Will this man make me £10,000?
November 14th, 2008
My first 2012 bet: Jon Huntsman at 200/1
When the first 2012 White House race betting prices were being compiled last week many of the names that came up were ones we were familiar with already - 2008 contenders and those who had been tipped at one stage or another as John McCain’s running mate.
One person who has hardly been mentioned and, indeed, only one bookie is quoting a price is Jon Huntsman, governor of Utah and someone who from reports was playing a leading role in the post-election meeting of the Republican Governors Association.
Just read this from the influential Politico commentator, Jonathan Martin: “…to chat with him here at the RGA and then see him address a room full of reporters, it seems that Utah Gov. Jon M. Huntsman Jr. may very well be in the presidential mix in 2012..Huntsman, 48, cuts an impressive figure and has a fascinating personal and political story to tell, including the sort of foreign policy background most governors lack. The scion of a prominent Mormon family, he served as U.S. ambassador to Singapore for Bush 41 when he was in his early 30s, did trade stints in the Commerce Department and was a deputy U.S. trade representative under the current Bush, overseeing trade with Africa and Asia…Fluent in Mandarin Chinese — a few words of which he put on display to an unexpectant press corps — Huntsman is the father of seven, including two adopted girls from China and India.”
What marks Huntsman out for me is the way he is thinking seriously about the challenges facing his party and is proposing solutions. A key issue is broadening the appeal to younger voters.
The Politico report quotes him directly: “..We as Republicans can’t shy away from speaking the word ‘environment,’ and we shouldn’t shy away from speaking the words ‘climate change,’” Huntsman told reporters at a press conference this afternoon. “When you’ve got a body of science that already is rendering certain judgements about what is happening in our world, for us to shy away, say it doesn’t matter as an issue, I think is foolhardy, it’s short-sighted and it’s bound to do us damage in the longer-term.”
When you have gone through a mauling on the scale that the Republicans saw last week it creates an opportunity for those who can see their way through the problems and show that they have the potential to bring in change. Huntsman seems to offer that.
I’m convinced that the GOP nominee next time will be of Obama’s generation or younger and that it won’t be Sarah Palin. If she puts her hat into the ring she will fall badly in the first primary test - the Iowa caucuses.
You can get 66/1 on Huntsman for the nomination and 200/1 on him becoming president. The latter is where I’ve invested my £50.
Mike Smithson
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Good find. I’d like to hear a bit more about him from some of the US posters. Presidents normally win a second term, barring an accident. However, even if 2012 looked like a lost cause I think he would see it as trial run for 2016. 66/1 to win the nomination is very attractive.
You seem to have whoopsified the link with green splodges rampantly.
No.
Second!
he sounds great.
Depends how strong the evangelical voice is in the Republican party in 2012. I really can’t see a Mormon surviving the primary process if there is a comparable Christian candidate, and I’m sure that plenty of possible Republican candidates are getting right with Jesus just in case their name gets dropped…
No.
But if Betfair get off their arses and add him to the Next President list we might be able to start trading
You can get 66/1 on Huntsman for the nomination and 200/1 on him becoming president. The latter is where I’ve invested my £50.
You ruined that sentence with the word “latter” instead of “former”.
I’m convinced that the GOP nominee next time will be of Obama’s generation or younger and that it won’t be Sarah Palin. If she puts her hat into the ring she will fall badly in the first primary test - the Iowa caucuses.
Who??
BBC: A programme looking at Margaret Thatcher’s impact on Wales broke impartiality and accuracy guidelines, a BBC committee has ruled…
It also ruled the presenter, Huw Edwards, should not have urged viewers to vote in forthcoming elections
Nuff said!
The cuddly Beeb breakfast bunnies opening with the story that the Govt. was warned in a written report to Margaret Hodge about failings in Harringay social services six months before the death of Baby P…
Surely the nomination bet is better value, given the low likelihood of the GOP beating incumbent Obama?
Another Mormon? I don’t think so.
1/9-Do presidents always win a second term?
Say since WW2:
Truman-no
Ike-Yes
JFK-*
LBJ-*yes
Nixon-Yes
Ford-*No
Carter-No
Reagan-Yes
Bush I-No
Clinton-Yes
Bush II-Yes
I would not say conclusive. There are many imponderables so far and my guess at the moment would be to bet against Obama as that is where the best odds are given media hysteria, sorry euphoria. If odds subsequently change then you can always get out.
Consider Obama 2008 52.6%
Bush 2004 50.7%
Difference 1.9%, hardly a huge difference in anyone’s book and a fairly muted call for “change”.
I accept Clinton in 1996 from 1992 increased his margin of victory 49.2%-40.7% from 43%-37.5% or 8.5% from 5.5% though, but his breadth was wider. He won 31 states+DC in 1996 and 32+DC in 1992. Obama won 28+DC.
England bowlers tormenting Indian batsmen this morning. They can’t decide whether to hit them for 4 or 6.
Get yourself a few bob on Tim Pawlenty, too….
Good luck with your bet.
And the big UK politicial story today is surely poor old Osborne’s fate.
For example
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2008/11/14/osborne-is-doomed-115875-20893381/
Headline: Osborne is “doomed”.
Or as PBC’s famous Martin Day would say, DOOMED, mate, DOOMED!!!
14. No it’s Labour ignoring concerns about Haringey 6 months before Baby P died. Nothing about Osborne on television yet again. It’s a Westminster story.
The nomination bet is only better value if you think that in the event of him being nominated he would never drop below 2-1 to win overall. The point is that you trade.
15 Something in the quotes caused my post on this to disappear into the ether
- Steve Richards has a good column on PMQs and Haringey. What I found particularly interesting was that he suggests Ed Balls announcement was driven by Downing Street advisers monitoring political blogs and reaction on BBC (Politics Show & Radio 5 live I assume). He says Brown panicked because of reaction on blogs like this and BBC that he had shown himself up.
If blogs are indeed becoming influential in driving short term tactics then I expect we will see more astroturfers trying to influence those - which reduces their effectiveness to parties as a gauge of informed opinion.
http://tinyurl.com/5ez5w9
11. After 8 years of Bush it wasnt exactly a massive vote swing was it.
BUT, the USA in 4 years could be an even more benign environment for Obama if he uses the goodwill right. If he doesnt those odds I was seeking from anyone on Obama not getting a 2nd term would have been interesting.
If ever there was a thread for Roger to make the first post, this was it!
Seriously though, the key question at this stage has to be whether a potential candidate is serious about running. Any that are, and would stand a half-decent chance, shouldn’t be 200/1. The Mormon issue will work for and against, as it did for Mitt Romney. For one thing, it gives the media a hook on which to hang the candidate; one which if he is good enough (as Obama was), can be used to advertise rather than to stereotype. On the other hand of course, there remains fairly widespread scepticism of Mormons.
As for the election overall, the list Peter2 produced at [11] is perhaps worth splitting into two - those elected in their own right and those who became president on the death or resignation of their predecessor. Of those who were directly elected first:
Ike - 2 full terms
Kennedy - assassinated during first term
Nixon - 2 election wins; resigned during second term
Carter - 1 win; defeated in re-election bid
Reagan - 2 full terms
GHW Bush - 1 win; defeated in re-election bid
Clinton - 2 full terms
GW Bush - 2 full terms.
There’s a very good record of this type of president going on to win a second term. Not only that but every one who won a second term did so by more than they won their first. Still, all the value will be on the GOP side of the debate because that’s where the uncertainty is.
Barack Obama has a difficult task ahead. He is bound to make some mis-steps and he has a thin executive track record to date. It must be entirely possible that he fails, especially in such difficult times.
Given that a presidential election is one against one, if the Republicans can find the right candidate, the chance of a Republican victory this far out must be better than the implied one in three chance built into the gap between Mr Huntsman’s odds of nomination and his odds of becoming president in 2012. And if Mr Huntsman were to be nominated, surely there would be a chance at some point to hedge at more profitable rates than that. So I too would bet on the next president rather than next candidate, if Mr Huntsman were to be one of my horses.
I find this market an interesting one, in that current outsiders must stand a much better chance in the Republican primary season next time round than is usual. The party has just suffered a disaster and there is a dearth of talent. There will be core vote candidates (Palin and Huckabee - and I would rather have money on Huckabee than Palin), but it has to be far more likely that the Republicans would go for someone with a realistic chance of winning over the middle ground. That will need a candidate who accepts the changed terms of trade, is capable of reaching out to the business community as well as the church community and who can articulate the concerns of the equivalents of John Howard’s battlers.
I know nothing about Mr Huntsman, but in this peculiar market, current lack of name recognition may well be a plus. The one quotation given above does suggest that he might be starting to think about the right things. 200-1 doesn’t look stupid, but I would want to look in detail at other current outsider candidates and have bets on quite a few of them. It’s at times like now that I wish I had more time to do in depth research.
Perhaps the most encouraging event this week has been the Post Office decision. At last the Government has done what is clearly correct and sod the rules or set down procedures. Is credit due to Mandy?
Shame this new way of doing things was too late for Baby P.
Was there ever any greater stain on this blair’s govt than the words “Margaret Hodge - Minister for Children”?
Confirming my last post, Today’s interviews re warning letter in Haringey case every one seems to be saying is that “proper procedures were followed”.
22 - Those of us who live in Islington considered that to be a particularly sick joke.
8. Somehow it seems very appropriate that the vile Hodge is associated with this story.
23. Procedures are crap end of! I read something about Haringay wanted her to keep the child she has just had to protect her human rights. Says it all. With this govt we are living in 1984! Eric Blair - tony blair!!
15. The story is in The Guardian. They talk more tactfully about a “change of role” for Osborne. He admits that he hasn’t been quick enough on his feet, apparently.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/nov/14/george-osborne-economy-recession
27 - That is obviously the top story Ermintrude, much above Ministers knowing about the major concerns forwarded to Ministers about Haringey council months before the death of Baby P.
Mormon is the big questionmark. And though we can say ‘who thought in 2000 there’d be a black President’ I remain very skeptical. Still, at 66 and 200 it’s hard to go wrong.
23 The more that is revealed - warning letters, whistleblower under injunction - the more you wonder why Ed Balls hadn’t already set up an independent enquiry into Haringey and needed the spur of overcoming his PM’s dismal reaction to the Leader of the Oppositions questions to act.
I was thinking of Hodge and Islington when I was watching the PMQs and how none of them ever pay, going spare over Mcbean not answering and thinking how much I wanted to batter the ****. Then Cameron went for him.
Beautiful moment.
Where did you find the 200/1, Mike?
23, 30 - Gordon Brown should be terrified of this story. Hundreds of thousands of voters, especially women, will be following this story more attentively than any story since the 10p tax row. It is real life, it is devastatingly sad and if there is any suggestion that the Government in some way failed, it is going to have to dig deep into a great big bucket of sorry. “Proper procedures were followed” is not going to do the trick.
8- begs the question of who knew what and when? Did Brown dodge DC’s demand for an independent inquiry on Wednesday because he knew ministers had been tipped off and did nothing? Did back-benchers heckle Cameron because THEY knew? Was Nick Palmer smearing Cameron on here because HE knew - and the whole PLP thought they could deflect attention and keep it quiet that ministers had failed to act?
i have £1650/25 on the Republican nomination,thank you Mike. how very exciting!
Oh dear oh dear, this is another major problem they’ve created for themselves over the last few years. Haringey social services are obviously in a mess, yet the government has ignored it, why is that exactly?
Jon Huntsman is 100-1 at Ladbrokes for next President in 2012 and they’ve closed him on the Republican nomination.
37. Ladbrokes are no fun anymore…
27. The Guardian doesn’t count for much. When one of the news networks start running with it then it may gain some traction. A few lines in a low circulation newspaper gives this story something of a niche feeling. Maybe it will explode again and Cameron will move him but at the moment there is no imperative for him to do so.
Didn’t the Government reorganise the whole of Education / Children Services throughout the country because of the the Victoria Climbie case? And yet we have this in the borough where the original death occured. I do not think “procedures were followed” should be any defence. Not least by so called Directors and the like. Their job is to ensure that the procedures are actually appropriate.
23 I was thinking along the same lines.
The enquiries were originally a local one, which was too close to home and Lammings, which was supposed to be looking at the wider social care arrangements in the country. Neither were likely to involve the Gov in this case.
The new enquiry might. But had Balls avoided one and had the previous complaint come out [which he must have known about] it would be very damaging.
Hewitt was informed. She passed it to Balls’ Dept in February who then replied in March by passing it on to someone else.
Hewitt has passed it to Balls and now Balls is passing it to ‘officials’ saying he never saw the letter. Now Balls is speaking up against the council because he is in a difficult position.
re 21. I don’t get this post office thing. I used to have to go in one every year to tax my car - now you can do that online.
I suppose that if you were running a small mail-order business then having the facility to post your products locally is quite useful.
Stamps? Buy them once a year for Christmas and you can do that at Tesco.
Paying bills? All now direct debit or online.
Letters? Don’t send them by snail-mail.
So what’s the point?
17 re blogs and astroturfers. Some have wondered for some time whether the number of Conservative partisans here trashing Brown at PMQs each and every week is entirely unrelated to Francis Maude.
Yesterday’s Daily Star condemned both leaders and all MPs. The Star may be closest to the public mood.
21 The Post Office decision makes a welcome change from Blair’s programme of axing Post Office services then wondering why Post Offices were less profitable.
The coverage of Baby P dominated Radio 4 news this morning. Apparently a social worker involved with Baby P has been in injuncted. Her lawyer was on the radio giving general details of a letter written to Patricia Hewitt’s department which seems to just have been duck-shoved between various government departments.
Everyone saying that correct procedures followed but as Humpries(?) said, if the correct procedures were followed why was a vunerable baby battered to death?
imho this story has the capacity to overshadow all others at the moment.
44. It is getting bigger and bigger as more government ministers and departments become involved. All the correct procedures were followed, yet a baby is still dead. How can that happen unless the procedures are wrong?
43 As someone who pops up regularly to trash Gordon Brown I can assure you I have nothing to do with Maude.
I think most of us who post regularly can make some assessments about each other and we can be pretty disparaging about the people who turn up at certain times and astroturf.
Although I did note how quickly our own NickP can on line to give a Labour perspective.
I think it would be pretty silly of the parties to assume any blog is wholly representataive of public opinion.
34. I bet there is at least one complaint letter for every social services department in every local authority every year and probably more for places with many problems like Haringey. The rate of false positives if one took each one seriously would be ridiculous. While the narrative is bad for the government, it would be ridiculous to apportion blame on the basis of this letter. It did seem to be getting a lot of coverage on the BBC this morning.
44. It shows how right DC was to persist with the issue at PMQs.
42. Post offices very popular with elderly Labour voters–more social servive than business. Closing them was just another stupid move from the government’s electoral point of view. More evidence of Mandy clearing the decks of anything that would directly lose them votes.
re 11 Truman didn’t stand for a second term. Although constitutionally the 22nd amendment didn’t apply to him perhaps he thought that with the country deciding 8 years was enough he would call it a day.
42. Old people generally aren’t technologically savvy or terribly mobile. It’s handy for them to have bit of a one stop shop close to their home
The Brown nosing Nobel prize winning economist was on the Today programme this morning. Apart from the “Gordon is saviour of the world” moments he sounds, Nobel prize notwithstanding, like a complete fruitcake.
He was calling for a fiscal stimulus this year of 4% of GDP for the US and about the same here. That’s £60 billion.
Made for News of the World:
Sally C denies affair with Tory Grandee Francis Maude
53 - “Francis Maude was unavailable for comment”.
So did anybody find the mythical 200-1?
John Huntsman sounds like he has been looking at the unexpected, relative success of Mike Huckabee’s primary campaign. Huckabee also spoke of the need for action on climate change and on some issues was arguably to the left of Obama (whose policies are still quite murky).
52. Probably the reason that Krugman isnt on Obama’s economic transition team. A good economist - his economic geography/international trade stuff was good. He made a bit of a name for himself with the Asian crisis. But he has become a bit mass-market. He is right that the recession will be very bad though, even if I dont agree with his solutions.
ToryDiary: “The RSPCA wouldn’t have visited this flat 60 times and done sod all”
Tory Diary discussion is a quote from an article in The Sun.
Quite inflammatory, but a telling a point.
The overwhelming emphais is on the preservation of the family. We have gone full circle from whipping kids out on the say so of a doctor with a theory, to one where removing one is the very last thing on an agenda which takes months and years to work through.
55 No, but I got 66/1 thanks, Whelan. Shadsy seems to have run for cover now though.
No cullions that lad.
I think that the ‘Proper Procedures were followed’ line is lethal, particularly from some of the grotesque automata occupying middle ranking positions in this government. If a child is dead then the procedures were clearly not ‘proper’, even if they are the ones in force. There’s a difference, and the person on the street can see that, even if government apparatchiks cannot.
