Has Hannan put down his marker for next Tory leader?
March 25th, 2009How good is a 100/1 long-shot bet?
At 10 pm last night, after an evening in which the right-wing blogsphere had been buzzing over a speech directly to Gordon Brown in the European Parliament yesterday by the Tory MEP, Daniel Hannan, our friend Shadsy, the political market maker for Ladbrokes, popped up with a great bet. He had a simple posting here: “If anyone does want to take a flyer on Hannan as next Tory leader, you can have 200/1 at ladbrokes.”
In these things punters have to react quickly. Was this good value or not - for after all the incumbent, David Cameron, looks well set in and the 37 year old Hannan is not even in the Westminster parliament - a vital requirement if he has leadership ambitions.
Until now I’ve totally avoided the next Tory leader market because it could be at least a decade until there’s a vacancy. Who wants to lock up money for so long and in any case could the proceeds of a £10 bet, £2000, be worthless by then? Yet 200/1 is very tempting and I could not resist it. Other PBers felt the same and within just 20 minutes Shadsy has slashed the price to 100/1.
Yesterday wasn’t a good day for Gordon. After ex-minister Stephen Byers slammed last December’s VAT cuts the Governor of the Bank of of England, Mervyn King, issued a sharp warning about further stimulus measures - a story that headed the bulletins last night and is the lead in several papers this morning.
With next week’s G20 meeting in London and the budget in April the King criticism is a gift to the Tories and Liberal Democrats. Brown’s main strategy has been to isolate Cameron saying that nobody else in the world is following the Tory approach. King’s comments undermine that and provide the opposition with lots of valuable ammunition.
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First!
Nineteen thousand, eight hundred and seventeen to go?
No he hasn’t, but it’s an interesting thought.
As I said in the last thread, it was a very good speech but ultimately, slagging off Brown is trivially easy. Any politician worth their salt should be able to trounce an opponent when they’re so badly flawed and without the rules of the Commons keeping the language parliamentary.
Hannan has not yet been seriously tested with problems of leadership or of teamwork (unless he has some senior position at the European Parliament - but honestly, that’s so boring that not even I, a complete political anorak, can bring myself to watch).
Having said which, Cameron did become favourite for the leadership largely resting on a single Conference speech.
In my view 200/1 is about right. 50/1 would be too short.
I have seen Dan Hannan speak in person and he has the passion and belief that we need in politics. He is an excellent speaker and his blog is good too, although not as good as mine!
We are in the range of the hypothetical here, but on the assumption that Cameron becomes Prime Minister then there are two scenarios either he loses the general election in 2014/2015 (in which case he is likely to resign as leader) or he wins it. In which case reading his recent interview with Dale the implication is that Cameron is unlikely to continue on and on. He has seen what has happend to his two predecessors who continued to the ten year target and probably won’t wnat to repeat the experience - it’s better to leave before the electorate become restless.
So in either case the answer is no. Hannan won’t be an MP with another experience to be leader.
Oops should be “enough” not “another”
Is Hannan standing for UK parliament in 2010?
Just checking out Hannan blog and he has lots of clips of his speeches in the EU parliament. Never a sole in sight.
Now either he is breaking in and giving speeches in the middle of the night, or the bleep bleep bleep are even more bleep bleep bleep lazy than their UK counter-parts. Regular large scale non-attendance of sessions of parliaments really does make a mockery of the democratic process!
Would love to see a rule for UK parliament to stop all this buddying up and doing a mass bunk. I fail to believe that the all those backbench MP’s missing day in day out (except Wednesday at 12pm) have so much on their plate with other committees etc. It should be the minority missing not the majority!
Maybe we need an anti-truancy drive on MP’s or introduce an American style hall pass system
The non-attendence of MPs etc. at the House of Commons is why there only needs to 500 of them at most.
7. Oracle: Is Hannan standing for UK parliament in 2010?
Not AFAIK. I understand that he declined to be on the “A” list.
No - one speech does not make a PM - W. Hague!
Has anyone read his book?
http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/the-plan-twelve-months-to-renew-britain/3704883
9. Peter. Easy. Give them an hourly allowance for occupying a seat in the House. Some of the snouts would move in permanently - thus saving us their second homes allowance.
BTW - loved the Brooks cartoon suggesting Jacqui’s third home is a nuclear shelter. How much would that cost us - and would there be enough room for her sister and McNumpty’s mum and dad?
J. Porrit says the UKs population must fall to 30m to be able to sustain itself - no method is suggested - any ideas?
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article5950442.ece
It’s a strong speech, no doubt about that, but let’s not forget the excitement the Tories had in 2005 when they faced electing a leader with some hair for the first time in a decade. Hannan will need to do more than savage Gordo before he becomes value.
Good point about the lack of heckling - perhaps the others were just asleep but if someone ever gets the guts to deal properly with the screaming in the Commons, Parliament would be better for it.
As I said on the last thread, quite emphatically, the speech is rather good - and Brown’s reaction is equally intriguing: he smirks.
We’ve seen this grisly, asinine, aren’t-I-a-clever-boy Gordon Brown smirk before. He did at the budget when he slashed inheritance tax. He does it sometimes during PMQs.
Does he even know he’s doing it? I wonder. I suspect it may be some kind of defensive reflex - whenever he thinks he’s in a tight spot, or has just escaped a tight spot, Gordo wheels out The Smirk.
If it isn’t deliberate then it is a very unfortunate facial tic: because it is utterly infuriating. Even though I have never met our premier, The Smirk fills me with loathing - for this gloating Labour gnome, who debauches and betrays the country, and then chortles about it.
God knows how much it must infuriate Brown’s personal enemies - across Westminster and Brussels.
Keep Smirking, you funny little man. Keep Smirking.
13. Without immigration it would slowly fall naturally - more trees, less houses, more room generally, easier to feed ourselves, more skill training, more robots, less unskilled labour, much better in every possible way. But both Gramsci and short-sighted global capitalists say no.
I saw him on the Daily Politics and he’s too vitriolic. That’s alright during PMQs and out campaigning during elections, but for the rest of the time a leader needs to be more measured and I’m not sure Hannan can pull that off.
Don’t lets forget that Hannan is a Freedom Association Tory.
For his generation, Europhobia has replaced the “Hang Nelson Mandela Smash the NHS” lunacy of the 80s version.But he’s got plenty of time to move.
However.
In the interests of the British Parliament it would make far more sense for the Conservative Constituency Associations to select someone like him than some on the joke candidates they do adopt.
Betting wise, his odds are the same as John Redwoods.
They clearly should be shorter, 300/1 as against 500/1.
That photo in the Mail has an astonishing resemblance to our new guest editor! Is David moonlighting already?
Oh, good god, the T.I.M. is up to spread his vitriolic garbage even earlier than normal. Time to go to bed, then, whilst PB becomes unreadable through the T.I.M.’s malice and the host’s neglect.
13. I have a list already prepared…
20 - Repetitive as ever.And lacking in substance again.
Hannan comes from the John Redwood/Gerald Howarth wing of the Conservative Party.
The Party will never elect a leader from that wing.
Hannan’s speech has not been directly mentioned on the BBC website, on either the UK news page or the politics page. There is also nothing on Mardell’s Euro blog, save a little piece on European Day of Icecream, unless of course you read through all the comments.
Hannan seems like one of the good guys from many different angles - so I guess that puts him on the map and 200/1 may be about right. You’d need to see a route into parliament though.
The ongoing realisation of just how profoundly fuc*ed the nation’s finances are is going to accelerate now that the BoE has waded in. Labour has dug us into a huge hole through borrowing and spending and the genius in No.10 seems keen to see more of the same. Usual advice when in a hole is to stop digging.
Hannan sounds far too posh to be a Tory leader these days. He would make a great junior minister though.
Obama overnight.
Talking up the need for joint action on the global economy, Obama said: “We don’t want a situation in which some countries are making extraordinary efforts and other countries aren’t with the hope that somehow the countries that are making those important steps lift everybody up.”
Why he is right.
TOKYO (AFP) — Japan announced Wednesday a record fall in exports, keeping its economy on course for the worst recession since World War II as the global downturn pummels demand for cars and high-tech goods.
Exports roughly halved in February compared with a year earlier, making it likely the world’s second-largest economy will log another sharp contraction in the current quarter.
This isn’t a bet I would go for. It is simply too far out. It is not just ten years of the high inflation that is coming thanks to the Bank of England printing money potentially making a thousand pounds the kind of sum you loose behind the sofa and forget about there is also the number of unknown game changing events between now and then. Over that kind of period the Stock Market would probably offer better returns, plus the ability to take your profit (if there is any) at any point.
Isn’t the next Tory leader market like the US vice president markets? Is it possible to lay the favourites, or are only the traditional bets available?
I think too many people here are mesmerised by our host’s success with the Obama bet, but the circumstances here are quite different. Being an MEP is not the launchpad for leading the Tories as being a Senator is for entering the White House; The fortunes of the Tory party at this time are much better than those of the Democratic party at the time of Mike’s bet - so there’s less scope for a relative unknown to enter the running. I’m sure there are more.
26 What Obama is saying is that the US has knackered itself as badly as we have and wants otherwise prudent countries to come to his rescue.
The recession will work its way through all countries one way or another over the next year or two. What will emerge the other side is some countries that still have an acceptable ‘balance sheet’ and some that are sunk in debt. Guess which ones will prosper thereafter?
Cameron, King, Germany, China, the IMF, France, etc are broadly right. Brown and Obama are broadly wrong about policy.
Dan Hannan won’t be leader I’m afraid. he’s already decided to come off the A list and recently moved his family to Brussels. He’s also too much of a free and radical thinker (as his book The Plan demonstrates).
However a Dan Hannan Britian would certainly be an interesting place. Direct Democracy would be the theme.
[29] - There’s a bit of a difference between Obama and Brown, namely that Brown is responsible for the fiscal position he finds himself in, having been Chancellor for the ten years from 1997, and Obama is not, since it was the Bush administration that mirrored Britain’s decline into high government deficits during the “Boom” years.
“Hannan comes from the John Redwood/Gerald Howarth wing of the Conservative Party.”
On the EU, he certainly shares their views, but he tends to be socially liberal rather than socially conservative.
WRT the Freedom Association, plenty of Conservative MPs and activists are members, so I couldn’t see that being a barrier to him.
Off-topic, but I’m pleased to say that I’ve just been offered a rather good job.
22
I dont expect Labour will ever elect a leader from the lunatic fringe again. We have seen what 12 yrs of prudence has done to Britain and so have they.
31 That is true. But the medicine they seem to be prescribing is the same old lefty snake oil. They spend what they want not what they can. Expect Brown to go for it big time and with a hugely cynical giveaway in the run up to the next GE.
It’s shit or bust for Brown now. If he does the right thing by the country he’s sunk politically. His only political option is to sink the country in debt. Either way things in this country aer going to get a fair bit worse befoer they get better. A GE cannot come too soon.
33 Well done Sean, and good luck.
32 - Is he in favour of Drug Legalisation?
37. Buy ‘The Plan’ tim and you can see everything he’s in favour of. Ask Dolly if he’ll put it on expenses for you.
Reagan = Butter + massively increased Guns to break USSR
Clinton = Same Butter but reduced Guns
Bush = Same Butter + massively increased Guns
Obama = Same Guns + massively increase Butter
Kaboom!!!
Obamassiah -> Jonah McDoom II in 100 days
China is going to be so p***ed off if the dollar hyper-inflates and they lose all their savings. They won’t attack the states but they’ll take it out on someone.
The core complaint to the Tories leaving the EPP seems to be that it’s downright irresponsible not to be in a large grouping in a Parliament, because your grouping can’t get legislation through. Leaving aside the question of just how much influence the Tories had on the direction of the EPP, the entire stance does seem to be slightly harsh on the Lib Dems position in the UK Parliament …
[35] - You might have some success of labelling it as “lefty snake oil” over here, given that it is Brown who is responsible for HMGs finances, but whatever his rhetoric was, Bush II was a President of big government spending and big government deficits.
The criticism of Obama would surely be more accurate that he has not been “the change we need”, in that he is still too closely wedded to the Bush play book that he inherited.
On-topic: Hannan strikes me as more of a Powell / Joseph type. The more of a name he makes for himself with speechifying in Babylon the more seriously people will take the ideas him and his mate Carswell are pushing.
News this morning is another depressing reflection on Brown’s Britian. Govt poking its nose into facebook, school dinners to be regulated to extinction for no purpose whatsoever, Brown spending money we haven’t got. Another year of this to go yet.
33 is the job on topic (ie in or around politics)? And congratulations.
Hannans views on drugs.
For this reason, I tend to be liberal on drugs policy more generally. But I accept that I am in a minority. There is no appetite in Britain to move towards a decriminalisation of narcotics, and that strikes me as a good enough reason to keep the laws as they are. We are, after all, a democracy.
Bit of a disappointment for a free thinker thinking the unthinkable.
41 That is the real tragedy of Bush’s persidency. It was not the failure to plan post war Iraq, nor the social conservatism but that he presided over a big spending big government bureaucractic expansion. That should be against what Republicans hold dear and makes a return to fiscal common sense that much harder. We seem to have forgotten ’sound money’ on both sides of the pond and we won’t recover until we do.
Hannan. Next Conservative leader? No.
But clearly he is good and does seem to be positioning himself to be a big player, with the web site, the speeches, videos and so on. But there is no direct route from Europe to Downing Street, unlike America where anyone can run for the White House.
If Ken had seen off Boris, I’d be all over him for London Mayor. Are there any other big, directly elected offices?
Hannan is an MEP after all: could his ambitions lie in that direction?
Frisky Labour MP Nigel Griffiths, who has just been rumbled for entertaining a lady in his House of Commons office, cut a lonely figure when he turned up yesterday to hear a statement by the PM.
“No one would sit next to him,” says The Whip’s source, “and the only person who went up to talk to him was Lib Dem Lembit Opik.”
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/columnists/thewhip/article2338802.ece
“Isn’t it ironic,” says reader Les Hoggan, “that shamed MP Nigel Griffiths claims that he has no recollection of what happened in his office on Remembrance Sunday.”
http://www.theherald.co.uk/features/diary/display.var.2497614.0.Tunnel_vision.php
Brown is beginning to look extremely isolated regarding a further fiscal stimulus after comments over the least few days from home and abroad. The front-page photo of the King and Queen meeting makes this very clear.
How long will the Brown - Darling - King menage last? And who will come out on top?
I doubt that he would be the next Conservative leader. Firstly he seems unlikely to want to leave the European Parliament. Secondly I think the type of post-Cameron leader the Conservatives will be looking for will not be in the Hannan mode.
On the point of an empty Parliamentary chamber indicating laziness of Members, that is an utterly facile point. The job of MP is more than simply sitting in the chamber all day every day. If you are on a select committee you cannot be in committee and in the Chamber simultaneously, you cannot deal with casework effectively if you are never out of the chamber to pick it up.
‘EU election results will take four days’
Scotland will declare its final European election results a day after England and Wales and four days after voters have been to the polls.
http://www.theherald.co.uk/politics/news/display.var.2497629.0.EU_election_results_will_take_four_days.php
‘MPs dismiss home voting suggestion’
Frustrated by constant delays on his weekly odyssey - consisting of two flights, a ferry journey and a minibus ride - Mr MacNeil has tabled a parliamentary motion calling for a “limited number of opportunities during each parliamentary year to vote remotely on divisions in the House” when weather or technical issues prevent attendance.
http://www.theherald.co.uk/politics/news/display.var.2497628.0.MPs_dismiss_home_voting_suggestion.php
41, 46 — yes, Bush believed in big government, as did Nixon and earlier Republican presidents. It is a myth that all small-c conservatives believe in small government.
Even some of those who are true believers do not practise what they preach. The way President Reagan “showed that deficits don’t matter” is by spending an awful lot of cash.
Large political parties (at least under fptp) are coalitions. The tragedy of Bush (or one of them) is that he disappointed every single Republican constituency: from neo-Cons to isolationists, from the religious right to the country club, from limited government to interventionists.
52 - What a silly idea, how long would it be before every MP stayed in their constituency nurturing their vote.
Nationalists in local government
Running administration:
Dundee - SNP minority (to be confirmed)
East Ayrshire - SNP minority
Stirling - SNP minority
Leading coalition:
East Lothian - SNP/LibDem coalition
Fife - SNP/LibDem coalition
Renfrewshire - SNP/LibDem coalition
West Dunbartonshire - SNP with Ind support
West Lothian - SNP/Ind coalition
Junior partner in coalition:
Aberdeen - LibDem/SNP coalition
Argyll & Bute - Ind/SNP coalition
East Renfrewshire - Lab/SNP/Ind and one LibDem coalition
Edinburgh - LibDem/SNP coalition
Perth & Kinross - LibDem/SNP coalition
http://www.theherald.co.uk/politics/news/display.var.2497626.0.SNP_set_to_take_control_of_Dundee_council_after_Lord_Provost_resigns_from_Labour.php
re 22. The bet was for £10. Right. £10 to get a possible £2000. Things like this can happen and you can make money.
