05/05/05: When a 2.9 percent Tory deficit became 6.1
November 27th, 2009
House of Commons research paper
Can we expect a big shake-up in the boundary system?
The above is part of a table that is featured in a House of Commons research paper and covers just about all the statistics that you’ll ever want about May 5th 2005.
For me the striking feature is the contrast between the actual vote shares chalked up by the parties across Britain and the comparison with the final column. The latter is calculated by averaging the percentage vote shares each party got in each of the constituencies they fought.
So the overall vote share percentages across Britain take on a different look when you see how that worked out in each of the 627 constituencies that the main parties fought.
The Tory share of 33.2% became 31.6% when averaged across the seats while Labour 36.1% moved up to 37.8%. So a 2.9% Labour lead became 6.1%.
This is a stark illustration of how the electoral system worked for what was then Tony Blair’s party in 2005 - the product of the election being fought in England and Wales on the same boundaries that had been used in both 1997 and 2001. For the average size of the electorate in Labour seats was smaller than those of the other parties.
Next time, of course, there will be new boundaries everywhere apart from Scotland and I would expect a much smaller gap between the two columns.
A political consequence of this is that an incoming Tory government will take steps very early on to shake up the boundary review process as part of an overall effort to cut down on the number of MPs.
One potentially controversial Tory plan is to abolish the process of appeal in the current boundary review structure thus allowing changes to take effect more quickly and slash costs.
If Labour are defeated at the 2010 election then the fight to return to power might be that more challenging. For one of the great things about being in power is that you control the electoral system as we’ve seen with the massive extension of postal voting. If you are in opposition then another party is calling the shots.
Mike Smithson
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First!!!
First!
Morning! Interesting table, I wonder how much the Conservative percentage in the latter column is impacted by the fact that they stood in a few NI seats with little succes.
I suspect that this piece is a bit misleading. PART of the change (how much? - it only takes a few minutes to calculate) is due to size of constituencies, however it is also due to differential turnout - something which boundary reviews cannot cure.
This is also a sort of Midlothian Question issue. Scotland and Wales are over-represented in the UK parliament. If Dave is going to cut the overall number of MPs to 450 and even up the seat sizes as he says he will, then the cuts will need to be felt more in the ‘Celtic fringe’.
This may also be accompanied by some sort of English Votes For English Business legislation – and that is something that Scottish MPs cannot morally vote against. (The SNP ones would delightedly vote in favour of it).
The combined effect will be to make England a much tougher place for Labour to ever get a deliverable manifesto for ‘devolved issues’ in. We may one day in the future get a Labour PM who is effectively in coalition or minority government position for their plans on English domestic issues such as health, education and policing.
I myself approve of this. If I were PM I’d go for a full Devolution Equalisation bill and create an English Parliament putting each of the 4 assemblies on an identical footing. They’d soon enough find a working MO between UK PM and English First Minister. A more federal UK would be an improvement on the current arrangements where a single party can effectively become an elected dictatorship for 5 years (or 10 or 15 given the way electoral cycles work in reality). The Tories might resent some loss of control in Scotland and Labour in England – but so what?
I suspect very much that if Dave gets a majority we will be seeing huge change not only to the scale of government in tax and spending but also to our constitutional arrangements.
For me the surprising aspect is the fact that the BNP’s 4.3% share of the vote comfortably exceeded both UKIP and the Greens in terms of the seats they contested. Were they to contest at least 250 seats this time, they seem likely to collect between 500k-1,000k votes, thereby landing Paddy Power’s 11/8 odds for this band.
“Scotland and Wales are over-represented in the UK parliament. “
This is incorrect in Scotland, other than a few special cases (in the opposite way to, say, the Isle of Wight is a special case at the other extreme).
This “over-representation” argument is also specious IMO (although of course Tories love to push it for party political advantage). If the Tories are disadvantaged by Welsh (and formerly Scottish) ‘over-representation’ it is an indictment of their performance in those countries, not an indictment of the system.
The fact is that in FPTP systems “over-representation” of small states is a perfectly acceptable compensating measure for the fact that larger states can always get their own way when party allegiances are put to one side. America is an extreme case, but the UK has always had a fair balance.
7 Alex. Not entirely sure I follow your line of thought. I had understood that the average size of electorates in Scottish and Welsh seats was smaller than English ones. Are you saying that is not factually correct? (Happy to be educated if indeed the case).
An interesting exchange on the previous thread between Christina, stjohn and others on how many seats the Tories are likely to win in Scotland.
Trusting Christina’s head rather than her heart, I’ve backed the 4-6 seats band with Ladbrokes at 13/8, which looks the best bet of the three bands on offer.
8 - Wales is, Scotland isn’t.
8. I presume the point Alex is making is that average constituency size in Scotland would not be any smaller if you exclude the special cases like Orkney and Shetland.
Wales is indeed over-represented but Scottish representation was cut from 72 to 59 in 2005 to bring it into line with the rest of the UK.
Oh, and by the way, it’s the West Lothian rather than Midlothian Question. I’m not sure whether that was a deliberate mistake or not!
10 11. Understand. Thanks for correcting me on Scotland. Wales seems to be much more fertile ground for the Tories these days. The combined effect of seat reduction in Scotland and ‘good going’ in Wales seems set to be quite helpful for Dave’s chances of a majority.
Does anyone know how/if the Boundary Commission makes allowances for large student populations who will likely be registered in more than one seat. When I was at University everyone living on campus (several thousand students) was automatically enrolled on the electoral register. Considering many would vote at home (even during term time), if at all, this would have a major detrimental effect on turnout.
And of course it has a slight effect on the meaning of national turnout figures - because 100% turnout isn’t theoretically possible!
11 Yes - Westlothian. Whoops. I did know that. Must be tired. (I’m sure the same logic applies to Midlothian too however!)
alex at 4 is right IMO - a major part of the reason for the discrepancy is differential turnout in inner-city areas. Unless a government actually built in under-representation for people whose constituencies had had lower turnouts (a sort of collective punishment, e.g. giving the whole of Liverpool only one seat) I can’t see the effect disappearing.
In any case there are limits to what the electoral system can do if the electorate decides it really wants a change. I do some translation from time to time to keep my languages fresh and was recently doing a piece on 19th century Germany when the Social Democrats started to rise. The authorities in Saxony introduced a system weighting voting according to property - the richer you were, the more votes you got. It didn’t work, nor did olther fixes like weighting voting according to education and age - the tide was running so strongly to the SPD that they won anyway, eventually getting 22 out of 23 Saxon seats.
…and another area is the ‘locking in’ of party political advantage through other means. I’m talking about creating huge chunks of government outside the clear and direct responsibility of ministers (via Quangos and their kin) and then stuffing the management with lefties and hobbling the recruitment and replacement rules.
Dave sees this quite clearly and can see that reforming Quangos is going to be a decade long task. I’m sure this is why he has set out some ‘survival parameters’ for Quangos and seems set to disestablish large numbers of them by reabsorbing their function into ministries. Many, many of these organisations are not going to be reformed they’re going to be deleted or replaced. Good.
3. James - “few NI seats”
Look very, very carefully at the title of the table: ‘Summary of voting in Great Britain’. Please note that it does not say ‘Summary of voting in the United Kingdom’.
Misunderstanding of the difference between these two terms is widespread. I’d hope that punters and bookies would fully understand what the difference is.
Note: Wikipedia tends to use UK-figures, rather than the standard GB-figures, so always think twice before using some of their stats.
A lot of this discrepancy is down to Conservative MPs who win having larger majorities and Conservative candidates who lose being closer to the winner than losing Labour candidates. Held them back from getting that close in 2005 but this time out once they have a majority from a UNS each extra point would see swathes of Labour - Conservative battleground turn blue. Doesn’t matter how much you change the boundaries around, Labour voters don’t turn up in safe seats in the way Conservatives do.
Having said that there’s an element of tweaking that needs to be done which would reduce that 9.8% gap slightly. Better yet get rid of FPTP.
17 re UK vs GB
True. What adds to confusion is that Britain is a synonym for the United Kingdom rather than just Great Britain.
What was the one seat the Lib Dems didn’t fight, that both Tories and Labour did?
I can understand this procedure of “averaging percentages in each seat fought” as being useful to show how parties who haven’t fought many seats got on in a more comparative way. But (please suggest I am wrong, mathematicians or statisticians) I believe this process to be somewhat dubious - and of little help in analysing the relationship between the 3 top parties who fight all seats bar one or two in Great Britain. Yes, of course we know that Labour seats have a lower mean electorate (arithmetically speaking!). This is likely to remain so while the process of moving out to more sparsely settled suburban and rural areas from urban areas continues, combined with voter behaviour which means that those in urban areas tend to be more Labour voting and those in otherareas more Tory voting.
Of course, the world we will soon moving to as a result of the progressive impact of climate change MAY change these long term mega trends - and could well change the shape of our politics, along with everything else.
‘Pro-Union coalition rocked by the Tories’
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/scotland/article6932636.ece
David Cameron: ‘Salmond is wrong. A Tory win will not help him’
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/scotland/article6932690.ece
“Ten years on, and there is no doubt that devolution has been a success” - I wonder how many members of the Conservative Party disagree with Mr Cameron on that point?
I also wonder how much “mutual respect” the PB Herd have for Scots today?
I note that Mr Cameron refers to “all nations of the United Kingdom”. This implies, for example, that England is a nation: an idea explicitly rejected here at PB at regular intervals.
Overall, much food for thought. And hilarity.
23 The one held by Richard Taylor, the independent hospital candidate (at Kidderminster).
13 - You only get one vote in a general election. You can vote twice in locals, however
25 - Was that intended as a response to 13, or just a vaguely related post?
Alex’s point therefore seems right, ie that because people can register in more than one constituency (not just students, and not just for two constituencies) but are only entitled to one GE vote, the theoretical max turnout is is lower than 100%. A number of other factors influence that, of course. It is also likely that seats with large student populations are likely to be more heavily affected by this than other seats.
The worrying trend in council by elections for the Tories continued last night when they lost 2 seats to the LDs on quite large swings agains them.
http://lukeakehurst.blogspot.com/2009/11/council-by-elections_26.html
This does not augur well in Con/Ld marginals for DC and his merry men
28, weren’t the Tories regaining council seats after about 1995?
The Tories control a huge number of councils and have tons of seats. Unsurprising they’re at something of a high point and losing a few in by-elections.
28-Stratford Alveston Ward, Stratford DC. LD gain from Con. LD 888 (47%, -2.1), Con 834 (44.1%, +1.8), Lab 111 (5.9%, +5.9), Green 58 (3.1%, +3.1). Swing of 2% from LD to Con since 2008.
Surely your numbers are wrong!! Or is this NuLabour election counts, you win votes, your opponent loses votes, and…you lose the seat!
26 - It was related, I probably could have worded it better!
27 - Surely when they calculate the number of people eligible to vote in the general elections they don’t count people twice? Given that you only get one polling card at one address I am pretty sure they don’t.
31 - Actually, I take that back. You may actually be issued with multiplie polling cards, but only be eligible to use one of them.
Still, seems a bit silly they can’t work out accurate turnout.
28 The St Austell result was poor for the Tories, but it seems to have been largely influenced by a local issue on where to locate an incinerator and shouldn’t be seen in national terms - other than it is the fall-out of a local Tory council making unpopular choices, which may play as an issue elsewhere.
Put together, all that makes the general election of 2010 inconveniently unanalogous to any other.
So, politicians and pundits: you are on your own. These queasy times—when voters are at once angry and apathetic, timid but yearning for change, sick of the incumbent but sceptical of the alternative—demand fewer comparisons and more analysis. Here, in brief, is Bagehot’s: the single most important, fixed aspect of public opinion is Mr Brown’s record-breaking unpopularity. Because of that, one common assumption about campaigns, that the gap between the big parties will narrow as the election draws near, will probably prove wrong. The Tories are still going to win the election and a majority, albeit a smallish one.
http://www.economist.com/world/britain/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14960296
33 Mark. If you look at Council elections this year the LDs have consistently out performed the Tories.
We know how good they are at getting out the vote and from what i am heaaring they have been doing well recruiting young enthusiatic activists who will make a big difference on the doorstep.
The tories meanwhile whilst showing resilience in the polls are struggling a bit on the ground to get volunteers
Alex and Nick Palmer are both right that differential turn out has a big part in this, with low turnouts in safe Labour seats but this is worsened by the fact those inner urban seats are also those with smaller electorates. Using electoral roll data from nearly 10 years ago as basis of setting constituencies needs to be addressed.
Sad isn’t it that its in areas of deprivation and need, where perhaps we need to hear the electorate’s voice more than in the wealthy suburbs they are turned off from politics.
OT, extremeschoolsgate, round 2
But it turns out to be Ed Balls, just as much as Cameron, who’s been playing politics and failing to check the facts.
…
And Ofsted – far from “satisfying themselves that there were no problems” – actually condemned one of the two schools as “inadequate,” questioned the suitability of the staff, and said that it could do more “to promote cultural tolerance and harmony.”
…
Do Ed Balls and New Labour really want to be the friends and defenders of such people? Does Balls really think it’s good politics to be the Minister for Hizb ut Tahrir?
Not for the first time, the minister has allowed his thirst for a quick hit on the Tories to overcome his common sense. And not for the first time, he has scored a tactical victory, but dropped a massive strategic clanger.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/6667420/Ed-Balls-comes-out-fighting—for-racist-Islamic-schools.html
23 - “I also wonder how much “mutual respect” the PB Herd have for Scots today?”
Slightly off topic but I think the choice of language that Stuart uses identifies in passing how the debate within some quarters in England is a lot less slick compared to Scotland.
I can imagine all too well a writer outside of Scotland fulminating about ‘the Scots’ whereas the Scottish Nationalists learnt long ago that it’s better to talk of ‘London’ or ‘Westminster’ being the seat of trouble, not ‘the English’. A subtle but important difference.