The type of candidate the Republicans choose in 2012 could be heavily influenced by the mid terms in 2010. If the Republicans make substantial progress in 2010 winning back a swath of seats in the house and a few seats in the senate, then they are more likely to return to their comfort zone and pick an indentikit right winger such as Palin or Huckabee based on the feeling that America is still inherently a strongly conservative nation.
However if they struggle in 2010 then the mood is likely to shift and they are more likely to go for a centrist candidate which is where someone like Huntsman, Crist or Jindal comes in.
In essence therefore in betting on this field you are also taking a punt on what is likely to happen in 2010. Looking at 2010, this far out, I would suggest that Republicans will struggle to get anywhere in the Senate (looking at the seats being contested) and may only make limited gains in the house. However 2 years is a long time in politics and if the recession is worse then, than it is now then my thesis will probably be wrong.
I would like to echo the response of my close friend Francis, [ to me, Franny], a man who I have never met and say ‘No comment’.
57 Krugman is a newspaper columnist and was a prominent backer of Hillary Clinton (and especially her health plan). These facts may have counted against him.
It is getting serious:
John Lewis Department store sales down 9.7% last week which includes a new stores and on line business (still positive at +12.3%). Most individual stores down 15% on last year.
Waitrose +0.6%
Very strong intervention by John Major on the economy:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/7726959.stm
Since leaving the House, Major speaks rarely, and powerfully. I’m convinced it was his intervention during Brown’s “phoney” election that punctured the balloon back then.
63. Yes, as I said mass-market. NY Times. Backing Hilary wont have helped him with Obama, but unless he was very partisan (I didnt read his stuff so I dont know), he would be seen as a potential economic adviser to a Democrat Pres. (But I’d prefer if he wasnt).
On Ermitrudes Osborne posts the Times says Osborne will not be moved - though they headline it David Osborne (is he planning another name change?)
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article5142264.ece
Haven’t seen these posted from yesterday
Fenside, Boston DC. (Boston and Skegness) BNP gain from Boston By-Pass. Con vote 18% -1, Lab 11% -11, LD 4% from nowhere, BNP 43% from nowhere, UKIP 4% -11, Boston Bypass 22% -22.
Markfield etc, Hinckley and Bosworth (Bosworth). Con hold. Con vote 35% -4, Lab 29% -8, LD 22% +14, BNP 15% -2
North Road, Darlington. LD hold. Con vote 10% -2, Lab 24% +1, LD 51% -5, BNP 10% -1, Ind 5% from nowhere.
Coronation, Wokingham UA (Maidenhead). Con hold. Con vote 53% no change, Lab did not stand losing 4%, LD 42% +4, UKIP 4% no change
60 I wonder how many other Social Services Departments have similar sad and sorry stories of neglect where very little has been done? Is this an isolated story, or just one from an epidemic of failure within the whole system? I wonder if any of the Sundays are digging deeper, and find some whistleblowers.
Huntsman certainly sounds an interesting potential candidate, and expertise on China is something that might well become more and more in demand. I think there would be an ‘oh no not another Mormon’ reaction among the evangelical wing of the GOP, though - they got fed up with agonising over Romney. But S&S can advise better.
Paul D’s post at 34 is barely worth answering, since theories about secret conspiracies involving 400 people are obviously implausible, but since it’s been asked, the answer is no - and my opinion of Cameron’s intervention remains unchanged. We’ve discussed that at some length and many here frankly disagree, but there’s no need to question each others’ motives.
However, the allegation of Ministers being warned obviously needs to be addressed seriously. There is a difficulty here, in that anyone in public life gets a steady stream of letters and emails, often sent to every MP, which make apparently wild accusations about people you know nothing about. Some are illiterate and rambling (which doesn’t mean they’re wrong), some are neatly-typed and lucid (which doesn’t mean they’re right).
Presumably Ministers get many more. It’s completely impossible to investigate them all personally, so it does actually need a well-considered procedure. Mine is probably not optimal, but for constituents essentially I sift out the ones who seem to me not worth pursuing at all (to give a real example: ‘I have a feeling that someone has been going through my things but the police are not taking me seriously’, written by a constituent with a history of treatment for paranoia), and in the other cases ask the relevant body to review the allegations and tell me what their response is. Only if the organisation responds evasively will I consider taking it further.
What ought a Minister to do? Even Ministerial resources aren’t going to adequate to investigate every claim independently, however wild, so after a first parse like mine to eliminate the clearly irrational, the next step would presumably be to ask the local Department to comment. Only if the response looks clearly inadequate (i.e. the accusations aren’t systematically answered) would a Minsterial team charge in.
That’s what ‘proper procedures were followed’ is likely to mean, but obviously it’s not adequate as a political response. The independent inquiry is due to report within two weeks, so I think it’d be reasonable to refer these allegations to that and ask for them to be assessed there.
52
Only £60 billion? In a year?
What’s wrong with the man?
If Brown hasn’t set a match to that much per month, he starts to get headaches.
61 ah, but Huckabee is, if you look past his religion, not an identikit right winger. On climate change, immigration and the economy, he was to the left of his party and sometimes to the left of Obama.
Most Americans are practising Christians. It is not confined to the right wing. President Carter was a Sunday School teacher, even from the White House, and President-Elect Obama attends church every week even if he does not necessarily endorse the more radical sermons of Pastor Wright.
70 Now we know the official line from Downing Street, courtesy of Messenger Palmer.
59. No doubt. I think I’ll take the 100/1 for a less value trade then.
70. It wouldn’t be quite so bad if the government, and particular people in it, didn’t have a record of ignoring warnings of this sort and callously allowing abuses to continue for narrow political reasons.
#70 Nick - the letter was from a lawyer acting for a former social worker, not your normal run of the mill letter.
re 64 that’s 9.7% down on 52 weeks ago, is it?
Waitrose up?? I thought people were drifting downmarket for their food shopping. Maybe that’s not like for like?
Mike got good odds at 200-1 and will probably be able to cash in later when he appears on Betfair - he certainly has the family money to finance a bid so must be considering it.
I can’t see Huntsman as a winner though. A rich, fairly uncharismatic Mormon. Where have we seen that before?
Jeff Randall - Gordon Brown’s fingerprints are all over a disaster made in Britain
This hard-to-fault insight into the destructive nature of economic excess was given by Gordon Brown in his Budget speech of 1998. Later, as if to prove his point, the then-chancellor orchestrated a public and private spree of outrageous consumption that ruined the economy.
“No, I didn’t,” pleads Mr Brown. “It was the Americans what dunnit.” Sorry Gordon, not even Inspector Clouseau would fall for that one. This crisis was Made in Britain. Your fingerprints are all over the crime scene. Too much easy money, combined with diminished regulation of our banking system, created a frenzy of speculation in the housing market. Unaffordable commitments pumped up a poisonous bubble of illusory wealth.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/jeffrandall/3454763/Gordon-Browns-fingerprints-are-all-over-a-disaster-made-in-Britain.html
70 The thing which will horrify people is the very strong impression given by Council workers and the government that, if ‘proper procedures were followed’, then everything is OK. This box-ticking culture is, many people feel, the root of the problem.
52. To be honest, those are probably the kind of numbers you would have to deal in for a fiscal stimulus to have any hope of serious impact. But there’s a big problem - deficit financing on that scale would risk sharply increasing government debt yields and borrowing costs in the wider economy, snuffing out a recovery.
Krugman et al know this of course so expect the next thing they ask for to be a Japanese style quantitative easing as well - i.e. the central bank printing money and using it to buy government debt to hold down yields. Radical, daring and extremely risky while there are any residual inflation expectations.
Do you think the authorities in the US and the UK will go for this? Unlikely I would say…
77. My wife now shops at Waitrose instead of Sainsburys. I’m sure she personally accounts for a significant part of the increase if my credit card statement is to be believed.
70
Good try. Not.
No JLP quite sensibly don’t often publish like-for-like figures which are even more rubbish than seasonally adjusted numbers. Food prices have risen so in volume terms +0.6% is quite seriously down.
52 I thought it wasn’t actually the ‘Nobel’ prize but another prize named after the same dude.
He is a close pal of the Labour Party having supported Wendy Alexander at conferences in the past.
74 - I hope you hurried, he’s now down to 66-1 to win the election. Quite a shift from the odds that Mr Smithson quotes in his introduction.
In an insight into the hurry to change odds, Jon Huntsman is now 33-1 for the nomination, but listed between Rick Perry at 50-1 and Ron Paul at 66-1.
#70 Nick - excuse me for asking, but do you have any children?
86. I did. Just in time!
To be fair, not many people saw Obama coming so now is definitely the time to put bets on the new wave of Republican politico who will form their next administration.
Whether that administration will have a chance of winning in 2012 is open to debate!
http://www.lettersfromatory.com
69 In my experience things can easily go wrong but they don’t usually go so badly wrong that serious systematic abuse which leaves obvious physical injuires goes unchecked and leads to death.
There are reports the whistle blower spoke up because of the desath of another child, where she said the prodecures recommended after Climbe were not being followed.
I accept Ministers must get alot of guff in their in-trays, but if as letter from a lawyer about the death of a child in an area with Haringey’s history and reputation doesn’t get any attention from the Dept of Child’s Services, I don’t know which ones they bother with.
Good luck with your bet, Mike (and all those who follow the Delphic advice).
On a happy, note I’m now (finally) all green for the male/female and top female markets of Strictly (well, not if Kidd or Bleakley wins, but that’s unlikely and I’ve got £2 on Kidd at 50/1 to win which I could then lay).
Now I just need to sort out the pesky winner’s market.
Not great news for the government over the ministers told by a whistleblower about social services. Plus, it will dampen the effects of the excellent card account news (very pleased, because this means my local post office will stay open, instead of having a few miles to walk to the next nearest one).
70 the question is why an independent enquiry specifically into the organisation wasn’t opened earlier? There had been letters, legal proceedings and a court injunction. The Department concerned seemingly was happy to accept the Haringey enquiry as regards Haringey Social Services while it’s action was to have another national enquiry rather than one specific to what appears to be a failing service.
The Haringey enquiry draft reports and progress must have been monitored and seen by the Department - and the result “all correct procedures followed”.
Letters sent, whistle blower goes to court but “all correct procedures followed”
Doesn’t that strike you as a failure somewhere - too late for Baby P but where else in Haringey are there failings (and what about the 15 year old runaway girl living with the lodger - was anything done?)
85 re Nobel Prize, Sally C. We have done this sketch. It is the Nobel Prize for economics, even if not one of the original set, and is widely accepted as such even by Conservatives in the context of, say, Thatcherite pin-up Milton Friedman.
Yes, it is embarrassing that Krugman said nice things about the Prime Minister but we can live with that.
92. Lisa Snowdon has been the one to back - her odds have come in from 20s to 7s in two weeks
Austin Healy is poor value - he’s had a lot of ballroom dances and has quite a few Latin’s to come (which he is not good at).
The Causualty Doc to win - 4.4 but him reaching the final has been priced in.
On Waitrose - everyone drops down a slot.
If you shopped at Tesco, you go to Aldi.
If you were going out, you buy a take away
If you were getting a takeaway, you go to M&S/Waitrose.
Takeout pizza places can do very well in a recesion.
42: “I don’t get this post office thing.”
Andt my elderly relatives don’t get this internet thing. Still expecting sympathetic responses from politicians has always been a waste of time.
BTW one of the recipients of the letter from the whisteblower was David Lammy, recently proposed as possible London Mayor.
70. On the letter to ministers thing, I find myself in total agreement with NickP. There are going to be loads of letters from lawyers acting for public servants alleging misconduct in every part of government, central and local. To blame Ministers for not following up every single one is insane. Even if the letter is sensible - if it is about a local authority, the logical place for complaints is to the council, not the government, or to professional oversight bodies (GMC or in this case the social workers one).
What should the Minister have done? Sent in a team of crack OFSTED inspectors to check on allegations made about a local authority? Resources are finite - and the high level resources to do proper checks are very limited - random letters are just going to generate far too many false positives.
Proper procedures for letters to ministers usually means it is referred to someone who is meant to be overseeing matters (as happened in this case) or is answered by some unfortunate junior civil servant - even the mad ones get a proper letter back. To lambast the government via the letter is silly.
It seems we are now such an influential force in the political betting market that Ladbrokes closes its book and elsewhere the odds are dramatically slashed and all for something 3 or 4 years away - bizarre.
Re post offices - As a fellow Lib Dem I rarely disagree with Mike Smithson but Labour have under duress eventually made the right decision. In addition to the examples already mentioned and a surprising number of people (and not just the elderly) still do have internet access, you have also to remember rural areas where the Post Office is often still attached to the only shop. With the closure of the Post Office the shop can cease to be viable. In cold financial terms maybe it doesn’t add up but in social terms it does.
99. They could delegate I suppose - but then they take the lead from the Fuhrer of micromanagement : Gordon “Fingernails” Brown.
94 I wasn’t trying to be picky. My comments were genuine and based on an article I read The Times - but I am happy to stand corrected.
87. Sorry, antifrank. Order now restored on our list.
We took a bit of money at 200/1 last night, no doubt on the back of the politico piece Mike highlights above. Went 100/1. Quite a few people had some of that this morning, so we’re now 66/1 outright and 33/1 for the nomination.
I find it very hard to feel any warmth to the Post Office since my mother, who is normally a very astute woman, was tricked by one of its counter staff into switching from BT last year to her potential financial disadvantage at a time when my mother was very low after the death of her own mother (and which the staff member knew about, because my mother was in the Post Office to sort out my grandmother’s post office accounts). I managed to unravel the problem at no cost to my mother, but it left a very nasty taste in the mouth.
21
I don’t get this PO thing either, surely its time for the government to be honest.
I’m as rural as you can be, we have a small PO, manned by volunteers, seems to work ok!
Otherwise I do everything online, cartax, TV licence, Tesco shop etc, we are the future.
If the government wants to help the economy, (particularly the rural economy) invest in fibre optic.
What was amazing was seeing Dinky Duncan, (Freemarketeer and Libertarian) chiding the government for being late in saving post offices. Sorry Alan why weren’t you attacking the government for interfering in the, ‘Market.’
Duncan obviously hasn’t read, ‘Saturn’s Children, (hardback) which is a pity seeing as he co-wrote it!
69. The role of the social services in this case does not seem have come under scrutiny:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/south_yorkshire/7682771.stm
(Warning, as harrowing as the Baby P tale)
77 - Waitrose overall sales are up a shade but like for like are down 2.5% (because they have expanded their number of stores).
96 - Yes, but you have to lose overall sales somewhere in the system and would expect Waitrose/M&S to be hit particularly. Tesco and Sainsbury are more direct substitutes for Waitrose than are takeaways. I don’t really buy your argument that people move naturally from takeaways to upmarket supermarkets. Yes, they are similar in terms of price but takeaways aren’t seen as particularly classy and a regular takeaway user (who likes convenience) is more likely to go to their nearest supermarket of whatever brand if they want to save a bit.
88: to answer your question, no, I don’t have any children. (I don’t think that prevents me from feeling very, very upset about the case, like everyone else I’ve spoken to.)
96/99: looking further at the reports, I gather the letter wasn’t actually passed by the Department to ministers, but to the Social Care Inspectorate, whose job is to investigate this sort of allegation. I hope the inquiry will cast light on what happened then.
99 Ken - You may have a point, but (as PtP keeps reminding us) this is a political betting site. In that context, the repeated mantra that ‘proper procedures were followed’ is politically a very bad line to take. The public don’t care a fig about procedures - it’s the outcome which matters in a case like this.
It seems to me that there will be considerable political fallout from the combination of this appalling case with:
- Haringey’s history;
- A whistle-blower whose warnings were, it appears, shunted between departments;
- Brown’s PMQs disaster - which looks even worse now that more is coming out;
- The extraordinary complacency of the Council’s and government’s comments on the case.
95, yeah, I was quite pleased when I saw Snowdon move from 21/1 down now to about 8/1. A shock exit for Healey would be great news for me. Him and Lunghi in the dance off would be excellent:p
I think Stevens’ odds might tighten after the next dance, the rumba (for her). Apparently the training stuff looks very good, and she was only 1 point off a four place tie for the top marks last time. She was only in the dance off because she was technically fourth, despite 3 getting 36 points and she getting 35, and I think nobody voted for her assuming she’d be safe.
Be interesting to see how long Sergeant lasts.
have to say that looking at the story that ministers were “warned” seems a tad unfair.
The letter appears to have come from an employment tribunal, which are often messy and involve all sorts of accusations. If a central department received such a letter it would be hard not to treat it with some scepticism and to feel that the matter was best resolved at a local level.
On topic, the guy could be candidate but I doubt he will win. Presentationally just from that photo, wonky smile, too lightweight and suspiciously clean. not that I’m superficial
111, 4 years to improve though. Or get worse.
