The Swingback Myth - Do governments really recover?
January 2nd, 2010
A re-run of Andy Cooke’s December 2007 guest slot
(This analysis first appeared on PB in December 2007 and has been much quoted both here and in the mainstream media since. It’s even more timely today and I thought it was worth re-running - MS)
One of the most widely held items of received wisdom is “The opinion polls always swing back towards the Government as the Election approaches”. That mid-term blues will always overemphasise an Opposition’s performance in the polls and these will wear off as the Parliament winds down towards the next election.
Received wisdom can well be right - there is always a reason somewhere along the line that any given fact ends up as received wisdom. But sometimes it can be wrong. Usually when this happens it was a truth that has worn off, that has gradually ceased to be so, leaving only the story of its presence behind.
The thing is - in cases such as these, many people still end up betting on defunct received wisdom, which leaves a whopping great opportunity for the more questioning among us. The trick is, of course, to identify which items in the pantheon of received wisdom remain valid and which are now dead. Whether you agree with the thrust of this article or you don’t, at least it should cause you to question this belief - so if you remain a believer, at least you will now be more confident in your belief.
So - let’s have a look at “The opinion polls always swing back to the Government.” The main reason that this popped up a bit of a flag for me is that when I noticed this argument, I thought - hang on. I don’t thing that they did last time. The long period of Tory rule meant that a swing towards the Government was exactly equivalent to a swing towards the Tories. If the rule was valid, there should have been such a swing towards Labour in the last two elections - which doesn’t appear to be so.
Let’s look at the facts. As is frequently pointed out, it’s very difficult these days to compare polls from before the “great methodology change” of 1992-1997. However, MORI have pretty much sustained their “all adults naming a party” methodology and to their great credit have made available their archives back to 1983. This provides a decent baseline for the traditional methodology (the one under which the “rule” was coined).
ICM were the pioneers of the new weighting methodologies, with “spiral of silence” adjustments, first applied in 1994. They have made available their archives since 1990 and they have retrospectively adjusted their 1992-1994 figures to meet the new methodology (Thanks to Anthony Wells at ukpollingreport for making all of these figures available in a very convenient form). Accordingly, we can compare equivalent polls from a Tory Government to the last two Labour Governments in order to see correlations in swingback between midterm and polling day.
For each, what we’d expect to see is the Government (after a short honeymoon period) losing support until the mid-term and then turning it around and steadily recovering until the polls. Individual polls should vary about this tendency, but comparing the average score for the middle year of the Parliament with the following election should provide the data that we’re after.
MORI - LONG BASELINE (1983-2005), “TRADITIONAL” METHODOLOGY
1979-1983 Parliament
Mid-term (calendar year 1981) average: Con 29.5, Lab 36.5, Lab lead 7%
1983 Result: Con 44, Lab 28, Con Lead 16%
So a swingback to the Government (or the Tories) of 11.5% as against the mid-term polls
Note: The “Falklands Effect” must have had some level of influence upon this result - so at least some of the swing to the Conservatives would be over and above the “underlying” recovery
1983-1987 Parliament
Mid-term (calendar year 1985) average: Con 35.5, Lab 35.5, Lab lead 0%
1987 result: Con 43, Lab 32, Con lead 11%
A swingback to the Government (or the Tories) of 5.5% as against the mid-term polls
1987-1992 Parliament
Mid-term (June 1989-June 1990): Con 36.5, Lab 48, Lab lead 11.5%
1992 result: Con 43, Lab 35, Con lead 8%
A swingback to the Government (or the Tories) of 9.75% as against the mid-term polls
Note: The near death of the third Party and its recovery as the Parliament wound on has to have had some effect. Again, I suggest that the recovery of the Tories was enhanced by this
1992-1997 Parliament
Mid-term (June 1994-June 1995): Con 24.5, Lab 56, Lab lead 31.5%
1997 result: Con 31, Lab 44, Lab lead 13%
A swingback to the Government (or the Tories) of 9.25% as against the mid-term polls
So far … so what? The rule seems to be working fine. Strong correlation between the rule and reality - at least 5% swingback for the Governing Party, enhanced by winning wars or events such as near-demise of the third Party mid-term. However - we’ve only explored the situation for a Tory Government. We could equally argue that a rule stating “there is aways a swingback to the Tories from mid-term to polling day would be equally valid. To seperate the two conditions, we need to explore what happens with a change of Government. And now we have a change of Government and we can “press to test”
1997-2001 Parliament
Mid-term (calendar year 1999) average: Con 27, Lab 53, Lab lead 26%
2001 Result: Con 33, Lab 42, Lab Lead 9%
So a swing away from the Government (or towards the Tories) of 8.5% as against the mid-term polls. Hmm.
2001-2005 Parliament
Mid-term (calendar year 2003) average: Con 29, Lab 43, Lab lead 14%
2005 result: Con 33, Lab 36, Lab lead 3%
So a swing away from the Government (or towards the Tories) of 5.5% as against the mid-term polls. Again.
Maybe it’s isolated to MORI. Let’s look at the ICM results.
ICM - SHORTER BASELINE (1992-2005), “MODERN” METHODOLOGY
1992-1997 Parliament
Mid-term (June 1994-June 1995): Con 29.5, Lab 49, Lab lead 19.5
1997 result: Con 31, Lab 44, Lab lead 13%
A swingback to the Government (or the Tories) of 3.25% as against the mid-term polls
Okay - still a swingback to the Government - if not as strong as the MORI polls showed.
1997-2001 Parliament
Mid-term (calendar year 1999) average: Con 30, Lab 48, Lab lead 18%
2001 Result: Con 33, Lab 42, Lab Lead 9%
So a swing away from the Government (or towards the Tories) of 4.5% as against the mid-term polls. Again - a swing away from the Labour Government - less pronounced than the MORI figures show, but definitely not the 5%+ swingback to the Government that we’d expect and that those that cite the rule tend to imply.
2001-2005 Parliament
Mid-term (calendar year 2003) average: Con 32, Lab 38, Lab lead 6%
2005 result: Con 33, Lab 36, Lab lead 3%
So a swing away from the Government (or towards the Tories) of 1.5% as against the mid-term polls. Again a swing away. Again, noticeabley less in magnitude than under the traditional polling system (so we could assume that the “new methodology” acts to dampen large swings in public opinion). But that swingback that we expected is once again absent - any swing here is away
FURTHER BACK
Getting data from further back is very difficult. It appears that the 1974-1979 Parliament had very variable poll scores - to the point where Labour was level in the polls with the Tories in 1978 - but 7 points behind by the election in 1979. This doesn’t really fit with the rule - which tends to be quoted as implying an inexorable pendulum, shifting opinion away from the Government until it bottoms out in mid-term and then swinging steadily back towards the incumbents. Of course, there would be some variation around this central pattern - but the fluctuations between 1978 and 1979 would seem too large to be a variation around a trend of swingback to the Labour Government.
The Feb-Oct 1974 Parliament was rather abbreviated - the “mid-term” would have been May/June 1974. The only data that I’ve got is that before the campaign (end of August/start of September) “Opinion polls showed Labour running 10 points clear of the Tories” (from the BBC website). Their 3.5 point lead in the actual election shows a swing away from the Labour Government from that point of 3.25%.
The last time that I can say with confidence that the “rule” worked for a Labour Government was the 1966-1970 one. And even that one had a surprise swing away from Labour at the end.
CONCLUSION
My conclusion? The rule came about because it was true - at least until 1970. Maybe even to 1979 - with some exceptions that tested it somewhat. It has broken since then. Every election since Maggie Thatcher walked in to Downing Street has seen a stronger showing by the Tories at the ballot box than their mid-term polling levels. And a weaker performance for Labour. Under “traditional” polling methods, swings to the Tories of 5.5%-12.5% have been recorded - averaging over 8% swing in the Tories favour (9% when in Government, 7.5% when out of Government). Under the “new” polling methods, the size of these swings is less - but the direction is the same.
Why has it changed? I don’t know. That’s the realm of speculation. It would be very nice to know why, however. These figures have shown the death of the “Swing to the Government” rule and its regeneration (like a wounded Time Lord) into a “Swing to the Tories” rule. It would be nice to know if this rule also comes with a sell-by date as well.
There may yet be a swingback. But I wouldn’t put my faith in the rule that “Governments always recover from mid-terms”. They don’t - especially, it seems, if the rosettes worn are red. Bet with your head on the trends you see, and don’t assume that there is a pendulum acting for the Government (or even, despite the apparent trend that we’ve seen above, for the Tories).
1 - The swingback rule has not worked for recent Labour Governments; instead there has been a “swingaway” effect.
2 - Even if this has been an aberration, the “new polling methodology” tends to dampen such swings; a swingback to the Tories under MORI of 9.25% (1992-1997) was only 3.25% under ICM.
Andy Cooke
MessageSpace Advertising
Crosby bait.
2 - You took the words right out of my mouth
1: “Crosby Bait”
*Gets out pop-corn, opens a fresh beer and settles back for the fireworks*
Crosby Still (talking) Gash
Moi
FPT. 303. history boy, nice one , very witty. Not so keen on the rash though.
Rod’s going to skweem and skweem and skweem!
Personally, I don’t see how anyone can argue with Andys article though. It seems to me to say it all in unequivocal terms….
Can we re-run the answers too, Mike.
I really can’t be bothered doing it all again…
To be fair to Rod - even if his theory held water this is no ordinary election as we are in no ordinary times. An unelected PM, two wars, biggest recession since the cavemen, massive debt and no vision from the goverment. I would say the Conservatives were in better shape in Jan 1997 than Labour are now.
Labour are doomed - DOOMED to defeat!
First!!!
[corrected for Swingback]
@8:
I’ll save you the bother:
RodCrosby: You’re selectively choosing polls to support your thesis
Mike Smithson: No, we’re not.
Rod Crosby: But if you apply my proportional swinbacklerator differential turnout woowoo to the…
Everyone: Shut up, Rod.
Labour have already regained 60% of their lost votes in the last seven months. They only need another 20% to remain the largest party, and about 3% to force a hung parliament.
http://www.titanictown.plus.com/hp/kalman.png
I rest my case.
The polls suggest there has already been a degree of swingback, don’t they? So if this isn’t just a general rule, it must be because more and more people think the Government is doing really well, right? Hmm. As secondary questions don’t entirely support that theory, I do think that there’s an element of swingback going on, mainly because people are seeing the coming election as a choice between Lab and Con rather than a referendum on Lab.
Several very interesting posts on the previous thread. Some replies:
Roger: Well… I’ll shortly be fighting an election under one leader or another, and all the plausible possibilities are perfectly acceptable to me and much preferable to Mr Cameron. I have a private preference between them, but I guess you’ll understand that I’d rather not comment in public at this point. In any case if I were going to express a public view, I don’t think I’d choose pb.com as the most effective place to do it.
FergusMac: scrutiny of Bills is better than is generally supposed. See for example http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmpublic/cmpbmarine.htm on the recent Marine Bill. It’s a myth that European directives can simply be nodded through - they require enabling legislation with the details (which is where you get arguments about gold-plating). The main area where things go through almost undebated is secondary legislation which has already been foreseen in primary legislation. For example, the Animal Welfare Act allows the Government to issue guidelines defining what is and isn’t ill-treatment, and they’re currently consulting on whether to stop allowing wild animals in circuses. That won’t need a full 3-reading debate, though if the opposition really hated the proposals they could force a debate anyway.
John Lilburne: it’s frank of you to admit than from a libertarian perspective you prefer ineffective government. However, if the system is designed to make change difficult or impossible, it effectively disenfranchises reformist parties, and that shouldn’t be the rule of the political system.