In January 2006 I backed Huhne at 200/1 for the Lib Dem leadership. He didn’t win but at one stage was the odds on betting favourite and I was able to lay off and made several thousand pounds - enough to fund crazy bets like this for years to come.
In November I put £50 on Jon Huntsman for next president at 200/1. He’s now the 16/1 fourth favourite.
I got on Ming Campbell at 33/1 for next Speaker and he’s now 6/4 second favourite.
I’ve got bets at more than 30s on Purnell and Cruddas for the Labour leadership as well as a tenner on Blair at 250/1. Very unlikely I agree but you could just envisage the circumstances when that might come about.
Big outsiders can work in politics. The amount you risk is minimal compared with the potential returns. Everything is about the risk/return ratio.
The picture of HM the Queen meeting the Governor of the Bank of England is one of the most astonishing political interventions by the reigning monarch for many a year - albeit, with an economy of words which would be worthy of Marcel Marceau! It couldn’t be clearer in sending out the message “one thinks you should listen to this man, Prime Minister”…
Explains why Tim had a sleepless night.
I wonder if anyone in the Royal Palaces visits pb.com?
43-Does put it into context. In one year’s time the GE election campaign will have started just about.
Not so long ago it was 18 months of this/2 more years of this…Suddenly it’s “only a year”.
51-Why?
54. James Burdett
Would it not improve the Westminster assembly if its members had better day-to-day contact with their constituents, rather than with each other (the ‘Westminster Village’)?
Sky Breaking News: Sir Fred Goodwin’s Edinburgh home has been attacked overnight. Windows smashed, car vandalised…
60. At least Gordon has an alibi.
59 - I very much doubt it.
57. Yeah. Nicely done Ma’am. Good picture too.
@56 (Mike Smithson)
How do you lay off bets like this one?
The main factor which prevents me betting more is the lack of two-way markets; I want to ability to sell as well as buy.
33 Pleased for you Sean, but aren’t you a solicitor in a family firm?
Lets be careful here aboyut the ’slashing’ of odds from 200/1 to 100/1 as a sign of anything other than a bit of interest. That interest could be no more than a few hundred quid. For those who got terh 200’s thats immaterial since they have the best odds and future potential, but from 200/1 to 100/1 isnt exactly a bandwagon
Tory MEP, Daniel Hannan looks a class act in both presentation and speech. However I cant see him beating either Boris, who is my pick for next Tory leader or Hague.
60. Thats what we get for making these people out to be bogeymen. I didnt see the media and politicians running around screaming 2 years ago when everyone though RBS a titan.
60
As a taxpayer I demand he get 24hr police protection at our expensive and allow this man to avoid paying any tax for the rest of his life.
Poor dear he must be traumatised by this experience.
I hope the people that did this are ashamed of themselves
previous thread - Shadsy - “Edinburgh South is on the to-do list.
There seem to be some extra parties in Scotland that I don’t know much about. It slows me up a bit when I try to work it all out.
http://politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2009/03/24/how-much-can-we-trust-this-scottish-euro-poll/#comment-980055
Ask LS to help you out Shadsy. By now he should have just about finished Chapter Two in his ‘Scottish Politics for Dummies’ nightclass coursebook.
15 SeanT - I noticed yesterday that whenever Brown does one of his sickening smirks, it’s usually accompanied by his scribbling furiously on a scrap of paper.
I’d be interested to hear a psychiatrist’s take on this but to me, as a layman, it comes across to me as a feeble and wholly unsuccessful attempt to belittle the person opposing him, rather like an old-fashioned schoolmaster might react to one of his errant pupils …….”I must make a note to give that stupid boy a good thrashing later pour encourager les autres.“
45. I see that ‘tim’ bot has been at his labour party anti-tory data base early this morning. Is there anything that he wont say to besmirch and deride perfectly sane remarks?
Obviously not. What a tit!.
Re 64. At the moment there is no point in laying off this. I only a bet £10. But with my 50/1 Obama bet I kept in there until after the conventions and then laid him on Betfair at odds that ensured that I would get about two-thirds of the profit whatever happened.
I’ll do the same with Huntsman if he does get close.
12. Given Jacqui Smith’s residential arrangements, there would be plenty of irony if she decided to leave the government “to spend more time with my family”.
33. Off-topic, but I’m pleased to say that I’ve just been offered a rather good job.
by Sean Fear March 25th, 2009 at 7:35 am
Congratulations! Anything to do with politics or betting?
Mike’s done very well with his bets on outsiders and 200/1 seems to be the magic number for him at the moment! Is it value? I’m not convinced.
For it to come good, Hannan will probably need to enter parliament at (or by) the election after next to give himself time to reach near the top and establish a name for himself, and he doesn’t appear inclined to do that at the moment although events may yet change that. He’ll also need to make good on those expectations of having leadership potential - and that means more than the ability to make a good speech (although it worked for Cameron). The timescale will also be against him. Cameron will probably have to lead the Conservatives for another ten or more years in order for Hannan to reach a position from where he can credibly challenge - and then of course he’ll need to win the leadership contest against whoever else might be around.
That’s a lot of ducks to line up. Hannan looks to have the intellectual and presentation ability and is in the right sort of age bracket if there’s a lengthy Conservative government but I still have my doubts. The comment above, comparing him to Powell and Joseph (or for a lesser version, John Redwood), looks to be close to the mark. He has a bit too much of the maverick about him to be the sort of person likely to make it to the top. His desire to remain the the EP rather than move to Westminster is one obvious indication of that.
On a practical betting note, it would be extremely handy if Betfair could open up a ‘Next Leader’ market for the main three parties. It might not be particularly liquid but it would at least give the opportunity to lay as well as back options.
previous thread - Easterross - “Ironically the better score for Labour in any Scottish poll the worse it is for them. They have a great problem getting their people out and especially in the Euro elections. If the average uninterested Labour voter thinks Labour is going to walk it then they simply wont bother to vote.
http://politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2009/03/24/how-much-can-we-trust-this-scottish-euro-poll/#comment-980073
Strongly agree.
I was absolutely delighted with STV’s voodoo Euro poll (Lab 41%, SNP 30%, Con 13%, LD 10%). The last thing Scottish Labour needs now is complacency. And the last thing the SNP needs is over-confidence.
No way are Labour anywhere near 41% on Euro voting intention. STV is doing the SNP’s work for us: motivating our supporters to get out there and actually cast their votes.
72. Tim only exists to knock Conservatives and the Conservative Party. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him make a reasoned, positive post about anything.
77. I spy a return of the Palmer Paradox.
re 76. So David you think that there’s greater than a 99.5% chance that he won’t be leader? I disagree. I’d put it at 99%
re 78. I think that Tim has had some very interesting things to say about the scandal of the MMR scare-mongering. If someone believed this trash and they were a candidate for parliament it would change my view of them.
If I heard him correctly, Mervyn King also told the House of Lord’s Economic Affairs Committee yesterday that he would prefer an inflation measure which included the cost of housing. Rather revealingly, he said he argued against using the CPI rather than the RPI when Brown imposed CPI as the inflation yardstick in 2003.
Also rather embarrassing for Brown IMO.
71. Peter from Putney
You can take the son out of the manse. But you can’t take the manse out of the son.
Self-righteousness superiority is in Gordon’s blood. His opponents should toy with that character flaw. If only for hours of endless amusement. One could, quite literally, drive the poor sod completely mad.
Mike has explained it all very well @ 56.Some of you people are far too solemn and also don’t have the faintest clue about betting.
On the exchange,a 200.0 shot becomes instant money once it becomes 190.0 shot.So much better if it becomes a 1.90 shot !
I spend roughly a quarter of my year betting on Big Brother and the very last thing I think about is who is going to win the thing.
To make MONEY all you need to do is to predict the movem ent of prices in the short and mid-term.
All the rest is a load of crystal balls !
76 David - last para, don’t hold your breath, Betfair have already demonstrated that they are not anxious to develop their political markets beyond the mundane. They are light years behind both Ladbrokes and Hills in this regard. Small wonder that there is next to no money being wagered on their individual constituency markets.
Even the spread-betting firms seem totally unadventurous in offering little other than GE seats on unattractively wide spreads, and then only for the three main parties.
Long gone, sadly, is the notorious, grotesquely worded “Brown Weeks” market offered by the late, much-lamented Spreadfair.
Must go off thread because the Messiah hath spoken again last night.
This must be the eighth time in five days that Obama has been before the media in a bid to drown all criticism of himself and his policies by his mere presence.
Oh what trouble the USA is in!
Wibbler is right @4 that it was an open goal. But, there was superb delivery, lots of beautiful touches, and the ball was thumped into the back of the net.
There is a real eye for the telling detail that hits the crisis home:
“Brezhnev-era apparatchnik”, “servicing the interest on the debt costs more than educating the child”, “not every vessel in the convoy is in the same dilapidated condition”.
Hannan is an enormous prospect for the Tories, much more impressive than any other pol I’ve heard of his generation.
79. David Herdson - “the Palmer Paradox”
Err… pass.
Please enlighten us mere PB hoi polloi, Sir David of Wise Penshire.
By the way, hearty congrats David. THOROUGHLY well deserved.
When is seanT going to be joining the PB staff? I love Sean. He is my No.1 favourite fictional character.
URW - But these bets of Mike are not generally available on the exchanges. It only works when there are not many runners and your previous outsider is one of the few. So in the case of Huhne, Mike could bet on Clegg - not worrying about whether he would win or not, because if he didn’t his Huhne bet would come in.
Surreptitiously this recession, (despite some odd quirks), is taking a deeper grip on the country.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7962833.stm
re 84. Thanks URW. Gamblers look at these things differently and try to spot opportunities. Price like this occur rarely and when they do you have to make a snap decision whether or not you think it is value. At 200/1 you can make a lot of mistakes before it gets costly.
The joy of political betting is that there’s more chance a of an extreme long-shot coming through than with the horses.
re 85. On Betfair, sadly, I have to agree. Their markets are so unimaginative and so illiquid that I hardly bother with them these days. That’s sad really because the place where Politicalbetting effectively started was on the Betfair Forums in early 2004. In those days there were some great liquid political bets.
re 90. My 200/1 Huhne bet was in the 2006 contest.
81 But, doesn’t the candidate have an autistic child? If true, that is what makes tim’s attack unpleasant. A parent of an autistic child is not best placed to judge these matters, just as the victims of violent crime should not be in charge of sentenceing policy.
The MMR scandal happened because the public don’t understand risk.
Wakefield made a hypothesis and put some evidence in front of the scientific community. It was evaluated and found wanting. There is no proof or disproof of a link between MMR and autism — it is just statistically very unlikely that there is a link on the basis of evidence we have now.
However, there is a risk associated with all vaccines, albeit tiny.
I think your view is too harsh, not least because the evidence in science can change with time (new datasets become available, new methods are used). It is rarely as clear-cut as you seem to imply.
84. URW - I spend roughly a quarter of my year betting on Big Brother…
OMG. And I thought I wasted a fair chunk of my life on frivolous pursuits. But you win URW.
90. Icarus.What you say is true but things can and will change in the fullness of time.Eventually Betfair get round to putting up a market on anything and everything.
Gordon Brown will repeat calls for greater fiscal stimulus and more financial regulation on a visit to the US as part of his pre-G20 summit tour.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7962654.stm
morning all and on topic, surely this man wants to lead the new anti-federal conservative grouping which is presumably what William Hague has been constructing for some time. Remember since a group in the EP needs to have representatives from at least 5 member countries, the grouping will not simply be the British Conservatives and a few “extreme right wing nutters” to paraphrase some of you. There is a tradition of British Tories like Sir Jack Stewart-Clark being elected into the more senior positions within the European Parliament and Mr Hannan may have ambitions to be President of the Parliament one day which would be a genuinely influential position. He will never be Westminster Tory leader. Firstly he is not a UK MP andI think the days are long gone when an MP stands aside to let someone be jettisoned in as George Younger did in 1963 to let in the Earl of Home. Secondly he is only a few years younger than David Cameron and that generation is already crowded out with 2001/2005 intake members who would jockey for the top job it it becomes available prematurely.
It is noteworthy that yet again McDoom is to be absent from PMQs. He seems to do anything to avoid it and of course I am sure Harpy is desperate to stand in because her ambition knows no limits.
Could the Governor of the Bank of England be visiting the Queen to reassure her that he has put her civil list funds aside in a “cupboard” away from Gordon McDoom in case he spends them saving the Universe? Lord King of Lower Reserves in the County of Insolvency has a certain ring to it.
84. It would be very nice if someone from PB would print and publish a simple primer on spread betting that would help some of the less knowledgeable (like me) to participate more.
97 - So he clearly paid due attention to the Governor.
Back to 15: ST
Brown’s smirk is probably a reflex. Some children when getting a thorough b********g will wear the same smirk or even start to giggle. It is distancing one’s self from the reality of a high stress situation.
The excellent Hannan coolly, calmly, and very publicly, ripped Brown a new @rsehole and all the increasingly ludicrous wretch could do was to smirk and giggle like a naughty schoolboy as he always does when he is confronted with his deceit and incompetence.
99. weathercock
AND a primer on terms like “The Palmer Paradox”, and “Smithson’s Seventh Rule, Twice Removed”.
81. Mike would a candidate believing in supernatural beings, people walking on water, and the transformation of pieces of bread into flesh also preclude you from voting for them?
Robinson rightly getting slated on his blog for lack of coverage of the Hanna speech.
One of the best political speeches in recent times, for its brevity, its sense of purpose and its passion, and not a whisper from the BBC. Shame on them, shame on them.
The Conservatives are on the cusp of power, and the BBC is mounting its own funeral pyre.
Its a shame because i like so much of what it does.
Regarding Betfair: Ages ago,Penny4them pestered Betfair into opening a ‘Date and Most Seats’ market.She did it through persistence.As it happens the market is badly supported for now.
They used to be a lot more responsive to my suggestions in the early days but not now.
The situation is crying out for Party Seat markets a la shadsy and Hills.Perhaps someone a bit dogged could do the honours.
105 - To be fair though, hardcore Conservative slates Labour PM could be considered as not newsworthy. We do have to be reasonable in our criticisms.
Congratulations to Sean Fear and David Herdson for their respective promotions. David’s a very good choice, and I’d be intrigued to know more about Sean’s new job if he takes it.
By the way, I should know as it’s my region, but I don’t: is Kilroy-Silk standing again? Does Veritas still exist?
To respond on the MP/MEP attendance issue - this would only change if two practical things changed. First, the rule that you can only speak if you attend pretty much the whole debate (to be precise: the intro speeches, the closing speeches, all sppeches until you’re called, and then two more). This means you have to commit to five hours or so in the hope of speaking for 10 minutes. That wouldn’t matter if it wasn’t for the second point: MPs would need to be stripped of their role as de facto local Ombudsmen. I get around 150 letters and emails a day, most of them about personal issues - the neighbour is noisy, the CSA are slow, etc. I literally can’t afford on a regular basis to spend 5 hours sitting in the Chamber while they pile up, so I do what nearly everyone else does - work with the monitor on so I can follow the speeches while I’m sorting out the CSA. If the number of MPs was reduced without fixing this, it’d get worse, not better.
101 Brown (as anyone would be having to sit listening to a savage attack) is in a lose-lose situation. He cannot reply, if he looks serious then press reports “ashen faced”, if he tries to look relaxed then unfortunately, as smiling is a learnt art for him, he seems to smirk.
The note taking though is an odd tic that he has, presumably he has to do something with his hands (and its better than picking his nose isn’t it) but it may also be an attempt to denigrate the attack by signalling he has something better to do.
I think we all agree that it’s very unlikely indeed that Dan Hannan will ever become Tory leader, but after hearing his speech at the top of this thread, it was difficult, irrespective of party allegiance to avoid exclaiming WOW!!(or something akin). I don’t suppose Brown has ever been spoken to like that in his entire life.
Brown reminds me of Catain Ahab, waving the crew on as he drowns in the debt of his own making. I dont think anyone takes him seriously any more, and its looking very much like paybacktime for all the lecturing abour prudence to other Govts.
111 sea of debt
88: Stuart, Palmer’s Paradox is my theory that the more likely it seems that the Tories will win, the more difficult it becomes for them to do so (because it mobilises those “0-5 likely to vote” Labour voters). The optimal Tory position is a huge lead, of course, but if it’s close they do best if they get a surprise last-mninute swing. David Herdson is suggesting a similar one for Scotland: “the more comfortable the Labour position in polls, the less Labour voters will bother”.
110.0 PfP.
It is far from surprising to hear the word ‘unlikely’ and the figure ‘200.0′ used in the same context.