33. The tories have so many councillors they were bound to start losing some sooner or later. Don’t they have more than the lib dems and labour combined?
37. But that’s all Balls does, he attacks and attacks, even when the ground he’s on is shakey, he just can’t let anyone else say anything. That’s why he was so poor against Gove on c4 news, he couldn’t let Gove say a word without trying to challenge it and so looked like a bullying goober.
39 - http://www.parliament.uk/commons/lib/research/rp2009/rp09-054.pdf
Con - 10,008
Lab - 4,733
LD - 4,446
PC/SNP - 569
Other - 2,300
37/40. All good news for those of us with money on the Tories to win Morley and Outwood. Balls appears to be cast in the same strategic mould as Brown.
On last night’s thread, Mike reported that the Tory candidate for M&O was at the PB gathering. Anyone know how he rates his prospects?
35 That is not so. The Conservatives made a net gain of seats from the Lib Dems in the County elections.
19. Contrary to what’s often claimed, the Conservatives don’t have a problem with piling up big votes in their safe seats (no Conservative polled above 60% in 2005, whereas 21 Labour MPs did).
Their problem is (you point out) they just had to do a lot better than Labour, in any given constituency, to win. The anti-Conservative vote tended to be concentrated on one party; the anti Labour vote was more likely to be split between different parties.
35. timmo
“If you look at Council elections this year the LDs have consistently out performed the Tories.”
Perhaps in byelections but when it really mattered in June the Conservatives made strong gains from the LibDems.
“Their problem is (you point out) they just had to do a lot better than Labour, in any given constituency, to win. The anti-Conservative vote tended to be concentrated on one party; the anti Labour vote was more likely to be split between different parties.”
A situation that might reverse at the next election which would strongly affect the UNS predictions.
The tightening up of postal voting to the same degree as in Northern Ireland would reduce its use by 90%. That would mean 2.7 million fewer votes cast in 2005, and maybe 3.6 million fewer in 2010.
If it was estimated that postal voting favours Labour two to one against Conservative, Labour’s baseline vote might be reduced to 2.5 million from about 4.5 million.
They might never be elected to power again. Lib Dems would become the second party overnight if Angus read’s figures are about right.
Are there any figures to lend support or otherwise to my wild conspiratorial guestimates?
A pleasure to meet and re-meet so many posters last night; thanks to Not So Fat Steve for organising it (It could perhaps become a monthly event for interested parties, although I’ll sadly have to pass on his offer to become a social secretary for pb!) and everyone who made it for an enjoyable evening of political banter.
I did bear witness to a recorded bet: James Burdett has 10 pounds at 6/4 with Peter the Punter (Who did try to explain to me why it wasn’t 3/2 but I think I’ll need another session on that one) that should there be a 2009 poster of the year competition sanctioned/organised by Mike Smithson, that Yellow Submarine is voted the winner. 15 pounds to JB if so, 10 to PtP if not. Bet null and void should there be no such poster of the year contest.
Could you both post your agreement with the above terms and amounts? Thanks
47 tpfkar - Wily Peter the Punter laying the favourite. Interesting…
No pics from last nights booze up then?
And no sign of YouGov/Telegraph?
I don’t think the Tories are planning to cut MPs to 450 any more. Too many of their own would be executed under that plan. Latest I heard was 585 or a cut of 10%. If 20-30 of these were notionally Tory I suspect Cameron wouldn’t mind at all.
It would discourage any potential rebels who would be the likely losers in the round of musical seats that would follow the boundary changes being announced.
23. “I also wonder how much “mutual respect” the PB Herd have for Scots today?”
I’m not sure if i count as a member of “the Herd” in the delusional architecture of those who use such language, but there is plenty of respect for Scots, although a great deal more mockery for the small-minded and parochial caledonocentricity of far too many of the Scottish Nationalists here.
Hint: Scotland is bigger than the SNP, and the SNP is not the guardian of the soul of the Scottish nation. Insulting the SNP =/= insulting Scotland.
42 stjohn - Re previous night’s thread:
Richard. How about my £20 against your £50 that David Davis serves in Cameron’s cabinet during his first term in office. You lay me 5/2?
by stjohn November 27th, 2009 at 12:04 am
I’m pretty happy with that, except the timescale for settlement might be five years or more, which seems a bit long. Would you be happy with making it up to the end of 2011? (In practice, I think it comes to much the same).
I’d also suggest bet void if Cameron doesn’t form a government by end of 2011, thus allowing for various combinations of hung parliament, a rapid second election, etc.
37.
from your link - great digging from AG:
“And Ofsted – far from “satisfying themselves that there were no problems” – actually condemned one of the two schools as “inadequate,” questioned the suitability of the staff, and said that it could do more “to promote cultural tolerance and harmony.” That was in November 2007.
By May 2008, according to a follow-up report, the school had been magically transformed, and was now “good”. That second report, however, was written by an inspector with, at the very least, personal connections to Islamic groups”
49. GIN I have an uneasy feeling the YouGov poll might be Ipsos Mori mark 2, with a release timed to cause maximum media narrative. We’ll have to see.
btw Commiserations on your dental problems (picked up from previous thread). For what it’s worth I had root canal treatment a few years ago that was painless and successful, if a rather lengthy procedure.
Hmmm Libdems doing well in Cornwall local elections. Didn’t Seant, (our expert on all things Cornish) forecast they would lose all of their seats in Cornwall come the GE.
p.s.
Seant think your, ‘Joan the Wad’ is malfunctioning stop rubbing it, give it a rest.
51. Beautifully put Random. I share your sentiments entirely, but could not have phrased them half so well.
30: It’s a split ward, peter2 - a Tory seat won in a very good year was lost despite a small positive swing from a not so good year.
36: Ted, yes, that’s a real problem evident in the US too. It is enormously tempting for the parties to ignore the very poor because by and large they simply don’t vote. The Democrats don’t bother to think up policies that help people who live in trailer parks etc., but are very active on behalf of people like schoolteachers who are not rich but nonetheless better off. In Britain, things like working tax credit that (for all the well-known faults) have meant a lot to people on very low incomes were introduced despite the knowledge that there would be little or no electoral reward. I was proud of the party for doing it, and wouldn’t like to get to the stage where we only care about active voters - ideally, you want to get to the point where the desperately poor are better off and can start to think about things like voting rather than just surviving.
#51 In theory, your points might be right, but in practice they are not. It is a similar feature with respect to Gordon Brown who is attacked as if he is some kind of freakish embodiment of the community of Scotland. And, thankfully, he is most certainly not!
Unfortunately far too many commentators rather than attacking the SNP aim far wider than the party but to include much more than that.
52. Richard. How about we stick to the terms of the bet as suggested by me but I pay the stake money now. Only fair to you, I think. I can’t expect you to wait 5 years for your money. Bet void if Cameron doesn’t form the next government.
Forgive me going off topic but most of the threads on Political Betting for the past week has included at least one contributor who asks why Bailey Bridges are not being used in Cumbria.
That was considered early on, and the professionals tell us that Bailey Bridges are not suitable for the particular circumstances of these particular bridges, but that the army will be able to provide some assistance, and today that is happening. Construction work will begin by the army today on a new temporary footbridge crossing the River Derwent in Workington, uniting communities currently cut off on the north and south side of the river following the collapse of Workington Bridge and the footbridge, and by the structural damage making Calva Bridge unusable. It is hoped the new bridge will be completed by December 5.
54.
Maybe. However there should be other polls this weekend so it make look a bit silly of they go for another “hung parliament” narrative” …. Who knows ?
55. I predict the LDs will lose half their seats in Cornwall. And I say that with the authority of a Cornishman who is RIGHT NOW sitting by a swimming pool in Bangkok.
Recession ‘is even worse than feared’: Chancellor predicts steepest slump ever
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1231282/Recession-worse-feared-Chancellor-predicts-steepest-slump-ever.html
56. Why, thank you Polly:-)
58. Gordon Brown is certainly a freakish embodiment of *something*, it’s Scotland’s misfortune that he’s one of her more high-profile sons at the moment and the attachment gets noticed (maybe now you understand how I felt, as a Welshman, when Neil Kinnock was the most high profile politician from the principality…). If the Scots don’t like that, they could always stop voting for him I suppose…
#24 Tim13 - The one held by Richard Taylor, the independent hospital candidate (at Kidderminster).
I think it’s actually called Wyre Forest.
To answer an earlier question of whether Scotland is overrepresented in the UK parliament. Well when the parliament is considering UK wide affairs it isn’t but when it is considering English affairs it is, as the correct representation then should be zero
66.
62
Make sure that the, ‘Joan the Wad’ doesn’t get sunburned.
Mike! will you be offering a prize for the first poster who manages to blame GB for the problems in Dubai.
57 I must congratualte Nick Palmer in bringing up working tax credit in a discussion about seat allocations!!
I am not sure that people on working tax credit are that much less likely to vote than other areas of the popualtion given they have a job and therefore feel part of society. Labour are certainly looking after a core vote here by introducing it and not doing it purely for altruistic reasons.
The row about those Islamic schools rumbles on
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/6667420/Ed-Balls-comes-out-fighting—for-racist-Islamic-schools.html
“Ed Balls comes out fighting - for ‘racist’ Islamic schools ”
“We connoisseurs of Ed Balls, a small but happy band, know from experience that the moment he gets that complacent little smile playing round his lips is the time to set the video; the moment when Her Majesty’s Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families is once more about to walk, unknowingly, into an open manhole. ”
“The central charge is perfectly true, thoroughly documented – and a scandal. ”
“But it turns out to be Ed Balls, just as much as Cameron, who’s been playing politics and failing to check the facts. The issue is not the situation with the schools now. It’s the situation at the time the public money was paid. It turns out that the schools’ chief Hizb ut Tahrir trustee, Yusra Hamilton, only resigned last month, in response to my story, long after the Government grant came in.
The headteacher of one of the schools, Farah Ahmed, who remains a trustee to this day, refuses to deny that she was a Hizb member and has written in a Hizb journal condemning the “corrupt western concepts of materialism and freedom.”
And Ofsted – far from “satisfying themselves that there were no problems” – actually condemned one of the two schools as “inadequate,” questioned the suitability of the staff, and said that it could do more “to promote cultural tolerance and harmony.” That was in November 2007.
By May 2008, according to a follow-up report, the school had been magically transformed, and was now “good”. That second report, however, was written by an inspector with, at the very least, personal connections to Islamic groups.”
“Do Ed Balls and New Labour really want to be the friends and defenders of such people? Does Balls really think it’s good politics to be the Minister for Hizb ut Tahrir? “
Betting (not political) post: state of Victoria bans all racing over fences and hurdles starting next year: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/8382072.stm.
Thin end of wedge?
57. ideally, you want to get to the point where the desperately poor are better off and can start to think about things like voting rather than just surviving.
Nick, there are plenty of global examples of desperately poor and disadvantaged people taking pride in being able to vote, and actually taking risks to cast their votes. The culture of being disengaged with politics amongst the most disadvantaged (which risks becoming a rather patronising assertion) is mostly the product of a media environment that grooms people to think Katie Price is more important than what goes on at Westminster. It really isn’t a case of reaching a certain threshold of wealth before exercising your right to vote.
71 aussies going soft?
70
On the other hand.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/article6934174.ece?
Then again.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/why-conservatives-failed-the-test-on-islamic-schools-1828763.html
Pays ‘yer money……
‘That second report, however, was written by an inspector with, at the very least, personal connections to Islamic groups’
Really? That’s explosive if true…
74. Personally I’d go for the journo who broke the story - Gilligan who is miles ahead in the story - neither of these two seems to have caught up on the detail that the Islamic Ofsted inspector (who upgraded the schools rating) had links the same group as the one running the school.
75. you racist
38. Stephen B - “… the debate within some quarters in England is a lot less slick compared to Scotland.”
Spot on.
It often strikes me how immature the constitutional “debate” is in England. It usually just involves slinging insults at the Scots (eg. SeanT, John R, runnymede, and hundreds of others).
English debate on this topic is at about the level of the Scottish debate 50 years ago. Scotland has moved on. When will England catch up?
70 – Floater, thanks for linking that entertaining and informative find, somehow I don’t think Gabble will be so enthusiastic to report on this particular Telegraph article.
A question for those out here who understand how the UNS models work. Do the seat predictors work off the national vote %rather than the average constituency vote? My understanding, which may well be wrong, is that they do. And my supplementary is does this matter?
At a slight tangent, does anyone have the comparable 2005 averages based on the new constituencies this time round? This would illustrate the change in imbalance between them.
78
Stuart
I have to say you reap what you sow.
My perception of SNP politicking is to raise tension between Scotland and England to encourage a break. The SNP set the tone on this so they shouldn’t complain if they get their own policies mirrored back - it’s what you are seeking after all.
77. No pun intended….:)
For one of the great things about being in power is that you control the electoral system as we’ve seen with the massive extension of postal voting.
Surely this is the most significant area that Cameron could potentially sort out, if he doesn’t get Hung.
70/79. The BBC ran this story entirely as being an incredible blunder by Cameron and gave no other angle. On yesterday’s PM on R4, Eddie Mair ran a big package about political gaffes, with Cameron’s supposed deeply embarrassing ‘gaffe’ as the centrepiece. They even got Danny Finkelstein on to provide a round up of great political mistakes. There was absolutely not a hint of there being two sides to the issue from that great bastion of political neutrality.
78. Once again you conflate Scots and the SNP, Stuart. I am certainly happy to fling insults at the petty parochial nats and their risible fairytale conception of Scottishness, but I have nothing against the Scots generally.
This just in, a photo from the SNP Conference, taken last week:
http://tinyurl.com/yeqvo2q
New seat up at Ladbrokes. A very tricky one.