The Danish model seems not bad - list PR, so all views get represented and nobody has an overall majority, plus a not very constraining written constitution, plus a qualified majority needed to pass constitutional change without a referendum (>80% I think).
Edmund’s idea of apolitical voters delegating their referendum votes is original, but it happens informally through abstention. A typical minor Swiss referendum will get just a 30% turnout - that’s because the majority decide they’re not much bothered and/or don’t understand the issue well enough to take a view, so they delegate the decision to people who are interested. Another advantage is that it integrates extremists, who have a chance to get an idea through if they tailor it moderately - I don’t like the anti-minaret vote, but it’s better to have a democratic way to canalise the view with a limited proposal than to leave it to fester in the likes of the BNP and the EDL.
Great article well worth reposting. Thanks OGH and Andy Cooke. My own feeling, and it is not at all empirical, is that under Maggie Labour managed to rebrand the Tories into the party of the selfish, ie the party that you vote for if all you think about is your own wallet. Thus voting Tories has been branded as the guilty pleasure.
This, I think, has too effects, both of which will tend to understate Tory performance at election time during the mid-term period:
1. people actually believe it is more altruistic to vote Labour or LibDem than Tory, so when the hard choices are not immediately upon them, their heart rules their head and the think they prefer the non-Tory alternative;
2. the soft Tory support will not be honest except in the privacy of the polling booth, which will also help explain why the Labour vote recall is higher than the actual Labour vote was.
Both of these lead me to believe that the rule as morphed to the “Swing to the Tories” rule (with a dampened effect because of the new weighting methodologies), and that, with polls now in the 40:30:20 range, what we’ll see come election day is more like 43:26:21
Btw, does anyone know if it’s possible to do an accumulator/parlay bet with the bookies on seat bands?
13 - Actually they haven’t
Opinion polls do not equal votes
When people have had a chance to vote against Labour in the past year, on the whole, they have done so in a pretty convincing fashion
FPT continuing (addition to my last post) for voreas (with a connection to UK politics at the end)
This is interesting, in that actuality is relegated because of spin put out beforehand. I suppose that’s the danger of taking time to make decisions but it does mean that the spin could potentially be shown to have been lies, this supposes a long game however, and that fails when close to an election.
Where it falls down in the short term though is that people are predisposed to believe lies if it is politically in tune with their thinking. It’s been successful on things in the US such as ‘death panels’, an outright lie, or others such as places of birth etc. where poll after poll shows that people believe a lie and don’t actually appear to care that it is so. It is also a tactic to say that the reaction to such spin is an ‘excuse’, people often trusting the first version of something they hear. It’s horrifyingly insidious as a campaigning tactic.
It’s worrying if the UK falls further into that therefore, I don’t think we are that far gone but there is a sense that Brown is gearing up to use similar tactics. Put out ‘facts’ which are contradictable but which chime with potential supporters as being hopefully true.
It’s gutter politics and, though we have a politics that is worryingly based on personal issues (much of tim’s MO), we aren’t yet in the mess of lies being the currency of vote grabbing. God help us if we do, quite frankly.
FPT continuing (addition to my last post) for voreas (with a connection to UK politics at the end)
This is interesting, in that actuality is relegated because of spin put out beforehand. I suppose that’s the danger of taking time to make decisions but it does mean that the spin could potentially be shown to have been lies, this supposes a long game however, and that fails when close to an election.
Where it falls down in the short term though is that people are predisposed to believe lies if it is politically in tune with their thinking. It’s been successful on things in the US such as ‘death panels’, an outright lie, or others such as places of birth etc. where poll after poll shows that people believe a lie and don’t actually appear to care that it is so. It is also a tactic to say that the reaction to such spin is an ‘excuse’, people often trusting the first version of something they hear. It’s horrifyingly insidious as a campaigning tactic.
It’s worrying if the UK falls further into that therefore, I don’t think we are that far gone but there is a sense that Brown is gearing up to use similar tactics. Put out ‘facts’ which are contradictable but which chime with potential supporters as being hopefully true.
It’s gutter politics and, though we have a politics that is worryingly based on personal issues (much of tim’s MO), we aren’t yet in the mess of lies being the currency of vote grabbing. God help us if we do, quite frankly.
18 & 19 - Nope. Not a clue how that happened…
FPT 303 History boy
Events, dear boy.
1979-83: Falklands, falling inflation and incipient economic recovery.
1983-87: Government got its act together post-Westland, unemployment started falling
1987-92: Change of PM, (proposed) abolition of Poll tax, falling interest rates
1992-7: Economic recovery
1997-2001: Tories reverting to core-territory, firming up their own support
2001-5: IDS dumped in favour of Howard, Iraq turned out badly for the govt.
Traditionally, governments implemented unpopular policies early on (whether necessary or indulgent), and hoped that a combination of time, effect and more popular policies closer to the election would recover ground lost in the meantime.
New Labour adoped a different strategy of permanent election: aiming to be as popular as possible as often as possible. The one exception was Iraq (a poor choice of ground on which to make an exception, as it turned out), consequently the usual cycle doesn’t apply and they’re even more at the mercy of events than usual.
6. It’ll clear up of its own accord.
Afternoon all
We are coming to the end of a second protracted spell of Government by a single party which is surprisingly common in Britain but alternates with periods of more regular changes of administration.
One can argue that the period 1964-79 was one of those periods of regular Government change and within those times there is perhaps an accentuated effect of a small movement of voters where you have the two main party blocs running almost level.
Since 1979 and arguably at earlier periods (1964 and possibly 1945) long-serving administrations are brought to the edge of political collapse by events. I’m to be convinced that the current Government is in those terms as close to collapse as the Callaghan and Major Governments.
A better parallel might be 1964 when a Government with a clear majority in the HoC was simply viewed with contempt by the electorate and nothing they said or did made any difference. In the absence of meaningful polling, we don’t know how the parties would have stood in a late 1963 poll but we do know that Orpington showed a degree of volatility in the Conservative heartland which had not previously been observed.
That said, Labour still had a lot to do to win a majority based on the 1959 result but they managed it (albeit narrowly). While there are no obvious ideological parallels between David Cameron and Harold Wilson, the one thing they do have in common is that people are more able to identify with them and they speak in terms which resonate with the voters far more than the incumbent Prime Ministers.
As to whether Cameron is the Conservative Harold Wilson, I would merely say he has managed his party as effectively and brought them to the brink of power as competently.
14. Nick Palmer
The polls suggest there has already been a degree of swingback, don’t they?
On what basis Nick?
Not on a comparison of November and December 2009 polls where the Conservative figure has strengthened marginally and Labours has sat still.
Not on a comparison of December 2008 and December 2009 where Labour is 7 points worse now and a 3.5% swing from Lab to Con.
Not on an average of polls on a year on year basis between 2008 and 2009. Labour are three points lower in their vote share and there has been a further 1% swing from Lab to Con in terms of the Conservative lead.
Basically unless you can specify exactly what period you are referring to I suggest that the only place where swingback is actually occurring is in the furtively desperate and delusional minds of Labour supporters still recovering from the humiliatiing experience of polling 16% in the Euro elections and seeing their county council presence virtually wiped out.
Of course Nick keep believing the illusion of swingback and Labour’s poll recovery because to a great extent that’s what got Labour in this situation in the first place!
stodge January 2nd, 2010 at 2:55 pm
Browns Government has already effectively collapsed. Sure he is still PM but it is a hollow edifice. Do most people believe what they hear come from the government these days? Most people think anything Labour says is spin, blatent lies or smears.
I really sometimes think you post and comment in hope rather than actuality due to the likely contraction in Lib Dem MPs coming.
As i posted before yesterday, this does not just feel like a change of Government election but something far more profound. Labour are hiding something truely shocking about there period in power thus the extents they go to try and stop the tories. It is not rational the way Labour behave - therefore i think your ideas on how the next span of government will be affected is not just out of date: The Goal posts have been moved and Labour once shifted out of power have some terrible secrets that will be unearthed and cause further problems for them!
Labour are hiding something very big indeed they dont want the public to know.
Still I like the start of your comments with the
25. This is one of the causes of the swingback myth (or perhaps more accurately, why different definitions get confused).
There has been a swingback from Labour’s worst figures, either in absolute terms (that 52% share the Tories got in Sept 2008) or as an average over a moderately short period e.g. a couple of months (also around late Summer / early Autumn 2008). It would be pretty unlikely - and frankly, pretty poor political management - for the government to trough out right at the election.
However, just because there’s likely to be a recovery from the worst point, it doesn’t mean a smooth upward line from there. Indeed, it doesn’t mean the line will be moving upwards at all in the run-up to the election.
Labour has improved its position from May this year but is down on where they were in December last year. To be honest, I don’t think past trends are particularly useful in projecting future movements in this case.
19 I think though Paul in the case of my opinion of Obama I now tend to think the worst due to the fact that I am only really interested in how he comes across as regards the UK.
From the beginning he has searched for a cooler relationship with the UK and given Brown’s brown nosing of him and his own apparent belief that he is super human combined with the perception that he now dithers(regardless of the reason), means I am now far more receptive to criticism of him than a year ago. To be fair he has earnt that sceptism through his words and deeds.
If you believe this is unfair on Obama, most of what I am hearing about him is through the ultra pro obama British media so it may not be the way the story is being told to me, it may be the fact that I am asked to suspend my critical faculties because it is Obama which makes me do the exact opposite.
14 Nick P, I admit that if the political system contains too many blocks to change, then people are effectively denied the ability to choose a reformist, radical Government. However, we are going down the route in the UK where an elected Government can rule unopposed if it has sufficient seats in Parliament. In your world, 51% of the electorate maybe should be able to dictate to the other 49% - in reality it is 40% of the 65% who vote, that’s about a quarter of the electorate. There are surely “macro” issues where we have to have central government rule, such as macroeconomic policy, defence, the common legal system of the country, and foreign relations. But the rest is surely better delegated to a much more local level. At the moment, Government can rule by virtue of a majority in the Commons, and is increasing its reach to every part of its subjects’day to day activities. But the traditional areas of countervailing power - local councils, independent minded MPs, the idea that in a common law country you can do pretty much what you will as long as it is not illegal - have been smashed. We need centres of countervailing power that make Government ineffectual not on the macro issues that it, and only it, can address, but the multitude of smaller issues that affect its citizens’ day to day lives.
27. David H.
I fully agree. I noted that Andy used ‘mid-term’ figures - I checked and whether we look at the term as a whole or just Brown’s term currently there is no swingback indicated with those ‘mid-term’ figures (Nov 2007 or Dec 2008 by my reckoning) and Labour’s figures seem to be worse than those ‘mid-term’ figures.
Unless swingback has a tightly defined definition then it is meaningless.
I think someone on here last night said that Gordon Brown calls summits as leadership debate blocking tactics, and spaces them out because that question will always rear its ugly head.
He’s now doing it again with this nonsense about the Yemen.
GB is really starting to scare me now. As we approach the general election, what will be his tactics then, once the election becomes unavoidable.
Be afraid, be very afraid.
PS I write this listening to my scumbag chav neighbours, laughing and joking next door without a care in the world or their pea sized brains. Yet another nu-labour creation, which like some big fat maggott has to be fed from the taxes of hard working law abiding British people.
8 - Rod, whilst I’m not dismissing swingback, do you think your biases are colouring your judgement
Rod Crosby wrote
“I am not anti-Tory. I am anti-wanker.
And at the moment, the Tories are wankers….I am not anti-Tory. I am anti-wanker.”
And at the moment, the Tories are wankers….
http://politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2009/12/08/icm-data-just-63pc-of-blair-voters-sticking-with-brown/#comment-1339073
Remember what Vito Corleone said, “Don’t hate your enemies, it clouds your judgement”
Voters are not like salmon, subject to forces which they themselves do not understand that ineluctably draw them hither and thither. They change their voting intention for a reason.