When you come to think about it,mere words are silly creatures.
Headless chicken alert
http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/3471281/how-significant-was-kings-intervention.thtml
Congratulations to David Herdson. I look forward to reading your articles. Also well done Sean Fear.
84. URW. Do you have a strategy with your Big Brother betting and do you win? Maybe if you do have a strategy you prefer to keep it to yourself? Do you spend hours watching the live streaming or just the highlight shows?
I watched it one year and backed Nikki at long odds. Around 20/1 I think. She shortened to about 2/1 and I thought she was going to win. I was too greedy to bank a profit. A lesson learned. I ended up watching hours of the stuff though. Not good for the soul. Ho hum.
109
Ted, on several occasions recently when Brown has been publicly reprimanded over his reckless, self-serving, and thoroughly damaging stewardship of the UK economy Brown has responded by smirking and squirming like a naughty child who has been found out doing something he shouldn’t have.
His physical response in such situations tells us all we need to know about this damaged and destructive creature who is determinedly taking the economy further into the abyss before we can finally give him the boot.
81, Mike,
My opinion of them would be based on WHEN they believed it and whether they still do. The most pernicious element of the despicable Dr Wakefield’s fear-peddling has always been the timing element of the vaccination - a stunned parent (like the PPC in question), confronted with the shocking regression of their child, casts around for a “why”. Wakefield provided an outwardly plausible “why”. I fully agree that believing in it in the face of the indisputible evidence and the information that’s since come out about Wakefield’s study is absurd - but for her to have grabbed onto the explanation offered is only too human. She may have believed this in 2005 (although to do so even that late is disappointing), but does she still in 2009?
(Note that my tolerance on this doesn’t extend to Wakefield himself - although non religious, I dearly hope that there is a special place in Hell reserved for him - and media commentators who try to still peddle this shite, like Melanie Phillips, David Kirby and the entire Huffington Post)
I don’t know enough about him to comment, but 0.5% probability might be about right. He’d have to get a seat fairly soon know. I can’t see the Tories winning the next election but one as they’re going to make themselves very unpopular in the next parliament.
Just receieved from a colleague in London, an easy to understand explanation of the world banking crisis. Sorry no photo of Heidi was supplied.
The financial crisis explained in simple terms
Heidi is the proprietor of a bar in Berlin. In order to increase sales,
she decides to allow her loyal customers - most of whom are unemployed
alcoholics - to drink now but pay later. She keeps track of the drinks
consumed on a ledger (thereby granting the customers loans).
Word gets around and as a result increasing numbers of customers flood
Into Heidi’s bar.
Taking advantage of her customers’ freedom from immediate payment
constraints, Heidi increases her prices for wine and beer, the
most-consumed beverages. Her sales volume increases massively.
A young and dynamic customer service consultant at the local bank
recognizes these customer debts as valuable future assets and increases
Heidi’s borrowing limit.
He sees no reason for undue concern since he has the debts of the
alcoholics as collateral.
At the bank’s corporate headquarters, expert bankers transform these
customer assets into DRINKBONDS, ALKBONDS and PUKEBONDS. These
securities are then traded on markets worldwide. No one really
understands what these abbreviations mean and how the securities are
guaranteed.
Nevertheless, as their prices continuously climb, the securities become
top-selling items.
One day, although the prices are still climbing, a risk manager
(subsequently of course fired due his negativity) of the bank decides
that the time has come to demand payment of the debts incurred by
the drinkers at Heidi’s bar.
However they cannot pay back the debts.
Heidi cannot fulfil her loan obligations and claims bankruptcy.
DRINKBOND and ALKBOND drop in price by 95 %. PUKEBOND performs better,
stabilizing in price after dropping by 80 %.
The suppliers of Heidi’s bar, having granted her generous payment due
dates and having invested in the securities are faced with a new
situation. Her wine supplier claims bankruptcy, her beer supplier is taken over by
a competitor.
The bank is saved by the Government following dramatic round-the-clock
consultations by leaders from the governing political parties.
The funds required for this purpose are obtained by a tax levied against
the non-drinkers.
Finally an explanation we can all understand
re 18 tim dragging up the 1980s again I see. When will you learn? We politically obsessed nutters on here don’t care, and for the electorate as a whole you might as well be discussing the politics of Mars. Such scare stories don’t work, so please leave it out.
116 stjohn.
My chief approach on Big Brother is to nurture the less spectactacular side-markets such as Top4 and Top Lass,Male v Female, that sort of thing and to exploit anomalies in the betting.I use the very liquid main Winner market as a dustbin for hedges and arbs.
My stamina and my total obsession is not what it was.Once upon a time I used to watch them sleeping on the Live Feed.
By watching the Live Feed I pick up signals for a move in the betting that might not mature for 36 hours.You have to get the timing right of course.
You can learn infinitely more about political betting from watching BB than you can learn about BB betting from a study of politics.
Hannan next Tory leader, no chance! Why? Not enough hair, IDS and Hague were living proof that bald men don’t get no votes.
Of course he could always ask Fabricant where he got his hair from.
94.”81 But, doesn’t the candidate have an autistic child? If true, that is what makes tim’s attack unpleasant. A parent of an autistic child is not best placed to judge these matters, just as the victims of violent crime should not be in charge of sentenceing policy.
The MMR scandal happened because the public don’t understand risk.”
I agree with you on this Gwynfa. I remember the the heat of this debate, and more importantly, the way it was handled by all concerned including the media. I never bought into the MMR/autism link, but no one handled the concerns it raised at the time correctly and in a manner that fed into a confidence that parents needed at that time. I think that tim’s posts yesterday were unpleasant, and aimed at smearing this lady in particular. And he didn’t bother to add criticism about the government, media or medical bodies handling of the issue either. And you know what, the parents of autistic children get enough of a rough ride without blaming them individually for this mess.
re 57 Marquee I quite agree. I’m sure such meetings are unremarkable and happen all the time, but for the palace to have a photo taken and to allow its release….
Now if only Darling could get the same done.
Can we get excited about PMQ’s today? I suggest not.
http://blogs.news.sky.com/boultonandco/Post:519bcd4b-4ceb-4080-a150-d3d1f55c9f2f
124 Thanks, ChristinaD. I agree with what you say.
And yet again, I am forced to query HOW does tim know so much about Conervative MPs and PPCs, their children, their partners?
We may remember that in the hounding of Stewart Jackson MP, tim knew who Stewart’s wife was and was able to lift whole paragraphs on the fly from Stewart’s wife’s book to demonstrate that she had been inconsistent.
Either tim has a very unhealthy obsession with the personal details and lifes of Tory MPs and PPCs. Or he has access to a whole lot of research that someone else has done on them.
123. Bald may come around again - I mean who ever thought 80s fashion would come back ?
I suspect a Scottish son of a minister has no chance for the next 25 years however.
King seems to be saying that because of the inevitable lags the measures taken so far have not yet started to work. This begs the question why the BOE didn’t reduce interest rates 6 months or more ago when it was quite obvious that we were in serious trouble.
King got it badly wrong then. I would ignore King and support more fiscal measures or infrastructure projects (more medium term) now which will work with a shorter lag before more companies fail and families are ruined.
Firstly, thanks for the kind words. Hope you’ll still think the same once I’ve started editing!
80. There’s a big difference between Next Leader and A Future Leader. 200/1 is probably in the ballpark for the former but a good deal too long for the latter. The main problem for Hannan as Next Leader is that it requires a very long stint for Cameron. I could see him as a more plausible next-but-one or next-but-two.
85. I agree, but it would still be good.
88. See 113.
126, beg to differ. May be a damp squib, or could be quite exciting as per the last time the two met.
re 113. Nick - don’t you think that there is a danger that it could work the other way round? I know a couple of loyal Lib Dems in Bedford, Tory target number 67, who loathe the idea of tactical voting and would want to support our excellent 22 year old PPC. The only thing that could trigger a tactical decision would be if Brown looked as though he night be making a come-back.
I thought Jon Huntsman was a good bet for next US president in 2012 at 200-1. With one caveat, I don’t think that Daniel Hannan is a good bet for next Conservative party leader, even at 200-1.
Our host is an aficionado of longshots and I do understand the concept of trading bets. If it could be laid, then I start to get more interested. However, where could you lay this particular bet?
For this bet to come off,
1) First of all, David Cameron needs to be a long term success. Given that Daniel Hannan is not apparently standing in the next UK general election, that means that he has to survive as Tory leader to a minimum of 2018 and probably longer.
2) Next, Daniel Hannan needs to decide that he wants to stand for a UK constituency.
3) Then he needs to find one and get elected.
4) Then he needs to achieve prominence in the Parliamentary party.
5) Then he needs to avoid a career-ending misadventure.
6) Then he needs to stay on the right side of internal Conservative party dividing lines.
7) Then he needs to defeat all opponents under whatever rules are in force at the time.
For all of these things to come together, I would suggest that odds of 500-1 would be more appropriate. The real deal-breaker for me is that David Cameron will at some point stumble. The Conservative party is ruthless and past experience shows that 10 years as Prime Minister is the normal limit.
So David Cameron will almost certainly be gone by 2020, and Daniel Hannan doesn’t have enough time to establish himself as a front rank Conservative MP by that stage, even if he enters Parliament in 2014/15 and David Cameron remains in power to that point. So any election at that stage will have Daniel Hannan as a rank outsider, even if he participates. Since the bet is for next Tory leader, not whether Daniel Hannan will eventually become Tory leader, this seems remote indeed.
108. “MPs would need to be stripped of their role as de facto local Ombudsmen”
Isn’t one of the problems with this though that for a lot of people “local ombudsman” is precisely how they are most likely to interact with their MP and see that it is the role in which he is of most direct benefit to them? I suspect too it’s also a large part of the reason why opinion polls so often produce results like “most politicians are thieving scum, but my MP is actually pretty good” (I paraphrase). Take away the ombudsman role, and what do you have left?
Speaking personally I happen to think your time is much more valuably spent helping some constituent get justice out of an otherwise unaccountable bureaucracy (and I write as a civil servant who has some experience of the way the system snaps to attention when an MP is pressing a query) than it is sitting in the chamber for hours on end only to vote the way the whips tell you to at the end. YMMV of course.
122. URW. Thanks. It sounds like a lot of work. The financial rewards would need to be good to jusify it I would have thought.
124. I agree. It look like Tim would make an excellent Lib Dem campaigner, which perhaps explains Mike’s sneaking admiration.
I loved this in the Sun today:-
But haven’t they got it wrong. Wasn’t Griffiths the only one who would talk to Lembit?
127 ‘Either tim has a very unhealthy obsession with the personal details and lifes of Tory MPs and PPCs. Or he has access to a whole lot of research that someone else has done on them.’
tim has probably got access to the modern equivalent of ‘Excalibur’, the Labour Party’s computerised database used for rapid rebuttal. He’s a vile troll and should be ignored.
Lembit has question No 2 at DPMQs today.
137 - I saw that snippet and it made me warm to Lembit Opik enormously. He may be a prat, but he showed some human decency.
At least Lembit did it off site
re 94 I think the public do understand the concept or risk. What is lacking is that their perception of how risky something is is compleltely askew. For instance they will continue to smoke or drink to dangerous levels when those risks are well known, and quite large, but then inflate things were the risks are minuscule, if even present at all, like the risks of an adverse reaction to a vaccine.
If you ask a member of the public what a “common” reaction is a recent survey showed that the public perceive that to mean a 45% chance. Actually, to a regulator the likelihood is 1-10%. Similary they think there’s an 8% chance of them suffering a “rare” adverse reaction, whereas the regulator’s perception of a “rare” reaction is 0.01-0.1%. So a regulator might say that the chance of a vaccine causing reaction “X” is 1 in 10,000. The public will think it’s 1 in 12.
This is an interesting paper on this phenomenon, which might have a betting interest because it shows how the public (punters at large) perceive probability.
Edp - which is why we come here. Someone somewhere will know something about whoever is referred to and share their knowledge with us.
If Tory (or Labour or Liberal Democrat MPs or PPCs) have skeletons or foibles then we should know about them.
138 Livens up this(otherwise) Tory site though!
140 - Nothing would make me warm to someone with such a conspicuous lack of judgement as Lembit. How on earth he ever made it into Parliament beggars belief.
128
I’ve noticed that the daughter’s of Grantham grocers, aren’t too much in evidence these days either. Not too many son’s of trapeze artists and gnome makers reaching for the top job are there.
You’ll be sorry you said that if a meteor falls on your head!
135 stjohn.As it goes I have been very LUCKY with the final result these last two years but in truth I didn’t make any fortunes.
Two years ago when Spreadfair had a market it was fantastic action at times but last year they gave it up and this year they have given themselves up.
Mike Smithson made a point to me about my getting too emotionally involved and that this could cloud my judgement.I dismissed this out of hand in the context of Political Betting but BB is different matter.
The way it works is that as soon as I start to REALLY like a character they get evicted the following week !
We should have pb.com Big Brother……with 597 nominations, tim will face the pooblic vote this week.
Thanks for the kind words. It’s a part time job, as legacy officer and company secretary to a charity.
The real reason why the MMR scare took off is because the scientific establishment has form in this area. It spent years denying that there was any evidence that the whooping cough vaccine could cause brain damage. Then we had been told that there was no link between BSE and CJD. A sizeable section of the public takes considerable reassurance, especially when presented with plausible evidence to the contrary by an apparent expert. To dismiss those with concerns about this as whack jobs is glib and remarkably stupid.
146. I would have thought being a grocers daughter would be highly desirable in a PM candidate. Being like Gordo would count against you though.
As a parent I fully understood the worry over MMR ,but given the huge coverage in all the media over Wakefields claims, no government/scientific establishment could at the time restore any sort of balance into the argument.As a result the public were not able to make a rational judgment based on real evidence.
I think this applies to a lot of situations where balance and truth goes out of the window in the face of a good story..
145 - There are many many MPs with a complete lack of judgement. At least Lembit Opik adds to the gaiety of the nation. Cheeky, cheeky…
147, asteroid. Which is unlikely. The MD StarGun would undoubtedly blast it to smithereens using its unique combination of unparalleled power and Labour leadership ammunition.
144 I was very struck by rulko’s observation that all the Scottish posters are from parties other than the one apparently ahead according to the Scottish Euro Poll (Labour)!
I wonder if Mike could set up a poll that asks for political allegiance, and geographical location.
Personally, I don’t think this is a Tory site, although it is an anti-Govt one.
143 It’s not the message it’s the methods. As has been said before, if tim chose to debate issues sensibly, rather than constantly attack and smear, many more would be prepared to interact with him in a similar vein.
144 Bull. Anti Labour does not make one a Tory.
re 145. I think that Lembit is a great guy who got seduced by the trappings of celebrity. When he was a front-bencher there were a couple of times I saw him on Commons TV and he was impressive. He can think on his feet and is articulate.
My guess is that he’ll hold onto his seat at the general election against a fierce Tory challenge.
150. Yes. One might also note the way the scientific establishment lined up behind the government’s fraudulent, electorally-driven, behaviour over foot-and-mouth.
It’s not too surprising - when you consider where most of the funding comes from, it’s a risky business rocking the boat.
153 - I just find he is everything wrong with modern political life. Sorry I have an irrational dislike of Lembit.
139 I thought William Hague would be asking questions 2-7 after the usual planted question from the Labour benches.
Gwynfa re MMR.
There was a seven year study in Yokohama in Japan. Children in the prefecture (more than 30,000) were not given the MMR vaccine. Autism rates in Yokohama climbed despite the ban.
For there to be any suggestion of a link between autism and MMR after a study of this size is ridiculous. This goes way beyond “statistically significant”.
159. Re Lembit, it’s not irrational.
Whilst he has passion Hannan hasn’t got a hope in hell of becoming Tory leader. He’s too slck even by David Cameron’s standards.
http://www.plenty2say.com
Nice work if you can get into the charmed circle of CEO’s, isnt it? :
Royal Bank of Scotland said it had made its chief executive, Stephen Hester, an award of £2.6m worth of shares with no performance targets as compensation for options he forfeited when he left British Land.
British Land’s 2008 annual report shows Hester has seven tranches of options which gave him the right to the company’s shares for £7.96-£13.27 on a range of dates until the end of 2017.
142 I’m not sure that’s risk perception. Most people happily take whatever medicine their doctor gives them, without thinking of the risk: in fact they demand medicating even when they don’t need it, this showing they are prepared to run the risk of an adverse reaction for no benefit. This shows that in action, not word, they probably underestimate risk.
It is surely a disconnect between everyday use of English and the way professionals use it as jargon. It simply shows that to Joe in the street “rarely” means “less than one time in ten” and “commonly” means “nearly half the time”. The professionals need to adjust their use of language. (Try “f***ing unlikely”!!)