97 - Mike isn’t a politician. He’s just saying he doesn’t use Post Offices because they offer nothing that caters for his needs. The reason they’re under threat is that a huge number of people are in a similar position.
In fact, politicians never tire from putting out “Don’t KO the PO” leaflets and conspicuously caring about them. People pretty mindlessly go along with it but often on a pure anti-change basis. I have never found anyone who won’t sign a Post Office petition. But do they use them? To a huge extent, no.
104 While I sympathise with your story, in my experience this type of thing can happen in any organisation including for example the Banks and doesn’t really alter the case for rural post offices.
105: Yes, it’s clear that no-one here can put themselves in the place of the old or infirm. But, as I say, that’s politics.
113 - A bit like the John Peel Show on Radio 1. It was generally thought to be a great thing that he should be on the station, but very few people actually listened to him.
Great article:
“From the time Tony Blair became Labour’s leader in 1994, British politics has had an air of inevitability. That has also been true since Mr Brown took over, albeit in a wildly oscillating way. At first it seemed inevitable that Labour’s clunking fist would crush the Tories; then it was Mr Cameron’s grip on the polls and policy agenda that seemed ineluctable. He is still likelier to beat Mr Brown than vice versa. But that prediction, indeed all predictions, look less reliable than they have for some time. Politics is entering a twilight zone, where almost everything seems possible.”
http://www.economist.com/world/britain/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12597252
America may have elected a black president, but I can’t see it electing a Mormon one. Still, you could do worse than following Mike’s advice!
By the way, is anybody still waiting to get paid out on last week’s presidential election? Still waiting for the state of Missouri to be definitively called for McCain to allow to clean up on my electoral college Obama bet and my no. of states McCain bet.
Has anybody heard anything about when we get a final result? Are the authorities in Missouri counting every vote several times to keep us in suspense?????!!!!!
114 - I’m not suggesting otherwise. In my view, sentimentality should play no part in the decision, but in practice it will. My contribution was intended only to show that sentiment can go both ways. I’m sure that one of the reasons that I completely agree with coldstone on this topic is that experience.
70 - Fair enough, I’ll take your word on it that you knew nothing about the whistleblower. But can you really be shocked that people wonder, given that New Labour have ‘previous’ i.e. Rosa Addis, there was the man who was abused as a child in the care of the council Margaret Hodge led (who drew damages from her after she smeared him when he went public with it), the WI members who slow-handclapped Blair and within days were portrayed as Nazi sympathisers by the Daily Mirror
New Labour has lived by the sword and, in doing so, leads itself wide open to questions like the one I posted earlier
[77] - “Waitrose up?? I thought people were drifting downmarket for their food shopping.”
I think I’m correct in saying that the figures are not adjusted for food price inflation, so I expect that volumes are significantly down.
115 - I empathise with the elderly and infirm. But why not stop faffing about with subsidising this and that and just give them the money? Post Office subsidies, bus passes, free TV licences etc simply strike me as overly bureaucratic ways of benefiting people we could help more directly.
O/T - But the Conservatives must be wondering how Brown is riding out the financial crisis so well when just across the Irish Sea the governing party is suffering swings of about 13% or so to the main, centre-right opposition party. There have been some amazing polls in Ireland recently with the government so damaged by its (mis)handling of the financial situation that Fine Gael is enjoying big leads in the polls for the first time in living memory (well, my living memory anyway). I dont think there are too many lessons for the Conservatives to pick up though, it’s mainly been due to incompetent handling of the recent Budget. Maybe they can hope for the same at the PBR?
113 Post Offices used to be where you went to collect your pension or your unemployment benefit and to buy your television licence.
The Labour government decided it would be better if people did not do these things. That is why Post Offices shut. It is a natural consequence of government decisions.
110. Hopefully Sergeant will be gone this week. I can’t bear another week with him in it – this week he’s in the American Smooth which means lifting Kristina. I just hope the paramedics are on hand.
123 - So you think people should be made to do inconvenient things just in order to keep Post Offices open? Would you seriously go back to people being unable to pay their TV licence by direct debit and their car tax online? That’s just insane.
[99] - “Even if the letter is sensible - if it is about a local authority, the logical place for complaints is to the council, not the government..”
To my mind that is one of the important underlying issues. The country is too large for Ministers in Whitehall to be accountable for every child on the At Risk register, or every Paedo on the Sex Offender’s Register or … etc
The people of Haringey should be able to hold their council to account for this failure, and ensure that it is put right. All the media coverage ignores this, and insists that Ed Balls [an MP from Yorkshire] and Gordon Brown [MP from Scotland] take action to put it right.
However, by and large, local councils are not taken seriously, because they are not responsible for raising the revenue that they spend. Despite large increases, council tax only makes up a small proportion of the money councils spend, and for the rest it is central government that has the power and doles out the grants.
[84] - I see you got there before me.
Krugman quote from the FT (posted on Toenails Robinson’s blog)
“Given Gordon Brown?s ruinous fiscal and financial stability legacy, Paul Krugman?s question in his October 12 New York Times column, ?Has Gordon Brown, the British prime minister, saved the world financial system??, can only be answered one way: no he has not.
He has left a ruinous legacy of financial instability and lack of fiscal restraint at home. He has been one of the principal cheerleaders for the competitive international deregulation of international financial markets and of border-crossing financial institutions.
He is one of the fathers of the crisis. I am pleased he did not stand in the way of Chancellor Darling?s partial remedy for the worst of the local manifestation of the banking crisis in the UK”
http://blogs.ft.com/maverecon/2008/10/making-monetary-policy-in-the-uk-has-become-simpler-in-no-small-part-thanks-to-gordon-brown/#more-341
122. Sure - but then they wouldn’t feel so dependent on the state and would be less likely to vote Labour. The closure of post offices is part of the same attempt to increase the payroll vote too, by forcing rural people into towns and cities where it is hoped they will adopt different voting habits.
118 Missouri has a self-imposed deadline of 18 November. It is not recounting votes but checking the eligibility of provisional ballots cast by people at, for instance, the wrong polling station. Those votes which are judged to be valid (maybe around half) will then be counted. It is extremely unlikely there will be enough new votes for Obama.
It is possible that McCain or Obama could then ask for a recount but we can rule this out since it will not change who is elected President.
124, reportedly he’s fine at the lifts.
I do think he should go. He’s not as annoying as Kate Garraway though.
Sigh. I don’t want to stop people doing things online. But it simply isn’t an option for some. But of course “one size fits all”, the central tenet of all government.
Then again, the internet, secure? I think not.
125 Post Offices. It is not a matter of what I think, though for benefit claimants and pensioners, it was often more inconvenient to have to open bank accounts. The point is that Post Offices were closed as a result of government policy, and now many have been saved by the government.
Good or bad, that’s what happened.
108. With all due respect, I think that is untrue - re having children. I’ve gone from being a forty-something professional bloke without kids, to being a forty-something professional bloke WITH kids, so I have experienced a life (somewhat!) similar to yours, and a life dissimilar.
And it is VERY dissimilar. Once you have kids you react much more personally to stories like Baby P’s - I actively avoid them now, because I find them too upsetting; I couldn’t read the Austrian cellar story, for the same reason.
Previously I would have read them and felt properly angry - but in a more rational way, certainly in a more detached way.
That’s why Brown’s performance at PMQs was so weird and unfortunate: he sounded like a robotic and evasive bureaucrat, Cameron reacted with the anger and passion of someone who’s had kids.
Any mother or father watching the exchange would have noticed the stark and revealing difference.
It’s a shame that SI aren’t offering a market on this yet. There might be some value in a spread bet if you think he may “be persuaded to stand” because the price would presumably rise as we enter the primary season even if he’s seen as an outsider.
110. I think it’s wishful thinking that Healey will go. I hope not because I have him at 5-1 and 4-1.
I agree the Lisa Snowdon is improving. Sadly didn’t get any 20-1, but have some 12s and 10s.
Here’s hope Sergeant goes. The joke is wearing a tad thin.
130. The dimwits who keep voting him in don’t seem to grasp that if they vote him in, then one of the others, who is actually has some ability, gets kicked out. I’m not sure seeing Heather Small tango her heart out only to be booted off is good TV - but obviously the public do. BTW, I’m not surprised that Lisa has come down so sharply – I think she will be the best dancer by Christmas and looks well priced at 7-1. OTOH, he sex is a disadvantage, I suspect most voters are women and will therefore favour the blokes. Is Austin favourite?
P.S. Watch Rachel top it this week: looks very good in training and the Rumba should suit her.
127 In areas of the UK media sympathetic towards Gordon Brown, he has been hailed as ‘Chancellor to the World’. Please can any PB’ers in places overseas enlighten us as to whether this portrayal holds true in the far corners of the globe, or is the UK’s great financial saviour largely ignored?
FPT: Just been reading the late night exchanges between SeanT and Red Meteor. Top quality as ever. Can I be the first to suggest that these two are given their own mini-site or perhaps TV show? They would discuss only Scottish independence; and despite the narrow nature of the subject, given their prowess as a double act, I can guarantee the new blog/show will be a thundering hit.
People who say we can do without Post Offices remind me of that crank pressure group which argues that Britain should pull up all its railways and turn them into motorways.
133. I don’t have kids as yet but I too cannot read or watch stuff like this - too harrowing - which means I know very few of the facts of the case and therefore try to stay out of any discussions about them. My only question is how and why people can find it within themselves to read up about them.
132 - But what then is your view on it? Mine is this - giving people more convenient options for paying bills and collecting pensions was unequivocally a good thing with some difficult consequences. Any party in power would have done the same, and would have been right. It’s a no-brainer.
135. Healey will probably make the final but is unlikely to win IMHO - his Latin is crap.
See here for detailled info for betters..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strictly_Come_Dancing_(Series_6)
128
Even by your standards Runnynose that’s ludicrous.
As a rural inhabitant, I can assure you the PO is subject to the same technological changes that we all are, nothing can save it.
To feel sorry for the rural PO is like feeling sorry for goose herds when the nib was invented, or ostlers when the internal combustion engine arrived on the scene.
At a university in Tokio, there are two computers communicating with each other along a fibre optic link, they process data 10,000 times faster than the fastest broadband.
The internet will change the 21st century as radically as the railways changed the 19th. You will not have a workforce leaving home travelling 30 miles or so, entering an office block and sitting down in front of the very same PC, they’ve left at home!
Unless of course you still enjoy writing with a feather.
139 - Why’s that the same? It would cost trillions to tear up the railways and replace them with motorways. Not subsidising Post Offices which aren’t profitable wouldn’t.
132. Despite it being about possibly the most humdrum thing in the UK, Post Offices, it’s interesting. Instinctively I’d be for keeping them but this thread has made me think about it and realise that I have been in a Post Office once or twice in about 10 years. If I am typical, is there any demand for them?
126 Point of having Government Departmental oversight is that when systemic or particular failures are identified within the organisation itself there is a route to a higher authority. These failures are not tied to electoral cycles.
In the case of social services the Local Authority is acting in large part as an agent of the Department, following guidance and laws developed at the centre. Ed Balls has a duty of oversight and if there is organisational failures, or the allegations of such then his Department needs to investigate.
In the case of Haringey the Liberal Democrats are the most likely replacement to the Labour group which has so comprehensively failed and could only be an improvement.
122. “122. Sure - but then they wouldn’t feel so dependent on the state and would be less likely to vote Labour. ”
Evidence? That reads suspiciously like the prejudices and flat earth view of a grumpy old Telegraph reader.
139, 144 - Wouldn’t it be better to rip up the motorways and replace them with railways?
142. So it’s a Lisa and Rachel showdown then? Let’s hope so they are both crackers.
125 Yes for many making such payments online is very convenient and obviously we will not go backwards. However a large number of people are either not computer literate or simply as a choice prefer to do things in person. A Beeching style axe has already swept away many of the less used Post Offices in towns where an alternative Post Office is not far away. Most of those left have an identified social need.
PA reports:The far-right BNP made a shock gain in the latest council by-elections.
Mainstream party concerns will be revived by the result at Fenside, Boston Borough Council, Lincolnshire, which comes after a long period in which its votes appeared to have been contained.
Candidate David Owens polled 279 votes to win with a 138 majority over the ruling Boston Bypass Independent group.
The party did not fight the ward in last year’s main polls.
The BNP’s vote share dropped in two other by-elections this week.
In a blow to Labour hopes of a further bounce after last week’s triumph in the Glenrothes Commons contest, Tories held a marginal seat at Markfield, Stanton and Field Head, Hinckley and Bosworth Borough, Leicestershire.
RESULTS:
Boston Borough - Fenside: BNP 279, Boston Bypass Independent 141, C 119, Lab 69, Ukip 24, Lib Dem 23. (May 2007 - Two seats Boston Bypass Independents 317, 315, Lab 174, C 134, Lab 116, Ukip 107). BNP gain from Boston Bypass Independent. Swing 4.6% Lab to C.
Darlington Borough - North Road: Lib Dem 561, Lab 262, C 115, BNP 106, Ind 60. (May 2007 - Three seats Lib Dem 930, 861, 836, Lab 401, 381, 296, C 193, BNP 168). Lib Dem hold. Swing 2.6% Lib Dem to Lab.
Hinckley and Bosworth Borough - Markfield, Stanton and Field Head: C 637, Lab 528, Lib Dem 390, BNP 263. (May 2007 - Two seats Lab 970, C 844, 840, Lab 639, BNP 371, Lib Dem 208, 122). C hold. Swing 2.2% Lab to C.
Wokingham District - Coronation: C 850, Lib Dem 675, Ukip 74. (May 2007 - C 1133, Lib Dem 802, Ukip 103, Lab 92). C hold. Swing 2.2% C to Lib Dem.
143. Nearly 1/3rd of the population do not have internet access. I have also seen privately commissioned research which indicates that internet penetration is levelling off.
http://www.internetworldstats.com/top25.htm
139
Even though I certainly wouldn’t advocate the tearing up of the railways, (comparing to PO’s isn’t correct) I’ve often thought the Reading to Tonbridge line via Guildford, could be converted into a fast coach link.
143 I’m not convinced the change will be as radical as you suggest. Individuals benefit from real rather than virtual contact with other humans, and productivity is improved as a result. The home environment can prove too distracting, with children running about. Remmber, not everyone will have the luxury of separate working areas.
149. Danceoff this week = John vs Cheri.
135, the only way Healey will go before the very late stages is if the dance-off makes him too nervous and someone else very skilled (Chambers or the like) puts on a great performance.
136, hehe, that’s what I said too. I do feel sorry for Small. She wasn’t going to win it, but was a decent dancer. I’d be gutted if a properly good person (Stevens or Snowdon) had to leave to keep Sergeant in.
I’m not sure about sex being a disadvantage. Alesha[sp] won last time. Plus, women voters swayed by that can also vote for male dancers they like.
137. I shall be in Boston Massachusetts by this evening.
When I take my airport taxi to the Common, I fully expect to see the road lined with billboards: heralding the arrival of the “Chancellor of the World” at the Washington G20 meeting tomorrow. No doubt hot dog vendors on Harvard Square will be wreathed in smiles, thankful that the Saviour of the World has safely touched down on their side of the Atlantic.
Perhaps I will be given dimes by delirious panhandlers outside the Fairmont Hotel, in simple gratitude for my being the same nationality as the great British premier who is guiding the globe out of its crisis.
Maybe all this will happen. Who knows?
Alternatively, I will discover that no one gives a flying f*ck about Gordon Brown, and that 99% of America and the world have never heard of him, and those that have heard of him regard him as a sad, laughable, puffed-up little man, who somehow believes he has earned the right to lecture other countries despite wrecking his own.
I will be interested to see which is actually the case, and I shall duly report back to the pb blogerati.
[145] - I’ve been in Post Offices loads of times, for passport applications and for posting parcels, mainly.
One thing to bear in mind is that a blog is probably not going to attract comments from the sort of people who still rely on a Post Office to collect their pension, or who live in rural areas without a car and so rely on being able to walk to the nearest Post Office/general store.
157, at least 20-30% of America will know him. Don’t forget, he grinningly gave away tens (hundreds?) of millions of pounds on our behalf on American Idol Gives Back.
No-one disputes that for many people, the PO is unnecessary - if that were untrue, they’d be profitable.
The point is that the few people who do use them a great deal consider them a lifeline. They are the hub of a community - combining shopping for groceries, all bureaucracy, contact with the outside world and banking. They are part of the character in rural outposts.
Government is there to spend taxpayers’ money on things that are not commercially viable, but are important to the population (either crucial to a few, or generally good for the many). The BBC (the goods bits like classical music) falls under this remit, as do Post Offices, and rural railway stations.