Voters might decide to stick with the current government on the ground “better the devil you know”. I can see that line of thought might get increased traction in the run-up to a general election. But to do so, there must be something fundamentally worth valuing in the present government. There is not much sign that the bulk of the electorate see very much worth keeping in this government. The non-voting intention questions in most polls are very damning.
Voters may change their vote in the run-up to an election based on avoiding the riskiest choice. Labour is trying to present itself as a safer choice than the Tories. Frankly, it has its work cut out. If voters draw the opposite conclusion, we may yet see further swing away from Labour.
30. Labour were 20% behind in mid-2008. They’re now 10% behind.
That’s a 5% swingback from their worst position.
Another 1% (or less) and we’re in a hung parliament.
Another 2% and Labour could remain in office…
33 - I think Labour could have “won” an election with that approach, however everyone will throw the following comments back in their, face, more than likely, fatally damaging Labour’s credibility
“No more boom and bust”
“Best place”
“We saved the world”
“0% Growth”
34 - Why Mid 2008? Why not December 2008?
Where the tory lead was down to 1%
Since then, we now have Tory leads of around 10%
34- The ’swingback’ is calculated against an actual election result, which we do not have yet.
Why has it changed?
Undoubtedly because of Murdoch’s power - which had not really taken off in the 70s. It has given a huge boost to right wing media hegemony - it is irrelevant that Murdoch has backed NuLab (till recently) - it still means that constraints are put on left of centre (or left wing) politics. And it means that the swing towards election time will be rightwards. This time however, with various status quo orthodoxies as being widely perceived broken, it couldjust pan out in a different way.
Betting post (especially for Peter the Punter):
Corals have a novelty bet: “Green Party to win a seat in the House of Commons in 2010 - 11/8″. Ladbrokes, by contrast, offer only 11/10 for the Greens to win Brighton Pavilion. I’m on!
OT The perils of making up an age when registering for a website.
I’ve just been sent an email congratulating me on being 100yrs old today
If this happens then this could make the election even harder to predict in terms of shifts:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/6921281/Britain-facing-one-of-the-coldest-winters-in-100-years-experts-predict.html
Brown was nuts going in Decemeber 2009.
I have no strong feelings on swing back either way, however iirc there was a big swing back to Labour at the end of 2008, and they still got battered in the Euro and CC elections in 09.
My guess is that this will be rather like the 05 election in reverese, in which Howard managed to stabilise the Tory position so that we only got beaten rather than humiliated. Labour aren’t touching the bottom any more but I don’t think there is much room for their score to improve.
If the Conservatives got a 5% swing from recent polling figures t’would be a (bigger) disaster for the red team. Huzzah!
34 Rod, you’re comparing apples and oranges. If you’re going to compare polls from different years they must be from the same time of year or the comparison is worthless. Like your completely untested theory.
If you compare Labour’s position now to the end of 2008 and 2007, it’s much much worse.
32. And I suppose the 76% of ramping Tories who inhabit this site are just disinterested parties offering perfectly objective analysis…
I make no bones about it. I don’t like Cameron, and hope he never becomes PM. But in the 30 years I’ve been looking at elections I’ve disliked and despised many politicians on all sides.
Nonetheless, I usually predict the election right.
41. Should say: Brown was nuts not going in Decemeber 2009!
Wow - dip in quickly and find my name in lights!
Anyway - very briefly (should be in the living room with the kids right now):
Nick notes a degree of “swingback” since the Labour nadir. There has also been a large degree of “swingaway” since the Labour zenith. The article was penned to refute the claim that at that point - in the middle of the mid-term - Labour were certain to recover. Implying a Labour majority.
I think that’s now seen as highly unlikely, anyway. And as both David Herdson and jsfl have noted above, there will always be a swingback and simultaneous swingaway from the worst and best positions respectively, unless the highly unlikely event of the absolute low point (or high point) of popularity coincides with the election.
For what it’s worth, I believe that David put his finger on why the swingback rule broke down in post 22 above. Couple that with the traditional power of the PM to choose an election when he’she deems the moment propitious, and you see why there should be a swingback in such situations. When the PM plays it long, to the 5-year end, that final advantage is lost. If the incumbent Government uses the perennial election mode playbook as David notes, then they won’t have plumbed the depths of potential unpopularity from which to recover.
(P.S. Happy new Year, everyone!)
Gordon Brown is relying purely and simply on the old Labour adage, which internally many on the far left have always relied on, namely that the left vote has nowhere else to go. And it’s true, they don’t.
Come general election day, the left vote will re-emerge like some sleeping dragon.
However, i still stick to my original, and now 2 year old thesis that GB will attempt to thwart the general election in some way, and if he can’t, he will walk away.
Gordon Brown does not do general elections. He has had a rock solid labour seat since 1983. Kirkcaldy would vote for Donald Duck in a red rosette. In other words, zero competition.
Something has happened to Gordon Brown in his life, where he will not do anything unless the outcome is guaranteed. people say he calculates, and then moves. He doesn’t. He calculates, decides whether he is guaranteed to win. And if there is any risk AT ALL, he doesn’t move. Simple.
That is not calculation. That is being dictated to by events.
That is drift.
Also on Corals is 5/2 that UKIP will win a seat and 1/5 that David Cameron will be Prime Minister on 31 December 2010. The last of these looks very generous, given the Conservatives are typically 1/12 to win most seats.
28 - It’s going to be interesting to see what the relationship with Cameron will be like, I’d hazard to guess better as they are closer in age and temperament.
32 Mr Eagles - that had me laughing out loud
Brilliant, post of the day for me!
34. Oh Rod
We can all play that game - the mid-term from Brown’s Premiership (July 2007-May 2010) was Dec 2008 so if you take the figures from then Labour’s average deficit for the month was around 5 points - now it’s 10 points. That’s a 2.5% swing TO the Conservatives.
If you want to do the actual mid-term figures for the whole term it’s November 2007/ December 2007 by my calculation which suggests a 1% swing To the Conservatives. There is no evidence of swingback at all in those cases in fact there is slight evidence of the opposite.
The thing is Rod the way you play it you can make it up as you go along just to validate your own theories. If you select the date ranges to prove your point it becomes meaningless…..
44 - perfectly objective analysis
I look forward to seeing your perfectly objective analysis when Robert Smithson puts up his next VIPA article.
Swing back can only be definitively declared after the election.
Yes, there had been a trend of narrowing in the polls in the last few months but equally has a government as bad as this one ever put taxes up in the running straight before an election on things that are going to cut into folks desposible income at the time of year when they will still be paying for xmas? Added to which the likely worse winter weather in a long time further eating into folks desposable income on heating and the like.
Swing back is a reasonable theory but far too academic. If you look back to 1997 the Tories did indeed have a similar improvement and solidification in the polls but the economy was doing well then. Even if there is a statistical recovery and the unemployment figures show the move from unemployment benifits to other state benifits paying the same amount - Will anyone believe it?
27. David Herdson it is now 2010 and may this year was last year.
34, Rod your breaking my heart.
David Cameron fired the starting gun today for the longest GE campaign on record:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8437645.stm
It will be bitterly fought, and even NPMP will come away from this with his claws dirty.
For us PBers it will mean plenty of opportunity to place bets. My bet is for a tory overall majority of between 44 and 66 seats.
BOMBS AWAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!
34. However, compared to the end of 2008, Labour were polling worse at the end of 2009. Whoooooppppppsssssss, sorry we don’t mention Oct-Dec 2008 because it blows your theory out of the water.
50 - I’m saving my very best for the cybernats
Rod, is your model available on line anywhere?
Would be nice to see it peer reviewed
I hope Cameron will at least comes across as less supine. Whether it will make any difference to US policy towards us I seriously doubt. Anyway here is hoping.
RodC
“Nonetheless, I usually predict the election right.”
Remind us of your prediction for the Crewe byelection will you Rod
58 is for UKpaul at 49
32- very funny, and very, very good advice. I think a lot of opponents of the Tories hate us so much that they think everyone else does so too. They don’t seem to understand that some people dislike them too.
59 - Another Richard, he did say usually.
This is my favourite Rod Crosby prediction. Who isn’t biased at all
Ha!, as I said two years ago, the Newsnight panel shows voters are only bluffing. They are not really going to vote Tory in a month of Sundays. They are just saying it because they are p1ssed off with Labour, and have to say something.
Combined with the train-wreck interviews of Gove, May, Johnson, Pickles, etc. and universally negative media coverage, this is proving a perfect conference - for Labour.
Expect the Tory vote to start heading south, towards 35%.
And you know very well what that means…
http://www.titanictown.plus.com/hungornot.jpg
http://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2009/10/05/is-this-pay-back-time-for-the-suns-announcement/#comment-1249084
Did anyone hear ‘Listener’s Look Ahead’ on R4 today at 2pm? It ended with predictions about the election. Sure this is a self-selecting sample of R4 listeners, and maybe not a typical segment of the public, but the message from these listeners was striking.
1. They have what struck me as unprecedented levels of gloom both regarding foreign and domestic affairs. No confidence or even hope regarding Afghanistan and nothing but doom regarding the economy.
2. The majority not only believe there will be NOM at the election but positively welcome the idea of a national unity government to address the crisis ahead which they fear is looming
The media narrative in recent weeks has certainly instilled the idea of a hung parliament in people’s minds. But this reaction went beyond a cool appraisal of this liklihood. There was a sense of national emergency; a sense of national decline; a sense of hopelessness with regard both to foreign policy and the future role of Britain. The quantitative approach of opinion polls is of course important, but they miss out on the all important qualitative aspect of opinion - the mood, the depth of feeling, the emotion of the period. Surely Martin is right to say something more profound is going on than simply a change of government election.
59. I was the first to say the Tories ought to, and probably would, win it!
56 You are displaying passive aggressive behaviour and I claim my £5
[I was looking for a post of mine on the last thread and discovered I'd been name-checked [13x by one poster] more times than I’d actually posted -
65- as they say on the goggle box, you’re worth it!
65 - Take it as a compliment.
I’ve always been told, if someone is that aggressive to you, and seems to mention you all the time, then they are really in love with you
Nick Palmer @14: “delegating votes… happens already through abstention [in referendums]”
This is partly true, except that if you’re deciding an issue by a referendum the abstainers don’t have a choice who they delegate to; If they don’t turn up, the decision gets made by people who do. There’s no option in the referendum for “I dunno, let my MP figure it out.”. (Although if you’re really dedicated you could achieve this effect by finding out what they recommend and following their recommendation.)
At the same time, they only get the option of a (direct) say at all if the issue is actually put to a referendum, which as you say already has a bunch of hurdles even in referendum-crazy Switzerland.
What I’m thinking we should do is just to start letting the people decide wherever they want to in the legislative process, and also decide at what points they think they should make decisions themselves, rather than leaving it up to somewhere else. A bit like the Catholic doctrine that the Pope is infallible, but only when he says he is…
67 I believe it’s called Mentionistis - my ex had an acute case of it before he ran off with a work-experience student
60 voreas you mean 49.
What I would love would be a PM of any flavour at all who rather than repairing the special relationship would formally declare it dead and buried (if it was ever alive in the first place). It has never yielded anything except incredulous embarrassment at the antics of various pms, and a special opportunity to invest our own money and soldiers’ lives in insanely pointless wars. It is the same kind of relationship as that between Bernard Madoff and his investors.
67 - Castration is too good for him
71 - Was for 69. Castration isn’t too good for me.
71, Mr. Eagles, you’re too harsh on yourself
62. Whereas in fact the Tory share went up after the conference season, back into the 40s - where it stayed until the Lisbon ratifiaction.