Back in the day when Radio5Live had a political late-night slot,Lembit Opik regularly appeared alongside Austin Mitchell and a seriously zany Tory MP whose name escapes me but he is no longer in the HoC.
The programme was great fun and it was their proud boast that there were more of them in the studio than there were listeners.
Congratulations David and Sean.
David will add a huge amount of intelligent analysis to the site; in addition to that already provided by Morus, Double Carpet and Mike.
Sean Fear - pray tell, what is this exciting new job of which you speak?!
Chief special advisor to the Shadow Chancellor?
161 I am not arguing for a link, although I don’t think your study settles the matter.
“For there to be any suggestion of a link between autism and MMR after a study of this size is ridiculous.”
The sample size is not the only thing that matters. For example, autism is not a well-defined condition, so the criterion by which children were diagnosed as autistic will affect the results. What are the other control factors in the experiment? How easy is it to keep them constant (probably very difficult in an non-laboratory experiment of this kind).
But my point is — pretty much as others have said — scientists distruct glib and hard-and-fast conclusions (like “whack job”, the phrase used by tim). Because the essence of science is to approach any question without preconceptions, look critically at the data and understand its limitations as well as its strengths.
167 I think it would be a stretch to call the Shadow Chancellor a charitable organisation. Although, I’m sure Tim might suggest that, if you are seriously wealthy, then…!
152,
That’s why I primarily blame Wakefield - whose study was deliberately flawed (and the £435,000 he’d been paid by legal teams to find a plausible link, plus his patent on a single-jab measles vaccine have caused considerable suspicion over his motives since) and dishonest.
Secondly a lot of blame attaches to the media, who deliberately bypassed their science experts (who could understand and explain both risk and the potential flaws in the study) to go for a more emotive aspect of the story (which, of course, happens to sell more copy).
On the whooping cough vaccine - actually, the entire 1974 controversy was also based on a single paper that got blown up by the media. I was one of those children not vaccinated by a concerned parent, and yes - I got whooping cough very badly. I don’t remember it, but my mother informs me that she was terrified for my life at one stage (She’s possibly overegging the case, but I can’t prove or disprove it. Parents get funny when you say “citation needed” … ) . Apparently, over a hundred children in the UK did die in an outbreak around that time.
This could be an interesting survey….
http://waugh.standard.co.uk/2009/03/new-poll-public-think-most-mps-are-dishonest.html
161, 168,
More to the point, there was a whole population study done in Denmark of all children born between January 1991 and December 1998. It covered over half a million children and the rate of diagnosis of ASD was statistically invariant between those who didn’t receive the MMR vaccine and those that did. Rates of ASD diagnosis in the overall population increased in synch with that of the rest of the world.
142 I forgot to mention smoking and drinking.
For a start, we don’t believe the scientists. They keep arguing among themselves, and sometimes change their minds (for example, eggs are now good for you again). There were scientists who decided that feeding ground up sheep to cows was safe.
There is also cost-benefit analysis. People do these things because they enjoy them, ie get a benefit out of them. People play rugby, go mountaineering. I owned a TVR - which had a go at killing me - and used to do historical battle re-enactment, which causes injuries (and even one or two deaths) and has given me a couple of bad sprains and a persistent lower back injury. But I enjoyed it: I didn’t stop doing it because of the risks, and in fact I am going to do some again this year.
Most people look at the crap being spouted by scientists and think, my parents generation drank, often more than we do, and it didn’t do them any harm. Someone who goes to the pub a couple of evenings a week for a few pints, sometimes has a beer or a glass of wine with a meal or a whisky in the evening, and a few times in the year treats himself to a Saturday drinking all day, to be honest is very unlikely to face serious health problems as a result and in any case is likely to believe that the pleasure involved is worth it.
170 The point about vaccines is very simple.
A small number of people die or become seriously ill but there is an overwhelming benefit to the population. A small number of people died from smallpox vaccinations (because they went on to develop smallpox), but the disease was eradicated from the Earth. And so on.
Wakefield’s study, or the whopping cough scare, should have been countered by an explanation of how vaccination works, and why it is beneficial for the whole population (even if, in a small number of individual cases, it can cause death).
165. “This shows that in action, not word, they probably underestimate risk”
It’s worse: people don’t even *understand* risk - this is one of our biggest problems as a society.
Commonly underestimated risks:
Risk of losing job
Risk of negative equity
Risk of financial hardship
Risk of damage to home through fire/flood
Commonly overrestimated risks:
Buying unnecessary extra bits of car/motor insurance
Airplane crashes
Risk of dying in a terrorist attack
Risk of being a victim of a violent crime
Risk of Labour forming the next government
Everyone needs much better education about risk. Children should be educated about risk and statistics at school. They must be so they can assess risk rationally by themselves.
You prepare the child for the path, you can’t prepare the path for the child.
http://europe.wsj.com/home-page
Live interview with Gordon Brown at 12.20 gmt.
176 - I don’t need an afternoon nap.
175. Sorry - forgot the biggest one.
The National Lottery
(it won’t be you)
161.172. Robert.Andy Cooke. I think we’re all pretty much on the same page here - I don’t think that Gwynfa really believes there is a link. The study Robert cites doesnt actually disprove a link between MMR and autism though, it just shows that autism or diagnoses of it, have become more common. Even Andy’s one is’nt conclusive since such studies are highly dependent on the controls used to account for other risk factors. Bottom line, it is difficult to prove a negative - but most of us would agree that there isnt a causal link from MMR to autism.
Morning all. I’m very pleased to hear that we’ll be hearing more from David Herdson - his excellent contributions are always full of insight (and it was great to meet him at the PB party!)
Having said that, I think David’s post at 130 has got it the wrong way around: “The main problem for Hannan as Next Leader is that it requires a very long stint for Cameron. I could see him as a more plausible next-but-one or next-but-two.”
Dan Hannan is 39. Unless something totally untoward happens, Cameron should be PM for at least two terms, perhaps into a third. So the next leadership campaign will probably be in around ten-twelve years’ time, maybe more. In his early fifties, Hannan would be a possibility then, but much later than that and he’ll be getting a bit on the old side; not an insurmountable barrier, but it would reduce his chances. His best chance would therefore be as Cameron’s immediate successor in around 2020.
And if I’m wrong about the dates, Hannan definitely won’t be next leader; as others have pointed out, an earlier contest wouldn’t give him time to become an MP and gain the necessary experience.
One thing I would say, however, is that although Hannan is relatively unknown to the public, and it seems also to many PBers, he is very energetic and quite high-profile in the party (at least where I live, part of the huge SE euro-constituency which he represents). His name is quite often mentioned with something approaching awe in the meetings I’ve attended. He could certainly get a safe seat if he wanted to.
As for the bet, at 200-1 it was possibly worth a punt, but it is a very long shot. The comparison Mike makes with the Jon Huntsman bet is not really valid, because in that case we know for sure that there will be a republican nominee contest starting in a couple of years.
138. If “tim” has got access to the Labour party’s Rapid Rebuttal Supercomputer then this feared machine bears more than a passing resemblance to an Amstrad circa 1985.
A couple of weeks back, tim got a simple fact - i.e. non-EU immigration compared to EU immigration - totally and utterly wrong. Indeed he got it wrong about a dozen times, over several days, before he was finally forced into an embarrassing admission of his error.
If he can get a simple truth like that so badly wrong then the “Rapid Rebuttal Database” might need a bit of upgrading. I hear the Sinclair Spectrum is quite nifty.
149. Pleased to hear it Sean.
O/T - is anyone else *extremely* worried about the latest piece of government big-brother legislation on the BBC news website now?
It wants all the details on your social life. All friends, contacts and personal information from Facebook, MySpace and Bebo onto (yes, you’ve guessed it) another database - which may even be subcontracted out to the private sector!
I’m getting tired of this Gestapo cr@p. This government is becoming like the Stasi - files on everyone, spying everywhere. They view the information age as an excuse in itself to commander every piece of information they can and make a database of it.
F**k that. It won’t stop one terrorist attack.
If this goes ahead I’m deleting my facebook account.
182. Where did the idea come from?
http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/archives/007182.html
182 - No it probably won’t stop one terrorist attack, but then since we will never know any details of any investigations the govt can claim they have disrupted any number of potential attacks and no-one will ever be able to prove otherwise.
175/178 Casino - good to see you being drawn back progressively into the PB posting community - as others have found, you just can’t quit can you?
181. Well Sean there’s no reason why the content of the rebuttal machine should be factual, is there? In fact I would have thought lies and smears would constitute the overwhelming portion of it.
133 - 3) Then he needs to find one and get elected.
4) Then he needs to achieve prominence in the Parliamentary party.
(3) should be relatively trivial if he continues to build prominence in Brussels, and (4) isn’t necessarily required given a background as an MEP - how many people here realise Clegg & Huhne have only been MPs since 2005. Chutzpah is more important and Mr Hannan seems to have it in spades.
That said I wouldn’t back this at 200/1, an extra 0 would tempt me though.
Not had time to read all the comments, but Daniel Hannon was the speaker at a dinner I went to a few years back and, from memory, he was pretty good.
My main concern about his chances of getting to the top is, I’m afraid to say, his appearance. Sadly, he probably has too little hair and the wrong voice. It shouldn’t matter but it does.
The awful thing about the current state of affairs(for me) is that everything this administration does or doesn’t do that can’t be directly castigated as ’stupid’, immediately faces the alternative charge of ‘political opportunism’.
The latter charge owes more to the fact that this administration is hated rather than to the intrinsic merits of its proposals.
I welcome the fact that the Government have introduced a note of realism into its interface with the Muslim community.As always my preoccupation is with the secondary and tertiary baddies rather than with the ones who go out and blow people up.
The MCOGB has been a disgrace and they have been ‘nobly’ assisted by the tertiary useful idiots.
Even better,I detect a subtle change in the stance of the hated BBC but I am not holding my breath on that one.
I yearn to hear the voice of everyday Muslims, whatever it is they have to say.
179 - I’m certainly in general agreement (I do not think that there is a link between MMR and autism).
178 - I was once told by a 31 year old actuary that he bought his lottery ticket after 5.30pm on a Saturday night, because it was only after that time that the odds of him winning exceeded the odds of him surviving to see the draw.
183/184. Quite frankly, I’d rather deal with the casualties of a terrorist attack once every 2/3 years (like with the IRA in the 1980s and 1990s) than have all our lives become a living hell because we’re being snooped on, spying on, monitoring and bullied the whole time.
Human intelligence and informants should be plenty to disrupt terrorist cells. Increase the budget and staff levels of Mi5 even further if necessary. I bet not one terrorist group has planned any attack or plot entirely over email/telephone/internet, or anything like it. I bet not one has been stopped due to an “email”. They will do their serious planning face-to-face. Lots of irritated jokers probably talk about via email - like I do about hitting lefties - but it’s all bravado; that’s it.
No information intercepts, wire-taps, new databases or monitoring should be permissible without a court order. These orders should be time limited. And the innocent should have this information removed as soon as they are proved innocent. The running of this database should be strictly monitored.
An independent body should review the storage, maintenance, use *and* cultural attitudes towards data held with in public bodies on an annual basis. There should be no “data transfer” between departments. Access to personal data should be strictly “need to know” held on computers not linked to a network or the internet and it should be “read only”. The minimum numbers necessary should be authorised to access the machines - and those using it vetted.
Undoubtedly Nick Palmer will appear shortly to tell us all that what I’ve written above is “already being done”.
But we all know that clearly that’s b0ll0cks.
Comment nr 3 has it about right.
181. shame everyone can’t be a fountain of knowledge like you
The picture of the Queen greeting Mervyn King inside Buckingham Palace suggests a clear message to me, at least, along the lines of:
“Good Morning Mr King and thank you so much for coming round to see One at this most difficult time for us all. The Prime Minister keeps telling One that he has everything under control, but One senses the faint whiff of bovine manure in his words, so why don’t you sit down with a nice cup of tea and tell One how bad things really are?
185. Cheers Peter. But I’m being a bit naughty..
Actually been very busy at work for the last 9 months - but I can’t resist!
Keep getting the usual “what is he doing?” leery eyes from my colleagues; but I deliver the goods for my employer, so what’s the problem?!
Pb.com is important!
Good morning.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/nickrobinson/2009/03/brown_looks_to.html
Morning All,
Even though I was the first to raise the question last night, I do consider Daniel Hannan a longshot for the Conservative Leadership currently. However, I do think it is plausible that someone like him could become leader and there are a couple of considerations that haven’t been discussed.
If you look at recent political history each has produced Prime Ministers initially who are close to the centre followed by one who better represents the values of their particular flavour of politics. Thatcher followed Heath (followed by an attempt to go back to the centre with Major that failed), Brown followed Blair. it is a fairly new phenomena but who is to say that will not happen again.
One of the primary reasons David Cameron is there is to stop the march of socialist authoritarian and if he does and manages to navigate the considerable hurdles that Brown is leaving, who is to say what the mood of the country will be. Having implemented a level of decentralisation, devolution and democratic reform, having had some success in implementing social responsibility and having reversed the current political direction, who is to say that the electorate would not be open to greater levels of the same?
Furthermore, to me there is no guarantee that the next leader of the Conservative party has to be from the HoC. In the last month we have seen the announcement of the first pan-European Party and the announcement of the Conservatives attempting to extend the brand into Europe. It is increasingly excepted that Brussels directs 70% of our legislation. Whose to say that in 10 years time say, that a British leader of a European Conservative grouping is not well placed to become leader of the British Conservative party, whatever the direction of the EU or Parliament takes?
I agree it is little more than crystal ball gazing at this time, but who would have thought 15 years ago that we would have a quasi Stalinist in charge. IMO £10 was a reasonable bet. As a result I won’t count him out just as I wouldn’t count out any of those touted around. You just never know…….
190 Re: Actuary buying lottery ticket…..classic! That’s exactly how an actuary thinks 24/7.
Is Brown meeting Chavez this week ?
I would have thought the arch leftie who blames the worlds ills on the great satan of the USA would want to sit down with Mr C.
175. unfortunately you can’t just ‘educate’ everyone about risk - it is not an easy subject. remember that until recently many of the “world experts” on statistical risk analysis were working for financial firms that have now gone belly up.
many of the specific risks that you name are counter intuitive - this is built into human nature. the idea that these fears can be managed away by a deeper understanding of statistics is just as ridiculous as the idea that all risks can be managed down to zero by health and safety paperwork.
193. Indeed. Very true.
Sean Fear - gratz on the new job!
191. unfortunately we are dealing with a higher standard of terrorist nowadays, i don’t think many would agree with you after atrocities such as 11/9.
198 - I mentioned his age because that to him was clearly an important part of the thought process. Contrary to myth, consulting actuaries are rather fun, once you get into their unique way of thinking about life.
164. yes it is nice work if you can get it. from the outside there appears to be almost no penalty for complete and catastrophic failure - too much weight is given to experience (no matter how bad the experience!) and contacts (no matter how incompetent the contacts).
i can only hope that this is a symptom of the generation of people currently doing these jobs - hopefully in our increasingly meritocratic society we will see people with more merit at the top of these companies.
202, so you think the most efficient way to manage monitoring terrorists is to spy on every one of the 17 million facebook users?
I can give you a big sexy clue: try looking at Muslims. In fact, most of the terrorists will be Asian and male.
I’m sure spying on white Anglian grandmas will make leftwing morons get tented trousers over both the level of state snooping involved AND doing it in a quota-pleasingly fashion, but it’s a waste of time and money.
203 antifrank.Any sharp actuarist would have put me at 9-10 years whilst I was still in the womb and when I was a healthy and lusty one year old would have reduced it to 4-5 years.
Suffice to say the Sellers would have done their ballcocks !
190 - “it was only after that time that the odds of him winning exceeded the odds of him surviving to see the draw.”
Sorry to be pedantic, but that should read that it exceeds the odds of him dying before the draw.
You’d need to have something fairly serious for the odds of you surviving a couple of hours to be 14 million to 1.
Pedant alert over!
174. I’m not sure how many young mothers out there would be reassured with the line “Yes, your children may have side effects and die, but it’s better for everyone that a small number die rather than a large number…”
A perfectly logical argument of course, but certainly not one to put out into the emotive public domain.
207 - That’ll teach me to read my posts more carefully, many thanks for the pedantry.
205. no i don’t, but
“I’d rather deal with the casualties of a terrorist attack once every 2/3 years”
is quite a strong statement, with which i (and many others!) would not agree
obviously a balance must be struck, but anyone putting their details on facebook obviously doesn’t care much for their own privacy anyway
Morning again everyone.
The case against again link between a link between MMR and Autism has been well illustrated above.I won’t go over it again.
There never was any evidence.Even if Wakefield fabricated his research it still didn’t add up to evidence.
All the scientific evidence and research has suggested the opposite and in increasing volumes.
In short, there was never a reason to believe in a link, anyone believing in a link by 2005 is correctly described as a whack job, whether an Eastleigh PPC or from anywhere else or any party.