Castle Point
Conservatives 1/3
Bob Spink 9/4
Labour 10/1
Liberal Democrats 100/1
#11, by James Kelly November 27th, 2009 at 7:04 am
8. I presume the point Alex is making is that average constituency size in Scotland would not be any smaller if you exclude the special cases like Orkney and Shetland.
Young Jimmy, you are being disingenuous…!
Scotland has devolved responsibilities, so should not interfere with English legislation. Ergo Scotland should have a smaller foot-print in Westminster. [We both agree it should have none, but we have to be realistic...!
]
A fair representation for Scotland would be 51 MPs. Not my analysis - it something quoted in The Economist from many years back - but a portend of things to come…!
P.S. :thumbs: to Fat Steve. I can now say I have met Weathercock, PtP and some geezer called ‘Smithson’ [sp?].
88, I thought Mr. Smithson had retired? Did you get to ride him?
59 stjohn - You are being too generous there!
How about a compromise: If Cameron appoints DD to the Cabinet in his first term and before the end of 2011, you win. If Cameron’s first term ends before end 2011, without DD being appointed to Cabinet, I win. If neither of those happen, we’ll provisionally settle in my favour at the end of 2011, but I’ll undertake to reimburse your £20, plus pay you your £50, if subsequently DD does enter the cabinet before the end of Cameron’s first term. Bet void if Cameron doesn’t form a government after the 2010 election.
#78 Stuart Dickson
Morning Stuart
While I find it much easier to like Cameron than Maggie Thatcher, I don’t think he will make all that much difference to the perception of the Tories in Scotland.
His idea of “respect” for Scotland seems to involve an approach which means that he will keep out of matters already devolved to Scotland if the SNP will keep out of currently non-devolved matters.
This “frozen” position won’t satisfy many Scots, not just the SNP, because it seems to mean that the SNP are not allowed (in Cameron’s terms) to oppose the renewal of Trident in spite of the fact that not just the SNP oppose this but:
* A majority at Holyrood oppose it
* A majority of Scots MPs at Westminster oppose it (only 7 of whom are SNP)
Just wondered what your thoughts are.
84. It was a total, unmitigated disaster for the tories. If there is a genuine story underneath it all they have wrecked it - you don’t in politics get the chance to break a story twice or release a director’s cut - which makes them look even more incompetent. And your point would surely be more trenchant if you provided some sort of comparative data from other MSM who handled the story differently from the Beeb.
54 ‘49. GIN I have an uneasy feeling the YouGov poll might be Ipsos Mori mark 2, with a release timed to cause maximum media narrative.’
The alternative is that it’s been quietly left on the shelf, as it doesn’t fit in with the current media narrative of a hung parliament.
57/72 It’s not poverty but disengagement which is the failure. That people don’t see that Labour, Conservatives, Liberal Democrats offer any hope for them. This isn’t party political, all three, in perhaps different ways, want to lift the poorest out of poverty, both financially and the poverty of aspiration.
Cash isn’t enough of the answer and while Nick is right to be proud of introducing a system that addresses some of the financial poverty it hasn’t addressed the root causes of alienation and the “underclass”.
Morning all and catching up on last night’s threads I see we didnt get the poll we expected.
I noted there was a debate about the number of seats the Scots Tories will gain at the GE and Christina was “put on the spot”.
Take a look at the table I put on PB2 last week which shows the winners and runner up in 2005, winner of nearest equivalent seat(s) in 2007 and my 1st and 2nd choice guess for the GE. The Tories on 15% in 2005 were second in 15 seats.
In determining any bets you put on either individual seats or likely total of Tory seats, do you think the 3,5 or 7% the Tories are putting on in Scottish polls is being evenly distributed across Scotalnd’s 59 seats or mainly in the 20 seats they came 1st, 2nd or a close 3rd in? An increase of 3% amounts to roughly 70,000 votes, 5% to 120,000 votes and 7% to 175,000 votes. How these are distributed will dramatically affect the results in those 20 seats. Remember it is mainly in those 20 seats (formerly around 25 seats before reorganisation of boundaries in 2005) in which the Scots Tories lost their votes since 1987/92.
I was very sorry to miss the drinks last night, not least because the venue was a leisurely 10 minute walk from my flat. Naturally, I was in Leeds yesterday and then had a work emergency in the evening. I hope there will be a next time.
“The alternative is that it’s been quietly left on the shelf, as it doesn’t fit in with the current media narrative of a hung parliament.”
Is there generally evidence of polling companies doing that, or is this just another whacky theory?
92. Utter bollocks. Most people don’t watch Newsnight, nor do they listen to Today. They watch primetime news in passing or read it in the tabs.
The Gove mistake was silly, and distracting, but the Tories still got the message out to the average voter, via the tabloids etc. And the message is: Labour support Islamist schools. The fact Labour then squabbled about what sort of money they gave, and how, just made the story run a bit longer.
My guess is that most people will be shocked and dismayed to discover that Labour have allowed such schools in the first place, let alone funded them with grants.
90. Richard. Very happy to take the bet on those terms. I will cut and paste your entry above to Ptp as confirmation of the bet.
Please do remind me to pay up on 1st Jan 2012 if you happen to have won at that stage - or chase my estate for the money in the hopefully unlikely event that the grim bookie in the sky has got to before then! Rest assured I will happily remind you of the bet if it comes in for me.
Kind regards.
49: Well you were going to get me there, since it’s quite near the office, but in the event I wasn’t in London at all.
97 What’s whacky about it? The client isn’t obliged to release poll results. They’ve paid for it; they can choose to do with it as they see fit.
“96. not least because the venue was a leisurely 10 minute walk from my flat”
Intriguing. Spitalfields? Brick Lane? Barbican?
95. Easterross. Apologies if I have asked you this before. How do you rate these possible outcomes for Scottish Tory seats, in percentage terms?
0-3.
4-6.
7+.
100: Ah, you mean in the newspaper, as opposed to the party.
No, clearly not
91 Tom, it is like the Megrahi story. What matters for the Scots Tories is not how it plays out throughout Scotland but how it plays out in the leafy suburbs of Edinburgh and Glasgow, across the south of Scotland and North-east of Scotland and in that swathe of the country to the north of the Forth and Clyde valley. If it plays well in middle class church attending Scotland then the Tories will win a good handful of seats. If it doesn’t, we won’t. As simple as that.
We frankly dont care at present how David Cameron goes down in Glasgow or Lanarkshire because we are not going to win seats there. However if his thoughts chime with the good folks in Dumfries, Ayr, Gala, Selkirk, Stirling, Perth, Crieff, Arbroath, Stonehaven, Newton Mearns, Helensburgh, Bearsden, Corstorphine, Morningside, Milltimber etc etc then we will see a decent number of Tory gains in Scotland.
Remember a result something like Labour 28, SNP 27, Tory 21, LibDem 15 gives Labour 31, SNP 10 and Tories and LibDems 9 each on UNS and in Scotland the Tories and LibDems will do better than UNS because our votes are polarised.
15. The authorities in Saxony introduced a system weighting voting according to property - the richer you were, the more votes you got. It didn’t work
Probably because it was far too complicated to enact, Nick.
Much simpler to say, “Give us a million quid, Bernie, and you can write your own clause into the legislation on tobacco advertising”.
Or “Give us a few hundred grand for the Dome, Srichand, and you can have a British passport. You’d be a chump not to.”
It’s a much more modern solution. And who could possibly oppose modernisation? Only fringe lunatics and climate change deniers.
103 St John I would expect 4-6 to be more than 50% with 0-3 20% and 7+ 30%. I dont know how that equates to betting odds.
Good Morning all. First some comments:
47/88 Great to meet you last night at Steves bash, Tpfkar and fluffy thoughts.
49. Sorry Gin, I tried to take some photos with my phone but the milieu was rather dark if cosy and had no flash.
107. Easterross. Thanks.
In betting terms you would be offering the following prices, with Ladbrokes prices, last time I looked, for comparison.
0-3 4/1 (Ladbrokes 2/1)
4-6 Evens (Ladbrokes 13/8)
7+ 2.33/1. (Ladbrokes 7/4).
So the value bet, in your eyes, is the 4-6 band. I don’t think I will bet as I suspect shadsy has got this about right - as usual!
42 StJohn
Anthony Calvert was indeed at Dirty Dicks last nite and we had a long chat about his chances of defeating Balls, amongst other things.
He certainly does not lack confidence. He states that Balls is unpopular in the constituency and that many non-Tory voters were supporting him. His ‘Get Balls Out For A Tenner’ scheme is going well. He has backed himself, heavily, to win and tells me that OGH has done likewise.
I’m convinced, at least to the extent that he is probably value at 9/4 [Hills], my one concern being that the bets he and Mike have struck already [and they were big!] have no doubt reduced much of the value that there once was in the punt.
I have had a modest £20 this morning and wouldn’t discourage you from doing likewise.
Btw, Anthony does post here from time to time but anonymously and in the best traditions of PB that sould remain the case.
98. Oh yeah?
It is actually very difficult to know what “most people” think without asking them, which is why opinion polls are quite interesting. And when you say “places like this” has anyone on any side of the debate suggested that these were anything other than schools?
For evidence that tory high command agrees that it was a disaster watch Newsnight from last Wednesday where they fielded a bizarre man in reading glasses against Balls. Implication: chance of victory zilch so sacrifice a useful idiot rather than put up someone important to be humiliated.
The next round of polls will be interesting.
99 stjohn - Great. Good luck!
98. Don’t underestimate news slots on Radio 2, Commercial and local radio. A lot of people listen to this during their working day - for many it may be the only news they glean. It may be the brief gist of what they pick up is along the lines you say ie Tories critical of, Labour defending Islamist schools.
46 @ Tapestry’s point about postal votes. Presumably no poll reflects the fact that some of the 22% or so who bizarrely still support Labour control the votes of others.
So if you ask a Labour core voter in, say, Erdington what party he intends to support, he’ll say Labour. But he won’t mention that he also casts the vote of his wives, his daughters, and perhaps another 40 or 50 non-existent people on the electoral roll - the people who live in the fourth-storey flat in a two-storey house, for example.
This strikes me as the biggest single factor likely to understate the Labour vote in polls, and the main reason why votes cast for Labour will be nearer MORI’s rogue 31% than ARS’ 22%. Short of estimating the degree of voting fraud perpetrated by Labour supporters and grossing up, I don’t see how this can be reflected accurately in polls.
111. yeah..as ever the key to moving opinion polls is what the uninterested masses pick up and that message will have been..”Labour fund muslim extremists”
Just like last Autumn the initial Message was odd primeminister saves the world…
Think otherwise if you like but your only deluding yourself.
102 - Just behind Finsbury Square.
#105 Easterross
I worked out many years ago that the SNP don’t need to win any seats in Glasgow or Lanarkshire as UNS would give them a majority of Scottish seats without any gains there (I still hope John Mason can hold Glasgow East, of course).
I don’t think therefore that the SNP have to worry much more about Glasgow & Lanarkshire than the Tories do.
It wasn’t Glasgow that put the SNP into power at Holyroood. I think it is possible that Labour have overplayed their hand by effectively portraying themselves as the Glasagow Party-even as a Glaswegian I know that many Scots don’t like Glasgow much.
As I have said many times, I think Tory gains from Labour and Lib Dems are likely in 2010 but not from the SNP.
Even in 1979, when the Tories outpolled the SNP heavily in Scotland, they took back East Angus and East Aberdeenshire (for example) by very small margins at a point where the SNP vote virtually halved across Scotland-not much like today.
114 - “Short of estimating the degree of voting fraud perpetrated by Labour supporters and grossing up, I don’t see how this can be reflected accurately in polls.”
Oh dear.
113 I haven’t been able to keep up with much detailed news this week, didn’t see PMQ’s and haven’t caught up with this story other than that very headline notion that there is a spat about Govt. funding of Islamist schools that seem to perhaps be headed by people who are linked to some Islamic body that Blair said he’d ban but didn’t. And something about lots of “pathfinder” schemes?
Haven’t caught up at all with why Cameron or Gove may have dropped a bollock…it doesn’t seem to have seeped out into the wider public consciousness that I have seen.
111. The Muslim Public Affairs Committee, not necessarily known for its moderation, thinks this about the schools:
“MPACUK want to know if the parents of the children know that their schools are an indoctrination centre and that their five- year-olds were not being taught Islamic principles but were instead being taught the Hizbut ideology of segregation and anti-democratic dogma. MPACUK also want to know why the local mosques and Islamic institutions didn’t blow the whistle and tell their ummah that the HT cult was targeting children as young as five and that we, the taxpayers, were footing the bill.”
http://www.mpacuk.org/story/261009/ht-front-takes-%C2%A3113411-kafir-democracy.html#ixzz0Y3RCBcQi
As to whether this will affect the polls, I rather doubt it will boost the Tories much, if at all. But longterm it will further alienate the WWC from Labour, which from Cammo’s perspective, is just as good.
Following on yesterday the Markets opened 1% down this morning following the Dubai situation. They have since eased a bit, probably because companies and institutions have managed to withdraw such monies and notes that they were able.
It should be noted that British companies who are in the sh*t should Dubai default are mainly the banks and the construction industry, but many will be hurt by the ensuing pandemonium.
#100, by Anthony November 27th, 2009 at 10:03 am
49: Well you were going to get me there, since it’s quite near the office, but in the event I wasn’t in London at all.
Don’t worry,
Andy Morris was there. I have faith…!
93 “54 ‘49. GIN I have an uneasy feeling the YouGov poll might be Ipsos Mori mark 2, with a release timed to cause maximum media narrative.’
The alternative is that it’s been quietly left on the shelf, as it doesn’t fit in with the current media narrative of a hung parliament.”
The monthly YouGov for the Daily Telegraph has a cycle that sees its publication in the last Friday or Saturday paper of the month.