Perhaps one of the most striking feature of the 2009 polls was just how consistent the Tory share was, in the low- to mid-40s up to the Expenses Scandal, dropping off two or three points when that hit, heading back up briefly post-conference and down again in November. Overall, that’s a very stable set of numbers.
57. The by-election analysis you’ll find on this site.
The probabilistic swingometer I have posted before, but lots of people don’t have Excel, or don’t like opening unknown documents.
The kalman filtered polls and forecasts you can find on my blog.
http://hungparliament2010.blogspot.com/
69 – Odd choice of ‘emoticon’ there Plato, care to share?
34. The funny thing is that when the polls were suggesting ’swing away’, Rod claimed they were irrelevant and only ‘real’ elections counted. But when they have improved a bit for Labour, suddenly they are relevant after all…
76 - Perhaps Plato was the work experience student?
68 Edmund - couldn’t agree with you more.
Turning voters into mute sheep is no way to get them ‘engaged’.
When sensible fact based arguments are raised, it almost always gets through to your averagely uninterested voter - all it needs is a WTF? angle and the blue touch paper is lit.
CRB checks for giving kids a lift is just one of the most stupid ones where HMG and the public are at complete odds.
79, at least it’s one area of Labour consistency. People are not-yet and not-caught paedophiles, just as the accused are not-yet guilty if they’re found to be ‘innocent’.
74 - Agreed,
Looking at the polls of last year, out of the 138 Polls conducted last year
101 of the polls showed the Tories polling 40% or above
108 of the poll showed Labour polling 29% or below.
80. Morris D - I’ve always thought this was a subconscious admission of the guilt (of what I have no idea?) of Labour leaders. They assume we are all guilty because they know they are…
64 - And you got the London Mayoral election horribly wrong, didn’t you?
And let’s debunk another myth that appears to be gaining ground here, namely that a hung Parliament will necessarily be a vindication of Crosby’s swing-back theory which is entirely based on by-elections during a Parliament and NOT on opinion polls.
To be fair, Crosby has already stated that the swing to the Tories will be between 1.5% and 3.5% maximum: the latter would probably still see Labour as the largest single party. Any other result, such as the Conservatives holding a plurality, would DISPROVE his theory not uphold it.
ARRSE thread on Madman Al-Angry:
http://www.arrse.co.uk/Forums/viewtopic/t=141222/start=0.html
Warning: contains the world’s most dangerous cartoon. Viewing may involve freedom of expression.
82, it’s because the left have a deep belief in the likelihood of human failure. That’s why they think the state needs to hold their hand all the time.
The right believes in human potential, reward for success and penalty for failure, which is why it’s more focused on individual rights and responsibilities and less on statism.
76/78 close but no cigar
He kindly shared his sexploits with me - which were truly hilarious/weird confession listening.
Still we had a good laugh about it. Reilly Ace of Spies he was not
86 - Cigars? Affairs with Work experience girl?
You’re Hillary Clinton aren’t you?
Remember last time Sir John Major made a major intervention on Iraq?
Former Prime Minister Sir John Major has criticised Tony Blair’s handling of the Iraq war and his presentation of the case for invasion in March 2003.
Sir John said he had reluctantly backed the war because he believed what Mr Blair had said as prime minister.
But now, he said, big questions had been raised by the evidence given to the Chilcott Inquiry into the war.
He told the BBC the argument that Saddam Hussein was a bad man and must be removed was an “inadequate” one.
Sir John said it now seemed there were doubts before the invasion about whether there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8437422.stm
80 Mr Dancer - I heard a most ridiculous firsthand report at the height of this nonsense when a teenager was told that on the night of her 18th birthday she was no longer allowed to share a room with another girl.
The day before she was a ‘child’ - the next day a ‘potential sex offender’ that required a CRB check and seperate accommodation.
WTF?
70 Sounds like a vote for Hugh Grant’s PM in Love Actually?
87 Nothing better than a comic aside recognised
67. TES I’ve always been told, if someone is that aggressive to you, and seems to mention you all the time, then they are really in love with you
But wouldn’t that mean an awful lot of people are secretly in love with Gordon Brown?
13 - Rod said ” They only need another 20% to remain the largest party,”
LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL
“only need”
LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL
“things can only get better” eh Rod
83. “To be fair, Crosby has already stated that the swing to the Tories will be between 1.5% and 3.5% maximum:”
That is not quite true. The central forecast is 2.5%, but the real outer limit is 6.5%, which is the by-election average swing. No party has ever exceeded their average (i.e. there has always been a swingback)
I have never said the Swingback theory could forecast the election with pin-point accuracy, but it can rule out certain outcomes with increasing probability.
I would say the theory is only comprehensively demolished if the Tories do better than their by-election average (zero or negative swingback).
93 I missed that completely
85. MD I think we’re saying the same thing except I think I’m talking about cause and you’re talking about effect.
89, when sense is suspended in favour of regulations bullshit becomes an increasingly frequent occurrence.
91 - Was a waste of a really good cigar.
I’m so proud, I haven’t had a smoke since last year.
96, it’d be interesting if we got a sample of floating voters, proper Conservatives, Labour and Lib Dems and compared how they did on a given and fairly substantial personality test (something like the Keirsey thingummybob).
98, if you smoke your wife might give birth to socialists. Is that what you want?
89/97 - You’d hope it was a one off, but…
Nearly 127,000 children forced to have criminal record checks each year
The number of children forced to undergo Criminal Records Bureau checks has doubled in recent years in a dramatic expansion of Labour’s anti-paedophile vetting regime.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/lawandorder/6308565/Nearly-127000-children-forced-to-have-criminal-record-checks-each-year.html
98. TSE
24 hours without nicoteen for me. It’s starting to have OOB experiences
:-O
100 - My wife, is already a Socialist
88. I heard that interview with John Major on Today this morning. He came across really well. Major has a knack of giving rare but extremely well timed interviews. He’s been greatly under estimated IMO.
102 - It’s been 41 hrs for me.
Not that I’ve been counting
OT I was reading a link from Mr Dale’s Dozen and it struck me that even blogging is a collective activity for Labourists.
The only Tory one I can think of is ConHome - the left seem to have several and very few successful single voices outside Tom Harris who leads by a country mile.
There are a small number Liberatian ones such as Samizdata/Old Holborn with a group of contributors but it’s very much a novelty.
Have I missed something?
94 - But that’s such a huge variation as to make the whole theory meaningless in practice. A swing of 6.5% (your outer limit) would surely put the Tories on 39% and Labour on 29%, and the former on the cusp - at the least - of an overall majority, wouldn’t it?
103, that’s rather ruined my argument…
106 - Yes, you have missed something.
Since there are no outreach officers on the web, it’s why lefties are struggling.
99 Morris you mean this one?
http://www.keirsey.com/
I dunno I tend to think it’s all psycho-babble and all the ‘psychos’ (those who peddle such stuff) should either be fodder for the enormo-haddock or test rounds for the Space Cannon.
102 40 hours without chocolate.
Thwy really need to factor my lack of custom into the Cadbury’s takeover price…
108 - Well when I say socialist, she’s very good at spending other peoples money. Mostly mine.
She used to be a smoker too. There’s nothing worse than an ex smoker
As she tells me, giving up smoking is easy, she’s done it a 100 times.
111. MM - I was going to say can the economy take the shock?
111 - I’ve given up chocolate too. And booze too, and I’ve been celibate since October.
I’m going to crack up.
For information only:
iaindale
Will be on PM on Radio 4 after 5pm talking about Cameron’s speech with Neal Lawson from Compass and a do far unnamed LibDem
114. TSE - you haven’t joined a monastery have you?
113 It has guaranteed the W-shaped recession…
116 - No, I got married in October
85 - The right believes in those at the top looking after themselves and sod everyone else, whereas the left believes that everyone has a responsibility to help those at the bottom.
You see we can all play that game.
107. You can’t make any sense from that tosser John. I’ve given up even answering him.
RodCosby is set in concrete, and there he’ll sink.
110, I do think that such tests are imperfect necessarily (people are too varied to be divided into 4 big groups and 16 subgroups) but they are still of some use, I think.
118. I thought you were expecting, Eagles?
121 - Mrs Eagles is expecting, around Mid April.
Smoking a cigar and drinking a large Macallan every now and again are a pleasure too far to give up whatever time of year it is.
107. Yes, and that is why I think there will be a hung parliament. The 10% lead is the maximum the Tories can get under the swingback theory, and I think it will be a lot closer than that. My estimate at the moment is 5%, which is a little more than the central forecast, but that’s just my gut feeling, supported somewhat by the direction of travel of the polls.
The point surely is, if I can get the 2010 swing to within 1-2% by using a methodology published in 2006, that is still one hell of a forecast…
122. An election baby!
Are you going to name to name her (I’m sure it’s a girl) Raptorus?
Today’s Sun coined a new catchphrase “Land of Hope and Tory”
115. Thanks for the info Weathercock, I will listen in.
120. Morris unfortunately they are just another way of pigeon- holing people, IMO. A another way to exclude ‘the wrong types’.
Being a fan of ‘The Prisoner’ - I am not a number I don’t have much truck with such things.
125 - Actually it’s one of each, one boy, and one girl.
We had previously decided to name the boy Sebastian Morris, and the girl Emily Temperance, however we need to add one more middle name for each, as currently their initials are
S&M and ET.
126. A pleasure PollyB. I’m feeling particularly magnanimous today. I guess it’s the New Year feeling.
122 No sex from Oct to April ?! That’s seven months - crikey and my condolences - no booze is just rubbing salt into it.
119. SO
The right believes in saving and people spending their own money
The left believes in waste and spending other peoples money
You’re right anyone can do it…
130 - I look on the brightside, I was once celibate for 19years.
“Raptorus” what like a dinosaur?
Happy New Year everyone.
I see URW is being a scamp with his betting offers and James Kelly has packed in.
Why was the latter?
134 - Happy New Year to you Tim.
Re Mr Kelly, I think he got upset, that some people got upset over his midnight arguments.
128 Well for a girl - the middle name should be Naomi resulting in ENT
128. Temperance! Your barking up the wrong tree there me lad, or rather sitting on the wrong branch.
If you must use T foe a second name, Theodora sounds very nice.
Mr Dale has spotted a post on Labourlist that reflects Labour’s wishful thinking.
http://iaindale.blogspot.com/2010/01/polly-put-kettle-on.html
133. Don’t be silly Plato
No, Raptorus like a female Raptor
135 - WTF has been going on with the Bolton Manager market.
Owen Coyle turns down Celtic and is now 1/2 to accept Bolton?
TSE, there is a TV series called ‘Bones’ in which the female lead is called Temperance Brennan and the lead man, Seeley Booth.
You got to admit, ‘Seeley’ is kinda cool and unusual even though the kids will rib him mercilessly.
138. Saw that. Yet another leftie type desperately clinging to the pipedream that they are catching up…
140 - Without wanting to upset the cybernats, it shows that managing the Old Firm, isn’t as glamorous as managing struggling premiership side.
131 - And so we can …
The right is happy to see people sleeping rough on the streets (see Matthew Parris in today’s Times), the left is not.
In all seriousness, though, one of the problems that we have in this country (and I am sure it is the same in many others) is that left and right genuinely do not understand each other and believe that the other side is driven by mean self-interest. For the left, the right is all about preserving benefits for the wealthist and the expense of the rest; for the rigt the left is all about spending other people’s money and developing a client state on the back of it.
I admit that I indulge in this rubbish myself - and enjoy the baiting.But the grown-up in me sometimes thinks it would be a real advance in politics if we could all admit to ourselves - and acknowledge publicly - that the other side basically just sees the world differently. Once that happens, we can start to have properly engaging debates about ideas that could end in significant policy advances.