124 - ChristinaD. - Mohammed Al Fayed lost a son.He blames a conspiracy. His grief doesn’t mean he is a viable MP, and neither is Maria Hutchings.
181 - SeanT - I’ve already congratulated you on getting a singlular fact correct over the last six months, so I won’t do so again.
211 - Even if Wakefield didn’t fabricate his research.
Latest gilt auction 0.93x cover. No wonder Mervyn is getting worried about government overspending. Nobady wants to buy gilts any more and Sterling is plummeting.
What could Ben Brogan suggesting?
http://broganblog.dailymail.co.uk/2009/03/what-game-is-she-playing.html
re 180 Richard I think the thing “untoward” is happening now. The Tories will win next time. It probably won’t be big and may ne just short of a mjority. Brown will leave us in such a mess that they are going to have to do some very unpopular things. I know Mike says we can’t believe the old polls, but Thatcher’s and the Tories’ ratings in March 1982 were absolutely dire and the Falklands changed everything. The 1983 (or 1984) election would hve been very different without the Falklands.
210. The thing about Facebook though is that for some generations, there’s almost a level of duress (in the loosest sense of the term) to sign up.
If you’re aged 16-25, nearly all your friends in that age bracket will have Facebook and use it as their main tool of communication. If you do not have Facebook, you cannot tap into your social circle effectively. Hence, it becomes a near necessity to have Facebook. And that age bracket grows as we all age.
So, whilst I agree that putting your information onto the internet then moan about privacy does seem a little strange, we are getting to the stage now where for some of us *not* providing that information becomes a severe detriment to our private life. We need clever solutions to such a problem. Doubt that from today’s announcement the government’s going to be the one to provide those, though.
On the G20: It’s looking increasingly as though Brown is about to manage yet again to extract a PR disaster out of what might have given him a modest improvement. His tour of the world, bullying and bombastic, seems more likely to provoke a backlash than convert the other leaders to his way of thinking. It’s noticeable that Dan Hannan’s attack has got more traction than Brown’s speech.
Admittedly Obama seems to be saying some of the same things as Brown, but is is interesting that if you look at (say) Bloomberg, there’s almost no mention of Brown and the G20 meeting. As for the other leaders, it seems pretty certain that Brown is not going to get much support from France and Germany, and his arrogance and hectoring could well provoke some sharp criticism of his approach.
On the UK side, there seems to be near-universal agreement that Brown is deluded about the affordability of further fiscal stimulus. George Osborne has of course been making that point for a long time. Now it seems Alastair Darling is signed up to the same view; Mervyn King is signed up; the CBI are signed up; even Nick Palmer is signed up (FPT 197: “The Governor’s views seem fine to me - first round of major fiscal stimulus good (so Conservative criticism misplaced), a further round would be overdoing it (and wasn’t planned).”
The one who is out of line is James Gordon Brown - and Mervyn King has effectively torpedoed his position.
Media coverage of the G20 is therefore likely to focus on two things: splits between Brown and the European leaders, and the inevitable clashes and demonstrations that always mar these events.
The bottom line: it’s beginning to look as though the peak of Labour support will come quite soon - before the G20 meeting, not after it.
214. Delicious.
214
“Why are those funny notes with my picture on worth feck all ?”
Ouch. 40 year gilt auction fails. That hasn’t happened for a while.
Personally, I wouldn’t touch long dated government bonds from either US or UK governments. Return free risk.
If anyone cares, there is an ETF, ticker TBT, which is basically a way of playing rising long-term government bond yields in the US. No equivilent for the UK I’m afraid.
214 - Sounds like the plot of a novel - and probably IS the plot of a novel - but don’t know which one!
I think Ben is being mischevious.
re 191 Casino I did mention it on here last night, and encouraged the MI5/6 lurkers to “come out”. We all think that we’re probably being monitored don’t we?
210, really? We aren’t a nation of nancy boys. We survived the Blitz and decades of Irish terrorism.
Not many have died from terrorist attacks. Hell, how many died at the terrible hospital?
Is the Government proposing to spy on every NHS manager?
217 - Brown has not learnt one important lesson of modern politics, you should never allow expectations to get ahead of the most likely realistic outcome.
214. I
200. Ed - noone is saying it’s easy. I’m saying people need to be taught how to judge and assess it better themselves.
A key lesson would be to try and avoid emotional attitudes to risk and assess facts calmly and logically.
I don’t think there’s any harm in that and it would do a lot of good. We already have a very rough & ready module in “statistics” for A-level maths. I’d like to see that moved down to GSCE Maths and it’s teaching become a bit broader and wider through other academic areas.
Something being a “difficult” subject is no reason to avoid it.
Unless you are a member or supporter of this government, of course, where difficult subjects in a childs education are something to be avoided at all costs.
217. Very good post.
Indulging in a bit of Kremlinology, I wonder if Mr.Palmer’s apparently blase ’second stimulus wasn’t planned’ line is the authentic voice of retreat from the bunker or just an off the cuff line?
The other Labour spinners have been heavily pushing the extra stimulus line until now, including of course the PM himself ‘wait for the budget’….
216. it might feel that way to you, but there is no duress whatsoever. even if you join, noone is forcing you to put any personal info on there.
my feeling is that facebook will go out of fashion as quickly as it came in. achieving the ultimate dream of an entirely electronic social life leads only one way - “this is rubbish, i want some real friends”
215. Would be interesting to see who would have come out of top - Thatcherism v The Suicide Note, without the Falklands factor.
I refuse to believe people would have voted for Foot. Labour might not have gone down to a complete rout, but they wouldn’t have won with a hugely socialist manifesto.
Perhaps the answer is neither? Perhaps the SDP would have really broken through?
Still believe on the balance of probabilities Maggie would have won though, but probably with a hung Parliament or slim majority.
214. I thought it was a bit suspicious when I saw the picture yesterday. Quite a remarkable move. I don’t think she would do it if there wasn’t a groundswell of opinion in the Treasury and the BOE that Brown is losing it.
225. My apologies, very clumsy this morning.
I have a sektit man-crush on Dan Hannan.
Ssssh.
215 - The MORI figures from the time show that the Tories had risen from 27% in December 1981 to 30% in February 1982 and 34% in March 1982:
http://www.ipsos-mori.com/content/voting-intention-in-great-britain-1979-to-1993.ashx
While undoubtedly the Tories had a Falklands boost, they were already on the up.
re 214 She is just collecting evidence for when she calls in Mr Brown on 13th May next and informs him that now that the parliamentary tem has lapsed She’s going to issue the writs for a general election whether he wants one, or not.
222. i think that is the ultimate problem with the “big brother is watching you” argument - the self-delusion that anyone cares what you are up to from day to day, let alone that enough people care to spy on more than a handful of known suspects
210. Pathetic.
You can’t make *any* assumptions about individuals attitudes to their own privacy who use websites to communicate with their friends. You may as well say anyone who picks up a telephone cares little for the content of their call to stay private too.
216. Exactly.
234 - I think the self-delusion that assumes that the government doesn’t have enough computing power and doesn’t monitor political activities of all kinds is the ultimate problem with the “nothing to fear, nothing to hide” argument.
225. Excellent post.
223. i agree, but that isn’t how people think and feel.
remember that the irish had a political aim and a survival instinct.
your stereotypical muslim suicide bomber just wants to take people out spectacularly. the threat is different.
228. I don’t want to sound like a promotor or major fan of Facebook; but I think you underestimate the power of ‘everyone else is doing it…’ Yes, I know that can lead to the argument of people being sheep, but isn’t that what generally happens as society develops? People just go along with it? When 95%+ of your age bracket is on Facebook, organising events, etc - it does become a near necessity to at least sign up and get a profile (the process of which many would say leads to you providing a lot of your private details). See how well the average 18 or 19 year old would cope without Facebook now - it would be almost as bad as not having a mobile phone.
182 - I can just imagine Osama logging on to Facebook from the cave every day, to up date this status with a “thought for the day”, or address the Alka Ada (as Gordo would say) Appreciation Society.
What idiot, who was thinking about a terrorist attack, is likely to “reveal” their activities on Facebook. If they are that type, they are also the ones likely not to be able to know the difference between the green wire and the red wire!
You could argue that due to the “friendship” network you could find associations. But really, come on, a) are you going to track every trail that leads from an individual Facebook friendship network and all their 523 “friends” (we are going to need a lot of people, b) if they brought it in do you not think the Terrorists might have the sense to make sure they didn’t add their terrorist mates and / or use false names.
I could go on, but I would kinda of guess that a worldwide Terrorist organisation has slightly more advanced techniques for recruitment, training and communication than Facebook!
233 - I suspect the ‘She’ referred to is Harpy not Her Majesty. I don’t think that Ben Brogan would be as rude as to refer to the sovereign as ‘She’.
230. The Treasury is certainly extremely concerned about Brown, as are elements in the BoE. There is a widespread fear that he is willing to take massive risks with the UK’s financial stability.
Paul Waugh digs up an interevention on MP’s expenses…
http://waugh.standard.co.uk/2009/03/sir-john-baker-duffs-up-gordon-on-mps-expenses.html
On topic - It was a good speech by Hannan, no doubt about it. However it’s one thing to be good at opposition, but leaders need more than that. Gordon Brown was a star in opposition (hard to believe now) but the public never saw him as a PM.
127. 138. I doubt very much that tim is a paid Labour Party apperatchik. Any veteran of the blog wars between the pro war left and the “stoppers” will be familiar with “tim” (all lower case) as both a regular at the Harry’s Place comment threads including as an occasional guest poster and troll at Lenin’s Tomb.
What gets Tim the HP guest poster slot is that he appears to be the world’s greatest living authority on the life, times and misdeeds of George Galloway. Now, granted, Galloway is an odious creature and it is right that the blogosphere scrutinises his activities but I always thought that tim’s interest verged on the obsessive which is not inconsistent with his stalking of other opponants of New Labour such as Stewart Jackson.
So my take is that tim is ideologically wedded to Blairism (yes, such people do exist) rather than paid and, whether retired or unemployed, is living proof of the aphorism “the devil makes work for idle hands”.
Apologies if this is mistaken identity - I have asked tim a couple of times if he is the same one and he has not responded (although I might have missed it) which I took to be a yes. The style is right as well.
Stay strong,ed.
These people have never faced a Black Swan in their little lives and if one bit them on the bum they would still be blaming ‘Bush&Blair’.
226. risk does carry an emotional side though. those who are able to “train” that out, tend to do very well for themselves. it certainly isn’t something you could easily teach at school, and it has very little to do with statistics either.
as for moving A-level stats into GCSE, you seem to be labouring under some pretty fundamental misunderstandings about how education actually works. for a start, something would have to move out of the GCSE curriculum to make room for it. secondly the level that can be taught is dictated by how good, how experienced, and how old the child is. teaching A-level to 14 year olds does not make them A level standard. (obviously)
do you also believe that adding quantum physics to the primary school syllabus will herald a new era of british scientific leadership?
234. Your ignorance and naivety is breathtaking.
Go and look up “Stasi” on the internet and down at the local library.
Then come back and tell us that: “(no)one cares what you are up to from day to day, let alone that enough people care to spy on more than a handful of known suspects”
People are nosey. They love to know what others are up to. It is the human condition.
202 ‘unfortunately we are dealing with a higher standard of terrorist nowadays, i don’t think many would agree with you after atrocities such as 11/9.’
Nonsense. Most would disagree with your view. The UK faced a much higher threat during the 70’s and 80’s, and we managed to survive without the proposed levels of intrusion into the private lives of individuals. The Government is doing what it likes to do best, that is spread fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) in the hope of controlling further a population that is becoming increasingly hostile towards it own self interests. Put simply, our political masters have realised that we know what they’re up to, and they’re frightened of what our response might be, if the anger boils over. There’s a good example today with Fred Goodwins smashed windows - the McNulty’s of this world are worried it’s their turn next.
240 (cont) What is shocking is that elements believe the “terrorist” excuse for everything and I don’t just mean toothless wonders. We take the micky of the Americans widespread irrational / exaggerated fear of terrorists etc, but I flicked on the Wright Stuff and one of the panel, a well spoken youngish women couldn’t understand why it was a problem, even with Matthew Wright ranting at her about police state etc.
Also noticeable that none of the panel, including Wright, knew the difference between CPI and RPI, I don’t think they even got it correct which is the governments preferred measure! What morons work in telly, and a “current affairs” tv at that! The arguments for and against further stimulus were also laughable.
Ironically, one assumes when talking “Palace Coup” that it is the Head of State being deposed - usually whilst away from South America visiting Europe!
248-Thanks for telling me about the Stasi.I had no idea !
I’ll take my chance with ‘The Stasi’ and leave you to take your chances with Islamo-Fascism.
Let’s see who comes off best.
239. no i don’t underestimate it at all, i am intimately familiar with the phenomenon. however, i just think it is ludicrous to put any details you want kept private on there, and then complain when people look at them. any number of organised crime networks are already doing so whether you like it or not.
250. Remember that a lot of younger people see totalitarianism as an alien concept, because they never grew up knowing how repressive the Eastern Bloc was.
248 - Have you seen Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives Of Others), Casino? I heartily recommend it.
URW: in the last - say - 100 years, would you like to give me some idea of:
(a) the number of people killed by terrorists
(b) the number of people killed in wars
(c) the number of people killed by their own government
Anybody but Brown!
214. It seems quite a coincidence that the Queen grants her first ever audience, I believe, to the Governor of the Bank of England on the very same day that Mervyn King jettisons Brown’s unique selling point: his claim for economic competency.
Queen moves in on King. Check. Brown to play.
252. exactly. i think most people understand that we do not live in comparable circumstances to the former DDR
247. Risk has everything to do with statistics.
This government has introduced plenty of extra guff into the GCSE curriculum: citizenship and personal/social/health education spring to mind; not to mention more testing and exams and reduction in sport time - I can’t recall you ever objecting to that on the grounds of “time”.
Clearly a syllabus has to be carefully designed. With respect to content as well as time. But we’re not educating our children sufficiently about risk at the moment and that needs to happen in the classroom, on the playing field and at home. I think education has an important role to play in that.
Your last point is silly and, as usual, involves you taking an argument on a completely different subject to the extreme to try and “win a point”.
254. and because it is an alien concept.
251. Prince Harry is going to get a few tanks - Drive up to Downing street with a cloth tied round his head and a machine gun in on hand with ammunition in the other!
Bye Bye El- Gordo the ‘fat one’!!!
256 robert.Very clever ! I don’t fear Jacquiboots one jot.
254. If you go back to the 70s and early 80s there were also quite a lot of young people who didn’t see much wrong with the societies in East Germany, Czechoslovakia and the USSR.
Quite a few of today’s MPs are included in this group - which perhaps explains why we have had the avalanche of authoritarian lunacy of recent years.
255. one of my favourite films - true classic
I do fear Kaufmann and Winnick.Maybe ‘fear’ is the wrong word.
252/255 - Watch that film and then listen to the trite Henry Porter going on about a Stasi State,
Context, Henry, context.
LONDON, March 25 (Reuters) - Britain suffered its first failed government bond auction since 2002 on Wednesday after it attracted just 1.627 billion pounds ($2.39 billion) in bids at a sale of 1.75 billion pounds of 2049 gilts.
Gilt prices tumbled after the auction result, with the June gilt future dropping as much as 1.9 points on the day and the 40-year gilt yield rising 8 basis points to 4.54 percent after being flat before the auction.
The UK Debt Management Office said its last failed auction in 2002 was for an index-linked gilt, and that Wednesday’s failure was the first for a conventional gilt since 1995.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/feedarticle/8421247
OT
has anyone seen this exchange site?
http://www.amciv.com/Main.php?do=dashboard
“something would have to move out of the GCSE curriculum to make room for it.”
Bulls##t! That is the argument that is always used, it is one in one out, or under this government especially, lots out, one “modern” thing in!
No you idiot, education shouldn’t work like that. It isn’t a matter of well I would like to teach this, but I would have to remove something. You add it in and you make them learn about it! GCSE have never been very taxing or contain enough material! We now even have multiple streams of dumb, dumber and idiot level of the GCSE exams to increase pass rates and “tailor” the material to different abilities.
Also, GCSE and A-Levels are narrower than ever. In my field of science, there has been systemic removal of many of the core fundamental principles, which form the building blocks if you choose to take that subject further. People get qualifications without knowing the fundamental, rather just learn to solve a small subsection of problems. The result is they can almost never work from first principles, a key skill, they only know the final formula.
Nobody is arguing sticking advanced quantum mechanics into GCSE, but at GCSE and A-Level you have to cover all the fundamentals of a subject and cover them well. Otherwise, people like me get stuck with students with 3/4/5 A’s at A-Level asking what is “Pascal’s triangle”, well why is it useful? “Taylor Series”, no, not done that, don’t get why I would ever need it! etc etc etc
252. Fair enough URW.
But life is too short. During the short time I’m alive on this earth I want to live a life of freedom and independence and be unmolested.