There’s as yet no evidence it’s been delayed, held back, whether part of any media narrative or not.
110, thanks for that, very interesting to read.
121 The Dubai fallout could be gnarly indeed. Only last week Barclays was advising people that Dubai debt was “a good buy”.
Thanks to Fat Steve for organising last night. Great to meet everyone, looking forward to the next one already.
125 I guess that’s the Banking equivalent of PB’s Roger saying that Barack Obama would not be US President.
Is there anybody out there who still thinks the banks know their job?
Sounds like last night was a roaring success - hope I can make the next one.
OT Wasn’t Melanie Philips a very cold fish on QT last night? I wasn’t expecting her to be like that.
127 - “Is there anybody out there who still thinks the banks know their job?”
Absolutely, it’s to line the pockets of top bankers. Didnt you know?
128 - With Melanie I tend to expect mild insanity and am usually disappointed. Not so much cold fish as crazy fish.
I did see Mel get her a*se handed to her by David Davis, which was fun. But not much else. Tend to avoid question time.
111, 120.
If you read the thread, you will see that there is, apparently, no dispute in the Muslim community as to whether this is a “Hizbut” school. Many of the schools leaders and teachers are, it seems, acknowledged sympathisers of Hizb-ut-tahrir.
The debate amongst Muslims is whether Hizbut should be taking tax money to fund this school, do other Muslims realise who runs the place, etc etc.
There is no argument about the centrality of Hizbut to the school’s ethos.
128. Melanie Philips was being at her most dogmatic last night.
She writes better than she speaks, but she should ask an expert for a personal makeover.
Last night she came over as a petulant grannie. Not Good.
AndY Coulson’s victim interviewed on Radio 5.
Dave certainly did recruit his own McBride.
125 - Are you sure that they weren’t saying: “Dubai? Goodbye”?
WRT:opinion polls..given that less are coming out full stop, it would be likely that the ones which are given are taken for publication when they have the highest impact….IE at the weekend.
134 Weak.
130. She was right about the AGW movement being a complete and utter fraud, but she was incorrect to dismiss the idea the AGW could be happening. David Davis was much slicker.
Of course Marcus Brigstocke was plain and utterly wrong on pretty much everything he said, but he has that annoying ability to persuade people. The audience was hideous, that silly woman bleating about Cockermouth, i felt the same way that Portillo did on This Week afterwards, when Diane Abbot tried the same thing.
Look to the ceiling and mutter ‘for the love of god’. You can see why scientific advancement throughout the adventure of mankind has often been a very risky business.
The audience seemed overwhelming wedded to the idea of AGW, they might be right, they might not be, but the evidence that AGW is happening is pretty much non existent.
Melanie Phillips might have well have been telling a crowd of christians that God didnt exist, she would have got a similar response.
132 Indeed, CiF had a thoughtful piece from Shaaz Mahbood yesterday, showig that the issue is important to Muslims who don’t go alomg with Hizb-ut-tahrir
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2009/nov/26/faith-schools-extremist-ideas
134 – Tim arrives on the scene with a smear and a sneer and so starts another 18 hr shift. Deep joy..!
“the evidence that AGW is happening is pretty much non existent”
David Davis said he was 80% convinced it was happening, so it can’t be non existent. Unless Davis wasn’t as slick as you make out?
134. tim.
So when is he going to be fired?
125. I wonder if they followed up their own recommendations, or did what is sometimes known in the trade as a ‘G***mans’?
23. re: Cameron’s reference to ‘all the nations in the UK.’ I think he is in good company, Stuart. One version of the national anthem, which I remember singing in my boyhood, has the verse:
One realm of races four
Blest more and ever more
God save our land!
Home of the brave and free
Set in the silver sea
True nurse of chivalry
God save our land!
141. But aren’t you are missing something here?
I didn’t see QT but I understand Davis claimed the chances of mankind affecting climate change were 3 in 4 or something - and everyone nodded along - as they are doing here. Sensible remark, yes, that’s about right, etc etc
Davis’s comment in itself constitutes a paradigm shift. For years we have been told that AGW was a FACT, not a theory. It was up there with Evolution, with a heliocentric solar system, with 2 + 2 = 4. This is the reason the Beeb feels able to ignore “deniers” - they are denying established scientific FACT.
Now Davis (amongst others) has suddenly and subtly introduced doubt into the science. Something that is 75% likely to be true, is not a fact. It is a theory yet to be proved - a good theory, but that is all.
Cf. A court would not convict someone on the basis that they were 75% likely to be guilty, i.e. - a 3 in 4 chance of guilt does not put the guilt beyond reasonable doubt.
This is a huge shift we are seeing. AGW is moving from being a truism to being a probability. That in itself is massive.
134 The Thicket signs on for the day.
141. Did we watch the same show? Davis was sceptical of AGW industry, but as a scientist, wasnt closed to the idea that mankind could be impacting the worlds climate. It has been known that in a laboratory on a small scale, increasing the levels of CO2 have a greenhouse effect. The theoretical underpinning of the potential for mankinds influence on the planet is there to see, but the evidence of any actual influence is not.
Davis was slick, he gave a balanced answer, as i gave a balanced criticism of Melanie Phillips.
145. Yes, and David Davis is a clever man, if he really does believe that AGW is a load of old bunkum, to denounce it outright would cause him significant political damage, isolating him from the mainstream political consensus and damage Camerons green strategy.
Coming across as reasoned, but slightly sceptical is good for him, and it is good for the ‘consensus’.
145. Spot on SeanT. I thought Davis was very clever last night, exactly the right tone. Phillips was shrill and dogmatic, as extreme-sounding as the high priests of GW she was attacking.
As time goes on, Davis’ 80% can become 60%, then 40%, then 10%….
Hmm. Davis’ climate change stance sounds interesting, but I stopped watching before then. Melanie Philips’ view is one I agree with but she was patronising as hell, and when Marcus Brigstocke began what I assume was a protracted list of ‘reasons’ to back climate change I switched off.
54. Thanks for the dental advice Polly.
144. Wales a nation? it’s not even a country.
50. Brigstocke is a joke. Another luvvie with an over-inflated sense of his own intelligence and importance.
“Davis’s comment in itself constitutes a paradigm shift.”
Not really, since an 80% acceptance that something is happenign means you are still going to want to work to address it.
“Did we watch the same show? Davis was sceptical of AGW industry, but as a scientist, wasnt closed to the idea that mankind could be impacting the worlds climate.”
Saying some thing is 80% likely is more than just “not closed to the idea”. What he was sceptical about, and in this I agree, was whether the polciy reaction is headed in the right direction.
“As time goes on, Davis’ 80% can become 60%, then 40%, then 10%….”
Or indeed 90%…..95%…..etc etc
145 Indeed, we are now close to the tipping point.
The consensus has been outed not as the settled view of thousands of scientists but as the unsubstantiated opinion of a cabal of about 40 pseudoscientists in 3 or 4 establishments manipulating a few key publications.
In the same way as GEs are decided by a few thousand voters in marginals, the “consensus” has been driven by a few marginal voices (marginal in every way).
GW may well be happening, the seas may well be acidifying, oil may run out and it is indeed mainly found in flaky kleptocracies. There are thus still good reasons to get off fossil fuels, but we’ve been doing this for centuries anyway without the help of environmentalists.
The upshot of Climategate will be to take the leftism and ecofascism out of environmentalism. Good.
Off topic, it’s nice to see Alcohol Focus Scotland helping a small company with its marketing stunts:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/north_east/8380412.stm
155. Sure - but he wouldn’t have expressed himself in the way he did if he thought the odds were about to shift upwards.
142 - I doubt, whatever comes out about Coulson that Dave will now sack him.
Although recent events illustrate that Mr Cameron should have an employment lawyer watching Coulson 24 hours a day.
157 Had just finished reading that - my first thought “a bottle for my brother-in-law and brother as Christmas presents”, then what does it taste like? Alcohol Focus bedamned.
On another note I can see from these threads that we are all fizzing with expectation at the immenent announcement of the new UKIP leader…
“Sure - but he wouldn’t have expressed himself in the way he did if he thought the odds were about to shift upwards.”
Don’t see that follows.
154. No, you are wrong. Imagine if a top politician went on telly and said I believe the chances of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution being correct are about 75%. He’d be laughed to scorn.
We have been brainwashed into believing that AGW is on a par with Evolution in terms of scientific certitude. So much so, governments are going to spend trillions combatting it.
Yet Davis can get away with saying there is notable doubt about AGW, even though it is probably true, and no one bats an eyelid. That is a big shift in perceptions.
Alternatively, maybe those doubtful perceptions of AGW have been there all long - and now some politicians feel able to careful give voice to them. Thanks to climategate.
159 - Tim arrives on the scene with a smear and a sneer and repetitive post on his chosen target of the day. How tedious.
145 “Cf. A court would not convict someone on the basis that they were 75% likely to be guilty, i.e. - a 3 in 4 chance of guilt does not put the guilt beyond reasonable doubt.”
True … but the analogy is not a good one. The consequence of a wrongful conviction are serious, but not devastating, they don’t render large parts of the planet uninhabitable.
Consider Lembit’s asteroids. The probability of a large asteroid impact is tiny (certainly far less than 1 per cent). But, if it happened, it would wipe out much of the planet. How much money & time should you invest in something that has an a priori very low propability of happening, but would be devastating if it happened?
Global warming is taking place (we have satellite measurements that put the fact that the temperature of the planet is increasing over 20 year timespans beyond all doubt). The origin of the effect is not entirely clear — but the probability of it being man-made is (let’s take your figure) 75 per cent. How much money and time should you invest in something that has a very high probability of happening, and would be devastating if it happened?
Lembit’s asteroids — < 1 per cent
AWG — 75 per cent.
Complete certainty — 100 per cent.
So, SeanT — at what odds do you require a devastating thing to happen for you to change your behaviour? If you wiat till 100 per cent ertainty, it has already happened — it’s too late.
160 - It’s hardly as if it’s competing with Buckfast. At £30 a bottle, it’s going to be more comparable with a good whisky. Alcohol Focus Scotland should be focussing on the drinks that really cause social problems.
FPT: #92, by coldstone November 26th, 2009 at 11:11 pm
No doubt like Tony Blair, you prefer other people’s sons and daughters to die in the sand.
Hmmm so did Mark Thatcher fight in the Flaklands war?
As I’se out ‘n da’ City [correction, the parameter thereof] iz diz geeza ‘Coldstone’ makin’ a noise fa’ da’ beetin’ of da’ Hun ova’ Heglioland…?
Bring back Hannover to The Crown, annit…?
“Thanks to climategate”
I think you are seriously over-reaching. The email leak showed some dodgy practices with a few of the people involved, but did not discredit the entirety of the field.
“A court would not convict someone on the basis that they were 75% likely to be guilty, i.e. - a 3 in 4 chance of guilt does not put the guilt beyond reasonable doubt”
Civil law is of course the balance of probabilities……..although whether 3 in 4 is beyond reasonable doubt is rather subjective.
162 - I’d always understood that these things were in % terma of risk, I’ve always discounted the 100 percenters either way.
Looking at comparative risk, the flood defences in Cumbria were built to withstand a one in a hundred flood, if Davis is right then climate change is an eighty in a hundred risk, and defences must be built on that risk.
I don’t think this stuff is too difficult really.
If the science asses the risk has increased to 85% or reduced to 75% then action adjusts accordingly.
There, sorted.
164. You entirely miss my flipping point. I have no idea whether the chances of mankind affecting climate change are 75%. They could be 2%, 99.998%, or 7/4 against on a windy day.
What I am saying is that politicians are now able to express, subtly and carefully, the idea that AGW is just a theory, and not definitely true, and they are not howled into derision.
THAT is the paradigm shift - the open and accepted expression of doubt. We have been told AGW was beyond question. Now it is not beyond question. Who knows what will happen now the dyke is breached?
A few years after Gorbachev admitted communism wasn’t entirely perfect, communism entirely collapsed.
162 - Politicians have been all over the media talking about the floods in Cumbria as a 1% chance, but one that must be incorporated into flood defences.
Don’t really see what your issue is.
166. I see you are on top form this morning Fluffy.
80. Verulamius
The (mean-overall) vote is a measure of how better a party is doing in the smaller constituencies - where smaller means smaller electorates and/or lower turnouts.
The means on the new R&T boundaries are
Con 31.9%
Lab 37.5%
LD 22.3%
the Lab-Con difference has thereby narrowed from 6.1% to 5.6% as a result of the boundary changes.
The median vote is the most important indicator, and the (median - overall) vote is a measure of overall bias in the system.
The notional 2005 medians are
Con 33.4%
Lab 40.7%
LD 19.0%
a Labour lead of 7.3%
“A few years after Gorbachev admitted communism wasn’t entirely perfect, communism entirely collapsed.”
Uh-huh……yes, climate change is like communism…..
90/99 Possibly the most complicated bet ever agreed on PB!
If global warming does race on apace, we Brits will be alright. The south coast might fry, but there’ll be plenty of room for us all to move up to Scotland. The change in climate to “clement” will have the benefit of killing off the midge. Plus, the shift in population will kill off the SNP….
What’s not to like?
[145] - Davis’s comment in itself constitutes a paradigm shift.
Er, no it doesn’t. The IPCC AR4 report, released in 2007, stated that the probability that human release of greenhouse gases was the cause of recent global warming was 90%. Davis’ figure of 80% is therefore pretty damn close to what you might expect him to have read in the Summary for Policymakers written by the IPCC [which I doubt you have bothered to look at].
The greenhouse effect, whereby increasing levels of CO2 will warm the climate, is a scientific fact, to rank alongside other observable facts such as that adding salt to water lowers its freezing point. Despite this you will find some denialist websites or “documentaries” that deny this.