Government should not be cutting off funds to things like the PO network because they aren’t commercially viable. They should *only* be funding things that aren’t commercially viable, because otherwise the private sector could be doing it without taxpayers’ money.
The sound of reverse gears being engaged, rear view mirrors being adjusted and backs being covered in Government Departments drowns out the cries of a 17 month old baby being tortured to death.
Any mention of Haringey, child abuse and concerns in a letter to anyone in a position of authority should have been acted upon immediately and those actions followed up.
How worthless are the words, ‘It must never happen again.’?
It just did
Within fifteen minutes walk of where I live in Bedford there are four post offices - all co-located in other shops and being paid for by me, a tax-payer.
It used to that there were great queues of people collecting their pensions and other benefits. You don’t see them anymore. The main users round here are people who run small online businesses who need to get their parcels out every evening. Fine - they could easily go to the main post office in town.
I refuse to sign petitions, even from my own party the Lib Dems, to keep them open and until this week’s announcement Labour should have been praised for taking the right decision. Now instead it’s waste public money time.
PMQs — after another viewing Brown seemed OK, and his answer, if not perfect, at least dignified and reasonable.
Or would have been were it not for the baying and jeering from the cheap seats.
Some free advice for MPs and even ministers: you’re on telly. Grow up.
137. At least in Germany, Brown’s image has changed dramatically over a pretty short period of time, largely reflecting the changes in Britain, but with less nuances.
- From 1997, he was “the UKs iron chancellor”: powerful, successful, one of the main reasons why Blair’s Britain did not play a positive (from the pro-EU German perspective) role in Europe after 1997.
- As PM that image continued for a while and he was seen as boring but extremely smart and capable.
- After the bottled election, Brown was seen pretty much as a joke.
- Lately, Brown has been seen as an exceptionally strong leader during the financial crisis and it has been noted that both the Americans and the Germans basiclly copy his model. Which is seen with some pride (”Europe leads world response”) and some sarcasm towards our national politicians (”Steinbrueck copies his homeworks”).
- Right now, German media don’t report on Britain at all. It’s all recession, elections in Hesse, and our national coach slowly sidelining Michael Ballack.
I don’t think Germany has ever developed a consistent picture of Gordon Brown. Blair was always seen as an exceptional once-in-a-generation politician and even when he was derided as Bush’s poodle, he was always seen to be as… less pronvincial than other European leaders (Schröder got a bit of a bounce out of his role in the anti-Iraq War “coalition”, but not much). Brown is probably seen as a very good chancellor, but not as an exceptional PM. There’s just not that much interest. In a sense, Blair has been replaced by Sarkozy in the German press, although with the latter it’s more of “so what does he want to nationalize today?”.
156. Yes but Alesha was so clearly the best last time, she transcended the sex disadvantage. I’m convinced that it does play a part: I don’t watch Big Brother but I think there’s loads of empirical evidence that shows that men fare better simply because most of the viewers are women.
159 - and many more will know him for being lampooned on the Daily Show for praising Barack Obama with a totally strange comment. Leaving Jon Stewart to ask “what the f–k does that mean?”
On topic, the very fact he’s a Mormon will doom him from the off from the usual suspects.
Worth noting though that amongst the GOP there’s a slight sinking in already of how far they’ve fallen.
Startling statistic in The Times. One German in seven is employed in the car industry.
Remarkable. They are in for a VERY rough time. If we somehow manage to do even worse than Germany, given that statistic, that really will be quite an achievement by Gordo and his puppet pals.
I’d rather my tax money went on ‘unnecessary’ POs than even-more-unnecessary ID cards, thank you very much.
158. Very true – good post. Also Morus’ point was good. As I say, instinctively I’m in favour (particularly in rural areas). FWIW if you are out cycling, it’s quite sad to find village after village with no shop – as well as annoying if you fancy a can of pop.
157 & 159 - Thanks to SeanT and Morris.
Excluding the US, I’m now really curious as to how many have even heard of Brown, let alone his new role as Finance Minister to the World.
Calling all foreign PB’ers…
127. Amusingly Buiter’s comments about the Pound at the end of his piece appear wide of the mark - Sterling has taken a real kicking.
The Post Office is a classic example of how splitting things into profit centres can go horribly wrong. The Post Office used to do everything. Now its is split into Post Office counters and Post Office mail. So if I post a letter for someone in my small town it gets collected from outside the Post Office taken to an office on a local trading estate (where you have to drive to if for example a letter needed a signature and you were out). From there it is taken to the large town sorting office 12 miles away. Once sorted the letter is sent back to the local delivery office, on the trading estate and is delivered to my neighbour - probably about 4pm in the afternoon.
A surprising number of letters are local - my town is about 10,000 people. Give responsibility for collection and preliminary sorting and then final delivery to the business or homes back to the local Post Office - it would be much more efficient. One of our post boxes has two slots which could allow customers to sort their own mail into local and other, but it is all mixed together.
re 109 it seems that the terms of the injunction obtained by Haringey council prevent the whistle blower even talking to Lord Laming’s enquiry.
What about Jindal ??? His ’share price’ must be about to ramp up, now that we have a president-elect who ain’t just another ’stupid white man’..
173. Was the injunction part of the deal worked out at the end of the tribunal ?
I must agree, NickP’s post (70) does seem very like a government statement, so why don’t we ask him? Nick Palmer, do you ever receive suggestions from government sources, concerning subjects they would like to see aired on this site, with an indication of the line to take? I get some stick for my posts concerning my doubts about your integrity, I am sure you can put the matter to rest once and for all.
160. Quite right. Which begs the question, why is this government so keen to splurge huge sums of money on some ‘essential’ services but determined to destroy the rural post office network?
The answer can be found in my earlier posts - it’s a callous, partisan calculation. Most people reliant on post offices are elderly and in Labour’s eyes, probably Tory voters. If they lose out, so what? Longer term if rural population centres decline and their inhabitents are decanted into towns and cities, Labour see that as a positive.
Is Huntsman white? In the photo he looks couple of shades darker than the incumbent elect!
re 130 then the judges will have to stop being insulting to him. One colleague says that his father-in-law never votes in these types of programmes but felt inclined to vote last weekend because of the pasting Sargeant got.
160. POs don’t have big profit margins and have been steadily losing custom to the internet etc.
to keep them viable, the govt. must think of other ways that it would be useful to engage with the public through a “shop front” - before it is too late.
174 - possibly - saw him interviewed on Jay Leno and he was very articulate, knew how to handle himself, sounded very intelligent etc.
Trouble is, he doesn’t come across as presidential but more of a party leader.
Got a horrible feeling it’ll be Palin for 2012, especially if she has a successful botox job
177. You are one of the most cynical people on this site Runnymede. FWIW, I find the idea that Labour is actively pursuing a policy of rolling back post offices as a stealth way of encouraging urbanisation pretty spurious. But maybe I am merely a naive greenhorn.
EdP@170: Brown isn’t particularly well known here, but there’s been a fair bit of (generally positive) stuff about his economic proposals in the serious press.
164-When are the Hesse elections?
169-Are there no petrol stations where you can buy pop? [not ebing sarccie]
Concerning the post office lovely quote from Malcolm Bruce in yesterday’s debate.
Malcolm Bruce (Gordon) (LD): This is clearly the right decision, although I suspect that Lord Mandelson has cast a long shadow over it—assuming that he casts a shadow.
182. Just a brainless Labour kiddie I think.
If you want evidence of a cynical approach to the world, just have a quick look at the party you so adore - the party of the Iraq dossier, the party that lied and smeared about foot-and-mouth and destroyed millions of healthy animals to keep an election on track, the party of Ecclestone, the party that smeared Rose Addis, David Kelly et al. The party of the Haringey scandal. The party that employs Campbell, Draper, Whelan…
181. “he was very articulate, knew how to handle himself, sounded very intelligent etc”
Sounds like he has no chance with the GOP base.
177 - Demonstrably incorrect as many closures (and certainly those affecting most people) are in urban and suburban areas.
187 - I was trying so hard not to say that…
Wouldn’t put money on any GOP presidental candidate until 2016 anyway.
171 Ken. You clearly have not taken in that Buiter in the same article wrote:-
“But during my time on the MPC, I have learnt to give up trying to treat the exchange rate as either endogenous to the decisions taken by the MPC or as predictable. Instead, I now think of the exchange rate as a rogue elephant: unpredictable, dangerous and to be treated with respect, if not with fear; not something to be manipulated or managed by the hunter, camera-toting tourist or monetary policy maker.”
186. Why thank you sir for your kind words.
Off topic: We got murdered in the cricket. India are looking worryingly like the best team in the world at the moment.
162 I think that’s an argument against your situation in Bedford where it sounds like there’s an oversupply. I don’t think it is typical of the picture nationally. However Morus at 160 and Timothy at 158 are absolutely right. Runnymede at 177 is probably taking the Labour conspiracy theory too far - it’s more about money than anything else.
The GOP doesn’t want intelligence; it wants Coulter-ites who call for genetic reasearch to be scrapped because it makes use of *French* fruit flies.
184. There aren’t as many petrol stations as you might think off the main roads – I mountain bike so when you come off the bridleways you often rely on village shops. There’s more pubs than shops in National Parks now – Pubs are often great in leisure areas but sometimes you just want a can of lemonade then on your way.
189 - As Mike noted, you can happily back GOP Presidential candidates even if you expect the Democrats to win as you can cash in later on the betting exchanges.
So he spotted Huntsman at 200-1 for President and 66-1 for GOP candidate. If he waits until Huntsman is nominated, the only way the 66-1 is better value is if the Republicans are never better than 2-1 (a one in three chance) to win the election after that point. That may be so, but I suspect there will be at least one point where Obama has a wobble in that scenario even if he wins.
192. Yes of course it’s mostly about money. But the sums aren’t huge in the scheme of things. If Labour thought there was a serious downside politically to doing this, they wouldn’t be doing it (compare and contrast with Northern Rock).
In fact, they think there may even be an upside.
The grave risk for Labour is that “Baby P” is starting to come together to undermine Labour’s line on the economy - because both are examples of Labour shouting “it was’nae me!”.
The failure to regulate the veracity of mortg@ge claims, and hence UK house prices - vertical rise, then vertical fall.
The failure of regulation in the banking sector - Northern Rock, B&B, HBOS, Royal Bank of Scotland - all allowed to swim in the open sea whilst the lifeguard was sent home.
The failure to deliver the much-vaunted “end to boom and bust”.
The failure to adhere to Labour’s own golden rules, by writing themselves the biggest overdraft in history.
The failure to supply our troops with the basics for survival in the war zones to which they have been sent - wars without a coherent mission that they are there to achieve.
The failure to control access into this country.
The failure to stop teenage kids knifing each other in record numbers.
The failure to stop our comparative educational standards slipping down the international rankings. The failure to even mark exam papers.
The failure to make people feel safe, either in the streets or in their homes.
The failure to listen when those involved in child care in Harringay tell them the system is broken - leaving the most vulnerable in society to a slow, agonising death. And don’t let’s even get started on the failure to meet the promised reductions in child poverty.
The tens of billions spent. The hundreds of billions pledged. The future, pawned, to be gradually bought back by our children and grandchildren.
Labour’s response? Every time?
“It was’nae me!!”
So Labour - what exactly HAVE you taken responsibility for during the past eleven and a half years?
170. Well the Japanese dont seem to have heard about Gordo’s plans - dont the following points sound rather familiar -
Doubling of IMF funds from $340 billion
Raising the contribution ratio of emerging countries so the US and European nations
Urging proper assessment and disclosure of non performing loans
That the IMF should be tasked to monitor global financial bodies
All proposed by the Japanese PM Mr Aso. No mention of SuperGord on the Daily Yomiuri english language site. No sign of him on google news Japan either when searched for with G20. Nor is there much adulation in Google german news using Gordon Brown G20.
Interestingly on google france news, Gordon is seen quite positively - although even here Sarko is the lead. But there are quite a few positive things about Gordon, the return of Keynesianism and intervention (the French love dirigist stuff). Not really “Chancellor of the world”, but quite positive press.
96. is nonsense. The takeaway to supermarket option makes some sense. But the restaurant to takeaway is just silly.
Anyway, back to politics…
re 195. Now that Shadsy has made it 33/1 for the nomination and 66/1 for Presidency the former bet offers the best value.
On Bobby Jinadal I’ve spent a fair bit of time looking at videos of him and I’m not convinced. He doesn’t seem to be saying anything original in the way that Huntsman is.
My sense is that Jindal is a hugely ambitious light-weight - a bit like Palin.
193 - the likes of Coulter and their brand of politics are likely to become pretty outdated with the first couple of years of an Obama presidency. Not so much the message (if you can call it that) but the whole tone and approach.
Bill Clinton was a product of the post 80s political culture, and the next Rep president will be as much shaped by the next 4/8 years of Obama as any media mouthpiece.
Right now, the current political situation in the US is like watching a re-run of Jerry Springer against a new episode of CSI or 24.
176: no, svejk, I have never had any suggestion from anyone about what I should write on this site. Nor have I ever had any feedback or criticism from colleagues in the PLP or party organisation about what I write here - I don’t think anyone cares. Contributing here is something I do for interest and enjoyment.
202. hahaha
118. Yes.
129. Thanks for the update.
201 Are you sure? A left of centre govt usually leads to a resurgence in populist opposition on the right.
163 John L
“PMQs — after another viewing Brown seemed OK, and his answer, if not perfect, at least dignified and reasonable.”
No, he avoided the question and then accused DC of playing politics.
168 I’d rather get to keep it so I can decide what to spend it on.
Over the years I have got increasingly annoyed with the level of service you get in post offices, and from the whole “Royal Mail” empire. My local sorting office is no longer open after lunchtime, so if you have a package to collect and have to go to work you have to get up at sparrowfart… you can’t collect packages at post offices, instead you have to go to the depot which might be miles away and inaccessible by public transport… using a post office is like shopping in the old Soviet Union… you always have to queue for ages while people do complicated stuff they should be doing by post or online, really you should get a discount for renewing your tax disk on line… I recently tried to change Swedish Kronor straight to Euros for my next trip and it can’t be done (mind you, my bank wasn’t any better, as I hadn’t purchased the currency from them in the first place). They are dull, dreary, tedious places and I do my best to avoid them - I buy stamps from Waitrose and pay for non-standard postage online.
195 - fair enough, and I’ll start looking into GOP candidate only for 2012.
It’s a far less clear cut choice though than for the Dems in 2004 (which was effectively BO vs Hillary)
200 - I don’t think he’s lightweight as such (he did a very good job in Louisiana during the hurricanes), but he may be a racial token candidate.
190. Yes, I had. But he was engaging in typical economist hedging - in the previous paragraph he’d written:
“The reason I would go into the rate setting meeting expecting to participate in a decision to cut rates by somewhere between 100 and 150 basis points, is that I am not at all convinced that the most likely response of sterling to a rate cut of such magnitude would be a sharp decline in its value. ”
He did cover himself (as any sensible economist would, when talking about forex), but the point is that he expected there would be no sharp decline. (Note again the weaselly “not at all convinced” bit.) Given that he then writes a couple of weeks later about Reyjavik on Thames - I think it is quite amusing.
179, yeah, the judges need to engage their brains.
Also, they should fire Arlene and get Brian Fortuna to replace her (saw him on It Takes Two and he was impressively analytical).
On Baby P: yesterday I was certain Cameron would spend all 6 questions next time on the economy. But now… will he revisit the issue? How much will he ask about the economy?
I think the Baby P case is causing more and more damage to the government as we sit here. The general public are used to and expect there will be government cock-ups, bad policy, etc. I think many are also buying the Brown line on the economy. For many I think it is for them the choice between the devil we know and the posh lot that we don’t (but that Cameron isn’t too bad).
However, this is an emotive for a large section of the population and has a lot of press coverage. They want to see passion and decisive confident talk about sorting this mess out. So far the likes of the BBC seem to be running with “the government / PM spokesman says all correct procedures were followed”. End of story.
As a “tactic” I think it couldn’t be more wrong. It just shows the government in the light as a heartless bureaucratic machine that is considering the legal issues of accepting any blame for this and the wider issue of nobody ever being to blame for anything. The way in which the nasty party tag stuck for the Tories for so long, the idea of the heartless party (over 10p and now Baby P) could just easily stick here.
17 - “What I found particularly interesting was that he suggests Ed Balls announcement was driven by Downing Street advisers monitoring political blogs”
202 - Nick Palmer “no, svejk, I have never had any suggestion from anyone about what I should write on this site. Nor have I ever had any feedback or criticism from colleagues in the PLP or party organisation about what I write here”
The juxtaposition conjures up a wonderful picture for me: One Downing Street adviser saying to another “Who is this Nick Palmer guy who keeps posting on PB.com?”
205 - depends how Obama governs. If he’s as far left (relatively speaking) as he’s made out to be, the Reps have a far better chance of clawing back.