I am by no means “soft” on terror, but if it comes to a “Stasi” system vs. a free society - I’ll take my chances on a unlikely freak terrorist attack cutting it short every time.
255. Yes. It’s excellent.
259. You miss the point.
We’re moving ever closer down that path each year; it’s happening gradually - and sounds a grotesque exaggaration - but that’s where we’ll end up if we carry on in this direction and the arguments to oppose each gradual encroachment into our liberties remain as feeble as the ones you put up.
254. & 264
Maybe ED would have benifited from watching the recent programs on eastern Europe - they even had camras in peoples bedrooms and showed the footage!
ED is only young early twenties IIRC - his lack of knowledge is tempered only by his youthful arrogance.
258 Nice once, stjohn. I wonder if Brown will sacrifice a few pawns in a desperate attempt to keep the game going.
260. giving a useful lesson on risk, to children, has very little relation to A-level stats [i would advise perusing the syllabus for this if you don't believe me]. as you yourself admit, the important point is taking decisions in an emotionally detached way. not the analysis of data series.
i think personal/social/health education and citizenship classes are a superb idea and there should be a lot more of this. before you mentioned these i was going to suggest that this topic might best be taught in such classes (i do think the general idea has merit). for what it’s worth, i also object strongly to increased testing and reduced sport time (you seem to be accusing me of having some particular agenda that i have never voiced).
URW
The issue is one of creeping state control. The threat from communism was very real in 1930s Germany. Middle class fears and a willingness to espouse the dictum of “desperate times require desperate measures” lead to… well… it’s obvious.
Personally, I would stop almost all anti-terrorism spending.
I don’t understand why we spend £400,000 to prevent a road death, £30,000 for a year of “quality adjusted life” in medicine and yet (when it comes to people potentially being blown up) we’re happy to spend £30-40m per saved life.
Why is a life on the road worth 1% of a life blown up by a bomber?
Terrorism - whether anarchists in turn of the 20th Century US and Europe, or Northern Irish, or Basque - has been with us for a long time. It doesn’t kill very many people, and - just as with the war on drugs - the cost of treatment is far worse than the cost of the disease.
230 i wonder if the Queen personally sanctioned the timing of the release of the picture, just to make a point?
Ho Ho Ho, the government has strong armed Merv the Swerve to make a statement saying “no rift”, “don’t reckon those media headlines, not what I said”, and of course the BBC are reporting within seconds (not the 5hrs it took to report his actual words yesterday).
(For the record, I’m saying treat terrorists like the common criminals they are.)
reckon -> recoginse
Already shrieking from Harman- don’t fancy her chances today;).
Hague cracked a good joke at Geoffrey Robinson.
275 robert.We need a month at least of considered debate rather than a few soundbites from yours truly.
Over egging the Tory attacks is old Harman.
270. i thought it was fairly obvious that bringing a whole A-level module into the GCSE programme must displace something else.
i have sympathy with some of what you are saying, but there is a balance to be struck. there is only so much time and resource to teach, and kids can only take in so much. a lot of these (slightly OT) arguments about declining standards are based on some “golden age” of academic achievement that simply didn’t exist. my dad is always going on about all the scientific and mathematical stuff he learnt at school that people don’t do now, how kids rely on calculators,etc. and i always think to myself “yes dad, but half the physics and chemistry stuff kids do nowadays literally had not been discovered yet when you were at school”
275 But then what would happy to all the spotty oiks at Heathrow and Gatwick parroting “liquids and gels”? They are a truly valuable safeguard against the terrorist threat.
271. i think you could be on the first step to recovery - you have acknowledged that your ideas “sound like a grotesque exaggeration”.
are you ready for step two?
PMQ Good fun !
282 - that sounds like a refusal to debate the issues.
How do you feel about Benjamin Franklin’s dictum:
He who would trade liberty for some temporary security, deserves neither
27 - The problem is further than what is taught it is how it is taught.
The pressure is such on schools to get “Results” has lead to schools teaching robotic style, telling the children what is expected, what is on the syllabus, how to answer it. Little “free” thinking.
The big big problem is the ability to think and problem solving are skills which can’t be directly taught / forced into people. It has to be encouraged, nurtured, a skill promoted over time.
Again, this is a massive problem I face. I get lots of 18 year olds, great A-levels, highly motivated, know how to answer a small subsection of questions on a particular subject. However, as I have said before the vast majority of kids from the state system, have shocking poor levels of critical and logical thinking skills! It is something that the private kids appear to be far more capable (through experience).
Isn’t that what we are talking about, being able to think / critically analysis! Teaching robotic style is not the answer, which what currently happens in a short sighted attempt to meet the target of exam results.
top gags from hague
272. Martin, maybe i can address all your doubts in one go:
my mother escaped from german-occupied poland, many of her family did not.
Harman failed there.
Harman even worse at failing to answer the question than Brown.
Vince on form!
Hague’s last question was fantastic
Has Harman finished her irrational ranting yet?
289. this isn’t just down to the teaching by the way: someone argued in this thread that 16-25 year olds are under duress to join facebook (a complete waste of time, with security risks)
the average teenager watches TV for some obscene amount of time (3 hrs per day?)
what chance have teachers got?
Harman will never finish ranting - it is all she knows how to do
Listening to Harman ranting like a deranged schoolmistress is giving me a right bl0ody headache!
Elizabeth Blackman - “Would the government say they’re doing a good?”
291. So why the stupidity on this issue with regard to the creation of ’stasi’ like police. It is not welcome who ever is in power!
296 etc
Harman sounding more like Thatcher by the day. Could she be the first female labour PM?
…a good job*
288 robert.It is the opposite.
This topic is ‘fun’ for you and those who would inhabit the moral highground.
For me in the end it has to do with ’survival’ a concept that might never occurred to you and your kind.
To make it clear…I envy you and your kind.I would just luvvit if I had the luxury of the moral highground, rightly castigating the badguys and identifying most huggingly with the goodguys.
The problem is (for me) that I no longer know who the goodguys are but I do know that the soi-disant goodguys are the badguys.
Labour backbench questions embarrassing.
284 - Again quite a lot of bull.
Maths for instance is pretty much unchanged, except at the very highest level, for many hundred of years. Physics, the fundamentals, are still age old. Chemistry again.
Yes science has developed significantly, but the fundamental building blocks really aren’t very different, if at all. The people I experience now have large gaps in that fundamental knowledge! How they are then excepted to go on to know about the advanced things properly is laughable.
I am not saying nothing should ever change, but the fundamentals should never be ignored. As for a golden age, well have a look at an A-Level from the 60 or 70’s, completely different world. You know the difference?
The difference is they required critical thinking, problem solving and ability to work from first principles! The maths papers on the whole would have here is a problem, solve as you see fit…You would get marks for attempting it, for stating assumption, for working through it. So of the questions would also require (as at university level) to take some knowledge you have learnt and adapt it to this problem that you will be unlikely have seen before.
Today, the exams are very hand held. The problem is broken down into small baby steps. The result is that you can guess what needs to be done at each step, from what it says you need for the next step, and thus you are told the path of how to solve the overall problem. Again, the result is little test or requirement for logical thinking / analysis of the problem. Rather the ability to remember how to solve that small task by small task, which is what schools are drilling into kids.
Andrew Dismal….
PMQ’s planted question: “Same old Tories, same old cuts”
So that is the Labour line? They ain’t going to go until May 2010 on that line. The cash will run out before - as today’s failed gilt auction shows… Early election beckons!
297. Ed. You are misrepresenting me, and don’t try and insinuate I am unintelligent please. I was saying that in the loosest possible sense there is a form of duress (emphasis on ‘loosest’) in that if all your social circle have Facebook and plan events through it, you face substantial detriment in your private life if you do not have Facebook.
Tony Lloyd what a stooge…
Harman did well.
The attack that the Tories will only cut Tax to millionares will resonate.
The Inheritance Tax cut will be put on the back burner quickly by Caneron as he is brighter than Osborne in changing times.
302. Listening to that exchange it is clear Harman does not have a huge command of economics, she didn’t sound very convincing. And was over-shrill. If she worked on those two things she’d be much better.
308 - Nothing to worry about with regards the gilt auction failure, apparently!
Dear God, Harriet… “The Shadow Shadow Chancellor….”
Can’t Mike please give Labour a yellow card for repetition?
Brown’s interview is starting.
315 - Wondered why the Pravda cut from PMQ’s early!
308. Another poor attack line, same as the do nothing one they’ve used to death. It sounds very manufactured, something that many core labour supporters will nod their heads to but the mainstream will find irritating.
McFall: Chairman of a committee - pathetic.
275. Well put - your sober assessment of the numbers and statistics makes a very good point about our attitudes to risk: both heavily politicised and illogical.
284. Ed, you tedious little goat, I said:
“We already have a very rough & ready module in “statistics” for A-level maths. I’d like to see that moved down to GSCE Maths and it’s teaching become a bit broader and wider through other academic areas.”
I also said:
“Clearly a syllabus has to be carefully designed. With respect to content as well as time.” and “that needs to happen in the classroom, on the playing field and at home”
Nowhere did I say I’d teach *exactly* the same content at GSCE as A-level. That is why said “rough & ready” - I did say I’d like the general module moved down to GSCE and that the syllabus needed to be “carefully designed” and I’d like risk to be taught “a bit broader and wider” in the education establishment.
FWIW, I did A-level statistics and work in the engineering industry: I know exactly what I’m talking about. There was virtually no introduction to it during GSCE. Both Calculus and Stats used to be taught at O-level to a certain level - and I want to see such robust teaching reintroduced. Things like standard deviation, means, averages, modes and normal distributions would all help ordinary people to understand everyday life - and I believe they would be capable of absorbing it. PSHE is a joke.
But we all know you are merely an unthinking drone who only posts on here to defend the Governments record, so for you to appreciate the subtlety of such an argument would clearly be beyond you.
301. for me, the stupidity is repeatedly bringing up the idea that we have a stasi society.
for a start it is rather insensitive and ignorant.
secondly it is so obviously far from the truth, that noone will listen to the more valid concerns raised. there is a useful debate to be had, the word “stasi” does not feature in that debate.
308 “Same old Tories same old cuts” plus exciting new ingredient of “tax cuts for millionaires” (IHT) - think Harriet has been following tim on this as she bought that up in every answer. If they aren’t planning an election this year then the lines are going to be old and boring by next May.
I thought this was gordon Brown until i looked at the face!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ireland/5046370/Irish-Taoiseach-ridiculed-in-lavatory-painting.html
314. They’ve been pushing the shadow shadow chancellor line ever since Clarke was brought in, so far no-one else has picked it up or even bothered to mention it.
284. Yeah. How is school going Ed?
288. “He who would trade liberty for some temporary security, deserves neither - and will lose both”
318. McFall is remarkably dim - it speaks volumes that he can be the chair of a major committee. It’s scary that he is even an MP. One of the other committee members is even worse….
320. We are getting there with arreasts of MP’S and the like.
I’m getting bored. Brown is doing a speech not an interview.
On topic: I do hope so.
323. It is a particularly stupid line as most members of the public would prefer Ken Clarke to be the shadow Chancellor. Every time Labour uses the line with its implication I think ‘that’s good’.
289/306. Quite so Oracle. Well said.
It is that, of course, that we are referring to: giving children the skills they will need to think, assess, judge and decide by themselves.
311. No it won’t!
Dismal, the only word for the harperson rant.
Farcical, the only word for the repetative attacks in the Tories.
Laughable, the only word for the planted quedtions.
This government is on it’s last leg’s.
Harman screeching like a witch on that last one…
What was pmqs like, only caught the tail end.
329. Yes it isn’t the brightest line, mainly because people actually like Clarke so instead of undermining Osborne is just reminds them Ken Clarke is back.
333 Not a classic….
Anand just read out a comment that is a carbon copy of a comment from a renowned troll on ConHome…hmm
324. Mr Ed can’t help it after all……
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_PZPpWTRTU
weathercock, old cock.I urge you to make a study of the English language with special reference to apostrophes.You have been here long enough.
332 - well done James.
Whenever a female MP speaks someone always pops up with that one.
No wonder your Parliamentary Party is full of jolly good blokes.
Today’s gilt auction failure looks ominous but hardly unexpected in these increasingly dire circumstances for the UK economy:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a6KhEW.jkmdE&refer=home
that was for 336 JB
331:
I vowed to ignore apostrophe catastrophes, but it’s and leg’s in the same line is too much!
It’s = It is
Its = belonging to it
leg’s = belonging to the leg
legs = more than one leg
306. i agree with much of your broader point, but i must disagree with you on this: mainstream science, taught at school (esp. A-level), does now contain a significant proportion of stuff that was unheard of 100 years ago and certainly not well-known 50 years ago. whether this is worth covering in such little depth and with so little grounding is another question entirely, but it is covered. i am thinking about stuff like relativity, particle physics, space flight etc here. that does necessarily broaden the range of topics that must be covered.
i think it is also worth pointing out that people rely on calculators today for a lot of stuff that needed to be taught in great detail in the past. that may lead to some of the problems you describe, but it is certainly true at present.
another factor is the internet - research isn’t what it used to be!
341 - It makes no sense directed at either of my comments.
309. sorry!
319. i’m sorry you feel that way, i can assure you that if you read what i am saying there is a good chance you may be surprised
332
Harman’s appalling shrieking has left my head banging like a sh1thouse door in the wind
324. I agree, but always liked “A witty quote proves nothing”
339. No they don’t, only when Harman starts shrieking. There are many male MP’s who have terrible voices too, especially the one’s who repeat themselves and stutter badly when under pressure (wonder who that could be?)
344 - Harman screeching like a witch on that last one…
by James Burdett March 25th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
Every time a woman MP speaks someone always makes that point.
Your turn today.
Mike Smithson.Regarding 331 Citizen Weathercock.I urge that you ban this specimen for apostrophe abuse.
Strikes brought down the last Labour govt - could a gilt strike bring down this one ?
How many failed auctions before we need to go to the IMF anyone ?
311. Yes. It will resonate by showing an increasing opinion poll lead for them.
320. You miss the point - again.
It’s the fact we’re moving in that direction. And far faster than anyone would have thought possible back in those Halcyon days of 1997. In fact, you’d have been laughed at.
DDR - Stasi controlled (1984)
Protests banned outside parliament
Protests banned outside leaders residence
Files kept on ordinary citizens
Anti-state activity used as an excuse for invasive measures
Extended detention without trial
ID cards compulsory
Registration of all foreign holiday plans
Complicitness in extraditing ’suspects’ to other countries for torture
Monitoring of private communications
Gross abuse of legal powers for anti-state activity
Encouraging citizens to spy on each other
Asking political affliation when opening bank accounts
UK - Labour controlled (2009)
Um….
330. i think everyone wants that - how to achieve it is not so clear!
for what it is worth i don’t think any of our political parties come close to having a coherent plan on this, so i don’t expect things to improve.
349 - Did you see her last answer, she sounded hysterical.
Who’s the guy picking his nose? LOL
[340] - On the other hand, if Brown had been rigging the market to force UK banks to buy gilts, as has been alleged on here, then that wouldn’t have been allowed to happen. So things could be worse.
It surprised me that there had been failed gilt sales in 1995, 1999 and 2002.
350 - I like seeing a few grammatical and linguistic mistakes. They enrage the pedants and show that the poster has higher things on their mind than a well-turned phrase.
Actually he wasn’t picking his nose, he was poking his brain to wake up. Boooooooooooring Brown at his best
352 - Asking political affliation when opening bank accounts
Side issue, I know but did Fraser Nelson ever stand that story up?
Right - I really must get back to work now. Been posting for nearly 3 hours intermittently and I must crack on.
Ta ta for now.
Well now we’re starting to see Gilt problems things could get very nasty indeed between Brown and the BoE who will both be laming each other. My guess is, in the next month, either King will resign or Brown will!
As for PMQ’s didn’t get to see it today. Doesn’t sound as though I missed much, though.
359 - Yes - There’s a recording of a Fraser Nelson getting asked that question
354 - I didn’t James.
But as I say, someone on here always makes the same point when a woman speaks in Parliament.
357 antif.I never hitherto realised that weathercock had a mind.Thanks for bringing that to my attention.
CR - but don’t you realise, those things are necessary for our “survival”
By questioning them, and their necessity, you have shown your true colours. You are the terrorist’s friend. Your “morality” is the Islamofascists best weapon.
359 - Really?
Political affiliation?
Could you provide a link please.
(URW: I hope you don’t mind me doing your work for you. I just found you so persuasive, that I’ve asked the government to log my movements, just for my own good.)
359 tim - No, we’ll grant you that one. What about the others in Casino’s list?
