still?
On the other hand we have Cameron and Osborne, who are as unreliable and treacherous as they come. And Corbyn, who used to spend most of his time stabbing his own government in the back. Presumably Miliband is also in favour of REMAIN.
The problem is that the question is meaningless. Those who vote for LEAVE have no idea what alternative we may end up with. While those who vote for REMAIN have no idea what sort of EU they are voting for.
Whatever the result, it will be judged a great victory for Mr Cameron, who will define for us what the voting meant, and then act accordingly. Just as he chooses.
The whole thing is a waste of time and money.
https://twitter.com/NadineDorriesMP/status/713688248229437440
Around 1,000 British girls face harm from the 'abhorrent' practice of breast ironing, ministers have warned. In the brutal procedure, hot objects [stones, a hammer or a spatula] are used to pound and beat girls' breasts to stop them growing in the belief it makes them less desirable and discourages premarital pregnancy. Breast ironing originated in Cameroon, where it affects as many as one in four.
It also takes place in Nigeria, Benin and Chad.
This week Jake Berry, the Conservative MP for Rossendale & Darwen, said he was shocked to learn girls in west African communities in Birmingham and London were victims too.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3510492/British-girls-young-10-face-harm-breast-ironing-stones-heated-hot-coals-ritual-imported-west-Africa.html#ixzz441PRxfRy
Brussels airport suicide bomber Ibrahim El-Bakraoui, 29, was deported from Turkey not once, but twice, in the past year, and sent back to Europe.
However, because Belgian authorities told Turkey Najim Laachraoui's record was "clean", he wasn't deported.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3509299/Belgium-terror-incompetence-laid-bare-THREE-Brussels-suicide-bombers-flagged-Turkish-authorities-left-commit-mass-murder-Europe.html
Dupont et Dupond on the case again.
If the Turks tell you they think somebody is a terrorist and he isn't a Kurd, he's a F##KIN TERRORIST...and a dangerous one.
There's a gap in the market for something like Louise Mensch's Menshn so it's a shame she chose the wrong partner for it.
Following Twitter outrages are a very entertaining thing indeed.
I agree, but at the moment they are making big bucks out of it all...and also they have got fingers in other pies if Facebook starts to drop off.
Twitter has a load of journos and broke Millennials.
It seems I wasn't alone in suggesting here last night that the bookies were being a little generous in offering 5/1 against England winning tonight's friendly international against Germany, their time-honoured enemy. These odds have in the main been trimmed by a not insubstantial 20% to 4/1. As a consequence, the better value in now possibly to be found by backing SkyBet's 13/2 against England winning by the single goal - it seems most unlikely that they will win by two or more goals ..... miracles take a little longer.
I have, however invested a crispy oncer at 16/1, also with SkyBet on the exact final score being Germany 1 - 2 England. An unlikely outcome certainly, perhaps a 9/1 or 10/1 shot, but hardly a 16/1 chance in my view.
DYOR.
Blackburn is of course right that having argued for a positive campaign I added what I thought was an effective negative message, if we were going to do that. We professionals try to swing both ways
Both sides in the Brexit debate are trying to take something from it.
@JananGanesh: People think Katie Hopkins, Littlejohn etc are the columnists who "say what others won't dare" but, really, it's Parris.
But the definitive comment is perhaps this
@JohnRentoul: The case for Boris. @iainmartin1 puts it rather better than I did https://t.co/MafnoGdRHz https://t.co/ZdMOVCQMOl
Remind me again of what I said about Sri Lanka? Could I finally have made the right call in a cricket match?!
I actually can't think of a worse way to run a business than Twitter has been over the last few years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milo_Yiannopoulos
http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/03/25/i-just-launched-the-best-podcast-ever-you-guys/
Also Nick, Labour needs to be electable or every subject is going to be "a sordid squabble between rival right-wingers".
----------
The challenge of creating a massive safe space online is the competing goals of creating a zone where anyone can speak and where anyone feels comfortable speaking. Perhaps the de-verify is a compromise: Yiannopoulos is still allowed to say whatever he wants, but the world also suspects that Twitter would rather he didn’t say it.
http://fusion.net/story/254067/milo-yiannopoulos-twitter-deverification/
I agree Twitter may be in trouble. I hope it recovers. I like the minimalist approach, and it's much more my style than Facebook.
How exactly did the Treaty of Rome protect the Falklands from invasion in 1982? I always understood that we had to send a British only Task Force to evict the Argentine invasion. But maybe Mr Johnson knows differently? I also thought that one of our Treaty of Rome signatories sold arms (Exocets) to the Argentinians that were used against us in the Falklands.
The WhatsApp approach was brilliant, make this thing 99c. Its basically nothing, but you already have been invested in it. Also the really crap freemium games. I hate them, but I completely understand why they are successful, getting people on the drip drip.
Mr. Urquhart, free-to-play games are the work of Satan (it's also a description as accurate as joyriding, or happy-slapping).
Mr. Betting, well said.
And they're all full of tosh. It's pay to win, DLC-tastic.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-35905064
Military wing of the Labour Party still cannot accept they lost the last election.
“It’s worth mentioning two aspects from that campaign which resulted in an overwhelming majority to stay in the European Community. The first is to expose the nonsense that one sometimes hears from the Eurosceptics that the British people thought they were voting for a market. All the debate on both sides in 1975 was about political union. Indeed, the creation of a European Parliament was central to the argument.”
So what is the evidence that political union was the main theme of the 1975 referendum?
Here is a link to the text from the Government official leaflet.
http://www.harvard-digital.co.uk/euro/pamphlet.htm
It has 50 mentions of “market” and has no mention of the phrase “political union” it is just not there.
This is a blatent re-writing history. But since no one notices Alan Johnson, no one objects.
That said, one of the most irritating things about the Schwarzenegger advert is that he advocates using double the amount of resources (or more) necessary for any given military task, which is simply profligate idiocy.
On strikes: it is not necessarily unheard of for the NUT to advocate strike action.
Yes - he is just lying. Nothing changes. Lies 40 years ago, lies now.