If he governs in the centre (again, relatively speaking) and doesn’t do anything stupid like Iraq War mark 3 then the GOP have to really realign themselves. Which will be extremely painful for them, especially when they’ll have to tone down the social conservative tones, but will become better off for it.
Of course, you said “populist”….
199 - Why doesn’t restaurant to takeaway make sense? Sally was right that takeaways do okay in a recession but restaurants don’t. I for one might, if I fancy a little treat on a Saturday evening but am a bit strapped for cash, decide to get a takeaway rather than head for a restaurant. Makes perfect sense to me.
200 - That might make Bobby Jindal a good bet for 2012 for the nomination. If Barack Obama is reasonably successful, anyone truly talented is going to sit the race out. 2012 will then be dominated by the chancers, the last chancers and those hoping for a lucky punch.
When I get time to think about it, I’ll be looking for two different strategies - candidates to run against a mediocre Barack Obama and candidates to run against a successful Barack Obama.
Mr Huntsman is an interesting proposition for the former but is young enough to sit out a sucker run in 2012.
If Barack Obama is successful (and that has to be the default assumption at present), candidates like Mr Huntsman will probably be burnishing their cvs rather than standing. However, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin will be in like Flynn. Bobby Jindal might well be too.
209. Willem Buiter often has some useful insights but his opinions on a number of issues are suspect, and he has a deserved reputation in the profession as a bit of a loose cannon.
I think the article on Jon Huntsman most interesting, he certainly”looks” the part! The punt sounds like good value, personally I still like Palin but it looks like she is going to be staying Governor of Alaska for the meantime rather than getting a run at the senate from there!
I don’t think it would be very credible for her to run for the senate in 2010 in another state and then go for President in 2012!
199 It will be interesting to see how various businesses fare in a downturn. I imagine car manufacturing could be hit quite badly - it is easy to find an alternative to a new car (you keep the old one a bit longer, or buy a secondhand one) and of course we are talking about substantial amounts of money. If you are worried that you might be made redundant I imagine you would prefer to keep the money in the bank,. and certainly not take out a loan. Whereas a business like Waitrose could sell itself as an “affordable treat”. In addition, I imagine that Waitrose shoppers are generally wealthier and therefore hit less hard by rises in fuel and food prices.
214 And companies like Dominos Pizza are doing very nicely at the moment:
http://ww7.investorrelations.co.uk/dominos/news_events/media_centre.jsp?ref=223
203, 177 runnymede, Nick Palmer is a Labour MP. That he generally supports the Labour government demands no conspiracy theory.
Post Offices and Labour anti-ruralism? More likely Labour listening to the banking lobby which wanted all those new bank accounts.
211, I agree. It smacks of the box-ticking refusal to offer an apology by Shoesmith, who helpfully handed out graphs showing how super her team was.
Saying ‘procedure was correctly followed’ will make people (especially parents) absolutely furious.
220. Conspiracies are supposed to be secret, aren’t they?
210. Arlene is the queen of the tailing off soundbite and the mixed metaphor. However, I’m not one of these that thinks the judges are being harsh on Sergeant. As nice a guy as he is, he is a terrible dancer, and it is a dance competition, not a popularity contest. OTOH, I think they should maybe lay off for a week so we don’t get another sympathy vote. BTW, does anyone know where I can get my wife good ballroom dancing lessons in London? SCD is her favourite programme and unlike me, she is a good dancer generally.
Re Harringey
Any normal organisation post harringey would be extraordinarliy sensitive to allegations of incompetence. When they come from a scoial worker who whistlwblowed, then was fired and won a tribunal case for unfair dismissal, alarm bells would have been ringing.
Or rather alarm bells SHOULD have been ringing.
What alarms me is this all happened over 12 months ago … and yet no-one from Government was alarmed enough to investigate - or if they did they kept it quiet.
So obcviously the first rule of management: keep a close eye on problems - if they look like repeating DO SOMETHING - was not followed.
Of course, do something may in soem minds equate to passing it to someone else to deal with..
My personal view is that all involved washed their hands of what is clearly a major problem area…becuase the consequences of what they might find were too scary…
214. What I don’t understand is how a takeaway is an alternative to a restaurant. Call me old fashioned, but going out to a restaurant with your missus is an event and is about more than food. Rather than swap that for a takeaway of a weekend, I’d be more inclined to just go to restaurants less often but enjoy ourselves when I do. For those who aren’t attached I can see how it could be a straight swap though.
221 If this had happened out of the blue, and in a family where social services had no reason to take an interest, then the “followed correct procedures” line could be seen as a robust defence. However, that isn’t the case in this instance - the correct response is that the procedures are wrong and inadequate, and whoever devised them and put them in place is culpable.
I think it’s appalling that Haringey council has sought to take out this injunction, I would like the Tories to put pressure on them to go to the court and lift it. Private companies have commercial interests to protect, public bodies do not and their activities should be transparent. Maybe the social worker should simply ignore the injunction, as I can’t see Haringey having the brass neck to try to enforce it.
BTW “Haringey” = London Borough & council
“Harringay” = a district of north London, part of Haringey
218 I can see any number of retail companies going to the wall over the coming months, although Christmas trading and New Year Sales will put off the evil day for some until March/April. With sky high fixed costs, incl rent, rates, staffing, etc., there’s no way they can turn off the tap. Coupled with that, by the start of 2009, retailers will be paying significantly more for their merchandise as a result of the 25%+ fall in the value of Sterling.
Dire times lie ahead as high streets become deserted.
202. Nick, I agree that you are a hobby poster rather than a “told” what to post person. You can tell this from what you say and more important what you don’t!
I am surprised at the RBS axing 3,000 jobs but they look to be getting it good compared to the 30,000 at HBOS! What I find extreamley perverse is the fact that RBS has taken much more state support than HBOS yet it is HBOS being sacrificed for Gordon Brown’s short-term political gain at the expense of long-term jobs.
Baby P is the number one Beeb story.
Blowing SuperGordo at Bretton Woods II off the airwaves. Another mobile phone bites the dust ?
225
‘Going to a restaurant with the missus is an event’
Also requiring a sou’wester and oilskins - I only need the seaboots if the kids accompany us.
By the way this Post Office U-turn is not about saving post offices, it is Brown again deffering decisions for short-term political gain. Labour are delibratly storing up problems they have failed to deal with because they want the Tories to reap the unpopularity.
230
‘managing the news environment’
What aren’t we being told?
One of those Rumsfield ‘unknown unknowns’.
109. Richard Nabavi. It would appear that you are right. Whatever the rights and wrongs, Baby P is turning into a government disaster. These narratives have a life of their own (which I noted from the Sun’s attack on Gordon yesterday) and this one just seems to be gaining speed. I suppose it is karmic, Labour got undue credit for the financial crisis, now they receive undue blame for Baby P. The more details come out, the more I do feel that HSS deserves a good cleaning out.
PM rejects “buck passing”
(aka It wasnae me)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/7729267.stm
230.
Good piece in blog on LibDem voice,but then I would say that wouldn’t I. Just a matter of time before Gord and his chums adopt this suggestion
I thought Lynne Featherstone (one of the Haringey MPs) had it quite right in making the comparison with the Brand/Ross affair. In a world where - without waiting for any inquiry results to be published - the Controller of Radio 2 resigns after a deeply unpleasant radio prank, surely someone somewhere in all of this should have the decency to quit?
But then all Gord can taunt the LibDems with at PMQ’s are spending cuts (as he has done for the past 2 sessions)
Let us wait until next week’s PMQ’s…..should be very,very interesting
228 I think a lot of High Street businesses will fold immediately after Christmas. The quarterly rents will be due, and the banks will be eager to call in debts whilst the tills are relatively full of cash.
235. Brown has no shame. What a vile, nasty, political point scorer he shows on a daily basis.
I should imagine he is more bothered about getting his picture with G20 leaders than sorting out this mess.
235. The correct procedures were followed…. an injunction was issued to stop anyone finding out about this scandal.
239 - It’s utterly excrutiating, isn’t it. Talk about media management (not)
Telegraph has the meat :
Miss Kemal sued the council last year saying that she had been dismissed for voicing concerns that children who were being left with their alleged abusers.
In February 2007 her lawyer, Lawrence Davies, wrote to Miss Hewitt at the Department of Health as well as the junior health ministers Rosie Winterton and Ivan Lewis, and David Lammy, the local MP for Tottenham, who was a culture minister at the time, saying that measures brought in following a public inquiry into the Climbié case were not being followed.
The letters were passed on to the Department of Education and Skills (DES) - now the Department for Children, Schools and Families - which has responsibility for social services departments, and where Alan Johnson was then Secretary of State.
Meanwhile the council took out an injunction against Miss Kemal banning her from speaking about child care in Haringey.
Six months later Baby P died after months of abuse while living with his mother, her boyfriend and their lodger Jason Owen.
“We got pushed from pillar to post really,” said Mr Lawrence.
“Hewitt bounced us onto the DES… the DES then advised us to write to the Commission for Social Care Inspection whom we had written to on the same day as we had written to Hewitt, copying in the letter to Hewitt and the relevant material.
“By that time of course they had an injunction against us so we couldn’t go back to the inspectorate.
228
DSG Group reported in D Telegraph to be A Credit Insurance no go area soon..
Their business model is broke.. Just bought new washing machine. Delivered price from CO-Op 25% (yes 25%) less than Comet/Currys price in store and 4% below Dixons on line prices.
With consumers squeezed it will get much worse.
I expect about 25% of all retailers of non food items will disappear in next 3 years. Lots of empty spaces in shopping malls.
As for car dealers! …and DIY
I note B&Q are offering 50% off. Last seen in 1991-2 recession.. When I bought stuff which is still working!
We are in transition to a “purchase by neccessity ” from a “purchase by want” culture… which will cause great pain.
Tax and interst rate cuts are pushing on string. Consumer confidence is being broken.. and I suspect the message will last several years…
241 - If I were a journalist (which I am glad to say that I am not), I would be very curious about why that injunction was sought and who decided to seek it. If that person is still in a job today, he or she must have some searching questions to answer.
241 WOW! Dynamite. Everyone involved has tried to pass the buck. Very few of those involved seem to have any shame - disgraceful.
This dovetails into a thread yesterday regarding personal and political honour, and ministerial resignation.
I don’t frequent pubs much these days - so I was surprised a couple of days ago to be charged £4.05 for a pint of Peroni in The Spotted Horse, a pleasant but straightforward pub on Putney High Street.
This compares with a supermarket price of £1.37 for a pint of the same brew from the supermarket.
Given that the Pub Landlord (Young & Co.) is buying the stuff in kegs rather than bottles at a cost therefore of around £1 per pint or less, this means its profit margins are around the 300% mark.
Call me an old Scrooge if you like, but after just one pint I made my excuses and left - little wonder that so many pubs are closing. You have to wonder how many will still be open after a sustained recession.
241. That’s the most damning of all. It look’s like buck passing in the extreme, with each department sayings it’s someone else’s problem and ignoring it.
How much does it cost to get an injunction? - my guess £5,000.
242 “We are in transition to a “purchase by neccessity ” from a “purchase by want” culture… which will cause great pain.”
Especially as “purchases by necessity” will have to be paid for from money saved, rather than from easy credit….
245. To be fair you shouldn’t be buying overhyped cooking lager like Peroni. Its this years Hoegaarden/Magners etc..
CAMRA Marketing Dept.
240. I’m starting to wonder just how much the government knew of the details before PMQs on Wednesday. If Dave hadn’t been so stubborn would we know what we know now - or would there have been a carefully managed process with snippets of info being released whenever it was most convenient to the government, i.e. when the public’s attention was distracted elsewhere.
Pity that Councils and Ministers aren’t embraced by the legislation on Corporate Manslaughter. Or are they? A judicious application of the Health and Safety at Work Act might make ‘em sweat.
231. Eh? Do you live on a lighthouse?
250 - Without wishing to revive previous arguments about whether he was playing party politics, David Cameron must be unable to believe his luck. He chose an unexpected issue for Prime Minister’s Questions, got a pathetic (in every sense of the word) response from the Prime Minister, ignited a ferocious debate on a subject needing empathy - Labour’s weakest area - and now finds (which he could not possibly have known) that the Government has some kind of a case to answer for failing to act sooner.
245 Peroni? Is that a bitter?
You have to wonder if supermarkets loss lead on beer (lager in particular)
253. No, it’s Italian lager.
245 PfP - Young & Co seem to be a particularly expensive pub chain. A lot of their public houses have gone through costly refurbishments over the last few years and I suspect they’re trying to claw back their investment. I don’t like their beer anyway, so its no great loss to avoid them - any pub in West London selling Landlord or Bass gets my money!
247 - Higher than £5K
249 Harry F - you have a point, in nearby East Sheen, Youngs Bitter, a superb brew IMHO, sells for “just” £2.70 a pint.
245 You forget the costs of running a pub - staffing, rent, rates, etc etc etc. And if it’s a tenanted house, the pubco is probably already putting a big markup on it before selling it to the landlord.
But Peroni is p*ss, the Young’s Ordinary would have only been around £3 (admittedly it’s not been quite as good since they started brewing it in Bedford).
257 Ah yes thats better Youngs bitter - I remember it well from late 70s student days - good pint.
252. Yep, he saw that there was something amiss and went for it, good political instinct. This thing is blowing up even more, it’s becoming obvious that Haringey were in a mess and although there hasn’t been a cover up, the government is desperately trying to sort it out without tkaing blame.
It appears that Matron has allowed Janey Daley access to the computer room again..
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/janet_daley/blog/2008/11/14/was_tory_modernisation_based_on_a_myth
Actually I always think it’s shameful howe much drinkers of lager (and other hyped products like Guinness) have to pay for their pints. Real ale is always much cheaper, yet it is an inherently more expensive product - more expensive ingredients, shorter shelf life, produced in smaller quantities, greater skill and hence training needed to keep and serve in good condition, greater wastage.
250 I think the Government knew a lot about this case, and were waiting for a ‘good day to release bad news’.
Cameron stuck his pickaxe into the ground and purely by chance struck a rich, gusher of oil.
Regardless of his luck, it’s shameful and disgraceful that a child should die in this way. I’m still amazed by the staggering amounts of money involved - £100 million in Haringey alone? Extraordinary.
re 245. & 257. When I lived in York until Easter last year it was possible to go out, have two pints of Sam Smiths bitter, get yourself superb fish and chips on the way home and still have change left out of a fiver.
260, the conflict of interest was obvious to anyone who saw it (well, with a single exception), but Cameron can’t possibly have predicted what would happen next. I wonder if Brown knew…
Nick Robinson has an interesting piece on his blog - maybe he has become sick of the PM, who has no shame?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/nickrobinson/2008/11/not_everyones_a_fan.html?moduserid=movabletype9_43390&pid=71663417&upm=False&asb=False&pmp=False#dnaacs
264, Yorkshire = Home of Civilisation!
Anyone else think the guy in the picture at the top of this thread bears a passing resemblance to the Beeb’s Justin Webb?
217. Martin, in electoral terms, she’d be much better off staying in Alaska. Only three senators have been elected direct to the White House - and of course that was guarenteed this time as both candidates were senators. It’s much more common for people holding an executive office to be elected, usually a governorship or the presidency itself.
Presumably this is a combination of a general dislike of DC politicians (often while making exceptions for local representatives), and a preference for executive experience. As Palin is so well placed as an ‘outsider’ candidate (especially as she’d know she’d be facing an incumbent), why throw it away by two years in the senate during which time she couldn’t do much if she was campaigning for the presidency.
On a related note, and to answer Antifrank at [215], prospective candidates will need to make a call a long way out - well before it’s obvious how Obama will be viewed in 2012. Most of the GOP line-up is likely to be known by early 2011. That said, I tend to agree with his assessment that the next GOP field will contain more than the usual share of chancers, last-chances and lightweights. But at the back of the mind of those who sit it out will be the lesson from 1991/2, when Clinton took his chance by launching his campaign against a seemingly invincible Bush snr post-Gulf War - and consequently against a weak Democrat field. Those who sat it out waiting for 1996 never got their chance.
264 - Can anyone else hear a brass band playing mournfully in the background?
When I lived in Chester I could go out, drink loads of champagne, get beaten up by a hen party and thrown into the cells for quite a lot more than a fiver. On the whole I would rather have lived in York I think.
266, jet lag must have confused him about whether he’s meant to kiss or kick Brown’s arse. Nice to see an anti-government story for once, even if it isn’t the Baby P case.
250 Without Cameron raising it in PMQs there would still have been newspaper investigations and follow up but I doubt as quickly not with same degree of publicity.
I had deliberately not read the details of the case before because I preferred to to get upset about something I thought was most probably no-ones fault but the perpetrators but the more I have read over the last few days, the greater the institutional failures seem to have been - “processes were followed”.