139
I quite liked the whole 1m Years BC furry bikini angle myself.
141 - Bones is where i got the idea for Emily Temperance.
Sadly, I was persuaded to let my wife choose the boys name, this time round.
I’m a big fan of David Boreanaz ever since Buffy and Angel.
Pretty boring FA Cup third round so far.
I guess that makes Leeds and Reading victories more likely
Or maybe that’s wishful thinking in overdrive!
147 - Well Rafa has picked a strong side tonight.
124.Rod
Shut up man your talking complete nonsense.
I can’t wait until you are proven wrong and you will stfu!
Your theories are not even scientific nonsense, they are plain ridiculous!
145. I will commiserate.
A very thorough analysis which should be read by those lazy journalists who like to comment without knowing much. The analysis shows that if there is any swingback nowadays, now that polling is better, it tends to be towards the Tories not for an incumbent Govt.
149 - Wayne, please, please stop, otherwise, will people start mentioning your predictions and forecasts.
144 Good post - my issue with the ‘left’ is that there is little about getting the feckless to pull their weight.
There are too many excuses made and that’s bad for everyone [including them] as it leads to low aspirations, wasted lives, early death and depression - and unnecessary taxes on those who do get out of bed when they don’t fancy it.
IMO, my mother [who was a senior teacher] was rather OTT when it came to ‘keep calm and carry on’ - I was sent to school will all manner of infectious diseases on the basis that ‘I’d feel better when I got there’.
I managed to give my whole class Scarlet Fever as a result of one such incident.
Re: 26 - Good to hear from you as always, Martin
I’m the one sitting with a SELL of LD MPs at 47 so don’t tell me I’m not prepared for there being fewer LD MPs than now though in the context of past Conservative victories after periods of Labour Government 35 LD MPs would be a good result.
Has the Government “collapsed” ? By the definitions of early 1979 and early 1997 it hasn’t. There is still a reasonable working majority for the passage of legislation and I simply don’t detect the same almost desire to go into opposition that seemed to exist in Tory circles in early 1997.
This lot want to cling to power and will be dragged away from it only once the electorate have spoken.
Well that was short but sweet. Ref Ian dale on R4.
152.
Stop what the man is talking nonsense. Only idiots would engage or listen to the crap this man writes.
Anyway mention what you like about my predictions, aside from a cabinet resignation that didn’t happen, most of my Poll predictions are fairly accurate!
135 - Thats a shame.
James, at least knew what he was talking about as opposed to most of the herd who niggled emptily away.
O/T What I want to know is how an incoming government is going to get the off-balance sheet debts onto the balance sheet and what the consequences will be.
88. Like Macmillan and Callaghan Major has struck the right tone in retirement. He has gone into the background which means that when he does speak on an issue he is guarunteed to make an impact. This is especially true over Iraq as voters will remember him in the First Gulf War.
The contrast with they way Heath and Thatcher behaved out of office is very striking!
144. Southam
is that left and right genuinely do not understand each other
Seriously, I don’t think that’s surprising as the two are in many ways completely opposite to each other and view life from opposite standpoints. The further to the left and right people are the less they are going to comprehend each other.
Consequently, they will not agree on an approach because they start from opposing positions. The thing is as well these opposites repel rather than attract.
Rather ho hum discussion on PM about Cameron. Dale sounded like he’s auditioning for that safe seat (and who could blame him). Neal Lawson as off message as you’d expect him to be. LibDems run the risk of seeming churlish if they keep on rejecting overtures of unity. As I posted earlier there seems to be a desire for national unity in the face of impending crisis amongst the public. So far only Cameron is picking up on that mood.
OT Erm, so it’s getting warmer according to the Met Office?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/6921281/Britain-facing-one-of-the-coldest-winters-in-100-years-experts-predict.html
Next ICM prediction
Con 41 Lab 28 Lib 19
Next Comres
Con 41 Lab 27 Lib 21
Next YouGov
Con 41 Lab 28 Lib 18
162.Plato, that picture at the top of the article is taken in the village of Kingussie, about 12 miles from Aviemore.
154 I hope you have hedged that. It is a possibility but 2 huge differences the professionalism of the Lib Dems versus previous Tory returns to power and now the huge variable of the debates, an opportunity no Liberal or Lib Dem Leader has ever had in this way.
Any polls due tonight,anyone?
144 A really grown up attitude would actually recognise when policies have failed and should be demanding transparency, honesty and unspun statistics so those same mistakes are not made in the future. It is neither useful nor adult to put on a show of being magnaminous and treating everyones opinions equally. What is truly needed to progress is honesty with yourself and others.
153 - This goes back to the brief discussion on the previous post. Listen to Blair, Brown and others in the 1990s and they were saying plenty about getting the feckless (I prefer the term “entitled bone idle”), about how it was poorest who suffered most from crime and so on. To my mind this is all natural left wing territory, but Labour has failed horribly to actually do something about it. It is a genuine failure and one that cannot be brushed under the carpet. But the approach on the other side seems pretty dangerous to me in that if you just leave people to it, it’s not just them that suffer, it’s their kids etc, and that just causes problems further down the lines.
As a top rate taxpayer, I am not left of centre out of any naive altruism, I believe that a degree of redistribution is in the best interests of myself and my family. But it has to be properly managed and those that abuse the system have to be dealt with harshly. That said, I am not convinced that great swathes of the population do abuse the system - there is a minority, but the vast majority take what they need when they need it, look to better to themselves and when they no longer need help they stop claiming. They should not be penalised because of a low-life minority.
157 HNY tim
He was never really the same after his Grayling/Dannatt moment over Trenberth; completely knocked the stuffing out of him.
So that’s one AGW herdthinker fewer on the site.
162. Even George Orwell would not have predicted that the Met office would be putting out disinformation about the weather surely? What a mad mad world.
160 - In my more reflective moments - as I sip on my Macallan and puff away on my Montecristo No 2, for instance - I can see the attraction in a lot of mainstream Tory thinking about personal empowerment, a smaller state, paying less tax and so on. However, I continue to struggle with the consequences of that philosophy in that people who have vry little or nothing just do not have the means to make the decisions and choices that those with a good or great deal have. And if that is the case, all that we will end up with is a more divided country, far greater inequality and stigmatisation of those at the bottom (see Peter Lilley, Norman Tebbit etc). It’s not what I want this country to be.
170.Andrew Neil put up an interesting post on his Daily Politics blog on the 30th. It’s going to be a cold 2010
“As much of the country braces itself for further snow falls and freezing temperatures word reaches me from several US forecasters that the whole of the Northern Hemisphere is in for a very cold start to 2010. Apparently there’s been a strong downspike in something called the Arctic Oscillation Index and the North Atlantic Oscillation Index is also strongly negative.
This alignment in both atmospheric circulation patterns in a downward direction has led some forecasters in North America to predict a bitterly cold snap for the first half of January for North America and Northern Europe. One AccuWeather senior meteorologist called Joe Bastardi is even forecasting
“cold of a variety not seen in over 25 years in a large scale is about to engulf the major energy consuming areas of the northern Hemisphere. The first 15 days of the opening of the New Year will be the coldest, population weighted, north of 30 [degrees] north world wide in over 25 years.”
Some other forecasters agree. But not the Met Office here in Britain, which is apparently sticking to its forecast of a relatively mild winter (I think … it’s not really clear from its website), despite recent evidence (ie from the mid-December onwards) to the contrary. Indeed, from Scotland to the Great Lakes in North America the December weather has been fiercer than it has been for quite some time.”
153 Plato, I agree. After the Labour movement’s success in seeing off the anti-democratic Left, I was very hopeful that they would have similar success in replacing the benefits culture with a sense of self-respect. Then, of course, to find so many MPs were caught up in a high-value version of the same thing compounded the disappointment.
So the Lib Dems are rejecting Cameron´s overtures of “unity”, Polly?
What are the terms that Cameron is offering?
I wouldn´t mind betting that, if Cameron promised to implement all existing Lib Dem policies, the Lib Dems would jump at it!
The problem is that Conservatives seem to think that “Conservative” = “basis for unity”. It is hardly “churlish” for Lib Dems to reject such a proposition.
167 - Indeed; and it applies to both sides of the debate.
172 - I suppose it depends on what you mean by winter. If you take it to last from 21st December to 20th March, a (very) cold snap at the front end does not mean that by the start of March things will be a whole lot warmer. If you then average temperatures out, the Met Office may turn out to be right.
171: Southam @ 17:31
“people who have vry little or nothing just do not have the means to make the decisions and choices that those with a good or great deal have”
What sort of decisions and choices are we talking about here? How can the state (read clerk in an office somewhere) know what is better for me than I do?
162 Plato
I mentioned your post to Mrs Nat. Quite unlike her to use such strong language!
If I can bowdlerise her response. Global warming in terms of average world temperature (whether anthropogenically caused or not) produces more extreme weather conditions.
On topic, it’s unremarkable that Labour should recover from its low point, during the Parliament. Governments tend to.
Likewise, the Conservatives have also recovered from their low point during this Parliament.
And since June, both Conservatives and Labour have advanced, at the expense of minor parties, slightly to the advantage of Labour.
But, three months from the start of the election campaign, by any historical standard, an Opposition which is showing leads of 8-17% is in a strong position.
The Conservatives have consistently been on 40% or so for more than two years, and they seem to have that vote share sewn up. In that situation, it’s hard to see how Labour can hope to do more than hold them to a small overall majority.
172 Bastardi said a year ago that he thought this winter would be cold and was also IIRC pretty damning early in 2009 over the BBQ Summer forecast. He isn’t a believer in AGW but his (and Accuweather’s) forecasts have been pretty good.
Hadley Cantre & Met Office certainly don’t help belief in their climate models when the forecasts for next few months are as poor as the summer & winter ones have been. Maybe they are hoping they can make themselves unmarketable with Brown planning to sell them off.
177 - I amnot talking about other people making decisions for you, I am talking about the state taking on part of the burden that the poorest face in terms of getting equal access to top quality education, healthcare, housing, transport and so on. The more the state withdraws from these areas, the less chance those at the bottom have of improving their families’ lives.
Christina
The MET Office updated their seasonal forecast a few days ago.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/seasonal/2009/winter/
They now appear to be erring towards a cooler winter.
172 And I called Mr Neil out on it too
Plato gets up early in the morning…
“13. At 3:26pm on 30 Dec 2009, you wrote:
Naughty Andrew!
“Plato Says (07:02:04) :
WHOA – great news. Top journalist and BBC front man tells it like it is
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/dailypolitics/andrewneil/2009/12/its_going_to_be_a_cold_2010.html
“As much of the country braces itself for further snow falls and freezing temperatures word reaches me from several US forecasters that the whole of the Northern Hemisphere is in for a very cold start to 2010. Apparently there’s been a strong downspike in something called the Arctic Oscillation Index and the North Atlantic Oscillation Index is also strongly negative…”
He’s been reading WUWT
REPLY: Indeed, he quoted me exactly, but without attribution:
Meanwhile I pass on this advice from one US forecaster who thinks we’re in for a tough time: “bundle up, stock up and get ready.”
-A”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/30/major-northern-hemisphere-cold-snap-coming/#comment-276834
171. SO don’t you understand that the country has become much much more unequal under new labour. There has been a massive discrepency between rhetoric and reality. My own experience, quite the reverse of yours, is living in what Brown would define as relative poverty since being made redundant at the age of 50 a few years ago. I dedicated 21 years of public service at a very modest salary and witnessed the ejection of many colleagues who were experienced, dedicated, hard working and decent. The only ones who survived our restructuring were the least scrupulous. Put bluntly the shits rose to the top where they creamed off fabulous public sector salaries and the less pushy but most deserving were tossed aside. No wonder I effing hate the labour party.