What is, and has always been, in doubt is the degree to which feedbacks will enhance or retard this warming. We can’t answer that question with observations, it cannot become “fact”, until after the event. The uncertainties in observations, and the complexity of the system, preclude that.
We are therefore left with a risk. That risk can be estimated, which is essentially what climate science tries to do. It is then a matter of politics about how to appropriately respond to that risk, just as it is a political question to decide how much you spend on, say, train safety equipment that might save an average of 2 deaths a year.
What I find particularly frustrating is that the “debate”, such as it is, often deteriorates into one of:
(a) “teh world is burning now!!11! we *must* do x, y and z”
or
(b) “it isn’t happening at all we should do nothing”
There is a complete absence of creative thinking on the right to find alternative ways of reducing emissions that don’t involve the “x, y and z” that they find so unpalatable.
Just a couple of other points in passing.
(i) The cost for reducing emissions is often inflated, because it doesn’t take into account that our energy infrastructure is going to need replacing over the next 10-30 years anyway, so the marginal cost of replacing it with carbon-free sources is much lower than the total cost of replacement.
(ii) It is worthwhile noting that James Hansen [NASA scientist who famously gave AGW testimony to Congress in 1988] advocates a 100% tax and dividend plan, whereby 100% of the proceeds of a carbon tax are paid out to citizens as a dividend. Advocating action to prevent global warming doesn’t have to lead to an increase in green taxes kept by the state.
Apologies for the length of this off-topic post.
167. The warmists are asking society to make revolutionary changes, and to spend trillions of dollars, on the basis of their theory.
So far they have come close to doing this, because of the authority of science. Now one of the three main institutions in Global Warming science, the CRU, has been revealed as “dodgy”. And of course the CRU feeds into the IPPC reports etc etc, which are so vital a part of warmist theology.
In other words, these revelations threaten the entire edifice on which warmism is built: the unimpeachability of their science.
That’s why Monbiot is right to see the grave danger in these emails.
173 - There is an 80% chance that communism exists or an 80% chance that communism is man-made?
Gordon says British banks well placed to survive Dubai crisis: drop everything and start queuing now.
172 - Rod Crosby, your point about the significance of the median is very well-made.
Peter. I have already put my money down to Get Balls Out, at 7/2 and 3/1 - and it’s more than a tenner!
175 - Given Soctlands inability to attract the immigrants it so badly needs, thats not a bad strategy really.
168. tim, I’ll say it again. You are a TIT.
If bullying staff is of such great concern to tim, then why does he not post about Brown chucking nokia’s, other office equipment and reducing secretaries to tears?
It’s not just the fact of AGW..but the predictions and doom-crying which will be brought under a greater spotlight.
I’m not a scientist, so I can’t question the ’science’ but people will question practices and motives. (I do have a maths degree, so I know how statistics and data can be manipluated). It should force the science to be clear and more open, and that can only be a good thing
181. was directed at PtP at 110.
179. In fact British banks are the most exposed to the UAE - US$50 billion or so of exposures out of a European total of US$90 billion and global total of US$120 billion….
anyone know when the next set of polls are out??
179. fr. But are we best placed?
[ON TOPIC] - If I had time I would like to calculate the average vote share for the Green party in their top 119 seats, to provide a better comparison with the BNP average. And do likewise with the UKIP score.
I think this would be a more useful stat for Peter from Putney at [6] to look at.
The biggest “enemies” of environmentalism are the AGW lobby themselves.
As tim and I were discussing the other day - and surprisingly agreeing upon - is that they are so patronising, rude, aggressive, uncompromising and political motivated they actively put off even those who *want* to support them.
In other words: they get everyone rooting for the other side. Everyone hates them.
For example: I would love to see a world where we no longer combust oil and have no more polluting emissions but I detest the AGW lobby *so* much I’m loving every minute of this. I find myself longing to see their AGW arguments proven wrong and completely defeated - and then for their funding pulled and to be laughed at in the streets.
Isn’t that strange?
Don’t they realise how much damage they do to their own cause by being the twats that they are?
173. F*ck me, you’re dim.
Communism was a belief system that pretended it was a science. Do you get the analogy now?
176. Don’t worry, I saw the long post, went to the bottom, saw your name - and skipped.
177. “167. The warmists are asking society to make revolutionary changes, and to spend trillions of dollars, on the basis of their theory.”
Yes. But the theory is Marxism. Not environmentalism.
“That’s why Monbiot is right to see the grave danger in these emails.”
Monbiot sees it only as a propaganda danger though, something that those who do not agree with the current scientific consensus can use to chip away without coming up with any real evidence themselves; he points out that it does not change the actual evidence that exists in favour of the climate change theory.
Oh, what’s another 50 billion among friends ? Just lower the temperature in schools another degree or two.
179 It’s alright; Mervyn can print some more money and bail them out.
“Do you get the analogy now?”
No, because climate change *is* science; do you get why I was sarcastic now?
164. “Global warming is taking place (we have satellite measurements that put the fact that the temperature of the planet is increasing over 20 year timespans beyond all doubt).”
I think the thing that has changed since climategate is that you are no longer allowed to say that unless you have followed the chain of evidence all the way back. So: whose satellites? In what orbits? over what timescale? Measuring what, with what instruments and in what units? Sending the raw data to where, to be processed by whom with what software and published where?
But so as not to appear unreasonable, for starters just point us to the primary published data.
Thanks.
Completely off-topic but people were posting about the report into clerical abuse of children in the Archdiocese of Dublin yesterday. If ever there was an example of someone completely and utterly failing to take responsibility for his actions this is it:
http://www.limerickleader.ie/news/Bishop-of-Limerick-wont-resign.5863167.jp
Disgusting.
176. “What I find particularly frustrating is that the “debate”, such as it is, often deteriorates into one of:
(a) “teh world is burning now!!11! we *must* do x, y and z”
or
(b) “it isn’t happening at all we should do nothing”
There is a complete absence of creative thinking on the right to find alternative ways of reducing emissions that don’t involve the “x, y and z” that they find so unpalatable.”
I agree with all of that Timothy.
I also think we could affect a significant change over 20-30 years. What we *can’t* do is stop the world tomorrow.
We’re just going to have to take on the chin - and mitigate the impacts - of the cumulative effects of our emissions from c.1850-2050 and work on building a feasible long-term low-carbon future.
We can’t reverse it.
197: climate change is Science
The imapct and scope of climate change is an interpretation of data.
191. Quite so. The sinister and aggressive use of words like “denier” is very unpleasant. UGH.
I totally agree with your other comments, too. It’s plainly obvious that we need to move away from fossil fuels, and that polluting the whole planet is a bad idea, etc. But every time one of these AGW hysterons has a hissy fit, I want to buy a Ferrari and drive over a polar bear.
Own Worst Enemies.
181 Great value at those odds, StJohn.
You would not have been at all disheartened by Anthony’s views last nite.
Let’s hope we’re all ‘up for Balls’ on the nite.
199 - I’ve spoken to a couple of people about this subject and they’ve both said that the real jaw dropper is the fact that 25 years ago the Church establishment started to look for insurance policies to protect themselves against claims by the priests victims, yet just moved the priests around.
And someone posted on here yesterday that the insurance policies became standard practice around the world.
Unbelievable.
190 - I’m not sure that would do the trick. The 119 seats the BNP contested are unlikely to be precisely their 119 best seats - there will be some correlation but there are likely to be areas where they have some support but are poorly organised/funded so don’t stand and others which are never likely to be good for them but some moron wants to stand (e.g. they stood in a few places like Cheadle and Wokingham last time). So comparing against the Greens’ best seats might be misleading.
203 PtP - Am I the only PBer who has bet on Balls retaining his seat?
It’s a bet I’ll be delighted to lose, of course.
An interesting angle which David Davis came up with on QT last night was that ther eis a material cost in lost growth in world trade in implementing the green agenda. The people who loase out are the world’s poor, held back from improving their standard of living through growing their economies.
The ackowledgment of which must have caused Marcus Laughing-stocke to wince internally. (I don’t know whether po-faced holier-than-thou earnestness can kill, but I do suspect that it will be on poor Marcus’s death certificate anyway.)
202. Dead right Sean. Environmental protesters are the worst.
I’d like the see the entire lot of Plane Stupid chargrilled by the afterburners of a F/A-18 Hornet then skewered onto a kebab and eaten for dinner by Jeremy Clarkson.
204 - This is the country that gave the English language the word boycott - let’s hope the people of Limerick think about using it as a tactic until the Bishop decides to rethink his decision not to resign.
164. “Global warming is taking place (we have satellite measurements that put the fact that the temperature of the planet is increasing over 20 year timespans beyond all doubt).”
Is this true? After climategate? Some skeptics believe that the “hidden” data in the CRU output makes this questionable, once the hidden date is revealed. Thus:
http://www.climateaudit.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/briffa_recon.gif
From:
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=7844#more-7844
In the past warmists might have got away with dismissing these skeptics as cranky old “deniers”. Not any more.
206. I might do likewise actually. It’s effectively insuring yourself against the disappointment of seeing Balls survive Election Night.
206 - Some bets are just … wrong!
202 “I want to buy a Ferrari and drive over a polar bear”
Polar bears are very big, you’d total the car and probably kill yourself. The bear would probably scratch its behind and walk away. Bye bye Sean and Tom.
By the way how are you planning to get grip on all that melting ice?
208 - So you won’t be canvassing for Zac Goldsmith then?
206 Maybe, Richard.
I confess this is one bet where I may well be allowing my heart to rule my head.
212: He’ll either end up happy, or end up rich…
Not both
It’s the political equivalent of betting against your football in a relgation battle
206 - No, you’re not. A lot of people would love it to be the Portillo moment of 2010 and perhaps it will be. But the odds are distorted such that 4/11 is pretty tempting.
Climate Study is a science.
Climate Change is a fact.
Anthropogenic Global Warming is a hypothesis.
194. The scientific method is that people put up theses and defend them against objections. There isn’t something called Science with a capital S which has an exalted metaphysical existence above and beyond the data and is impervious to attacks on the data. So what Monbiot is now saying is effectively that his beliefs on climate change are religious or metaphysical and not science at all. Complaining that people attack the data “without coming up with any real evidence themselves” betrays the depth of his failure to grasp the scientific method.
A few things to note on the Islamic Shakhsiyah Foundation schools in Haringey and Slough:
(1) Schools are independent schools.
(2) Both schools show on EduBase as opening on 20/01/2003.
(3) Slough School first inspeted on 28/11/2005.
(4) Haringey school first/emergency inspection October 2007 [just when was this school going to get its first inspection?]
Islamic Shakhsiyah Foundation is a registered charity 1112376. It’s worth therefore having a look at the accounts they have filed for the period covering the Government Grants. Again a couple of things to note:
(1) Government Grants of £113,411 against Tuition Fees and School Activities of £301,163 - that’s a significant chunk of cash for an Independent School
(2) How was the extra cash spent [as always follow the money]?
Rent/Rates and service charge showed an increase of £21,502 or 30% over the previous year. I’d be wanting to look into that some more, and to undertand the ownership of the premises from which the schools operate.
Staff costs show an increase of £42,523 or 20% over the previous year suggesting an increase in teaching numbers - the PAYE records should support this. Although it is difficult to see how this could be sustained for the following year, presumeably when there is no further grant.
http://www.charity-commission.gov.uk/registeredcharities/ScannedAccounts/Ends76/0001112376_ac_20080331_e_c.pdf
193
For those who are still in ‘these are not the ‘droids you are looking for’ mode - may I suggest a peak at the two most popular sites currently unpicking the leaked files.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/25/climategate-hide-the-decline-codified
http://camirror.wordpress.com/2009/11/26/new-the-deleted-data/
If you are in any doubt that there is large scale data manipulation and fabrication going on - it’s all there in b/w.
The infamous Mr Hockey Stick Mann is now renaming the Medieval Warming Period as an ‘anomaly’. Oh and so is the Little Ice Age - and guess who’s covering this story - oh the BBC’s very own Richard ‘helpful journalist’ Black.
He seems to have a galloping case of selective amnesia about the story that was the leader in the Washington Times this morning and is now clocking over 9m Google hits since Sunday.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/nov/27/the-global-cooling-cover-up/?feat=home_top5_read
Well that’s one way to remove inconvenient weather data for 400 YEARS, and then again when Dickin’s wrote most of stories
It would be laughable if it weren’t so serious.
221 - Who is the OFSTED Inspector that Gilligan alleges is linked to Islamist groups?
220. What has been interesting about this episode is the way that (mostly unscientific) Global Warming Believers have elevated ’scientific opinion’ to the status of unimpeachable holy scripture, and characterised sceptical opinion as heresy.
218 Sir Norfolk - It was 1/2 when I placed my bet, which I thought was pretty good. 4/11 is marginal if Anthony Calvert is able to capitalise on the anti-Balls feeling as he hopes to.
219. Climate Change is a fact, but also a tautology. The earth’s climate changes all the time, that’s why it’s also called “weather”.
“Weather is a fact” would be the best way of putting it.
219 The $trillion vested interest of big oil against C02 reduction is also a fact.
222 Plato, why are you so excited about this issue? You seem to have gone “all Tim” over it.
I make it 3 Lib Dem gains fron Cons yesterday, up to now anyway.
Strange, could it be to do with middle class voters not happy with someone having a go at other religions. In Halewood South significant swing from Lib Dem to Labour
223. Good question. We need to know.
I saw a Guardian comment this morning which implied that the government has set up a special “sensitive inspectorate” for Islamic school. Perhaps they are hiring Muslim inspectors for this task?
This was just a comment, with no citation, but it tallies with Gilligan’s statement.
O/T
I would have attended the PB gathering last night had I not chickened out at the last minute. I even got to the pub (it’s on my way home from work after all) but didn’t pluck up enough courage to enter. Epic Fail on my part
Sorry guys. Will there be another opportunity this side of Xmas?