Brown was asked about the difference between the Government and the Bank of England because of what Mervin said yesterday. He answered that he was sure that Mervin agreed that they have to do what’s necessary.
tim - what do you make of this?
http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/
I do think some on the left are guilty of a bit of hypocrisy on education.
338/350/342.
Oh you fools, I’m apostophe lite.
URW, my grammer could be better, but so could your manners.
367 robert……you know it makes sense !
352. the DDR government did not pass laws allowing FoI requests.
the DDR government would not have allowed you to voice any of these criticisms.
the DDR government was not accountable at the ballot box.
the DDR government would not let people leave.
don’t you think that they are rather fundamental differences?
i think you could make a coherent argument against the UK doing any of the things in that list, unfortunately you aren’t able to because of this ridiculous (and offensive) comparison.
363. When?
Sounds like Harman was useless once again, when she doesn’t have a script to follow she just rambles or attacks with dull spin lines.
359. Iirc someone knowledgeable sounding said it was probably just a low-level employee bungling a required question meant to find elected officials or something similar
366 tim - The question was asked (Fraser had the recording on CoffeeHouse). However, it does seem to have been cock-up, not conspiracy. Now, what about the others?
371 weathercock old cock.I actually like you despite all appearances to the contrary.
I will try to improve my manner’s.
366 - Here you go.
http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/3434476/why-are-our-stateowned-banks-asking-customers-about-their-politicial-affiliations.thtml
371. weathercock, try this simple rule: if in doubt, leave it out.
apostrophe’s in the wrong place are far more irritating than an absence of punctuation
“am thinking about stuff like relativity, particle physics, space flight etc”
Are you completely off your rocker? And that is the point, they don’t need to be and shouldn’t be!
You don’t need to be “taught” space flight in maths or physics. It isn’t a topic, it is a human achievement, based on, wait for it, using the fundamental maths and physics principles. If anything it is modern history!
relativity or particle physics, what is a 15/16 year old learning about those in any detail? You can’t even start to comprehend that those things on an academic level, until you have the basic building blocks.
Also part of your argument is about equipping people for the real world. In the real world, in fact in the academic world, a tiny proportion of people need to know that stuff. How many people going into a normal 9-5 job, think jeez I’m glad I know about Einstein theory of “General relativity”. Where as, how many have to work out the mean, mode, SD, normal distribution of data, well a hell of a lot more people are going to need that for their paper pushing jobs and the quarterly reports etc. Even trade jobs, plumbers, construction workers, etc, are in far better position if they know some good solid maths!
In reality the things you mention can only be taught at a “populist” level, i.e history with an odd rather meaningless formula, and you think that they have to be included rather than, as I keep saying the, solid foundations of the subject.
#356 - They are 40 year gilts - not on the BoE shopping list.
Is that Gordon Brown being interviewed or has someone dug up Tony Hancock?
308. “PMQ’s planted question: “Same old Tories, same old cuts” - so that is the Labour line?”
Yes, it will be. It will also be the only one that has any chance of resonating with the public because there will be an element of truth in it (the element being that *any* government will need to make cuts but the Tories will be more open about it).
They ain’t going to go until May 2010 on that line.
Don’t you believe it
The cash will run out before - as today’s failed gilt auction shows
Quite possibly - but the BoE is printing money now so the bills can be paid in the short term and hang the inflationary effects (though what the government would do if the BoE stopped QE and started to increase interest rates to head off inflation is a different question. Change the inflation target?)
Early election beckons!
Again, I wouldn’t argue against the possibility.
346
I had to turn my car radio down.Shrill and hectoring was our Harriet. She would make an awful PM and an awful Leader of the Opposition. The Labour IHT attack is all wrong, they should have listened to the applause Cameron got on the Titchmarsh show yesterday when the subject was raised.
Just thinking aloud here, but a few people have mentioned the idea that Brown is deliberately skipping PMQs as much as possible. Normally the implication has been that he is doing so out of cowardice.
I wonder whether it might also be strategic, in an attempt to deny Cameron a parliamentary platform to criticise the government. So that Cameron doesn’t get his soundbite on the news each Wednesday. What do people think?
Would it be possible for Cameron to ignore the convention that sees Hague square off against Harman in Brown’s absence? Could he turn up and criticise Brown for his repeated absence?
Isn’t the big man, Rupert Murdoch, at this Gordo shin dig, after all his owns the WSJ? Wonder how the current Sun position to Gordo / government will go down?
Pravda even think Gordo is boring! They have cut him off! Ho ho ho!
[381] - Right… so another sign that our institutions are working as advertised and not being subverted from the Brown “bunker”?
385 - If I was Cameron or Clegg, I would, and I would preface with I’m only here because this is the job I am paid to do, responsibility to the country and it isn’t my fault Gordo can’t make it every 1 in 3 weeks!
I’ve not seen PMQs, but reading the comments here it looks like a clear win for Hattie then….
384. I also think that Hague taking the mick out of HH the niece of the countess of Longford was a good studed boot in the face to Labour on that score!
389 - I think it would backfire personally.
390, she shrieked overmuch. Hague just asked her if she agreed with King, and she scweamed and scweamed about the evil Towies. ’twas not an edifying spectacle.
384 - I wonder whether we are missing the point of Labour’s attack lines. Are they more about keeping up morale and holding the political line rather than actually having any impact on the opposition?
291 - “Speedos on the beach” was another line that gave me a good chuckle!
I have never seen a Hague after dinner speech, but I can understand why he is so in demand, I reckon it could be pretty funny stuff. Shame he doesn’t spend more time concentrating on the day job though! Seems to only do the media once a month tops.
370 - Frank Booth.
I have trouble taking Peter Hitchens seriously, particularly after a quote like this Alastair (Campbell) also was, and is, a militant and committed socialist and radical.
But I persevered and saw a list of questions, nothing else.
385 T(lZ)
Cameron doesn’t need to mount any attacks as Swervin’ Mervyn proved yesterday.
This government is suffering from ‘advanced entropy’
380. unfortunately what kids are interested in is not always the same as what you feel would be best for them in their future desk job. these topics (which i only raised as examples) are the interesting, relevant ones. of course they can’t be taught in depth, but how could a modern physics course not even mention the work of the world’s most famous physicist? it couldn’t.
mean, mode, SD etc. are tedious (although all these are taught as well)
remember that take-up for physics is already pitifully low. leaving out the interesting bits would be unlikely to help.
390
She won the decibel count but that’s all.
390. To give Harriet her due, the “Millionaires’ Manifesto” was a good line, and one I wouldn’t be surprised to see Labour use in the future.
However, I never thought I’d say this, but Gordon Brown is better at answering questions put to him than Harriet was today. Normally she’s a bit more upfront, but Hague asked her three times about the Governor of the BoE and each time she started rambling on about IHT. This, coupled with her shrill delivery (she is not usually as bad as that, maybe she’s got a bad throat or something? - for those who didn’t watch it, think Maggie circa 1976 but worse..) made her seem out of her depth. A shame, because sometimes she can give Hague what-for and the exchanges are quite good, but today she, I have to admit, was even worse than Gord, I though (and that’s saying something!)
Dale has an interesting blogpost about pmq’s
http://iaindale.blogspot.com/2009/03/pmqs-labour-mps-desert-harriet.html
387
Pravda are somewhat like Hansard. The will take what GB has said then their correspondents will rearrange it so that it conveys the message he would have given were he a better speaker
396. Fair enough.
re 352 Casino excellent post. The government I’m afraid seems to be winning given the comments on here from posters happy to give up ancient liberties because there’s an infinitessimal risk of being blown up.
How would all these apologists feel, for instance, if crossing the road was made illegal except at pedestrian crossings and then only at a green man signal? Many thousands more of us will be killed in a road traffic accident than will ever be killed by a terrorist.
400. ‘Millionaires Manifesto’ would be one written by Clegg and Huhne, wouldn’t it?
400 - Millionaires Manifesto will reappear.
Because its true.
In changing financial circumstances,the Tory pledge to millionaire remains.
On topic
+++ Hannan Speech Front Page Drudge +++
Worldwide Most Viewed YouTube Video
http://www.order-order.com/2009/03/hannan-speech-front-page-drudge-worldwide-most-viewed-youtube-video/
re 373 the DDR government did not pass laws allowing FoI requests.
What nonsense, the government is judge and juror in deciding whether we’re going to get the information or not. The FOIA is becoming more than useless.
Hannan video top of Drudge website according to Guido.
Maybe 100/1 looks good ?
406. And the alternative is Labour who also love millionaires?
The Tories are for the rich and Labour for the poor, or thats how it used to be. Now its Tories for the rich and Labour for anyone that agrees with their stilted, autocratic and confused policies.
400 How many Labour MPs are “super-rich” (Harriet Harman’s phrase)
March 25, 2009 12:46pm
by Jim Pickard
Enemies of Harriet Harman - I’m told they exist - will take delight from her slips at PMQs just now.
First there was an Austin Powers moment when she told the House of Commons that the government had helped….wait for it….90 businesses. Amid ripples of laughter, she clarified this to the real figure, 90,000.
Second she referred to UKFI, the arms-length body which controls the nationalised banks, as UKIA.
And was I the only person who picked up on her description of those who will benefit from the Tory inheritance tax cut as the “super-rich“? If this is people whose estate is worth more than £700,000, doesn’t it include lots of Labour MPs?
http://blogs.ft.com/westminster/2009/03/how-many-labour-mps-are-super-rich-harriet-harmans-phrase/
398 - I’m afraid what the kids feel they would like to know is a bit irrelevant. If they want to know about space rockets, get on the interweb in their own time and find out, and I would encourage them to do that. Another interesting thing, kids encouraged to learn things themselves for the interest factor, rather than for a qualification.
Besides, we are running a state education system, to educate the adults of tomorrow to be able to be a productive use for the country. Thus, if it isn’t up to them, what the focus of teaching is, they aren’t paying for it! Also, at 11-16, what do kids really know, a) what they want to do and b) what is “useful” and isn’t. They don’t!
As for take-up. Again that is a government created problem, which simply shouldn’t exist. They removed the rule that everybody had to do a language, result people choose the “easy” options. They gave the option to do “combined” sciences, rather than the proper 3 separate elements, results fewer and fewer state pupils do science properly, resulting in less at universities, etc, etc, etc.
Now I am not against all choice don’t get me wrong. But most other countries have a system where to “graduate” from high school you have to passed in all the core subjects plus x number of choices. That is how my school worked “back in the day” which wasn’t that long ago (a grey man in y-fronts was busy messing the country up!), and shockingly people are now very successful. We all had to do maths, all sciences, a language, history, geography, and then there was elements of choice. x or y from the list, but the core was not an option.
As for “boring” teaching, that is a problem with the teaching. In particular, I had a fantastic physics teacher, animated interesting, won teacher of the year, was extremely successful at getting people to “over-achieve” in physics. We had pretty much everybody get an A or B at A-level Physics “back in the day”. He managed to make physics extremely interesting, I don’t think I ever heard anybody complain that they were bored! After all physics really, it “how the world around us works” in the simplest terms.
[410] - And the alternative is Labour who also love millionaires?
Exactly. Blair/Brown spent more than a decade trashing their own brand so that now that Cameron has repaired that of the Conservatives Labour are sunk.
408. that doesn’t really answer the point though does it? only ten years ago the only possible source of information out of government was via govt statements and westminster lobby journalists.
the UK government now is more open and accountable than it has ever been thanks to FoI and the internet.
that doesn’t mean that its actions are always correct.
411 - You’re missing the point.
The issue isn’t wealth.
The issue is prioritising the wealthiest for a tax cut in the middle of a recession, while talking about “tough choices”
407. That’s interesting–I wouldn’t be surprised if the right-leaning press over here took up Brown as a cautionary example. “If Obama gets his way we’ll all be broke! Look at his nutty friend!”
Finally Brown will be famous in the US!
407 The Drudge Report front-page highlights two other UK stories:
BANK OF ENGLAND WARNS PRIME MINISTER: STOP THE SPENDING!
We’ve run out of money, no more stimulus…
CREEP: UK govt to monitor FACEBOOK, social networking sites…
Interesting to see the blogosphere interacting with, and in some cases framing, the media narrative.
As Anthony Wells points out there seems to be a correlation between peoples optimism/pessimism and Labour voting intention shares. Looks like a dip is likely.
Guardian reports that average pay in private sector has fallen 2.2% in February (due to lower or no bonuses) compared to rise of 3.5% in public sector. First fall on record.
With RPI at zero and increasing numbers of companies freezing or cutting pay plus bonus reductions across companies (at all levels not just rich bankers) there is going to be pain.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/mar/25/pay-falls-bonuses-cut
Though cost of living as reported in RPI is zero the people benefiting are in the main those with tracker mortgages - the Indy has a good article on CPI v RPI and the groups losing and benefiting, and where higher prices are feeding through.
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/sean-ogrady-millions-are-caught-in-the-new-inflation-trap-1653410.html
Only two and a bit months since the Obama Messiah was elected, yet his popularity rating has now sunk to only +4%.
The more this president speaks, the more he enacts policy decisions, then the more he sinks in American public esteem.
I once wrote that Obama would prove to be a newer but worse version of Jimmy Carter. How right I am.
See below:
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Tuesday shows that 36% of the nation’s voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Thirty-two percent (32%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of +4 (see trends).
406
only it isnt a plegde to millionaires, but no doubt you will spin it is such. hundreds of thousands of ordinary people are forced into paying death taxes which are in themselves iniquitous, of course its also strictly speaking untrue that millionaires benefit because the benefit is after death.
412. no it isn’t irrelevant because half the point of teaching them physics is to inspire them and get them interested. take up in sciences is low at school because they are perceived as boring and difficult - and yet you propose to remove many of the most interesting bits.
if physics is how the world works, then let’s deal with how the world works. that now includes interaction with satellites in space every day of our lives.
finally, beware of generalising about school systems in other countries - there are a very wide range of different approaches taken, with a wide range of results. it is notoriously tough to draw useful conclusions though.
410. Labour loves only certain kinds of millionaires - ideally they need to be non-domiciled, non-taxpaying and large contributors to Labour Party funds. At a pinch, just the latter will do.
411 - ScottP.
Thanks for that link.
You stopped before the article finished.
Here it is.
More seriously the Tories may want to re-examine their IHT policy (lifting the threshold to £1m). A tax cut which looked wildly popular during the boom times does not look so cunning during a recession.
One Labour adviser told me this week that the party was cock-a-hoop at David Cameron’s refusal to drop the pledge (see the Ken Clarke controversy at the weekend). “It’s one of their only firm manifesto commitments and it’s a giveaway to the rich, we are delighted they are holding on to it,” he said.
Given the downturn, the public is likely to agree with Harman’s description of the IHT move as a £2bn tax cut for just 3,000 well-off people - if not actually the super-rich. That wasn’t the case a year ago.
Thats the point.
415. As opposed to clobbering the poor and middle income families with propsed tax hikes? Plus the only reason that half those people are paying IHT in the first place is because the level at which you qualify has been raised so slowly, in yet another attempt to raise revenue without actually raising taxes.
The IHT was proposed before the recession was on the horizon (late 2007 I believe) and then partly copied by Labour.
408. re 373 on another of the points made the DDR government was not accountable at the ballot box
Of course they did have elections and people did vote. The key was that the Government manipulated the system greatly to ensure that they would remain unchallenged. Now who else do we know has attempted this (albeit in an utterly incompetent manner)?
I think this actually defines the difference between the DDR Governing Party and the UK Labour party. Whilst the DDR Government was relatively efficient in following their objectives, the current Labour party is utterly incompetent. Hence they bring in futile legislation such as the FOI which only highlights their wish to keep anything unsavoury about their behaviour them secret……..
So rather than being remembered with a legacy of authoritarian efficiency (abhorrent as that maybe), the British Labour party will leave a legacy of utter incoherent incompetence which of course means they are of no use to man or beast.
The UK Debt Management Office (DMO) attracted just £1.67bn in bids for its sale of £1.75bn of 2049 gilts this morning, its first uncovered auction of conventional gilts since 1995.
The cover of just 0.93 times is believed to be the lowest in history and far worse than the 0.99 times in 1995. The average cover of the last three auctions was 2.1 times.
412. Anecdote alert.
The “best” science question I was asked to answer as a student was “if you fall out of an aeroplane without a parachute, at what speed will you hit the ground?” with no other data.
To answer it we needed to work out what the balancing forces for terminal velocity might be, make real world assumptions about which formula for drag might apply, weight of each person, and work out an answer that was within reasonable limits.
Of course having answered it, the follow-up question was “if you had a parachute what size would you make it?” which requires further assumptions about safe landing speed and so forth.
Exciting physics based on fundamental principles, coupled with the realisation that the answers must seem to be sensible.