176 The Met Office define Winter as Dec-Feb, Spring as March to May, Summer June-August and Autumn Sept-Nov. So a warm March will mean a warm spring and not affect their October forecast.
We had a cold December and first half of January looks very cold, would be surprising if temps suddenly went sufficiently above seasonal average for second half of winter to make this a mild winter,
O rly?
Here is Kevin Trenberth, lead author of all the main IPCC reports to date, who disagrees with Mrs oldnat and takes the (laughably simplistic I am sure in Mrs oldnat’s eyes) view that colder weather -> colder climate.
This is a hacked email but his own report to which he refers is freely available online, so no conspiracy theory about it.
Hi all
Well I have my own article on where the heck is global warming? We are asking that here
in Boulder where we have broken records the past two days for the coldest days on
record. We had 4 inches of snow. The high the last 2 days was below 30F and the normal
is 69F, and it smashed the previous records for these days by 10F. The low was about
18F and also a record low, well below the previous record low. This is January weather
(see the Rockies baseball playoff game was canceled on saturday and then played last
night in below freezing weather).
Trenberth, K. E., 2009: An imperative for climate change planning: tracking Earth’s
global energy. /Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability/, *1*, 19-27,
doi:10.1016/j.cosust.2009.06.001. [PDF]
185 Mother Nature also has an opinion
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/02/the-met-office-getting-a-clue-one-of-the-coldest-winter-in-100-years/
183.Plato, I should have read the threads too.
Seriously, how do you rate the Metoffice these days after lots of cuts and downsizing in the last few years?
184 - I understand that Labour has failed on many, many levels and for a natural Labour supporter like me that makes me very angry. However, it does not stop me being left of centre - though this current government has lost my support. At heart I believe that a degree of wealth redistribution is a good thing, not just for those who benefit directly from it, but for everyone because, if done properly, it will create a more equal, less antagonistic society. For me, the issue is how you manage the redistribution and at what level.
182.Gadfly, I used to be a regular follower of their predictions, but not anymore. A friend up in the Highlands clocked a day time temperature of -18 last week, we were certainly bordering -10 to -12 that day too. The snow fall and recent prolonged cold weather up here has most people talking about it being the worst winter weather we have experienced in at least 25 years, the met office are a little late to the party, we could have told them this. The temperature predictions in some weather reports recently have been a complete joke.
184 - I am surprised that your colleagues have been ejected as my view is that one of Labour’s great failings has been its inability to tackle the jobs for life nature of so many public sector occupations - including those in areas such as education and health.
188 I’m really depressed by the whole debacle.
I never ever thought scientists of any hue would do this stuff.
The lengths they went to, passing ‘confidential’ [insider trading stuff] to each other but not their critics is appalling.
186 Constan Treader
“old” is my first name. Mrs Nat please - she wouldn’t appreciate the old bit!
181: Southam Observer @ 17:40
There is a leap in your reasoning (actually there is more than one, but let that pass).
Let’s look at one part of state provision.
Suppose the state withdrew from the actual delivery of education (i.e. all schools were independent but the state gave parents education vouchers to cover the cost of schooling). How would parents at the bottom end of the income ladder be worse off? Could not the fact that parents have a choice actually drive up the quality of education on offer to the benefit of all?
What I do notice is that at the moment the rich do have a choice in where they send their children, and their children do tend to get a good education. Those on more modest means have to put up with what the state thinks is good enough.
Rich people can get on with doing what they think best for their families lives. Those less wealthy have to have “part of the burden” taken from them and assumed by the state. Why? Is it because poor people are too stupid to make decisions for themselves?
If this is how an Old Etonian’s chums run London Transport,heaven help us all if David Cameron and his buddies form the next Government.
Can someone please explain to Boris Johnson that the UK is stil in recession.
Tube and bus passengers across London have been hit with above-inflation price rises after increased fares came into effect.
Average Tube fares have gone up by 3.9% and bus passengers face a 12.7% rise.
How can Cameron hope to impose a pay freeze in the public sector?
Southam
I am talking about the state taking on part of the burden that the poorest face in terms of getting equal access to top quality education, healthcare, housing, transport and so on
And this is the problem - the state doesn’t take on part of the burden ever - they just tell the electorate to take on part of the burden (just like they have told us to take on the greatest state debt in history). The fact that the state cannot afford to compete for top quality services because the country cannot support such a burden just adds insult to injury.
This is why there will not be agreement because many of us when we here the left’s ‘If I ruled world’ (or Satchmo’s ‘What a Wonderful World’ ) pitch just know it is the stuff of la-la land.
I agree Christina.
On 27 October the Telegraph reported upon the Met Offices’s prediction of a mild winter.
Re 196. here - hear
189. Southam Observer - I don’t doubt you are a labour supporter for thoroughly reputable reasons. Many (most) of my friends stick with labour through thick and thin and they do so for very well intentioned reasons. But it really isn’t good enough to be so feeble in the face of the systemic and systematic failure of Labour. The party was seduced by the Mandelson/Campbell faction - which Brown was always complicit with, despite his pretence of not being involved in ’spin’. Their essentially deceitful approach to gaining power has progressively taken over the party, sucking the lifeblood out of it. All that is left now is empty rhetoric. The worst elements have risen to the top of the labour party - the best ones are all quitting. My critique of
194 HurstLlama
Seems a rather urban argument. Would you want the same situation to apply to schools in the sparsely populated parts of England, where the local school is effectively the only possibile one to attend?
199. oops - posted before I intended, but I think I’ll leave it at that (for now).
200 - And to give real choice would involve creating so much surplus capacity to make it uneconomic.
As the Tories know well.
194 - Poor people are often not in a position to make decisiosn for themselves. Take education vouchers. What happens if the really good school the poor person wants to send his/her kid to is at the other end of town and a £4 return bus fare away? That’s £20 a week. If two kids are involved you double that, and so on. It’s a big chunk out of the salary of someone on the minimum wage. Far better, surely, for there to be a first rate school a walk away. My belief is that it is the government’s job to ensure that this is the case.
196 - Spain, Germany and France all deliver education and health systems that are better than ours at tax rates comparable to those we pay.
197.Gadfly, thanks for that link. The last winter weather that I remember being this severe over Christmas and New Year was back in the early 80’s.
200: oldnat @ 18:04
So rich people don’t live in the sparsely populated areas of the country?
Where there is only one school at present, what is the reason that other schools could not open? For example, the local secondary school to me is some distance away it has a thousand pupils drawn from numerous villages and small towns spread over a wide area, and, to be blunt, isn’t actually very good. There is plenty of scope outside rural areas for more, if smaller, schools to open and thrive - if the state were to allow it.
199 - Believe me, I am not seeking to defend this government or Gordon Brown.
193 My apologies to the good and youthful Mrs Nat.
6 pm news = handbagging for DC from little Bennie Bradshaw of Exeter for not being specific about things, ticking off from Mr Trouserpress for the LDs for not tackling MPs expenses. AFAIR DC said he would start making specific policy commitments on Monday, so both a bit off the point.
208 - Seems Dave was specific about increasing long term unemployment.
Very brave from the polished PR man.
13. Labour have already regained 60% of their lost votes in the last seven months. They only need another 20% to remain the largest party, and about 3% to force a hung parliament.
I rest my case.
Why go back to May 2009? Why not go back to 2005? Labour has lost 15% of their votes from that baseline, according to your figures. On your graph, the Conservative trend line is level, or up, or down, depending on how far you go back.
132. Luxury! I’ve been celibate for 41 years.
——–
Baby Names: anyone born today should have “Zizoio” as their middle name.
208 - David Starkey’s observation about Bradshaw should be played just before he speaks - each and every time.
209.
“Brave” is you coming here with Brown still in post.
203 Southam Observer
“the really good school”
The concept of “good” and “bad” schools is a strange one - especially in the way that the measures are used in the English system.
Consider the effect of transferring the staff of a school from a rich community with the staff of a school serving an area of multiple deprivation. Would the results transfer with the staff? Obviously not.
One can measure whether schools serving similar social communities produce better results than similar schools. However, as far as I am aware, such matching doesn’t happen in the English system.
Rod Crosby are your predictions of election results over the last 30 years published anywhere so we can admire your perspicacity?
212 - Don’t be silly.
Poor people are often not in a position to make decisiosn for themselves.
by Southam Observer January 2nd, 2010 at 6:07 pm
That is insulting to poor people and simply demonstrates my earlier point that Labour must learn they do not automatically represent the working people in the country and they must stop condescending to them.
Poor people are not stupid, they are simply poor.
Middle class Labour supporters on the other hand are often quite daft.
206 HurstLlama
I didn’t mention rich people. You say that your local secondary school “isn’t actually very good.” You may well be right - but how are you measuring that?
206 HurstLlama
Additionally, I wouldn’t describe an area that has a local secondary of 1000 pupils as “sparsely populated”.
204 The French pay considerably more than us for their public services. Most people would rate their health and education (but not Universities) highly, but they pay a price in terms of low economic growth, and high structural unemployment, thanks to their high taxes.
The Germans, however, do pay about the same as us, and, I’d agree, do seem to produce better results than we do for similar amounts of money.
The Spanish are certainly less-taxed than we are, and I can’t comment on their services.
Not everything is bad here. Basic administration, eg obtaining probate, the civil courts, land registration, registration of births deaths and marriages, is far more cheap and straightforward than in most Continental countreis.
There seems to be relatively little correlation between the tax burden, overall, in advanced countries, and the quality of public services. Taxes are heavier in Belgium and Italy, than here, but no one would write home about their public services. Taxes are less in Canada and Australia, and most people would rate their services highly.
216 One could say your last sentence is at best condescending,at worst rude to lower-middle class people who remember wildly oscillating interest/mortgage rates under the previous 1979-97 Conservative govt-amongst many other things I will not tire myself by recalling
203: Southam Observer@ 18:07
“Poor people are often not in a position to make decisiosn for themselves.”
Sorry, old man, but I have to ask you if you really mean that. Poor people are not in a position to make decsions for themselves and therefore….” Therefore, what? The state must make those decisions for them? The state must make sure they do not have a choice and therefore do not need to make those difficult decisions?
211.That was one of the most delicious moments ever on QT, he was certainly on sparkling form that night.
Paddy Power offer 11/10 on the Pope getting more than 85,000 at mass at Wembley. Wembley’s capacity is 90,000. Can anyone think of a good reason why Wembley wouldn’t be filled to capacity?
224 - CRB checks on the priests?
Have the post numbers gone backwards?
215.
Have a look in any Fantasy book!
“Poor people are often not in a position to make decisiosn for themselves.”
People have the right to make decisions for themselves. Part of the price of a free society is that they will sometimes make the wrong ones.
224.antifrank, it will be filled to the brim if the Pope visits. I don’t think the current Pope will create quite the excitement that his predecessor did, but they will certainly turn out for him giving mass. I cannot believe that he will not visit Scotland or Wales too, but if not, expect figures to be even higher.
222 He may, unfortunately, be correct. There may very well be a significant minority of people who really are unable, through circumstances, or capability, to exercise any real kind of autonomy.
The question is whether we hobble the majority, as a result.
Oldnat et al on rural schools. If you live further away from an urban area then choice is reduced obviously, but under the new Swedish-style free schools proposals as I understand it, a failing school can be taken away from the LEA and transferred to a new parent-led organisation, so where choice doesn’t exist in terms of quantity there is still a choice in quality and who runs the school. This is fundamentally different from now where you have to hope that a remote Minister notices and then decides to do something. In the end, the people most concerned with the education of children are their parents (in most cases). Putting them in the driving seat is going to transform the system.
Patrick what have interest rates got to do with Labour’s condescension to the working people of this country?