As for AGW, it’s ffffing ffffreezing today! We could do with a little warming!
228. It’s not strange. It’s because - as has been pointed out on here before - the Tories have now basically won every council seat they possibly can. Their councillors easily outnumber Labour and the LDs combined.
They have peaked. And in local government terms the pendulum is already swinging against them.
I read somewhere that the same happened for Labour in the 90s. Their local government peak was either just before or just after the 97 GE, and soon went into decline.
I could be wrong, but I seem to recall that evidence being posted on pb.
230 You made the right move Sunil. It was a big trap laid on by the CIA.
bbc ticker carrying headline Attorney General’s former cleaner charged with immigration offences. No link to article.
215 - Perhaps you are. I have several hundred riding on Balls losing. I have a lot of internal knowledge of the constituency, though. The makeup of Morley and Outwood should be almost uniformly Tory.
226 - Climate isn’t synonymous with weather, though, so that’s a slightly spurious point if you don’t mind me saying.
I’ve got to go out, so on Global Warming I’ll just say this:
1. Global Climate is always changing to various degrees.
2. Sudden World Climate change occures about every 10,000 years, (we are overdue for one).
3. Major long term climate change is historically erratic. There have been warming and indeed hot world climates lasting over 100,000 years at a time. Ditto Cold icy periods with similar long expanse of years.
4. None of the above climate changes were due to man or cows farting.
The whole AGW is a scam which scientists, politicians and buisinessmen seek to perpetuate for profit, kudos or plain fame.
They are disgusting, and the scientists are especially culpable.
219. There don’t appear to be too many scientists working at CRU.
As Casino points out, we don’t have to accept that there is any unequivocal proof of increasing temperatures any more. The hippies have removed readings they didn’t like. They now ignore all reading from Japan that are from stations over 300m above sea level. So when climate activists at places like CRU assert that Japan has been warming up, what they mean is that the Japanese lowlands are warmer today than the Japanese highlands were 50 years ago. Everybody panic!
The entire skein of logic is in question: the raw data (some of which CRU has in fact illegally destroyed to evade its FOI obligations), the analysis, the peer review process, the conclusions, the solution.
You can demonstrate that CO2 traps heat in a lab, but that’s a rather simpler system to model than an entire planetary atmosphere. Since the models that attempt this can only be tested by producing accurate predictions, and haven’t yet done so in the hitherto-suppressed view of their builders, the anus (snigger) of proof is on the hippies, not the pragmatists.
1/ GW may be happening.
2/ Man’s contribution may be significant.
3/ GW may be bad.
4/ Reducing man’s contribution to GW may be possible.
5/ Reducing man’s contribution to GW may be worthwhile.
When they get past proving 1/ we can talk about the others.
Bjorn Lomborg’s position remains smart - even if you accept 1/ to 4/, chances are, there are much better ways to spend the money entailed by 5/.
235. I don’t mind you saying anything you like, Sir Norfolk.
But the comment was flippant, rather than spurious - as I thought was fairly obvious…
214. Zac Goldsmith is in the Tory Party because of his personal and social connections.
It remains to be seen whether he can cut it as a Tory MP. On the one hand he is eurosceptic, pro-hunting and a supporter of direct democracy. On the other he is an anti-capitalist environmentalist gimp.
The two Zac’s are at conflict with each other. Until I know which is going to come out on top I’ll let the voters of Richmond decide who they want as their MP by themselves.
238 What’s wrong with you SeanT? You’re coning over all mild (almost reasonable) in your posts. You’re Pro-Europe and upthread expressed an interest in local government results.
Should we call 999?
Jonathon - because it’s not just poor scientific practice, it’s changing the evidence to suit the case for the prosecution.
And when science becomes a religion, and the co-founder of Greenpeace comes out and says he left when it was taken over by a politically motivated gang, that makes me really concerned.
The whole thing has got completely out of hand and I’m very pleased that the data/models is now where it should have been from the start - subject to review and result replication by other scientists who aren’t on the funding payroll.
No wonder the CRU resisted those FOI requests so aggressively.
236. Added to my post there is the thought that we are overdue for magnetic pole change which occurs suddenly, about every 30,000 years.
By suddenly I mean literally over a very few days.
240. Dunno. Maybe it’s cause I’m bored witless here in Bangkok. I’ve tried extreme behaviour, now all that’s left is being nice.
I’ve whored myself sensible. I’ve drunk myself into moderation. Hah.
“A former cleaner for Attorney General Baroness Scotland has been charged over immigration offences, according to the Crown Prosecution Service. Otolose Loloahi Tapui has been charged with possession of a false identity document, fraud by false representation and overstaying leave to remain.
She will appear at City of Westminster Magistrates’ Court on 7 December. Alexander Zivancevic, Ms Tapui’s husband, has accepted a caution for assisting unlawful immigration.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8382748.stm
Will the non resigning Attorney General be appearing as a witness?
243 You need to pull yourself together man. You’re a disgrace to your own reputation.
227. “219 The $trillion vested interest of big oil against C02 reduction is also a fact.”
Is it?
Apart from Esso I’m not sure any of them deny it. All the others acknowledge Climate Change. In the long-term they will simply diversify into becoming “Energy companies”; supplying and providing energy; rather than ones that pump oil.
Any sensible CEO would reorientate their corporate strategy around this. Which, indeed, is what Shell and BP are already doing through their renewables divisions.
This constant “Constant Gardener” stuff is really rather childish.
Just remember kids, SeanT visits whores so you don’t have to.
176. “Er, no it doesn’t. The IPCC AR4 report, released in 2007, stated that the probability that human release of greenhouse gases was the cause of recent global warming was 90%.”
There is a big problem with that, namely that the people know found to have engaged in asharp practice were significant contributes to that report - in particular it depended on the CRU’s climate model for it’s findings. the software for which model has also been leaked with the emails and shown, to put it bluntly, to be a badly written piece of junk whose conclusions are worthless. Sorry, but the IPCC isn’t Holy Writ any more.
239. Zac’s particular set of views sounds very much like those of many traditional country Tories I would say; the environmentalism is partly just a new twist on an old theme i.e. suspicion of big business and its motives and preference for smaller local activity.
247. Just think kids, some whores also work at universities.
I thought it was very depressing how the people on Question Time appeared to think the Cumbrian floods were related to climate change.
249. Zac goes much further than that.
237 And only having 4 data stations in California - 3 of which are nr the beach.
Or having other data stations placed in the middle of major intersections or next to air conditioning units… I wish I could find the Google Earth shot of that one again.
I saw in one report that 4% of the data has been entirely fabricated as the data stations were flatlining for 11/12 months so they made it up instead. What a joke.
It was a bad night for the Tories in the local by elections;
http://www.24dash.com/news/Local_Government/2009-11-27-Triple-blow-for-Tories-in-latest-council-by-elections
But before Labour supporters get too excited we need to examine these results in detail and find out what the local issues were in each seat because as I always say, local election - local issues.
Oh dear. Mark Field MP writes about how to prevent family breakdown:
http://conservativehome.blogs.com/localgovernment/2009/11/local-solutions-for-family-breakdown.html
Hmmmmm….
Interesting piece about why Blair went to war in Iraq. It seems like it was all about dividing lines:
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/steve-richards/steve-richards-the-real-reasons-why-blair-went-to-war-1828412.html
I don’t know if this or is not true, however Richards does seem to have connections into the heart of New Labour.
251. Every weather ‘event’ which isn’t a mild shower or sunny spell is put down to climate change now.
Six days of rain in a row? Climate change.
Two weeks of hot weather in September? Climate change.
Ice in March? Climate change.
Four inches of snow in November? Climate change.
Leaves turning red two weeks later than last year? Climate change.
Athletes foot and an itchy scrote? Cli- oh.. wait a minute.
re 113. “Don’t underestimate news slots on Radio 2, Commercial and local radio. A lot of people listen to this during their working day - for many it may be the only news they glean.”
No one should underestimate the significance of the r2 audience, which has the biggest audience at 0800 every day. It’s much higher than the Today audience.
48 Richard
I know YS is a warm order favorite, but my reasoning is that whilst you or I might vote for him, The Herd will not be able to bring itself to vote for the Yellow Peril.
I look forward to the emergence of a strong Anybody But YS candidate.
Mr Waugh has a blog post on the economic portfolio going to the French commissioner and how the govt believes they have it covered off…
http://waugh.standard.co.uk/2009/11/will-a-triple-lock-protect-the-city-from-the-dastardly-french.html
342
Have you read the Sci-Fiction book by Allan W. Eckert.
‘The HAB theory’? (from 1976 - I must have read it when it first appeared)
In the book, one of the explanations for the sudden shift in the magnetic poles is that the world is supposed to ‘turn turtle’
Looks as though many of the themes from the book have been recycled in various feature films through the past 15 years…
I couldn’t find the book online but there really is a HAB theory.
http://2012wiki.com/index.php?title=Pole_shift
254. GIN: you’ve gone all Mark Senior.
Three local by-election gains by the Lib Dems from the Tories on a low turnout in late rainy November have about as much significance to next years general election result as the rash on my bellend.
259. PtP.
What you need to remember is that, in general, The Herd views only the Seniorites as Peril.
Recession ‘worse than estimated’
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8382604.stm
261 to 242
(my mistake - hereafter abbreviated to mm)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8381992.stm
UKIP gets a new leader today..should be interesting.
A good explanation of the need to share data sets - and what happens when one team fixes the trend.
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2009/11/26/skewed-science.aspx
Gordon Brown says world economy strong enough to cope with Dubai debt problems
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/financialcrisis/6669430/Gordon-Brown-says-world-economy-strong-enough-to-cope-with-Dubai-debt-problems.html
259. “The Herd will not be able to bring itself to vote for the Yellow Peril.”
But you couldn’t be more wrong Peter. YS is undoubtedly yellow but, from what he says, certainly not peril.
266 In what sense?
259 PtP. Sound tactics from your good self. Laying the hot jolly in a Gameshow contest generally pays off.
Also, YS has been an ASBO or maybe an ABSO for a lot of the year.
As in 2008 I will be pursuing and ABST strategy and hoping for more success in 2009.
‘and’ = ‘an’. I will be following *an* ABST strategy, same as last year.
OK I’m going to the Foreign Correspondents Club for two small glasses of beer, before retiring early to bed with a cup of cocoa and my membership form for the Soi Cowboy Branch of the Lib Dems.
Sawadee K.
270: If it’s not Lord Pearson (the farage annointed)…there could be ruptions one would think.
262. As if I would get like Mark Senior! X
264. When was the last time the U.K Econonony shrank by greater than 4.5%? One of GB’s great boasts was that the economy grew by an unprecedented umteempth time because of his magnificent stewardship of the economy ( although some of those quarters were under Ken Clarke).
But of course, it all Darling’s fault, and those nasty greedy bankers like Victor Blank who was persuaded by someone ( can’t remember who now ?) that his empire would be stronger if his to date traditionallly sensible, cautious,liquid bank would take-over this basket-case of another bank, and even better they would be immune from competition laws !
Jeremy Greenstock tells the Iraq Inquiry that the 2003 Iraq War was LEGAL.
277. *Sir Jeremy Greenstock
Sir Jeremy Greenstock GCMG (born 27 July 1943) [...] was [...] Special Representative for Iraq, where he worked alongside Paul Bremer within the Coalition Provisional Authority.
Totally unbiased, then.
266. At least it won’t be a beauty contest ( literally rather than figurately speaking) !
Strictly Come Dancing star arrested:
‘Hollyoaks’ actor and ‘Strictly’ contestant Ricky Whittle has been arrested on suspicion of assault.
Bad luck stjohn.
169 SeanT:
“. You entirely miss my flipping point. I have no idea whether the chances of mankind affecting climate change are 75%. They could be 2%, 99.998%, or 7/4 against on a windy day.
What I am saying is that politicians are now able to express, subtly and carefully, the idea that AGW is just a theory, and not definitely true, and they are not howled into derision.”
Well done, SeanT. This is bleeding obvious.
No scientific theory is ever 100 per cent correct.
Science is the land where there is ceaseless revolution. The rebels are always capturing the railway station and taking over the radio waves.
Science is the land where 100 per certainty is always distrusted. Anyone claiming to know everything about even so simple a subject as the behaviour of fluid between two plates is a fraud.
And so of course we do not know with 100 per certainty the behaviour of the atmosphere of our planet.
277. “But of questionable legitimacy”
257 BBCi has a piece comparing Rotterdam & Maputo and how they are facing up to climate change in which the author blithely blames climate change for rising sea levels affecting Rotterdam - as far as I am aware it’s not rising sea levels but sinking land (as for South & East coasts of UK).
279. Important Person Agrees With Self???? What next? Italian Seen Gesturing Over An Espresso?
280.that should be ‘figuratively’
164. “Global warming is taking place (we have satellite measurements that put the fact that the temperature of the planet is increasing over 20 year timespans beyond all doubt).”
Well, for the last 20 years there have been satellites measuring the temperature of the Earth from space — measurements that are reasonably straightforward and trustworthy.
As sure as we know anything, we know that the mean temperature of the Earth has increased slightly over that timeframe.
Actually listening to Greenstocks words on BBC news just now, he sounds pretty scathing to me, considering who he is.
277 Bit of a selective quote, there, Gabble. Here’s a slightly fuller version:
Sir Jeremy said he believed existing UN resolutions provided “sufficient legal cover” for future action but only if Iraq was found to be breach of its disarmament obligations.
Asked about the legality of the war, he said there were different opinions and that a “final and conclusive” verdict was never likely to be made.
But he added: “If you do something internationally that the majority of UN member states think is wrong, illegitimate or politically unjustifiable, you are taking a risk in my view.”
“I regarded our participation in the military action against Iraq in March 2003 as legal but of questionable legitimacy in that it did not have the democratically observable backing of a great majority of member states or even perhaps of a majority of people inside the UK.