426 - I think it is significant. I would suspect that it is partly motivated from the Governor’s comments. Couple that with the fact of uncertainty over whether there will be an Economic Stimulus II.
427 - Point well made!
Logical thinking, tick,
analysis of the problem, tick,
theory required, tick,
real world (as Ed would like, rather than the oh so real world of particle physics and relativity) tick,
However, Ed, you can’t solve this problem without the core foundations, which is what this argument is all about. You can tell a kid that there is a thing called relativity, etc etc, but they can’t really do any calculations on it, not at 16. Man falls out of plane, absolutely can, and should!
428. Might it have been even worse if not for the Governors comments ? Perhaps that was his aim - to reassure bidders ?
429 - Oh and the solution to this problem, when was the “principles” required discovered. Give you a clue, not the last 50 years!
Fraser Nelson’s take on the guilt auction failure:
http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/3472576/the-beginning-of-the-end.thtml
http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/3472576/the-beginning-of-the-end.thtml
427. what has terminal velocity to do with it?
“assuming i would never be daft enough to take off in a plane without parachutes… the distance fallen is approximately 0.2m … answer: not very fast”
432-Snap!
430 - I dunno, I would suspect that the market would have been aware of the fundamental position, but the governor externalising his internal thought processes do make a difference.
I missed PMQs but BBC Radio 5 has spoken. HH - “nerves of steel”, “refused to be drawn” on King question, won on points, “millionaires’ manifesto” may not get headlines tomorrow but will “gnaw away at credibility of Tory party”, party of Etonian toffs, HH passed test of character necessary for Labour leader, did her job today. The host, someone called Colin Murray was strangely insistent that King probably closer to Brown’s point of view rather than Cameron’s.
435. LOL!
425. you are arguing with yourself now, my original statement was correct.
side note: who do you think is most likely to win the next UK election?
437. It was awful. Pienaar is pretty neutral but Steve Richards is so biased - there was no balance.
take up in sciences is low at school because they are perceived as boring and difficult - and yet you propose to remove many of the most interesting bits.
No, take up is low, because it is allowed to be low! As for only the boring bits, as demonstrated the fundamentals can be made very interesting!
As I have stated numerous times it is the removal of these fundamental building blocks and the nurture of free and logical thinking that is the problem, rather than as you say do we teach them about a satellite in space. The problem is that what the kids are taught about the satellite often doesn’t include the physics fundamentals that its operation is based on, rather than some pseudo science.
the nurture of free and logical thinking
-> lack of …..
I remember a past Finals paper starting …
“A corrupt bartender mixes a weak martini … ”
and then entered into a whole world of partial pressures and the laws of Raoult and Henry.
437. Clearly Radio Five are worried about being a sacrificial lamb if the Conservatives take power and freeze the TV Licence. The BBC as a whole don’t really do sport these days do they? So it wouldn’t surprise me to see Five as a victim of cuts…..
440, don’t complain too loudly. If Harman becomes Labour leader I get money and the country gets a few terms at least of a Tory Government.
432, 433 - Fraser Nelson is over-egging this. They can sell the gilts (and nearly did); the question is at what price. As the markets get more nervous, it won’t be a one-off meltdown, but a gradual increase in the risk premium we have to pay.
431. however long you consider air travel to have been mainstream for, i suppose, probably 60 or 70
439. Your original statement was incorrect. The DDR had elections.
440 - Pienaar is on with a different journo each week.
When he does it with Fraser Nelson should the left whine and whinge about balance?
Of course they shouldn’t. Now grow up.
“Alarm as government debt auction fails”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/mar/25/uk-economic-rescue-in-crisis
441. sorry but forcing kids to do physics up to that level is not going to make them enjoy it. of course there are millions of neat questions which are interesting to those already interested in science and don’t necessarily require much more than basic building blocks, unfortunately your average 14 year old kid is going to answer “i don’t know or care” and that isn’t going to help anyone.
444
Colin Murray: Hague started with broad smile, ended with ironic smile. Had been put in his place a few times by HH.
448. i know they had elections, which is why my original statement was not what you are arguing it was.
On IHT.
3000 wealthiest cannot pay £2bn in IHT - max for 3000 estates (assuming no partner transfers) is £825.6m. So the other £1,174.4m has to come from other estates.
So as a “factoid” what Harman says is incorrect.
IHT used to be applicable to 6% of estates - as a result of falling house prices that’s fallen to 3%. So about half the estates paying were on the cusp between no IHT and some IHT. It’s that margin between paying or not paying that is (was?) the vote winner, there are a lot of people with estates that are just below threshold who worry it will/might apply. Sufficient numbers to move the voting intention significantly when it was announced.
On IHT.
3000 wealthiest cannot pay £2bn in IHT - max for 3000 estates (assuming no partner transfers) is £825.6m. So the other £1,174.4m has to come from other estates.
So as a “factoid” what Harman says is incorrect.
IHT used to be applicable to 6% of estates - as a result of falling house prices that’s fallen to 3%. So about half the estates paying were on the cusp between no IHT and some IHT. It’s that margin between paying or not paying that is (was?) the vote winner, there are a lot of people with estates that are just below threshold who worry it will/might apply. Sufficient numbers to move the voting intention significantly when it was announced.
#351;#361
Yields on gilts are now above the level when the £75 billion QE was announced by the BoE. If you recall one of the reasons for QE was to drive real rates down on gilts and that would filter through to corporate bonds etc. Same effect can be noted in the US where the spread on corporate paper is still increasing, despite their $300 billion announcement.
On this [stated] basis we could say QE has already failed.
Jury is still out on the Geithner plan. Krugman gives it a big thumbs down, there’s a clip of an interview on Bloomberg worth watching.
Basically the patient [global financial system] is still not responding to meds.
Richard 446 is absolutely right. There will always be a market for UK government debt (as there is Argentinian and Lebanese, and indeed as there was for the Confederate States).
The issue is not will people buy UK government debt, but at what price (interest rate) will investors’ bite.
Can I recommend The Armchair Economist, which has an excellent article on funding of government debt.
452, Colin Murray: And the result of the 2003 rugby union world cup final was an utter humiliation for England who barely scraped across the line by a meagre 3 points. The English players look exhausted despite their phenomenal luck during the entirety of the game, tournament and indeed year. Pity the unfortunate but splendid Australian side who would have been worthy winners.
452. On what planet does he live?
Whoever the Lib Dem MP on Radio 5 is also going after the Tories on IHT, claiming that they would raise taxes on the wealthy.
455.
What is your source for those figures and why are you assuming no capital transfers?
452. Ironic smile? I’m not sure thats enitrely possible.
458
QED: Colin Murray is a d1ckhead.
Looking in briefly - a poster on the last thread made the point that although the ’social work’ aspects of MP’s jobs may be time-consuming, it could be risky to abolish them, since they’re perhaps the side of MPs’ work that people most relate to (’he helped me sort my rent issue’).
That’s right. But I was replying to two other points. One remarked on how often the Chamber is nearly empty (it’s often because MPs are doing casework, while probably watching the debate on the monitor) and the other suggested that we could make do with far fewer MPs. My point was simply that it’s barely posisble to do the ‘official’ Parliamentary job and the ’social work’ job as it is, and if there were fewer MPs it really would be impossible.
I’m not making any kind of partisan point here - the same would apply if we were all Tories, all intellectual giants, all extremely rebellious, and any other qualities you might like.
Whether one should have fewer MPs and drop the social work I’m not sure.
460. He’s obviously not read Mike’s memo to the LDs regarding being too close to Labour - naughty boy.
Guardian account here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2009/mar/25/pmqs-houseofcommons
“Harman v Hague: Hague won, of course, but Mervyn King had created an own goal. Hague asked Harman three times whether she agreed with his comments about Britain not being able to afford another fiscal stimulus, and her only response was go on the offensive. It’s hard to see what she could have said that would have created a “win”, but perhaps a more lighthearted response – “We’re always grateful for budget advice, but of course you can’t expect me to comment on what’s going to be in the budget” – might have worked a bit better.
The inheritance tax trap: The Tories are in difficulty over this. Hague cracked a very good joke about Harman’s own aristocratic relatives, and hence her possible interest in inheritance, but he did not once try to defend the decision to make a tax cut for 3,000 wealthy families a priority. Harman mentioned this repeatedly, as Brown did when he made a Commons statement on Monday. It’s the best campaigning line that Labour has got at the moment by a long way.”
456 - join to choose
Which part of the curve are you talking about? Looking at my Bloomberg screen, I see the interest rate on 6 month Gilts has come in from 1.55% a month ago to 0.6% now, while on 40 year Gilts the interest rate has risen.
460, a Lib Dem attacking the Tories as if he were a yellow-flavoured member of the Labour Party? Surely not.
464, regarding casework: surely because some constituencies have more people (the Isle of Wight being an unusual example) and some have less it would be possible for some smaller constituencies to be joined together, or boundaries generally redrawn so casework remains possible but the overall number of MPs is reduced?
I’m not necessarily advocating 500 as a figure, just fewer than we have now.
454
Is that 3000 of the wealthiest people in the UK popping their clogs per year?
451 - But filling them full of pseudo science is better, because they find it “interesting”! Hmmm….
It also destructive to those more motivated and bright students. Levelling down to the lowest common denominator. Then I have to spend my time bashing it out of them!
As for “I don’t care” attitude, well that is a product of the system, isn’t it! The school I went to, pupils virtually never had that attitude, the vast vast majority where there to learn and better themselves, not to be filled full of pseudo c##p. People with “I don’t give a s##t” weren’t allowed to “infect” the classroom for very long.
At GCSE, the idea between different stream of science and now maths was suppose to distinguish between people as you suggest that don’t care etc, but all the streams are dumbed down.
At A-Level especially, people have chosen to do those subjects, so they are suppose to be interested in them, so no excuse for “I ain’t interested, I don’t care”.
If thats the best line they have, God help them. I repeat, the IHT announcement was greeted with lots of applause when DC was on the telly yesterday. It might firm up Labour’s core vote, but as for Middle England, its a net positive, I feel sure.
467. the only constituencies with notably fewer people are the (already geographically huge and logistically tricky) scottish highland ones
412. Iirc combined sciences is a misnomer, students are still taught the three. As of about 03 I got the choice of “Separate science” or “Double Award”.
Separate Science was 15 hours a fortnight for 3 GCSEs and Double Award was 10 hours a fortnight for 2.
But the lessons were still divided into Biology/Chemistry/Physics.
470 - The Titchmarsh show audience cheered the abolition of the I Have a Trowel tax.
471, happy coincidence then as the Scots have too many MPs anyway. Kills two birds with one haggis.
463 - The constituency work would usually be better handled by solicitors or Citizens’ Advice Bureaux. Such people are at least trained in how to help, unlike MPs.
We could cheerfully dispense with at least half of the country’s MPs, whose sole impact on public life is to act as a drain on its resources. MPs in general comprehensively fail to act as a check on party leaderships. Why not just cut our losses and get rid of many of them? Who knows, by reducing their numbers we might encourage them to act more independently.
473. They still get a vote despite your snobbery
456. Yields on 10s and 30s are still below pre-QE announcement levels; 10s at 3.36 v 3.63 on mar 4, 30s at 4.33 v 4.52.
But it is true that the much of the original bounce has faded.
Keeping these yields down will be hard work given the fiscal situation, hence King’s comments yesterday. We need tighter fiscal policy - and Labour will be forced to deliver it, whatever the rhetoric says…
431. Oracle. Well there was Galileo and the two weights off the leaning Tower of Pisa - encapsulated in Newtonian mechanics. Formally Newton in Principia? So 17th C.? But, I wonder if some of the Greeks who engaged in practical engineering like Archimedes would not have known some of the principles - Archimedes reputedly developed buoyancy.
469. i’m not talking about pseudo science, i am just saying that the curriculum is necessarily broad, and in particular it is broader than it used to be.
there are plenty of scientific areas that simply didn’t exist decades ago, electronics, genetics, ecology, etc. etc. etc.
i am not altogether convinced that leaving them out is the answer.
i think issues around streaming and general achievement are a bit separate, maybe that is where some of your frustration is coming from.
470. It’s the ONLY line…
Fiscal stimulous? IHT
Gilt strike? IHT
Civil liberties? IHT
Sleaze? IHT
Should be a good campaign. Labour landslide!
New thread - First Post just taken!!
It appears Milliband has announced that there will be an Iraq war inquiry as soon as the tropps leave Iraq at the end of July. It seems the election IMHO is going to be fairly soon, as there can be no net positives on such an inquiry for Labour.
463 - Pull the other one Nick. Your government already made substantial changes to the way parliament runs to combat those exact issues. You know pretty much only do 3 day weeks in the HoC starting in the afternoon, and if you can’t find time for the “social” work part in the other 3-4, then you are spending too much time drinking the subsidised booze and posting on PB.com!
Again, this really something that has got worse and worse over the past 20 years. Are you honestly trying to tell me that all the other commitments have grown so large especially in the past 10 years, that they have made it such that the majority can’t sit in on a debate for even 3 times a week! You also have paid staff to do many of the more trivial duties for you.
I am not expecting for every MP to be at every debate every day of every week, but the fact that I regularly tune into the parliament channel and see 20-30 MP’s there is an utter disgrace. You honestly can’t tell me the other 600 plus are all tied to their desks with matters so important they couldn’t possibly leave at that moment.
Labour are in the zone of using attack lines not for their impact on their opponent but for evidence to their backers that they still have a little bit of fight. I am utterly convinced that Labour are aware that the IHT attack will change no votes. It’s not meant to it is simply about holding shape until the election.
467. MD if you reduce the number of MP’s whilst retaining the same or more power in Parliament you are advocating political centralism and increasing the democratic deficit.
The number of representatives must be related to the amount of power wielded and the size of the electorate represented else it undermines democracy.
Re the IOW I believe the answer is simply to split it and have 2 constituencies. The alternative following you’re line of thought is to reshuffle most of the constituencies around (particularly if you are increasing the avergae size of constituencies) and who knows how that would turn out. Cameron’s proposal would have altered all of the seats in England pretty much.
Some new seats, as requested.
Edinburgh South
11/8 LD
6/4 Con
7/2 Lab
25/1 SNP
York Outer
4/7 Con
5/4 LD
33/1 Lab
468 if the 3000 wealthiest people died in one year then the most the raising of IHT from £312k to £1m could do was give them £688k additional tax free per estate (£275.2k tax). Likely that half would have spouses unused allowance, so actual take from 3000 wealthiest would fall by £500m or so with Conservatives proposals.
The remainder would come from estates worth less than £1m and more than £312k (or £624k with partner unused transfer) with numbers of people paying obviously highest just above the threshold.
425-Not sure why you are surprised. Many of those apply to Cuba, which is lauded by those on the left.
You also forgot thought crime. Try challenging the “consensus” on race and sexuality, soon to be followed by the environment, Europe, taxes, etc no doubt.
A brilliant brilliant piece of oratory - succinct, damning and expresses what most people believe.
The blogosphere has spoken. Hannan has clearly struck a nerve with the man in the street and said what we would all like to have said had the Great Larder been anywhere close enough to hear it. Hannan is front bench material on this showing. And if, thanks to G
…ordon, I had a fiver left, I would put it on Hannan to be party leader material at some stage.
441 and 451
The issue is really, as posted elsewhere, the lack of critical thinking. To take the satellite example, there is ample opportunity to cover half of the important stuff in GCSE and A-level physics with one example - newtonian physics, electricity, gravity, the space flight that got it up there. Physics isn’t dull but it is easy to make it so if you explain it in a dull way. Using a good real-life example like this isn’t dull (or maybe it is, or I am!)
I remember one of my physics papers (A-level) was on this very subject. But the difference between now and then (then being 1993) is that all I had was a formula sheet and a question along the lines of “Give the value and underlying reasoning as to why a geostationary satellite needs to maintain a constant distance from the centre of the Earth, and explain why such a satellite would need to be directly above the equator” (probably in a simpler form and less suceptible to ambiguity than I have just written). The point is that you need to have been taught the underlying mathematical and physical principles to understand this - you CAN’T learn it by wrote and ‘wing it’.
The sad thing is that this question was also on a past paper we used for revision for that 1993 A-level. Unfortunately it was more-or-less verbatim lifted from the 1978 O-level paper. Such a shame as the analytical and critical faculties that are needed for life today aren’t being taught (and arguably they need to be nurtured, not taught). Hence why 1st year university is remedial class, and our top universities our shunning our public examination systems.
Back on topic of risk, the statistics stuff is great but theres no point talking about probabilities, means, averages or the like until you also start talking about expectation. As this is a betting website I’d expect a lot of people to know this, but I’ll guess just as many won’t:
If I place a series of bets and my percieved chance of success is 97% and chance of failure is 3%, will I be have more money or less at the end of the series of bets?
…and whilst we’re at it:
if you toss a coin 50 times and it comes up with heads 50 times, what would you expect the next toss to result in?