My first contact with a Labour MP at the age of nine was him condescending to me on my own doorstep because I lived in a terraced house and my mother worked in a factory to keep us. He said, out loud amd so dismissively that his agent winced, that living in ‘a place like this they are bound to vote Labour’.
Mind you he were a nob and not middle class.
Since then I have heard the same condescending attitude from several Labour ministers holding office since 1997 when they assumed I was ‘one of us’.
And all of those were middle class apparatchiks with about as much connection to working folk as a whelk has to an elephant.
As I said earlier I really do hope the Labour party sorts itself out as a good social democrat party is important for our democracy, but they have to recognise the insensitivity of policies set by the metropolitan elitists when those policies are pushed as ‘for the working class’ who don’t want them.
225. Tim why is Brown still the PM? Have you pals lost their bottle again?
225 That’s the sort of response I’d expect on the Burning Bush, or ianpaisley.org.
217 - If you do not have the money to pay the bus fare for your kid to travel to school and back each day you are not in a position to make a decision because you have no choice, you have to go to the school that is nearest. Saying that is not patronising, it is a statement of fact. Poor people are not stupid, they are disadvantaged. The question is what you do about it.
230 - “He may, unfortunately, be correct. There may very well be a significant minority of people who really are unable, through circumstances, or capability, to exercise any real kind of autonomy”.
What an elegant description of the current Cabinet.
“We are asking that here in Boulder where … We had 4 inches of snow.”
It snowed in Boulder, Colorado! Now THAT disproves global warming! *snort*
224. They may block off the seats at the end behind the “stage” though there will also be people on the pitch.
But I’d expect seats lost to much more than offset additional standing.
On Wembley Stadium capacity it all depends on things like stage layout. Madonna performed there to a ’sell-out crowd’ of 75,000 while U2 performed to 88,000 in the last couple of years.
On swingback, I am continuing to take an open mind as I feel it will only be part of the story. I have just had a look at Rod’s filtered charts and what I did notice is that the Conservative band has just widened out at the end of the year, whereas the Labour band has just shrunk. Obviously as January progresses the polls will set out the position as head into the election.
Looking the the regional trends still shows substantial Tory leads south of the Pennines which should be enough to provide a majority. Even NPMP still accepts that the Tories are in the lead in his area, so I tend to hold that the polls are telling us a lot. If Labour start to substantially recover in the Midlands then this may well change, but we would need larger & regular regional polling which I suspect we won’t get much of.
222 - No, the state should put them in a position where they can make decisions, or the state should make such decisions unnecessary. So with regard to schools, the state shoul ensure that all kids are either witin walking distance of a high quality educaiton or, if they need it, are provided with free transporation to such an education. The same thing applies to health care.
Happy 2010 all!
I just glanced over the last few spreads and am feeling pretty happy about getting in the top 10 for the predictions competition. One question though: what is the “entry” column?
234 - Why?
The Catholic Church hierachy has played the role of protector of child abusers for 60 years.
They deserve no respect whatsoever.
237 An equally tendentious form of reasoning as: floods in Cockermouth prove global warming.
228 - If you have very little money your ability to make decisions is severely restricted because you have few if any choices.
224 - I’d be careful with that bet antifrank, it depends on the positioning of the stage etc.
218: Oldnat @ 18:23
No you didn’t mention risch people but I did in my original post. The thrust of what I was saying is that rich people have a choice the less wealthy do not, but have to rely on what the State thinks is good enough.
Those with sufficient income seem to manage to get sufficent choice in, education, health etc., to satisfy their needs regardless of where they live be it urban, rural or sparsely populated rural.
In reply to you subsequent post. Having a single secondary school with a large geographical catchment area and so about 1000 pupils is common in England outside the larger towns and cities. I appreciate that in the Highlands and Islands life is different, thats why we have devolution and seperate systems, is it not?
236.
200.
Khameroen’s new year message (Cherry Blossom on the noggin version) has been :
“We can’t go on like this.” Unfortunately he can and does.
To quote Polly B:
“Their essentially deceitful approach to gaining power has progressively taken over the party, sucking the lifeblood out of it. All that is left now is empty rhetoric.”
The Blairite take-over of the Conservative Party is complete. Vacuous waffle rules. No wonder Polly Toynbee (who thinks that our present conservative government aren’t conservative enough) wants Brown to go. Her approach is basically the Man City ‘If we buy Man United then we will be Man United” line.
No wonder Khameroen wants to let people with ideas into his ‘big tent’!
234 Sean Fear. O/T But on Henry VII the actual location of Bosworth is due to be revealed soon. Leicestershire Council had a bit of worry by suggestions the battlefield was in Warwickshire after a multi million visit center had been built, but apparently it is in Leicestershire but a short distance further away than thought. They were surprised by the amount of Cannon shot apparently for such an early fight.
231 SthLondon Nick
I’ve been meaning to have a look at the new Swedish model, but haven’t done so yet.
The obvious danger with a “parent-led” school is that parents are generally (and quite rightly so) interested in the progress of their own children, as opposed to those of the community as a whole. The articulate middle-class (as usual) will dominate, and the school may skew its resources towards their interests, rather than being fair to all children.
243. I think playing a critical role in the fall of the Soviet Union and liberating millions from communism probably deserves some respect.
Re boys names. A young cousin of mine, born in the late 1950s, was Christened Maurice. My father’s comment was “Thank heavens they didn’t have a Volkswagen!”
If you do not have the money to pay the bus fare for your kid to travel to school and back each day you are not in a position to make a decision because you have no choice, you have to go to the school that is nearest. Saying that is not patronising, it is a statement of fact. Poor people are not stupid, they are disadvantaged. The question is what you do about it.
by Southam Observer January 2nd, 2010 at 6:38 pm
That is rubbish. And another insult to millions of people who have made the effort as my mother did. She had no money, no education, no generous state handouts, no minimum wage, but she made sure I got a good education, got a bus pass for me to go to a good secondary modern, a grant for uniforms so I could go to the grammar school at 16 and then to university. And that was forty years ago when all the current aids and grants were unheard of.
She could think for herself so could the people I grew up with in our street who helped her and me enormously. They were disadvantaged but literally got on their bikes and did something about it.
So please stop talking twaddle about things I would guess you have never experienced in your middle class life.
237. No doubt, but don’t come boring me about it. Kevin Trenberth is undoubtedly the most important AGW supporting scientist in this country and in the top ten globally, so if you have cleverly spotted a flaw in his reasoning it is vital that you put him right about it asap.
Good luck!
243 Do you need to ask?
For a Free P, it’s axiomatic that every Catholic priest is a paedophile.
The problem with paedophile priests is specifically a Southern Irish problem, because they dominated the State in a way that they never did North of the Border, or in the rest of the UK. Thus, the worst among them were above the law.
There have obviously been paedophile Catholic priests in the UK, but I’d suggest, no more than in any other institution that has regular dealings with children.
215. No, you’ll just have to take my word for it.
Really one or even two cold winters don’t disprove global warming any more than than a couple of very mild winters prove global warming. Its the longer term trend thats important.
For the UK it does appear that we reached some sort of peak in recent (i.e the past 20 years) warming in that incredibly warm period from June 2006 to April 2007, since when we’ve been witnessing a very slow downward trend of the jet stream and consequently temperatures. That dreadful summer of 2007 is looking increasingly like a turning point for our location. But again that doesn’t prove or disprove climate change.
The coming decade or two will, IMO prove colder for us than the previous two. The Pacific has gone cold. The Atlantic will do so in due course. Expect winters to become harder and summers to become poorer, on average (hot summers and mild winters will still occur, just not are frequently as they did in the 90’s and 00’s) Again, this doesn’t mean climate change isn’t happening or indeed that it is.
Oh and the weather in the coming week looks very bitter to me. Wednesday through to next weekend seems quite severely cold and snow could becpme very widespread. Brrrrrrr…..
254 - So your mother made use of grants and travel passes and, I assume, the NHS and a free state school system and, presumably, you got a full maintenance grant and a free place at univrsity. That is exactly what I believe in.
247 HurstLlama
I was enquiring, rather than arguing. I’m more than happy to have different systems - especially since Scottish geography is more disparate than in England.
My original point was more that you seemed to want to apply the same process across all your communities, and wondered whether you had thought of the implications for all of them.
256
“he problem with paedophile priests is specifically a Southern Irish problem, ”
Not so.
See Boston US and other dioces where the current Pope is alleged to have condoned cover ups…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/may/04/religion.uk
To be generous about politicians and their motivations for going into politics in the first place it seems to me that the classic swing back to the Government happened because:
1. The first part of a new administration puts in place its pet schemes and policies. This is done as a combination of policical belief that it is the right thing to do, a belief that it would be good for the country and pay offs to particular groups that got the party elected in the first place.
2. But in a democracy a government is elected to take the blame, for things their own fault but also for things that happen for other reasons. The aim of a new Government is to keep blaming the other lot for as long as possible.
3. The Government inevitably becomes less popular with time so the second half of the term in office is to use incumbency in ways tht will benefit the party rather than the country. They justify this to themselves on the grounds that the other lot will be bad for the country. Tax cuts, extra benefits, Xmas bonuses etc, anything goes.
4. Where it can all go wrong is because of (a) circumstances, e.g. global recession and (b) unanticipated negative effects from the policies put in place during the first part of the term (c) wearyness of the public of the same old lot of rogues carrying on in power.
Historically I think tories have been less ideological in their polices (Mrs T excepted) but also more prepared to ‘buy’ support with tax cuts and other goodies. Tories know from long practice how to move support towards them in the later part of a Tory Government. They naturally have much less ability to control events when they are in opposition.
240. “I have just had a look at Rod’s filtered charts and what I did notice is that the Conservative band has just widened out at the end of the year”
The size of the error bars is a function of how widely-spaced the polls are, and how different the polls are, as well as sample size.
They have only really widened because there was a 10-day break between polls at the end of the year.
As poll frequency increases in the run up to the election, we should expect the error bars to narrow to something like a 1% MOE.
232 I do hear exactly where you are coming from;
Personally my family are upper-working/lower middle-class- apart from a now retired aunt,university educated life-long Labour voter,they used to be Tory/Liberal..until in ‘97 en masse we voted Labour (as did a very large chunk of Britain)
Funnily enough,I am the most outspoken critic of Brown in my family-other relatives are still minded to ‘give him the benefit of the doubt ‘when the day comes.
I do not honestly know if I will
This would be the first time I have not voted Labour at a GE-I’m 39 next month,so 1992 was my first GE
259.
“….mother made use of grants and travel passes….”
….which, over the last decade in particular, have increasingly been phased out by local authorities as Blair/Brown’s New Labour mimic a conservative government. Even Polly Toynbee managed to notice that New Labour have managed to continue the Tories’ trend to polarise wealth. All money (especially capital) is is a method of distributing a particular set of powers. At least the Official Tories with their inheritance tax priorities have the ‘front’ to admit that increasing the dstance between rich and poor is what they are really about.
205. Southam Observer
Spain, Germany and France all deliver education and health systems that are better than ours at tax rates comparable to those we pay.
Britain has a much greater population density and 2 to 3 times the urbanised population than France or Spain respectively.
Consequently that would lead to bigger and more impersonal establishments and a higher pupil/teacher patient/ health professional ratios.
Germany on the other hand is much closer to the British in population density and urbanisation, so further analysis is required. However, I suspect it will be along the same lines.
Thanks for all the responses. It sounds like 11/10 is about right, maybe a touch generous. The church would probably like to do at least as well as U2.
261 The article states repeatedly that sexual abuse of children violates Canon Law. Jesus Christ was also pretty explicit on the subject. It is no surprise that a minority of people who are given regular contact with children will abuse them.