“There was a failure to establish legitimacy although I think we successfully established legality in the UN….to the degree, at least, that we were never challenged in the UN or International Court of Justice for those actions.”
Who is Nick Clegg?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8381846.stm
I’m Sawadee Kapping as well.
Got a lot to do this afternoon. Toodleloo.
289. Will Martin Day be able to RESTRAIN himself from responding to that?
281 PfP. Damn and blarst ! I was on the case early this morning but bottled it.
You could have Layed what you liked 2.0 for Ricky Whittle, now 2.40 and rising.
As I type the 2.40 has been taken so all the balls are in the air.
It takes two to tango !
This has to be the most risible AGW assertion yet - worthy of Harriet.
http://www.u4prez.com/Blogs/Smashey/Global-Warming-Leads-To-Prostitution.html
287. Nope.
Heated up for a bit (because of the sun)
Greenie doomsters made up their theory
Stopped heating up and started cooling down (because of the sun)
Greenie doomsters started fiddling the data to cover it up.
289. http://nickcleggneilkinnock.blogspot.com/
SeanT, surely, a much more profitable line to take is to accept that the temperature of the Earth is increasing … and argue that it is a good thing.
Of course, some parts of the world become less inhabitable, but some parts become more habitable (e.g., there are vast tracts of Canada and Russia that might be rendered easy to live in)
Of course, we don’t want the Earth to end up like Venus.
But, a world that is — on average — several degrees hotter MIGHT be a better world.
That is much more difficult line of argument for climatologists to refute.
291 - who cares?
Another example of the Capillary-Popper’s dishonesty:
“Cameron’s hypocrisy on the tabloids”
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/fourth-estate/2009/11/mirror-sun-tory-cameron-lack
297. Awww.. c’mon Tabbers. Don’t be a party pooper!
Don’t you find him fun?
299 - no. And I’m not sure that encouraging someone who exhibits obsessive tendencies is necessarilly helpful.
293. I had thought it was from the Daily Mash.
But The Mash reveals that the Climate Data was manipulated so that the scientists could knock off early.
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/environment/climate-change-emails-stop-glaciers-from-melting-200911252254/
298, a story in the New Statesman quoting the Mirror? There aren’t enough lolcats in the world to summarise that.
292 URW - I’m afraid that I’ve rather lost interest in SCD since La Hingis, my hot tip to win the competition, went out in week one.
I took a great deal of well-deserved stick for that one!
296 - That is one argument that would get the greens I know in a tizz. I once pointed out that Siberia could well prove to be a stunning fertile plain given some good global warming. I think the look I received was one of the closest to pure hate I’ve witnessed.
303, in fairness that was quite the travesty.
My own SCD interest hasn’t been much this year, probably because I was more bothered about F1.
303 - Me too.
And my pick for XFactor, Danyl, seems to be loathed.
Why doesn’t this surprise me?
http://www.canada.com/business/fp/Dubai+World+lenders/2275536/story.html
292. Just been on to Stan James and bet on Ali (9/4) to win and on a female winner (6/4). Both seem gd value now.
PfP. I haven’t watched a single step but I never lose my interest in MONEY !!!!
Appropos of nothing in particular;
Waaaaaay back, when I was at university I remember reading an article in which it was postulated (iIrc a postulation gives rise to an hypothesis which, in turn, after innumerable battles in the eighth circle of scientific hell, becomes a theory) that the computer/human system for processing complex data could give rise to the ‘virgin birth’ phenomenon.
The inbuilt desire for order (and hence to see patterns) of human beings, amplified by the capabilities of computing, creates situations where totally spurious and imaginary outcomes result from random data inputs.
Of course in those days there was a natural brake in terms of computing power, computing time available and all those ******* punched cards to feed into the card reader…
“Boris Johnson was today in line to become David Cameron’s first elected police commissioner.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/davehillblog/2009/nov/27/boris-johnson-conservative-elected-police-chief
303.:)
:)
MrJones@295. Easy to check you theory
[0] Solar variability can be measured directly from the ground and by satellites. Does the solar luminosity curve correlate with the Earth’s temperature?
[1] The periodicity of solar variability is well-known. Do the changes in
the Earth’s temperature have a component with that periodicity ?
[2] If it is the solar luminosity that has changed, then the temperatures of all the terrestrial planets (which we also know from satellite measurements) will all have changed in step over the same time-frame. Do they?
309: Hmmm interesting. the ladies still in are Ali,Natalie and Lalia.
Both Natalie and Lalia are clearly not as good as Ali is, so I’d be more tempted to plug on Ali, but given that Ali is injured…well who knows?
This series has been a bit of a disaster for the Beeb really. The sacking of Arenlee, replacing with Alesha, 3 different sets of injuries, accusations of racism and now arrests!
300. You shouldn’t take it so seriously Tabman. It’s the sheer ridiculousness of it all which makes me chuckle.
It’s just silly - like Monty Python. I don’t know how putting Liberal Democrat logos in a picture with swastikas and SS flash badges can be viewed in any other way.
And some of the cartoons ARE quite funny - I’m sorry.
307 - I sold Danyl on SPIN a while back. I could take a small profit now, but I am going to let this one ride.
If i was going to bet Chris Hollins would be my tip now btw…a very likeable chap with more of a ‘journey’ story.
“THE links between the Conservative party, the Press Complaints Commission and the Dirty Digger’s News International are increasingly intriguing.”
http://www.private-eye.co.uk/sections.php?section_link=hp_sauce&issue=1250
301 “And I’m not sure that encouraging someone who exhibits obsessive tendencies is necessarilly helpful.”
Agree. I don’t think this place is good for him.
309 scrapheap. Seems like you have the best of it but it is by no means clearcut.
LTPs
RW 2.24
AB 2.34
CH 9.0
LR 24.0
Great to see so many pb-ers last night. Only got a few seconds, so just to say that PtP’s bet on YS is with me, not James.
Confirming that I’ve staked £10 to PtP’s £15 that YS will be named Poster of the Year by Mike (bet void if no Poster of the Year named).
315, it’s been pretty poor. Also, Ali’s the only one I particularly fancy, whereas last season had Rachel Stevens and Lisa Snowdon.
Only paid a little attention but Alesha[sp] should be thrown overboard. Arlene’s mangled metaphors and incoherent babbling was irksome, but at least she was qualified and knew her stuff. Dixon’s tottytastic but knows sod all compared to the pros.
Natalie LTP= 12.5.Apologies.
Our share of RBS is poised to increase from 70% to 84%.
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard-business/article-23776211-rbs-goes-for-pound-280bn-assets-protection.do
325: Ah well…only another $25bn ploughed into it.
255 - Mark Field writing about Family Intervention Programmes.
I can’t top that.
Argh… will this man never stop spending?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/nov/27/brown-global-fund-copenhagen-commonwealth
322 - I there a full market on Poster of the year available.
There’s no one I’d like to lay, but it would be interesting.
325 ‘RBS is insuring £280 billion of its most toxic loans and assets with the Government’
Mindboggling numbers. We’re screwed.
329. “There’s no one I’d like to lay, but it would be interesting.”
Um…
331: tim’s exploring his ‘curious’ side.
Ricky Whittle arrested!!! Arghhh!!
As it’s before the lagershed, I have to admit, words fail me.
However, all is not lost. It’s a paparazzo that he is alleged to have assaulted. And apparently this chap was previously the alleged victim in an incident with Paul Gascoigne.
Does anyone know how SCD works in the final stages? How many make it to the final and do the judges or the public ultimately decide?
329 TIMBOT, stick to the onanism.
tim could do quite well in the PB poster of the year competition. I could see him getting Jedward type support.
333. stjohn - For anyone who likes to watch a swiftly moving market, I advise a visit to SCD on Betfair.
The action is thrilling !
Hmmm unusual for Local byelections to make the nationals.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/triple-blow-for-tories-in-council-byelections-1829309.html
333: I think for nigh on all the series it’s been designed for a 3person final.
However in most series someone has had to pull out for various reasons (injury, or health, or personal reasons). So often it’s a two person final.
It’s still the points/public vote though. however it’s much more likely that the audience vote will win..and in the case of a two man final it will.
134 - so typical of you tim.
Labour are in a league of their own when it comes to spin and smears.
The problem for your party is that everybody knows it.
337 ‘Liberal Democrats dealt a heavy blow to Tories in the latest council by-elections, taking three seats off them.’
‘heavy’? 3 seats?
287. “Well, for the last 20 years there have been satellites measuring the temperature of the Earth from space — measurements that are reasonably straightforward and trustworthy.
As sure as we know anything, we know that the mean temperature of the Earth has increased slightly over that timeframe.”
Show us the raw data, if you can. One of the consequences of the CRU scandal is that “the experts tell us” isn’t good enough anymore.
338. Thanks Slackbladder.
So are you saying if only two celebs are in the final that the public vote will decide it; but that if it’s three celebs in the final, the public narrow it down to two and the judges then decide the winner between those two?
On topic: “Next time, of course, there will be new boundaries everywhere apart from Scotland and I would expect a much smaller gap between the two columns.”
No, it’s only down from 6.1% to 5.6%. So the boundary changes have made a negligible difference.
That is the starting point, although of course on election day a change in the pattern of turnout and/or Labour’s tendency to do best in the smaller seats would alter the gap.
I’ve noticed on this site that people who try to crush the life out of it with boring, repetitive political comments often feel the need, once in a while, to post a comment like, “Flash Harry at 5/1 at Uttoxeter is free money” in order to gain the absolution of others who say….”but he is a real betting man”
63.
“Recession ‘is even worse than feared’: Chancellor”
It is not fair for Darling to divert attention from the economy to Khamereon’s hair problems.
319. Wow, are you suggesting there is one single Qango left, in the entire of the united kingdom that isnt stuffed entirely full of Labour placemen?
Thats an outrage, surely Gordon should do something about it.
304. I lost some interest when Hingis went too, albeit for a somewhat baser reason than betting - she had the best legs of any dancer, professional or celebrity, in the show:-)
318. Chris is probably your best bet if you think a Darren Gough type (not the best dancer, but with a personality that appeals to the voters) is going to win. however, this runs into the problem that Ali is both a better dancer than he is and a very likeable personality in her own right (her professional, Brian Fortuna, is also very popular). I’m not a betting sort myself, but I’d say she has to be the favorite if Craig really has crashed and burned.
345 - wage slave has arrived, post-skipping glasses on…
The anti tory radio 5 smear campaign continues.The bbc do really want andy coulsons head.
282.
“You entirely miss my flipping point.”
Gwynfa is a shadow cabinet member with a high threshold for changing his ‘unprincipled home’ designation?
256 SthLondonNick
Thanks; That is a must-read article by Steve Richards - by far the most convicing explanation of Blair’s stance on Iraq that I have seen.
342: Seeing as theres a very strong likelihood of a 2 person final, then the public vote will decide it effectively. Theres still points, and they added to the public vote. However as the public vote always takes priority in the event of a tie, then the public vote will always take it.
342. No, in the final it’s entirely down to the public vote. The judges comment, but thay don’t score.
348 He must be on a weekend early release scheme from the asylum, as part of his rehabilitation into the community. It’s clearly not working.
337. It’s made *a* national.
A struggling leftie rag with a rapidly dwindling circulation which is desperately trying to find some straws to clutch onto in the hope of fooling itself that the Tories are as hated in the country as they are in their editorial office.
348.
“post-skipping glasses on…”
Neil, I thought you had graduated to jacks or hopscotch.
Meanwhile, in the other part of the playground, weedy Gove minor is baring his buttocks for a good pasting from the prefects. Swotty Goodman has blown the gaffe on him telling porkies to the head boy to try to worm his way into his favour.
Hizbutt’s getting very sore.
92. Constan Treader: Way up thread I know, but I was responding to the other reports in the MSM about the further evidence about cash for Hizb ut Tahrir, amply provided by other posters here. In particular the Andrew Gilligan report. Why did I need to supply these references as well? My point was that the BBC, which is supposed to give all sides of the question, did not report this angle. And it doesn’t seem to me that the story is an “unmitigated” disaster for Cameron, although clearly that is how the BBC want us to understand it.
345. If it starts with “Kham” I ignore it.
O/T Eu Commission
Epic fail for the British campaign to prevent Michel Barnier from getting the Internal Market and financial services commissioner portfolio… Yesterday, both Brown and Sarkozy pushed on Barroso, guess who won?
Just compare yesterday’ s Times article
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6934287.e
and today’ s
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6934718.ece
314 Gwynfa - Sorry but asking for data on other planet’s temperatures will not help. Data from satellites of Earth atmospheric temperatures is flat to all intents and purposes, certainly within any margin of detection for sensors trained at other planets.
And you might want to review the data of solar cycles. If you think that is constant you have some reading to do. And remind me - is it the sun that is actually responsible for the actual heating of this planet anyway? Remember CO2 doesn’t heat the planet - it simply can act to reflect more heat in some situations
356. “Hizbutt’s getting very sore.”
Maybe you should team up with tim?
He sounds up for something “alternative” today.
The long recession cannot dim my fame,
Of course I am not to blame,
If you ask I’ll tell you why,
It all started in Dubai.
316 - CR, humour really needs to rely on an element of surprise. If he came up with something new, or didn’t take it so seriously, then it might be amusing. Its not about the subject - imagine replacing Clegg with Cameron or Bruce Forsyth or Fiona Bruce or HMQ or whoever, look at it again, and then see what reaction it engenders in you. And whether you feel comfortable with that, given everything else you know.
353: They still score I think…but not the final show-dance.
Mash = lol
“But Bill McKay, an accountant from Dunbar, said: “I’m not a scientist, but last week I noticed some mosquito-like creatures buzzing around the light at my back door. Again, not a scientist, but… mosquitos, November, Scotland.