The Depts involved will have been aware of many of these details already, Balls will have been briefed, they had already prepared for a National Enquiry and announced this as the Haringey report was issued. But no-one seems to have judged that something more was needed as regards Haringey - except the Opposition and Lynne Featherstone (the other local MP, Lammy having apparently played no role).
245 - You are rather assuming there that the only cost of running a pub is the price of the liquid served. A somewhat flawed assumption. The high price of beer in London is of course primarily due to rents.
273 - Not just in London - the pubs in my parents’ village (mega-affluent Vale of the White Horse*) are going bust one after the other on the back of the ludicrous rents demanded by a certain verdently named brewer.
* Britain’s most pretentiously named local authority.
264 Mike - I suppose you’d eat your fish and chips along with a nice piece of Hovis walking along that quaint old cobbled street.
264 I’m surprised Roger hasn’t popped up, lamenting the lack of change from a £50 note, when buying champagne in The Groucho.
270,275 Snap!
I have just seen the PMQs exchange, courtesy of Iain Dale’s site. Some comments:
* DC didn’t make the “he never gives an answer” jibe until his third question, ie having given GB two attempts to answer the question. So I don’t think it was as unreasonable as some people are making out.
* DC was clearly getting wound up on his third question and on the fourth had - briefly - completely lost it. If the dispatch box wasn’t in the way I think he might have thumped Gordo. He did seem to get back in control fairly quickly. and apologies to the Chair for addressing GB directly.
* At one point I think you could telepathically hear DC thinking “answer the f*cking question for once you cretinous Scottish tw*t”, maybe sometime he should actually say it.
* At an election, I think that the occasional use of righteous anger on behalf of the taxpayer might go down very well.
* GB wasn’t actually criticising DC for playing “party politics”, really he was criticising him for acting as the opposition and taking the government to task. Reading between the lines of what he said, the only correct attitude in GB’s eyes seems to be (a) accept that the Government’s role can only be passive - ie acting after the event and (b) agree with the eventual outcome, however crap it is. Which is an unacceptable attitude.
I’m not sure DC handled it well after the fourth question, but he was surely right to raise the matter in the way he did.
277 - PfP, has Mike got a flat cap on his head and a whippet on a string at his side in your mental image too?
264. York = one of the best places in the world.
227. thanks very much - i had always wondered. i was in Harringay the other day
The Huntsman permatan together with the fast-greying hair gives him a touch of the Kilroy-Silk about him.
275 Strange but true trivia - the cobbled street from the classic 1970’s Hovis ad, is in the town of Shaftesbury on the Wiltshire/Dorset border and not ‘oop North.
250. I hope you are not suggesting our saintly government would be so cynical as to consider burying bad news. tsk.
262. ‘Actually I always think it’s shameful howe much drinkers of lager …have to pay for their pints.’
Nah - serves them right for drinking cr*p.
245. Peroni is inevitably overpriced. However, having been stung for a £4 pint recently I feel your pain.
Get on to the Guinness I say.
Oh and if in Putney head up to the Telegraph pub for a nice pint of Cornish Doombar and a fine burger.
282. There’s even a plastic hovis loaf at the top of Gold Hill to confirm the fact. Very tasteful.
264 Sam Smith’s is well under £2 in their London pubs, £1.86 from memory. They have some great pubs too, such as the Princess Louise and the Old Cheshire Cheese, unfortunately it’s not my favourite beer by a long way.
275 That was Shaftesbury, Dorset.
284 Or the Bricklayers Arms, full range of Timothy Taylor’s beers.
250.
Patricia Hewitt’s days as an M.P. are surely numbered
From 24dash.com
The investigation, which started yesterday and is due to make an initial report by December 1, is being carried out by Ofsted, the Healthcare Commission and the Chief Inspector of Constabulary.
Ms Hewitt’s office said the former minister was never made aware of the whistleblower’s allegations.
“As the Department of Health has made clear, the responsibility for children’s services was transferred from the Department of Health to the Department for Education in 2003,” a spokeswoman said.
“As a result the letter from Miss Kemal’s lawyers about Haringey children’s services was, quite properly, transferred by the Department of Health to the Department for Education.
“The letter was never seen by Patricia Hewitt.”
286 The Lyceum in the Strand is another Sam Smiths pub. I’m always amazed by the price. The Wellington next door normally has a good choice of Camra friendly beers.
The Bricklayers further north off Rathbone Place is good too.
283 EdP - thanks for that useful information. As it happens, Shaftesbury is etched on my mind as the place where I ceased smoking at 2.30pm on 3 September last year, coughing my guts out, whilst Her Indoors was purchasing potions to ease my heavy cold.
Sensing the irony of the moment, I threw the aforementioned weed into the gutter and haven’t touched the stuff since.
Romney’s age will likely lead him to believe that 2012 will be his last chance, he has the funds and kudos to be able to push out any other mormon who may want to run, and there isn’t going to be space for two if they want to have a chance of winning the nomination.
Jindal will try and fail (he would be a terrible candidate anyway), Pawlenty is too intelligent to try, Huckabee will be in the mix. The situation, however, suggests a relative unknown with a known history to the party (necessary as a result of the Palin mistake) will be in the top few, like IDS he or she will be a compromise candidate and The Portillo and Clarke of Huckabee and Romney look likely be beaten to it.
288. Oh what fun this is. It has the potential to be as big as the lost discs fiasco, Home Office ‘not fit for purpose’, Prescott-gate etc. An overdue reminder of just how venal and dysfunctional this government is.
A tee-totaller speaks: all this beer talk is becoming a tad dull, guys!
293 - Not for us alkies it isn’t
God knows what is going on now, each department is denying responsibility and covering it’s arse wholesale. The social services are being represent by that god awful Shoesomething woman who gave out leaflets saying how great they were (well done dear) while Brown tries to rise above it all and tlak about the economy.
290 I think you confused ‘useful’ with ‘useless’
295 - “…while Brown tries to rise above it all and talk about the economy” is going to be the mantra for the next 18 months in politics, regardless of what the main story is.
282. the band sounds appropriately northern though
292. Pretty much, it’s obvious Brown is trying to avoid the subject and get back to economics, but the people don’t want to quite yet.
297. Yep, and it’s going to be a problem for him. The economy is very important, but people do have other concerns, like this baby P thing. Brown can’t deal with it at all.
293 Start drinking then. Look at all the fun you’re missing out on, swapping tales of cheap pints of well kept beer in London pubs.
On the other hand, you might have a point…
Drive up Gold Hill once to deliver stuff to my mother’s business (cars banned now), did the San Francisco parking (Wheels turned in), returned to car and engine wouldn’t start as petrol pump couldn’t overcome gravity. Had to do a freewheel turn and make several attempts as I gradually headed downhill worried I would lose control (cars with power steering and power brakes are beasts without power) …etched in my memory as one of those Things Never to Do Again.
129- (John L). Thanks for advising me of the situation as detailed in my post at 118.
I look forward to next Tuesday then!
293 - Now you know how I (a non-dancer) feels when you lot are rabitting on about “Strictly Dancing with Get Me Out of Here Celebrities on Ice”!
304, but as a punter you should enjoy the betting talk :p
And as a bloke you should enjoy watching Lisa Snowdon and Rachel Stevens.
305 - I don’t know who they are, but I think I get your drift…
305 ‘And as a bloke you should enjoy watching Lisa Snowdon and Rachel Stevens.’
Yes, with a pint in one hand
302. That must have been a few years ago Ted.
What odd this happening?
Any Questions guests: Rt Hon ROSIE WINTERTON MP
Isn’t she one of the four written to about Baby P?
Some muppet of a BBC correspondent on lunchtime news. He seemed to have actually done some journalism and discovered that the letter from Ms Kemal might have got lost when the Social Care Inspectorate was taken over by Ofsted. Fair enough. But then he made a bland sweeping statement that in the UK child protection is better than anywhere else in the western world. Is this the BBC’s idea of balance? At the very least he ought to quote some figures to back up the statement. And in any case it isn’t the BBC’s job to try to reassure us that, despite the odd hard case, we are quite well served by our social services - that’s a politician’s job, should they care to do so. In any case I don’t think it’s relevant in this case as it looks more like there has been a huge catalogue of errors.
Lynne Featherstone MP made the point that Kemal should be released from her injunction, Michael Gove said something that seemed sensible at the time but which I have since forgotten.
This story is looking like it still has legs…
310. ‘But then he made a bland sweeping statement that in the UK child protection is better than anywhere else in the western world’
The Beeb was strongly pushing this line on Newsnight last night, too. Clearly it has once again been instructed on the ‘line to take’. When will Campbell be taking over presenting the news?
310, they’ll get complaints about that, and rightly so.
311, but it’s a case of propaganda doing more harm than good. A baby’s just been slaughtered for god’s sake. Claiming we’re super at social services will just make people rightly conclude the BBC is full of shit.
As Bass drinker £2.40 a pint in my ordinary local, £2.60 in the posher next door village. I enjoy a Peroni occasionally. Used to be only able to get them in Pizza Express - have been going there since early ’70s - and as chap who started it (began with “B” I think) was a Liberal donor, eating there helped the cause!
310 - 313 And if the system is working so well overall then there is less of an excuse for not dealing with Haringey specifically and robustly.
“wasnt me, gov” seems to fit this government like a glove.
310. “But then he made a bland sweeping statement that in the UK child protection is better than anywhere else in the western world.”
No, he did not say that.
I find it puzzling that in the tragic case of “baby p” full names are not being published.
Could this item posted on the web from BBC Radio London be co-incidental ??
[MODERATED - 13:42]
316 I refer my friend to post 197 above….
319 that’s baby p alright.
308 It was in those halcyon days when The Lady was in charge, summers were always warm (ish), we had snow at Christmas (lying snow three years running IIRC), British was best, coldstone was getting upset as British Gas was privatised, the economy was healthy…..
291 - “Romney’s age will likely lead him to believe that 2012 will be his last chance, he has the funds and kudos to be able to push out any other mormon who may want to run”
Huntsman is heir to the Huntsman chemicals fortune and is, I suspect, far and away wealthier than Romney. And does Romney have much kudos left? He is a fully certified loser.
The main political fall out from the tragic death of this child is that it has demonstrated once again Gordon Brown’s lack of ability to connect with the public at an emotional and a personal level.
I have absolutely no doubt that he is as appalled and upset as the rest of us at this awful tragedy. In his way he is a more principled individual than many of his peers. But he has been found wanting again in his lack of leadership and in what Mike Smithson I think referred to as Emotional Intelligence.
This lack of these prerequisite skills to be Prime Minister has once again become starkly evident. It’s terrible that a case such as this is the event to remind the public of his shortcomings. Blair could “do sincerity” and connect with the public mood. So can Cameron. Brown can’t.
284. St Stephens charged me £4 for a pint of peroni last night. I was shocked and appalled. Waste of money as well. The Badger is perfectly reasonable.
Can we now refer to the poor chap as [moderated - 13:43] instead of Baby P please.
Again and again with Gordon Brown as PM, I keep coming to the conclusion that Brown is pulling the country down with him. Brown does not care what he does to gain partisan advantage, Gordon is a monster - cannot someone put their foot down and tell him to shape up or ship out?
302-You paint a good picture-can just imagine it -there’s an excellent cafe/restaurant at the top with good views down-like looking at time gone by plus of course that superb 70’s advert of Hovis boy.
325 Not if you want to stay with the law - there is an injunction against using his name or parents names.
318,325 — will you be joining Mike Smithson in the dock?
I’d suggest those posts be removed.
318. Mike or Morus need to take that post down, sharpish.
323. Brown tried to make a party Political point out of it. Brown is not fit for office, he is an obsolute monster. He does it time and again - Brown’s one goal is office, that is it - He is not principled or even any good at being in office. For the sake of the country Brown needs to be removed.
325 I feel very uncomfortable in going ahead and making that leap. The courts have kept their names from the public domain for good reason - one assumes that there are other matters still to come before a jury and I for one would feel very aggrieved if they avoided having to face those charges because the case had been prejudiced by extensive internet naming. I think posts 318 and 325 should be moderated pending further clarity on this point.
312 Complaint made.
330. Why are you so concerned?
How long before the rebuttal unit starts smearing the whistleblowers with unattributed briefings to friendly journalists? Standard operating procedure for this lot, surely. Surprised they haven’t started already.
I’m going to have to ask that if you know the names of the victim, or the defendents, in the Baby P case, that you do not publish them in the comments here.
There is an injunction to prevent any trial being prejudiced. We must respect that injunction, even if it feels insensitive to the victim to avoid using his real name.
Mike would be in severe trouble if PB.com broke this injunction.
I am sorry to have moderated 318 and 325, but under the circumstances, I have no choice in the matter.
Morus
327 What did he say then?
I believe that a judge will rule this afternoon on whether the mother and her boyfriend have to remain anonymous, if not then I would guess that Baby P will be named.
318 - It may be an idea to alert the BBC that they are in potential breach of an injunction, based on that link.
Sorry that should have been directed to Mike L:
318 What did he say then?
I don’t want to get Mike or me into trouble but why cannot the baby have its name?
My brother a GP in Manchester said that one of his former patients has just killed her two children Romario Mullings-Sewell, two, and his three-month-old brother Delayno. He didn’t know her very well - he wasn’t in when she tried to leave her children in the surgery. Clearly she was pretty disturbed but the children were apparently not on the at risk register - why is the media not focusing on this new case?
Report is here: http://tinyurl.com/5nhv34
322 “It was in those halcyon days when The Lady was in charge, summers were always warm (ish), we had snow at Christmas (lying snow three years running IIRC)….”
Now we have a summer greyness barely indistinguishable from the winter greyness.
“New Labour: making England a grey unpleasant land since 1997″
No thanks. I want my green and pleasant land back!
341. This case is all over the news. It was headline news yesterday.
O/T:
This is to Nick Palmer MP -
Has Laura Moffatt ever let you have a look?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7693834.stm
341, 343 - They are very different sets of circumstances, and not really comparable.
341. Because the CPS are considering another crack at murder charges (double jeopardy having gone post Lawrence) and don’t want any hint of the trial being prejudiced.
Does anyone know whether murder charges couldn’t be made to stick first time round because everyone incriminated everyone else or because no-one incriminated anyone?
346 - They couldn’t be sure which criminal assault actually caused the death. Unlikely even the defendents knew, and if they did, they weren’t telling.
347
I believe what you describe could be charged as conspiracy to murder…?
341 - It does seem impersonal, but even the first name would be enough to link it to the adults, and they could be identified. Once identified, there is a slim chance they could claim a trial was prejudiced.
I know it seems horrible to have to keep using ‘Baby P’ but I wouldn’t want to be in any way responsible for two seemingly-evil people escaping from justice.
348 - If you can show death was the intended outcome. That could be highly problematic - always is in domestic abuse cases. The only Conspiracy to Muder cases I can think of resulting in ‘guilty’ verdicts are those where the convicted party paid money to have someone killed. Crimes inside the home don’t have the same evidence trail of intent.
Thanks. 14 years. What can you say.
349, quite, although I think your use of the word ’seemingly’ is unnecessary. The baby didn’t get those injuries by chance.
348 - There needs to be an actual agreement. Also, I believe both attempted murder and conspiracy to murder require proof of an intention to kill. Murder itself requires intention either to kill or seriously to injure which is much easier to prove.
Afternoon all,
80. Benbobjim, from last thread, in a word – NO,
I would rather eat my own s**t,
Switch allegiance to West Ham (the hamsters), if you know your football history/rivalries then you will know that we absolutely hate & despise West Ham,
Shave my legs
BTW, none of these 3 things above are ever going to happen.
I do not live in Bermondsey (check my No.76 posting from yesterdays thread ‘Was the PMQ flare-up part of a Tory strategy?’ I live in Upper Norwood in the borough of Croydon, which is what I meant when I said, “I voted Tory in the 06 local elections (we finally got rid of Labour from Croydon)”.
I will not be taken in by ‘Labour tax cuts’ if that is what they really are, we have seen time & again what Labour regard as a tax cut. Any money handed back to me in the pocket is fine as was the case in September when I received the £60 rebate & £10 last month as part of the 10p tax compensation (I believe it is £10 a month ongoing until next March IIRC) but I not show any gratitude for getting my own money back, any other money I receive back as I see it is only getting a small bit back of what they have taken of me since May 97. The recent Labour spin at Brown’s PM news conference earlier this week shows up exactly what I mean by this as the 10p tax debacle is now being spun as a tax cut –unbelievably. The VED stealth tax u-turn is also now being spun as a tax cut – putting off a tax rise does not constitute as a tax cut as they will simply put these taxes to the side for another day (if they god forbid are not booted by the electorate into touch at the next GE)
Please do believe me when I say that I will never, ever again vote for Labour while there is still breath in my body – as I mention the other day on a previous thread that my dad came out with a better one liner about Labour when he said “I will never vote Labour again as long as I have got a hole in my arse”.