“Someone needs to explain that to me, because as things stand, it does seem to be a tad fµcked up.”
O/T amused to read in Pb.com’s favourite commentators latest blog (on AGW) that Rod Liddle claims “I do have a bit of knowledge about stats, and randomness and chance”
Well he showed precious little knowledge of that expertise in his piece post the Mori poll. Perhaps like that Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society, Jack Straw figures aren’t his strong point.
http://www.spectator.co.uk/rodliddle/5576613/stats-and-climate-change-a-response-to-jim-ryan.thtml
262.
“Three local by-election gains by the Lib Dems from the Tories on a low turnout in late rainy November have about as much significance to next years general election result as the rash on my bellend.”
Depends which Shadow Cabinet member gave you the latter! More seriously, if anyone cares to plot where the Lib Dens are doing well and where they are not doing well in local elections and by-elections over the past three years, you might be able to guess the 3-6 Solihul-like constituencies that they could win GE seats off the Tories even when losing up to a dozen seats the other way. Similarly, poor Lib Dem results against Labour (like the Knowsley result yesterday) might give a hint of where those leading the Lib Dem team are seriously sub-standard and chances of a gain at the GE are less than minimal.
363. Fair enough. I sometimes laugh at slapstick and childish pranks. Other time I like acerbic wit and satire.
Not picky I guess - but Little Britain is annoying.
349 - Coulson must now stay in his position.
Its very helpful to have the highest paid Conservative employee being a proven bully.
From Bishop Hill blog:
This from a correspondent - no verification as yet:
1) Lord Rees (Royal Society) to be asked by UEA to investigate CRU leak.
2) Foreign Office and government leaning heavily on UEA to keep a lid on everything lest it destabilises Copenhagen.
3) CRU asked to prepare data for a pre-emptive release in past couple of days but trouble reconciling issues between data bases has stopped this.
Just catching up after a night shift, good to see the thicket in full flow. Gabble appears to have missed the links to the recession being deeper than originally thought. I am sure he would have posted them if he had. I mean there is no way he is a partisan tit is there?
Modern Britain:
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/new-campaign-urges-teens-to-‘get-up-the-spout-in-ilfracombe’-200911272263/
DISGRACEFUL.
(anyone know where I can buy a cheap ticket to Ilfracombe?)
366.
“Rod Liddle claims “I do have a bit of knowledge about stats, and randomness and chance””
But what relevance has initimate knowledge of bra-sizes, and subsequent indiscrete dalliances, to politics?
369 - Why are you giving up on your prediction that he will be sacked?
369.
“Its very helpful to have the highest paid Conservative employee being a proven bully.”
unlike….say….a recent Labour spinmeister….or even a certain Prime Minister?
349 - Coulson must now stay in his position.
Its very helpful to have the highest paid Conservative employee being a proven bully.
by tim November 27th, 2009 at 2:26 pm
Classic thicket post, totally unable to see the irony in what he has written.
367 - Wage Slave - looks like you’ve volunteered yourself.
369- lol, you really are shameless
Oh, and a hypocrite
tim=lol
more flipy floppy than a pair of flip flops.
I just wrote to Damian Green about a peculiar immigration issue that I’m trying to deal with. The Home Office/UKBA decision on it won’t be made until about a year from now so I’m expecting him to in charge by then. I wonder if he’ll get back to me…
Who is Khamereon???
308.
“Dubai is driving everything in the market at the moment.””
“Errrrr… Mr Farquarson, you wanted to know what happened to your pension fund. Well you see… my inside source told me ‘Do Buy’….”
Heres a little something for tim and Gabble.
Gabble likes to talk about our modest little recession and tim likes to talk up Darling’s qualities as Chancellor.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/budget/6665948/Chancellor-poised-to-cut-growth-forecasts-to-lowest-post-war-level.html
“Alistair Darling will use the pre-Budget report (PBR) next month to slash his economic output forecast this year to the lowest level in post-war history.”
“The Chancellor will cut the official economic forecast for 2009 to around -4.75pc, from the Budget’s forecast of a 3.5pc contraction”
Quite a revision there eh?
I know maths not your strong point timmy, but what percentage would you say he was out by?
What numpty would ever have claimed “no more boom and bust?
still,
“things can only get better”
I think Coulsons experience of running a bullying camapign will come in usefel in the General Election.
Although it is disconcerting that he’s now so high up in Dave’s inner circle, the moral equivalent of putting McBride in charge of the Civil Service.
The other thing is the strange fact that dogs take on the look of their owner.
I am told that Andy Coulson, the News of the World Editor-turned-Tory-spin surgeon, went purple faced when he heard of the whopping Wapping £800,000 pay-out to Matt Driscoll, the football reporter bullied out of his job.
http://www.sportsjournalists.co.uk/blog/?p=2216
Dave and Coulson should do press conferences next to each other, just so the “I can sing a rainbow” range of face colours can be visible to all.
314. “[2] If it is the solar luminosity that has changed, then the temperatures of all the terrestrial planets (which we also know from satellite measurements) will all have changed in step over the same time-frame. Do they?”
Mars is also warming up -
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/070228-mars-warming.html
Mercury doesn’t have an atmosphere (and isn’t being observed by satellites anyway) and Venus is FUBAR as far as climate is concerned. Needless to say, there is no AGW on Mars so why is it warming up if AGW is the key factor on Earth?
384 ‘The other thing is the strange fact that dogs take on the look of their owner.’
TIMBOT, it must be terrible to look like Gordon Brown. You have my sympathy.
I am starting to feel very sorry for tim. He started off very much like Brown with a reputation for being effective and correct in all his dealings. However just like Brown over exposure has revealed that he is actually just not very effective or very good. In fact he is actually just a bit crap.
Like Brown his reputation for competence has been completely shot and he is now just a figure of fun and that is what he really hates. He like Brown is just a laughing stock.
Now his only claim to fame is as de facto leader of the thicket.
One factor here which you may think will favour the tories is that there will be more BNP in 2010 (200 or thereabouts)- who may stand in more labour seast than not, and eat into their vote
However, had a quick clook ta the top 50 Labour marginals - seeing where BNP have stood before, are newly organisd sicne 2005 or did well at the euros and are likely to stand
And although new places like Harlow, Selby, Dartford, Aberdeen South and Loughborough will get a candidate (last 2 confirmed candidatures), and their vote will go up is say Burton or Nuneaton, they are unlikely to stand in areas like Battersea, Hove or Finchley etc
**** Betting POST ****
I think Natalie Cassidy is the value bet to win SCD. I have just been matched at 10/1 on Betfair.
I hadn’t realised how important the public vote is in deciding this competition. The public will love someone like Natalie winning the competition. Not typically glamorous, down to earth and appears a genuinely nice girl. The other one the public seem to like is Chris Hollins. I can’t see why myself.
Come on Natalie!
Are Labour still trying to create an equivaence between MacBride and Coulson? You’d have thought the thumping Rusbridger got would have given them a clue to stop.
351. “(Blair) told him that one of his key second-term objectives was to show that a Labour PM could work as closely with a Republican president as he could with a Democrat. His other main objective was to join the euro.”
Interesting.
“Duncan Smith had close links with the Republican administration in Washington and some newspapers noted that IDS might be Britain’s key link with Washington now that Blair had lost his close friend, Clinton. Blair was determined not to give up such space to a Tory leader….
….If the Tories had opposed Iraq from the beginning, Blair’s calculations would have been very different. In the light of Duncan Smith’s ardent support for war he was never going to risk allowing the Tories to be the pro-American, pro-war party and Labour to return to its 1980s position of being “soft” on defence and anti-American.
The political calculation was therefore straightforward. As far as Blair was concerned, if he had opposed the war he would have destroyed the New Labour coalition and given up vital ground to the Conservatives.”
“Shortly after the war, in the summer of 2003, Blair turned his mind to the euro and was livid when Brown as Chancellor placed impossible obstacles in front of him.”
Even more interesting.
IDS is to blame for Iraq? And Brown for us not joining the Euro?
Was Blair responsible for ANYTHING?
362.
“Was Blair responsible for ANYTHING?”
Three consecutive Labour election victories?
391. Despite my reaction to that - it does ring as 100% true.
The Conservative opposition from 1997-2006 must rank as one of the most influential oppositions *ever* on government policy.
394 Yes, I thought that sounded plausible, Casino. It is certainly the first explanation I have heard that had a consistent ring of truth about it, couched as is it was in strategic long-term considerations rather than isolated fact-based decision-making.
Surely we must now be due some polls?
Excluding AR for PB, the last polls had fieldwork ending on 15 Nov, ie 12 days ago. Even allowing for the fact it normally takes a day or two after the fieldwork is completed for a poll to be published, that seems like a much longer gap than usual.
393. Touché.
397:
Look at it this way. He created the conditions for Cameron.
94/95. Oddly enough, altho’ it does have a very plausible ring, I don’t think it was THE motivating factor for Blair. It might well have been a desirable outcome of a position that Blair wanted to adopt anyway, but I do believe that Blair allied himself with Bush primarily because he was convinced of the rightness of the cause, and because he felt he would be a key moderating influence between European/UN diplomacy and America. It’s what he said, and I think it’s what motivated him. The IDS thing (who never looked like a contender let’s face it) was probably for Blair just a pleasant side effect.
OT
Lord Pearson elected leader of UK Independence Party
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8381992.stm
360 pumpkin, I was suggesting possible tests of a theory proposed up-thread.
I do realise that the Sun’s cycle is not constant, & I do realise that the Sun is not solely responsible for heating the planet.
395. Yes. But strategic long-term considerations of whom? The Country, the Labour Party.. or just Blair?
You see you can draw out many interesting questions from this. One of them is: to what effect did the pursuit of this policy of the Right hasten the demise of Tony Blair and New Labour *and* make the coronation of Brown inevitable?
Would Blair have been able to serve a full third term without it? Were it not for Iraq, mightn’t a credible New Labour candidate have stepped forward with support from the parliamentary party once Blair *did* stand down? In other words; did just this one event discredit Blairites too much?
Or would New Labour have collapsed and Brown taken over in any event?
402 Who knows, Casino? I just thought it was a plausible explanation of what actually happened, an what real politics is like.
398. Yes he did.
But wouldn’t that have happened anyway even *without* Iraq?
My analysis: The 2005 election is dull. Blair loses support (again) for failing to live up to high expectations and delivering the improvements in public services he’d promised. Charles Kennedy tries to make an alternative left-wing pitch for votes but makes only 3-4 net gains. Meanwhile the Tories - having supported the disastorous US Iraq War invasion of 2003 - get pilloried in the press fail to make any progress at all in 2005 under Michael Howard. They finish 5 seats up on 2001. Votes: 40% - 30% - 20%.
A third Labour landslide is achieved. Labour MPs - sensing the dismay and feebleness of the opposition - dislike Blair but are in no mood to rock the boat. Gordon complains but Blair doesn’t budge. Blair serves full third-term promising to hand over to a successor after a fourth win.
I find it hard to read how Blair would have handled it if he’d still been PM and Brown Chancellor when the Credit Crunch hit in 2008-2009.
Would he have sacked him? And for who?
402/403. I think the media drove the narrative about Iraq fuelled in some quarters by being pro-Brown; the Tories always seemed like bystanders playing catch-up. Brown worked tirelessly to discredit Blair and the fortuitous (from his pov) coming together of anti-war and pro-Brown journalists worked enormously to Brown’s advantage. Of course it did leave him with the awkward legacy of Iraq which he still tries to maintain had nothing to do with him.
304. If Iraq had not happened then everything would be different. Brown would not have managed to topple Blair. It took the Iraq war to do that. It’s one reason I believe Blair was sincere and not merely tactical in his support for Bush. Supporting Bush was clearly doing him enormous political damage and he could have chosen not to get involved in the war. The fallout from ever growing anti war feeling from the summer of 2002 onwards was surely a much greater political threat than IDS allying himself with America. Without Blair the hawks and neo cons might well have gone it alone agaisnt Iraq in 2002. It was Blair, Straw and Colin Powell that insisted on taking the UN route. They always thought they could pull off a grand diplomatic coup - war in Iraq . Of course they failed.
OT - just received this from my 84 year old mother in law..
GORDON BROWN was visiting a Scottish primary school and the
class was in the middle of a discussion related to words and their meanings.
The teacher asked Mr. Brown if he would like to lead the discussion on the word ‘Tragedy’. So our illustrious leader asked the class for an example of a ‘Tragedy’.
A little boy stood up and offered, “If ma best freen, wha’
lives on a ferm, is playin’ in the field and a tractor rins ower him and kills him, that wid be a tragedy.”
“Incorrect”, said Gordon, in his best trying-not-to-sound-too-Scottish-accent, “That would be an accident.”
A little girl raised her hand, “If a school bus kerryin’ fifty
children drove ow’r a cliff, killing a’body inside, that wid be a tragedy”
‘I’m afraid not’, explained Gordon, “that’s what we would refer to as a great loss”.
The room went silent. No other children volunteered. Gordon searched the room. “Isn’t there someone here who can give me an example of a
tragedy?”
Finally, at the back of the room, a wee lad raised his hand and, in a quiet voice, said: “If a plane kerryin’ you and Mr. Darlin’ wiz struck by a ‘freendly fire’ missile & blawn tae smithereens, that wid be a tragedy.”
“Fantastic!” exclaimed Gordon, “and can you tell me why that would be a tragedy?”
“Weel”, says the lad, “it has tae be a tragedy, because it
certainly widnae be a great loss, and it probably widnae be a f*cking
accident either
Good to see a much more nuanced debate on climate change early on in this thread, with expressions of doubt on their position from those on all sides. Maybe the message is getting through that the average person is peed off at being shouted at.
On the substance, however, I read links on here yesterday which vehemently said one thing though and today I’ve read something else which dismantles what was said bit by bit so frankly I’m no further ahead on what is happening and why.