[341] - A bit of rooting around on the internet provides a good reason for not naming baby P.
130 SeanT you are right. I gave up my former job having had children. I couldn’t be a good mum, as exposing your children to managed risk is part of the preparation for life.
I had to live away from where I had been working.
I couldn’t have kids and know where abusers lived, knowing what they had done.
I remember going back to see a friend and bumping into someone whose history I was only too familiar with in MacDonald’s whilst I had my eldest with me. It was very a disorientating feeling.
This stuff can seem other worldly when you have never been in contact with it and most parents need to feel that way, with a sensible note of caution thrown in.
I am still heavily involved with people who work on such legal cases and there is often an added dimension when the child involved is the same age/sex as your own, even as they get older.
It’s human nature to wonder how on earth your own would have managed in such circumstances.
I don’t turn away as you do. I can deal with reading the details. I prefer to meet it head on. In fact we are discussing fostering when are own are older - though we are far from making a decision.
Certainly it would be quite wrong to suggest that you aren’t capable of appropriate feeling and real compassion when you do not have children, but having them is an emotional matter and for better or worse, it affects your judgement.
352 - True. I was allowing for the fact that they might be completely mentally-ill, or something of that nature. I don’t know the case well enough to definitively say anything about it.
350 There seems to be great reluctance to prosecute parents for murder. I recall a recent case where a child was starved to death, yet the charge was some sort of lesser child abuse thingy. Yet if you don’t feed a child it will die - a 1:1 correlation. It would have had to happen over a long period. Anyobe could have stopped the child dying by feeding it. I cannot think of a clearer example of both intent and action - and yet murder charges weren’t brought. It isn’t even an either/or situation, you can bring a murder charge at the same time as the lesser charge and let the court decide.
I wonder why, in cases like this, you can’t find everyone guilty of being an accessory before the fact to murder. Which is murder.
Steering away from this grim topic, when is Betfair going to get into gear and set up a market for 2012?
354. A fairly emphatic answer! I do know my football which is why I attempted (unsuccessfully) to introduce you to Patrick (West Ham Fan Who May Just Vote Labour Next Time).
As you are a Millwall fan who now refuses to vote Labour any more, I thought there could be an interesting, possibly explosive, duality there…
358. Because there is no such offence.
341 - You can only be tried a second time following an acquittal in very limited circumstances which would usually involve evidence coming to light that wouldn’t have been available at the original trial. In the one case to date that involved a post-acquittal confession.
I don’t know in this case whether there was an acquittal though so it may not arise.
361 - Yes there is.
359 James - They already have a market for the winning candidate in 2012. Interestingly, the odds are very different from those that the bookies offer (although there is little liquidity so this may not mean much).
I did wonder about a strategy of laying Obama at this stage, on the grounds that the odds are bound to move around as sentiment changes over the next 4 years. However, it means tying up cash for a long period.
324 I don’t think it is only a matter of Brown’s emotional intelligence.
It’s also his leadership. He as a massive insecurity complex.
His backbenchers lacked intelligence, emotional or not, and he seemed to takE his cue from them. Someone of real strength would not have.
When do you ever get the impression that Cameron is lead by his?
365 - Interesting point Sally. I wonder whether we saw an individual-driven instance of this when Dennis Skinner appeared to bounce Brown into making his facile call for ‘the authorities’ to investigate Ozzie for the heinous crime of yacht visiting.
361 No, the offence is murder, obviously. But if you stand by and let it happen without doing anything about it, surely you are (almost) as guilty as the person who does it. Especially in child abuse cases which tend to happen over a period of several months or years.
Although a bit of research on the net shows that standing by and doing nothing about it, is unfortunately not enough to count as being an accessory.
364 “However, it means tying up cash for a long period.”
On the bright side though, with deflation set to be rampant, when you do get the cash back in four years time, you’ll be able to buy SeanT’s Fitrovia gaff*….
*Unless you’d find his Blue Plaque on the outside wall a little OTT!
As Alexander Pope put it 200 years ago:
“Thou shalt not kill but need not strive
Officiously to keep alive.”
338, 340. I’m not going to waste my time going back and watching a re-run on the BBC website to get an exact wording.
What I do know is that he did not say that UK child protection is better than anywhere else in the western world.
360 I repeat what I said yesterday:that I have never had a problem with Millwall fans I have met (certain Spurs fans I would happily string up from a lamppost),and whilst I vote Labour:
(i)I am from the moderate social democratic wing
(ii)I only do so (i)With a certain resigned ‘Better the devil you’
and (ii)I’m not backing a party with John Redwood and his chums on their loony fringe.
363 Accessory before the fact is old terminology which has been superceded by other legilation.
358 - there are specific offences relating to causing the death of a child which are slightly easier to prove and may in practice result in a similar sentence.
It’s a pragmatic decision by the prosecuting authorities - do you go for an offence which is hard to prove and has a low possibility of conviction or a lesser offence with a greater chance of conviction.
I wonder how much of the background to cases like ‘Baby P’ is institutional. I wonder if there should be an investigation into the training of social workers - is it as full of relativist PC nonsense, “being non-judgmental about lifestyle-choices” - as I rather suspect?
362. I guess the $64,000 question is whether anythinf “new” or “compelling” emerges. Now that lengthy (if not lengthy enough) jail sentences are inevitable maybe stories will change. Maybe the forensics people can come up with something new.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_jeopardy#England_and_Wales
339.
My sincere apologies for my post at 319 as I was not aware of any injunction and do wish that any poster on this site could be charged with breaching that injunction.
I merely googled in “mother on toddler murder charge” and about the 5th item down it was reported.
By all means let the BBC know to avoid any red faces .
366 I made the same contection.
He spoke in agreement on that occasion in what he thought were the most general terms without understanding the consequences.
371, as opposed to a party with 90 day detention, ID cards and invading countries based on lies in the mainstream?
370 Right, so you can’t remember what he did say, but you are sure that you remembered it well enough to question my recollection? But can’t suggest where my recollection might be wrong?
In that case, you’ll forgive me for regarding your original comment as worthless.
I have made a proper complaint to the BBC, no doubt they’ll set me right as I asked for a response.
11- I provided my own analysis here yesterday illustrating, in my own way, the same point you’re making. In politics, people have a strong tendency to project current trends forward ad infinitum without considering if there is historical precedent to the contrary. Not only have there been several post-war presidents in the U.S. who have failed to win election to additional terms for which they were entitled to run, but party control of Congress is also an apparent factor in re-election probability. If the Democrats keep control of both the House and Senate in 2010 (which they are likely to do), this substantially reduces the chances that Obama will win re-election. If the Republicans achieve the highly improbable by winning back the House and Senate in 2010, I’d say that Obama’s re-election is very likely.
I read a rumour on a blog that David Cameron is to do a David Davis over the the Baby P case - garbage ?
John Redwood is indeed a loony but I don’t remember him (or Maggie) proposing to forcibly fingerprint every adult in the country. Dwarfs even the Poll Tax in terms of unworkable, illiberal, bureaucrats-and-jobsworths’-wet-dream legislation.
381 - Assuming he hasn’t gone criminally insane during the course of the day or been replaced by an android controlled by remote control by Mandelson, then yes, Garbage!
378 This will have to be a quick response as I’m off to work very soon:
(i)ID cards willprobably get kicked into the long grass (i personally would get one voluntarily,but each to their own.
(ii)In the most extreme cases ,to prevent another 7/7,I can see the case,in the most exceptional instances,of lengthy detention without trial
(iii)A personal acquaintance is a 50-something Iraqi,resident in the UK for 35 years.He told me graphically of friends/families accounts of saddm Hussein’s regime-I believe these.In my opinion,it was morally defensible,if only to finsih unfinished buisness in 1991,when the mandate was merely to liberate Kuwait
Beware of Nobel Economics prize winners
http://cassiuswrites.blogspot.com/2008/11/beware-nobel-prize-winners-bearing.html
In answer to your original question, Mike. No.
381 -Unless by doing a David Davis you mean [moderated] with [moderated] using a [moderated] and a [moderated] in contravention of the [moderated][moderated][moderated]Act?
364 - The Betfair market is useless as it hardly features any contenders (only 11 in total and doesn’t even include Biden who would presumably be strong favourite were anything to happen to Obama).
381. Garbage, no chance. Would make him look stupid.
385. Beware of economists.
Remember Thatcher’s Yes Minister Sketch
Cameron to make “an announcement” at 3pm ?
What is this about fingerprinting dwarves!
“ID cards will probably get kicked into the long grass (i personally would get one voluntarily,but each to their own.”
What if they’re not and what if Labour doesn’t give you a choice?
(BTW, if you already have a valid passport you already have a gold standard proof of your ID with the added bonus of it not being designed to monitor your every move.)
379, 370 Unfortunately the News at One doesn’t seem to be available on iPlayer, just the Six and Ten. As it was in an interview with the newsreader, I doubt it will be repeated elsewhere - it wasn’t a recorded set piece.
386 - Correct. I would also have accepted, “Only if you run a fake tan shop in Salt Lake City, Michael”.
Toenails Robinson has updated his blog - must be outside of Campbell’s phone signals..
“The editorial in this morning’s Wall Street Journal is damning: “The need is for sensible, reassuring policy, and a global government spending spree financed with higher taxes or more borrowing won’t stimulate much of anything save perhaps Mr Brown’s approval ratings.” Ouch.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/nickrobinson/2008/11/not_everyones_a_fan.html
388 James - Yes, but presumably they’ll add more contenders if we ask.
Actually, a Republican nominee market would be more interesting at this stage.
For those involved PB’s Tote ten to Follow has started with a….. loss! - Battle Cry was 2nd in a 4 horse race. We can only get better!
And in any case, whatever he said it was a value judgment backed up with zero facts and was inappropriate. If he’d said that UK child protection was the worst in the western world, it would have been equally wrong. But I still think my recollection is at least a reasonable paraphrase of what he said.
391 That sounds somewhat unusual, does anyone know what this is about?
391.
Not much longer to wait.
If David Cameron resigns how will that affect the spread betting market?
The Times has more meat
Social workers responsible for the care of Baby P tried to prevent his mother’s newborn child being taken into care against the advice of police, despite the fact it was born in jail, The Times has learnt.
Council officials did not want the new baby – a girl – to be taken into care as they said it was “against the human rights” of the mother, even though she was on remand over the death of Baby P.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article5149549.ece
370. OK Phil C, I’ve now checked.
You said above at post 311 “But then he made a bland sweeping statement that in the UK child protection is better than anywhere else in the western world.”
Guess what? The exact wording on the BBC1 1pm News was:
“Britain’s record in terms of protecting young people is one of the best in the Western World”
“In International terms performance in Britain is not that bad”
“In some ways we’re better than most”
Not quite what you posted at post 311, eh?
400.
Rumours are circulating that David Cameron is going to do a David Davis and resign over the Baby P. issue. Apparently he is making an announcement at 3pm. We will see
360. The attempted possibly explosive, duality with Patrick (West Ham Fan Who May Just Vote Labour Next Time) must have gone right over my head or I simply missed your posting. Of course, I have no need to try to stick it in Patrick as we continue to be the promotional dark horse in League 1 & the unhappy hamsters continue their slide down the Prem, its plain for all to see & Patrick knows full well that we will be meeting in next seasons Championship.
403 refers to 379.
396 ‘Toenails’ - Isn’t that his nickname at the Beeb?
397 - I’ll get in touch with them this weekend. Not sure a separate Republican nominee market would be better. Better to have a single market if the liquidity is fragile at this stage - you can always trade around it on the winning party market.
404. He can’t be. It’d be nuts. He didn’t even back DD’s move particularly.
408 - Good point, James, but it would settle earlier, which would help a bit.
409 - It would indeed be nuts. Surely it’s one of those crazy rumours that sweeps around from time to time.
I think it’s b*ll*ck but I did see it on two seperate blogs.
404 - Resign and do what? Stand on an anti-baby killing ticket? I reckon he might just win on that basis.
Phil C
I understand your ’surely it must…’ but the fact is that legislation is drafted to include certain circumstances and to specifically to exclude others.
It has to be very precise otherwise you bring people in who shouldn’t be. As a result, you lose people who ’should’ be in.
The legislation used here was brought in because the situation was not covered by current law. There were too many holes for the defendents to slip through.
Even if you can identify which injury lead to death, you need to establish who did it and they generally point at each other.
Standing by and not stopping an act in these circumstances is hard to understand but I am sure there are circumstances we can all think of when its understandable noone intervenes when they see someone being assaulted and don’t think they share the responsibility of the crime.
This legislation was designed to specifically to catch people in the house who must have known, even if they can’t prove who did what.
Would we be having this conversation if the max. penalty was life?
I really don’t see why it can’t be left to the judge to decide the level of culpability. Here he gave the maximum 14 years which means they will be ELIGABLE for parole in 7.
What if he had been able to give life with a recommendation of say 25 years plus and done so?
403??? WTF! OK I was embroidering it slightly, but if I had slipped in an “almost” I would be bang on correct. Can’t see how you apparently see a 100% difference between the two statements.
In any case, it is still inappropriate. It is a sweeping statement made without supporting facts, and it is editorialising that it is not the BBC’s place to make.
Well, it’s after 3pm and nothing appears to be happening. Shame, I was expecting an IDS-style “Unite or Die” moment.
In non-political betting, Roy Keane’s odds of being the next manager to leave a prem club have dropped on Skybet from 16/1 to 4/1 in just 2 hours. Paddy Power have taken their market offline.
I have no idea if he is leaving, but there is clearly some money moving around. I took a tenner at 14/1.
411 Maybe he’s calling for a much deeper independent review of the state of Social Services in the UK, and their failure to protect this child. This afternoon would be a good time to do it, as Brown is in the US and it whips the weekend papers into a frenzy?
416 - Maybe the rumour was true and Ozzie has had him sectioned
404. Rumours are rumours. This won’t happen. The Tories are ahead in the polls - why pull a “campaign suspension” move?
407 “Toenails” - an interesting nickname, obviously some history to that one. Personally, I always refer to him as Phil Silvers.
Lib Dem Islington council in turmoil
Councillor Andrew Cornwell has resigned as Execetive Member for Finance from the Lib Dem administration in Islington. In a damning resignation letter to the Council leader he says:
“The Council remains characterised by waste and inefficiency in too many areas. Excessive spending on refreshments, conference venues, travel costs and consultants. The number of highly paid managers has grown and unacceptable redunandancy payments have been made to departing senior officers”
422 - I don’t see anything controversial in that resignation letter. Anyone who lives in Islington has had to live with that kind of administrative control for years.
412 - That’s the trouble with t’internet. People see it on two blogs and assume it has some truth in it rather than that one blog has copied the other.
410 - I also think it’s good to include some Democrats. I think there is some value there as Obama COULD tank (don’t think he will - but he could) and more grimly could die in office. Ford and Carter both faced serious challenges in the face of difficult times in the 1970s, while LBJ simply gave up in the face of a challenge in 1968.
What’s this Cameron press conference then?
If Cameron was going to do anything dramatic it would be because Gordon had insulted him by accusing him of making the case a political matter!
Actually Cameron should insist on a vote of no confidence in the Government on child care. He would lose but the government would be seriously damaged.
417. Apparently has not travelled with the team to Blackburn.
421 According to Popbitch, it’s the only part of him that remains visible as he’s so far up Browns ar$e.
[418] - Yes, I suspect it’s something of that nature, perhaps also wondering why no-one has resigned, etc. Obviously he wants to move it up the news agenda over the weekend, so that “Mr Brown goes to Washington” gets less attention.
404 Are they circulating because you started them?
426 - That is an interesting and smart tactic for David Cameron to pursue.
How sad for Supergordon that his World-saving effort in Washington is being comprehensively overshadowed by other news stories, not least poor Baby P.
The G20 coverage is now just the fourth most important news story on PoliticsHome. “Baby P buckpassing” is definitively first.
Labour’s grip on the media script has loosened.
Have you lot been hitting the sherry?
Is there going to be a press conference or not?
430 ‘Norman Normal’ does sound a bit like ‘Dolly Draper’
433 - A piquant blend of lemsip, starbucks coffee and more lemsip in my case, but the effect is much the same.
There was I thought an offence of common purpose - that if the participants knew that there was intent to commit violence and a death occurred all could be held guilty of murder.
Transvestite Potters for Boris!
TRANSVESTITE potter Grayson Perry is adjusting to the new regime at London’s City Hall under Mayor of London Boris Johnson. Perry is a member of the Fourth Plinth Commissioning Group, which deliberates on which items of modern art, should appear, in rotation, in Trafalgar Square.
The Group has been kept on after Johnson ditched his pledge for a permanent statue of Sir Keith Park on the site. “I supported Ken Livingstone and would still like to see him come back but I’m pleased with how Boris is doing and happy to keep working for him,” Perry tells me. “It’s good he’s keeping the Fourth Plinth for something a bit different. It’s more interesting than just having war heroes everywhere.
“You can’t expect everyone to like what we put up but it’s democratic with about 20 of us and we each get a vote.
“I like Boris’s cultural adviser, Munira Mirza. She’s involved in a group called the Manifesto Club who are great mischief makers. They did a report on the social benefits of cultural interventions. It showed how a lot of the research done on the projects was conducted by those running the projects and so maybe wasn’t as rigorous as it could be.”
A transvestite being someone who likes to eat drink and be Mary!!
432 “How sad for Supergordon…”
On a related note, coming down Edgware Road this morning, I saw a collection of superheroes - including Bananaman. Good to know that Miliband is doing his bit for Children in Need….
414 Sally, you have the advantage of being a professional in the field (if what I gather from previous posts is correct) and I’m not, so you obviously have a command of the detail that I don’t. (I’m an HR professional, and I wince every time I see strident calls for sackings.)
I do support the “cause or allow to be caused” offence as it has allowed prosecutions in cases where it wouldn’t be possible before. As there is a effectively a lower level of proof of culpability in the death, I’m not sure if a greater sentence should be possible.
I still stand by my argument that murder charges should more often be brought, perhaps simultaneously with lesser charges - as happens with murder/manslaughter and some motoring charges.
As a conservative, I would have thought you would have supported the idea of individual responsibility. If someone’s partner is abusing a child they have a duty to intervene. Full stop.
Murray beats Federer - first time ever Federer hasn’t got through the round robin stage.
Glorious, glorious match.
Hmm, no press conference so far?
441, how’s his back?
351 Tony B. And possibly out on parole in seven years.Difficult to believe, I just hope I am wrong. Incidentally, what is the toughest prison in Britain for people like that?
438
There is a special circle of hell reserved for people who tell jokes like that.
Are we in it?
445- A special circle in the Hell that is political correctness…
446, don’t think so. I think bono refers to that circle where you’re forced to listen to Alistair Darling’s budget speech for eternity.
447 Good afternoon, S&S (or morning for you, I guess.) Are you going to pour cold water on Mike’s latest bet?
446 - Cheer up, we might be coldstone’s punishment.
On the subject of political correctness, can I just say that being a liberal didn’t prevent me from cheering at the end of David Mamet’s ‘Oleanna’.
441: some trouble at the start of the 3rd set, but fine after a few injury timeout massages.
The problem now is Murray needs to play tomorrow against a form Davydenko, who has an extra day’s rest. I’d also be concerned about the adrenaline comedown from winning an epic, one of the matches of the season, and against someone he respects as much as Federer. Having said that, Murray looks like he wants the title more than anyone, and is now the clear favourite.
I’m also going to stick my neck out and say Murray will be world number one sometime late next year.
Hmm, no press conference then, that was odd.
Skybet has also now suspended betting on Roy Keane in their 1st Manager to leave a Premiership Club market.
454. Local paper says don’t panic
http://www.sunderlandecho.com/sport/Keane-has-NOT-walked.4696388.jp
441 If he gets to be undefeated it’ll be a lot of cash and a good start in the rankings race - Top 3 looks quite close now. Federer - will he retire?
449- Morning indeed! It’s not a bad bet for Mike, but I don’t know if it’s the next 50/1 Obama bet either. He’s an appealing and media-savvy figure with the right kind of experience but he’s also a Mormon, which will always be a tough sell. I don’t see his Mormon background sinking him in a GOP primary since most social conservatives would be happy to see someone with his traditional values in the White House. But it could be a bigger issue in a general election with secular voters. All in all, not a bad bet but I’m not convinced it’s a steal either.
447
Where do you think I’m posting from? ‘ello there’s Rasputin must ‘ave a chat!!
Is George being moved closer to the door?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/conservative/3458928/George-Osborne-pushed-into-stepping-back-from-political-role.html
http://www.sunderlandecho.com/sport/Keane-has-NOT-walked.4696388.jp
Still, I reckon 14/1 is still good value given their recent awful form.
Too late!
UK Polling Report has had a revamp, the poll scores are now on the front page, along with a new average (and there’s a blog post giving Anthony Wells’ justification for publishing an average). http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/index.php
Perhaps they couldn’t find any journalists on a Friday afternoon, to come to their press conference. Well any sober ones.
461, slightly confused. The average has a Tory lead of 9 points, but a majority of just 10. Shome mishtake, shurely?
456: no no, definitely not. Federer was outright sensational at times today, arguably his best performance of the year. A good offseason’s rest and training and he should be favourite for the Aus Open (Murray narrowly behind, maybe Tsonga has a shot also, doubt anyone else does).
458 - What a weird headline: “George Osborne pushed into stepping back from political role”.
In other news, lawyer steps back from doing law, footballer to do less football and journalist to stop drinking.
If you get the opportunity to watch a recording of the Federer v. Murray match, do so. An astonishing game of tennis, lasting 3hours, 1 minute, the antepenultimate game alone taking 14 minutes.
Compare and contrast with professional footballers.
421. An explanation of “toenails” from Nick Robinson’s blog
“Any truth in this Nick?
Quote: BBC Journalist…
“Nick Robinson is now known by the nickname “Toenails” here at the Beeb because he’s so far up Brown’s [derriere] that that’s all you can see of him.”
Looks like your fellow BBC journo’s think you might have a slight bias in a particular direction…
Surely not… .”
433. My sentiments exactly Sally. It has come to my attention that our good friends on pb.com are starting their weekends ever earlier these days.
463 - You need a pretty big lead to get a majority on uniform national swing (actually in practice I suspect you need less but it’s on a UNS basis in Wells’ figures).
466, tennis certainly seems to be going through a purple patch of great matches. I hope next Wimbledon is as good as the last was.
458 - Dreadful photograph accompanying that article. He looks like a pantomime dame - funnily enough there a quite a few of Brown with the same pout knocking about. Are they related?
Maybe Cameron’s going to challenge Gordon to a duel in Hyde Park?
469, I hope the swingometer comes back.
472, maybe they’ll end up having a scene like the start of Gangs of New York. Tories would win that easily.
Some tasty odds on Murray to win the Australian Open, 5/1 or even 6/1 at some places. Stupidly Nadal is 3/1, despite his record of always losing to the first seed he meets in hard court slams.
474 - I expect we would get something closer to the scene at the end of Blazing Saddles.
475, er, I thought the Aussie Open was grass? Apologies if I’m in error.
Sorry, but didn’t a rich, smarmy, well-qualified Mormon just lose the last Republican primary?
473 - The trouble with the swingometer is that it’s hard to incorporate Lib Dem seats (a 5% Labour to Tory swing tells you very little about whether you will get a Lib Dem seat with a 6% majority say).
In the past when there were very few of these, that scarcely mattered. But now the issue of whether the Tories get a significant number of current Lib Dem seats may be pretty crucial to whether they get a majority.
479, so, what we need is a troika of swingometers:D
Or… a 3-dimensional swingometer!
478 - Yes, but at times last year his odds were pretty short. So had Romney been available at 200-1 in 2004 (he wasn’t) then whoever had backed him would have made VERY good money if they got out at the right time.
477 - You are in error
Is there any source for the Cameron announcement story? It’s not mentioned on Continuity IDS.
452 Andrew, Yes - Murray is 5/4 favourite to win tomorrow. This compares with his odds of 50-1, available from Ladbrokes or Corals, to win SPOTY in a month’s time, which says something about the guy’s popularity despite having had a great season.
Nevertheless, I’ve had a tenner’s worth with Shadsy’s lot as I’m sure the price will be shorter on the night. In fact there’s a small amount of free money available now for anyone prepared to lay him at 40-1 with Betfair.
480 - Yes, there are ways of representing it graphically although many lose the neat simplicity of the swingometer.
O/T Hugo Rifkind in the Times has a bit on how today’s politicians will become tomorrows old stagers. Suggests George Osborne, a pleasant man now in his opinion, will turn into a pompous, spluttering, septuagenarian grandee (wonder who he’s thinking of there). Best though is the Millibands (because it looks so likely) “the elder one will be essentially Gerald Kaufman and the younger one Peter Hain”
When Murray wins one of the 4 majors he’ll win SPOTY, not before
477: It was in the distant past, been a bouncy hard court for a while now though. Not quite as difficult for Nadal as the fast US Open surfaces, but he’s never done anything there (semis this year don’t count, he had a stupidly easy draw as always and then got thumped by the first decent player he met).
484 - He has had a good season but hasn’t won anything people care about. Rusedski got it for losing in the US Open final but it was a very weak year. Why on earth give it to Murray ahead of Hamilton, Hoy, Addlington or a dozen other Olympic winners?
He may not have a lovable personality but he’d romp home with SPOTY if he won a grand slam tournament. But he hasn’t.
487 - He could in a weak year. Rusedski got one for reaching a final.
485, I don’t know. A spherical, 3-D swingometer utilising the x-, y- and z-axes could be quite an elegant solution.
477 - Showing your age! It used to be about 20 years ago.
437. Indeed. The Thompson and Bywaters case in the 1920s is a notable example..
489 James - I agree, but at 50-1 he’s value, he’ll be shorter than that on the night.
[480] - I believe the BBC had a “battleground” sort of graphic at the last GE, in the form of a circle with a slice for the seats from each of the three main parties, and therefore a Lib Dem - Tory “front” and a Labour - Tory “front”, etc, so that the relevant two-party swings on each of the three fronts could be separately looked at.
It would presumably show the cluster of seats on the Tory-Lib Dem front and the wide open spaces the Lib Dems would have to advance into against Labour before they could reach a sizable number of seats.
Incidentally, in a four-party FPTP system you could achieve a similar thing with a triangle-based pyramid…
491 - It wouldn’t look that simple though - how do you show the little stick men changing colour in a visually appealing and understandable manner?
495 - Yes, I remember the BBC battleground thing - IIRC it seemed to work rather well.
I stand corrected. And feeling mildly silly.
478- If an inexperienced Chicago pol who lapped up the sermons of Jeremiah Wright could become president, I’d say 200/1 odds on Huntsman look pretty good!
491 - Just draw three axes at 12 o’clock, 4 o’clock and 8 o’clock (the angles, not the times, else it will take you a while).
Then you can project each seat onto a battlemap; the marginals will be the ones near the axes and the three-way marginals near the centre. I believe the BBC did something like this in 2005.
490 Rusedski was a popular guy, despite being an adopted Brit. I doubt Murray will ever win SPOTY after his anti-English antics. The English after all comprise around 88% of the voting audience.
492, ahem. Morris Dancer was born in the mid-80s.
496, you simply have three 2-dimensional circular swingometers arranged on the x-, y- and z-axes inside a sphere. Because they’re 2-D, the other two axes would always be invisible, until you rotated the sphere to look at them.
484. I’d say 50-1 is about fair for Murray in the Spoty.
Why?
a) He hasn’t won a major title
b) He’s Scottish rather than British which won’t help him win over English viewers
c) There are already three great candidates in Adders, Ham and Hoy that are much more public-friendly
[491] - You only need two dimensions for three parties. The traditional swingometer is just a bent line, so is just one dimension.
With three parties you have a triangle - each point of the triangle represents 100% support for that party and 0% for the other two. You can have three axes in 2-d space, because you can work out the third party share from the other two shares [if you assume there are no votes for others, and you can get around that problem by defining the axes in terms of the difference in vote share between the parties, rather than their absolute votes I think].
504, I still like my sphere. Morris Dancer’s Ball, it could be called, and everybody would stare at it expectantly.
501 - Nobody really gives a monkeys about all that nonsense. If he wins a slam, he’ll win SPOTY (unless somebody does something even more special).
501. There were no ‘anti-English’ antics, the whole thing was a figment of the media’s imagination. Still, you’re right in the sense that a certain percentage of the population seems to have fallen for it.
500. What you need is a ternary diagram. There’s a very good one here..
http://www.intuac.com/cgi-bin/changeconstpic.cgi?77
491 With a rocking horse on the end, ridden by Jeremy Vine in his cowboy outfit?
503: The irony is that Murray is less of a nationalist than Hoy (if my school memories are still right).
501. Snap-a-dap dap. Interestingly enough, he was down as A Murray (SCO) on the BBC results page the other day, although they now seem to have changed it. William Hill have him as Andy Murray (SCO).
http://usopentennis.willhill.com/usopentennis/EN/usopentennis.asp
I guess he may have requested that he is SCO rather than GBR. I’m sure that tennis is one of those few sports that usually goes with GBR rather than home nations. Murray clearly sees himself as a Scot (nothing wrong with that per se) rather than a Brit and as you say, that won’t help him in the Spoty.
510. Are those school memories of Murray or of Hoy?
512: Hoy, was in the year ahead of me.
510. I always thought it was the other way around – that Murray was a nationalist and Hoy a pragmatic unionist (although still a patriotic Scot) ? Did you go to school with them?
P.S. See my post above about him being A Murray (SCO) in the BBC Tennis results.
508 - that’s the one. Can’t find a screenshot of the BBC coverage.
503. Isn’t the problem that Murray doesn’t appear to have a personality?
508. And another..
http://www.lshift.net/election/2005.html
New thread: “Is this the end of Gord’s second media honeymoon?”
10.”Another Mormon? I don’t think so.”
I have got to agree IA.
138.”127 In areas of the UK media sympathetic towards Gordon Brown, he has been hailed as ‘Chancellor to the World’. Please can any PB’ers in places overseas enlighten us as to whether this portrayal holds true in the far corners of the globe, or is the UK’s great financial saviour largely ignored?
Jonathan Levy reports that the WSJ Gives GB A Kicking
161.”The point is that the few people who do use them a great deal consider them a lifeline. They are the hub of a community - combining shopping for groceries, all bureaucracy, contact with the outside world and banking. They are part of the character in rural outposts.”
Morus, I agree and see that in my own rural village. A lot of elderely people don’t drive or use the internet. Also, I think that people are forgetting that the “save our post offices” campaigns by PPC’s was gaining traction and hurting the incumbents Labour MP’s.
That, I suspect, is the main reason for this government U turn. Mandelson and Purnell’s joint involvement in this bit of good news should also be of interest.
507. I think the Anti-English accusation was taking things a bit far, as you suggest. Think Murray simply said that he wanted the England football team to lose – seeing as that is almost a pre-requisite of being a Scot, I didn’t hold it against him. But as you say, the tabloids did and have ne’er forgiven him for it.
516 - “Isn’t the problem that Murray doesn’t appear to have a personality?”
Sports Personality of the Year - past winners include Nigel Mansell, Steve Davis, Damon Hill and Michael Owen.
520: The “anti-English” basically never happened - a journalist baited him with some comment about Scotland not being at the World Cup, and he fell for it by responding with some banter in the same spirit. Of course, the tabloids jumped all over it. Never mind that he lives in England, and has an English girlfriend.
516: I think he felt attacked and deliberately misrepresented by the media a few years back, and now basically is extremely guarded with them. His attitude to interviews varies between absolutely minimal answers and close to a verbal equivalent of a single finger. Besides, when was personality a required factor…. didn’t Beckham win it?
Regardless, no chance he wins ahead of someone as photogenic and successful as Hamilton, surely?
Next year maybe. He’ll highly likely be the reigning Masters Cup champ, will have numerous masters shields under his belt, likely a slam or even two (in order of likelihood: US, Aus, Wimbledon, no chance at Roland Garros), and be no1 or no2 in the world.
In a three party system you need to plot vote shares on a triangle. The simplest method is just to plot the conservative and labour percentages on the x and y axes. Since no party can have negative votes, and the total percentage can’t be over 100%, every seat will be somewhere in a right-angled triangle. If you want to represent all three corners on an equal footing, you use an equilateral triangle instead, but that’s a mathematically trivial change.
With four main parties, you use a tetrahedron, preferably regular. With five, you’d use the four-dimensional equivalent, but TV special effects aren’t quite up to that yet.
Ignoring seats where there’s a significant fourth party, every seat falls somewhere within the triangle, with most of them near one edge. A traditional swingometer collapses this into one dimension, squeezing everything down onto that edge.
Looking at the whole triangle during an election, you’d see bunches of dots crawling around and a few going against the flow. Put contour lines on the triangle, showing the size of the winning majority, and we can watch the dots climb the hill to a conservative landslie, or get bogged down in hung parliament territory.
It’d be much more informative than the old swingometers, but I suspect the networks don’t trust their viewers to understand it.
481 - pardon my ignorance but how would that work with a straight bet against the bookies rather than on a betting exchange?
P.S. I reckon Jobby Jindal’s worth a flutter.