A few threads ago, we discussed several cases of teachers who had sex with their pupils. Thirty years ago, I don’t doubt that such behaviour would have been viewed more tolerantly than it is today, and it would have been more common to kick out such a teacher than to call in the police. That doesn’t mean most teachers are paedophiles.
Re 266 205. Southam
The German education system is devolved to the states and the federal Government has only a minor role.
So Southam I would contend in short as to why our public health / education don’t work as well as other countries is probably over centralisation of one sort or other (social, geographical or governmental or all of them)
267.”The church would probably like to do at least as well as U2.”
antifrank, I think you are right, they will want to make sure that as many people as possible get the chance to see the Pope live as it were.
256 - Nonsense Sean.
The Catholic hierachy covered up child abuse in the USA for years.
And in Britain.
http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/Ampleforth-child-abuse-scandal-hushed.1258869.jp
266 jsfl
Sorry to point out the obvious, but health and education are not “British”. Consequently, your point about “Britain has a much greater population density” is rather irrelevant. England does, and your comparison may be valid there.
265 - Labour had a once in a century opportunity to bring real change to the UK after 1997 and failed to seize it. What a waste.
269 - That could well be a reason. Although is it not the case that in Germany the system is the same everywhere, it is just administered at a local level?
18 “It’s been successful on things in the US such as ‘death panels’, an outright lie”
In the original healthcare bill there was clauses about having “end of life counselling services”. Palin dubbed them “death panels” on her facebook page and those bits were removed from the bill.
269 jsfl
The biter bit!
258. You are of course right. But if we get a third winter like this, and then a fourth, the warmist herd are going to start looking progressively sillier and sillier. So it is only being kind to them to start teasing them about it now so that they can start building up their immunity.
272. And the German health and education systems work through the states, but it is still perfectly legitimate to speak of the “German system”, just as it is legitimate to describe the aggregated health and education systems of this island as “British”.
Equally, it is perfectly fine to speak of Britain’s population density (which IS higher than France etc), regardless of the variance within our territory.
It’s this sort of pedantry that often leads otherwise intelligent nationalists to look petty.
272. Sorry to have offended your precious sense of independence.
I was using British figures and to have called them English when they were actually British figures would have been nonsense.
So if you don’t mind I’ll ignore your petty nationalism for the moment and state things accurately instead. Whether you like or or not you are still in the UK and the problems in some (urban) parts of Scotland are as extreme as any.
I was just reading this on UK polling report:
http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/guide/seat-profiles/huddersfield?cp=5
It crossed my mind and has done after reading comments in the local huddersfield paper that Sheerman may become a croper due to Labour voter abstention and protest to the Green party. Could make it a possible four way marginal in a 2010 rout. Maybe explains sheermans repeated anti Brown statements or he does not like some of my art work!
275. So Palin labelled something completely incorrectly? I don’t see how that invalidates ukpaul’s point…
256. 261. To some extent, that is an extention of the same problem. Both the English and American [esp Boston] Catholic Church is very ‘Irish’ in nature.
Many Catholic priests in England are of Southern Irish origin, as are many of the leading lights in a number of English Catholic Churches.
Sean is correct. The position of the Catholic priest in southern Irish society is quite particular, but it has, to extent, been exported.
A Catholic friend of mine brought up on the continent, but with Iris family, was quite shocked to see the unquestioning deference given to some Catholic priests in England, having believed it was a phenomenom confined to Ireland. The dominance of the Irish in Catholic affairs in England was not missed by her. It’s much the same in parts of the US.
Of course it is not the religion or the race that’s the issue; doesn’t matter what colour or creed you are, make someone untouchable and it will be abused.
Instead of having links to Rod’s Kalman filter graph 8537 times in every thread, can we have some variation? How about the state of the parties in opinion polls in (say) January to March 1992, compared with where they were during the GE campaign in March/April 1992? Or January to April 1997, compared with where they were during the GE campaign in April 1997? Or 1979?
We are now in a time frame where we don’t need to worry or theorise about RodCrosby’s mid-term/by-election/swing-back theory, we only need to think about the last-few-months before-an-election swing-back theory. And if we are comparing January with April of the same year, we don’t need to worry about polling methodology changes.
As a matter of interest are all of the resident Labour supporters on this site in the top bracket of income tax? Tim, and his fine wines, Southam Observer and his condescenion to ‘the poor’ - you all seem like a load of champagne socialists. In the circumstances going on about the Tories being the party of the rich is, well, a trifle rich.
It goes right to the top, and back 60 years.
In March, 2009, the National Catholic Reporter revealed that senior US bishops, Pope Paul VI and Vatican officials had been repeatedly warned of widespread problems of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy through letters, official papers and one-on-one dialogs by Fr. Gerald Fitzgerald, who founded the Servants of the Paraclete [Servants of the Holy Spirit] in Jemez Springs, New Mexico in 1947, mainly to help clergy with alcoholism, drug abuse and emotional troubles yet “bishops began sending him priests who had molested young people or who could not keep their celibacy vows” whether with men or women, from the 1940s through the 1960s. He called them “guests” and “his prescription was prayer and spiritual devotion to the sacraments” which was “the church’s prevailing approach at that time” according to the experts.[29][30] The documents were sealed at Church’s request in an earlier civil case involving Fr. Rudolph Kos who accused of molesting minors over a 12-year period and had been treated at Servants of the Paraclete facility and unsealed in 2007, by a court order obtained by Kiesel Boucher Larson which have been used “in some cases to dispute the church claim that it knew nothing about the behavior of sex abusers or the warning signs of abuse prior to the 1980s.” In his letters Fitzgerald claimed that most should not be returned to work with minors, even after treatment
God knows what else is left to come out.
Apols if someone’s already mentioned it, but Gordo’s on Kate Silverton’s BBC Radio 5 Live show tomorrow morning.
286. Thanks I’ll make sure I miss it!
284 I’m a low paid council worker,in receipt of tax credits
278 Socrates
‘And the German health and education systems work through the states, but it is still perfectly legitimate to speak of the “German system”, just as it is legitimate to describe the aggregated health and education systems of this island as “British”.’
That is only true, if you accept that there are contexts in which it is valid (as I think there are) where it is valid to refer to “European” health and education systems - for example in comparison to the USA.
Context is all, and it doesn’t apply to jsfl ’s original post.
284 - Its true.
Although unlike Gideon and Dave I’m not lobbying for a million pound tax break for myself to buy wine
SO. It would be unfair to suggest there haven’t been some changes for the better in the last 12 years. We are now a much more tolerant society and that has to be for the good.
Whether Labour had anything to do with that or whether it was happening anyway is open to debate. But that some vocal parts of the tory party were against it, once upon a time, isn’t.
Oops.That should have read “That is only true, if you accept that there are contexts in which it is valid (as I think there are) to refer to “European” health and education systems - for example in comparison to the USA.”
The Met Office gives us the warmist weather
The UK’s official weather forecasters are determined that winters should be mild, in the face of the frozen facts, says Christopher Booker
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/6924898/The-Met-Office-gives-us-the-warmist-weather.html
271 But how many schools covered up child abuse in the past?
Looking back at my own schooldays, I can think of several teachers who had “dodgy” reputations; one liked to sit boys on his knee and stroke them; another liked to punish them by putting them across his lap and spanking them; another (an extremely eminent classical scholar) liked to have one to one sessions with the prettier boys, at which they would recite Greek and Latin homosexual love poetry to each other, while he fondled them.
At the time, we thought this was both weird, and funny - but none of these teachers was reported to the police, although the first of them was fired. Now, I’m sure they would have been. I’m not convinced that the record of the Catholic Church (outside Eire) has been worse than other institutions.
281 Completely incorrectly? I’d say “end of life counselling services” could mean a lot of things - including a euphemism for euthanasia enthusiasts for example. Either way those clauses were removed very rapidly. I’m not saying they were what Palin meant by “death panels” but she didn’t just make it up out of nothing.
294 - I’m sure there were many.
But they were not protected for over half a century by the hierachy of the organisation running them.
When Ampleforths abuse was revealed to Basil Hume, he kept the police away and moved the perpetrator do different parishes and schools.
289. There certainly are contexts where “European health systems” can be compared to the United States’. However, the differences between European states systems are far, far greater than between the home nations. Do you regard it as invalid to talk of German healthcare provision, when there are differences in context between Bavaria and Hamburg that are greater than between England and Scotland?
“One of the most widely held items of received wisdom is “The opinion polls always swing back towards the Government as the Election approaches”.”
How does one eliminate the factor whereby the Election approaches because the opinion polls swing back towards the Government?
296 In practice, they were so protected. Unless it was a clear-cut case of rape, the worst they could expect was to lose their job.
284 - Why is it condescending to the poor to point out that they have fewer choices than the better off? That seems to me to be a device for being able to ignore the substance of what I am saying, which is a shame.
For the record, I am well of now but come from a background which, I guess, is pretty similar to those of many others on here - born into a first generaiton lower middle clas family, dependent on state education, the NHS, the first in my family to go to university etc.
298. We can’t, and I made that point some time ago. The PMs right to select the date of the election is a very strong card, and would surely tend to reinforce the validity of the swingback theorem.
Isn’t it the case that the nature of the common law system and the fuller scrutiny it provides through discovery makes it much more likely that sexual abuses in catholic institutions in the UK, Ireland, the US and Australia are going to come to light than in countries in which the civil law system applies?
297 Socrates
I’m always keen to learn. I’d be delighted if you could describe the differences in the education systems of Bavaria and Hamburg. I look forward to it.
284.
“are all of the resident Labour supporters on this site in the top bracket of income tax?”
They should support this bloke then, shouldn’t they?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fE_V29eS7EA&feature=player_embedded
On topic: The idea that election results can be predicted by a statistical law dependent only on random by-elections can safely be dismissed. There is no demonstrable causal link between the two, and by-elections occur as the result of mainly random events (such as the deaths of MPs). As everyone who has studied the stock market knows, it is easy to find correlations in past data; that doesn’t make you rich. What’s more, Andy’s article shows that there isn’t even a reliable historical correlation.
To estimate the vote shares at the GE, you need to look forwards, not backwards. That means making a judgement on how the political landscape is likely to develop over the next few months. Of course, such a judgement will be subjective (but then so are the factors which decide how people vote).
Of course, there may be a hung parliament; as Rod points out, that requires only a fairly small swing towards Labour. If there is such a swing, that wouldn’t validate Rod’s theory; it would simply show that Labour would have done relatively better than the Conservatives in campaigning over the next few months, or it would be caused by some external political event.
At present, my judgement is that it is more likely that the swing will be away from Labour. This judgement is entirely subjective, but is based on a reasoned assessment of the politics. We shall see what happens!
293
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/02/record-cold-weather-roundup-hundreds-of-new-cold-and-snow-records-set-in-the-last-week/
302 In practice, I think that that is so.
What makes Ireland unusual is that it is an overwhelmingly Catholic country that uses our legal system.
295. Yes it could mean a lot of things. But we don’t need to hypothesise about it as she was describing LEGISLATION for god’s sake, so we know EXACTLY what it did mean.
In this case, it was part of the bill covering what Medicare would and wouldn’t pay for, and including end of life services such as counselling regarding healthcare, hospice availability, and advice about setting up living wills etc. This was about Medicare financing, and had nothing about compelling anyone to do anything. It certainly was completely fictitious to suggest it was Obama’s plan for bureaucrats to decide people’s level of productivitiy to society, which is what Palin claimed. Even Repulican Senator Isakson described the allegations as “nuts”.
Due to this completely manufactured controversy, it was decided it would be better to remove those provisions from the bill, rather than put the whole legislation at further risk. So now millions of vulnerable elderly people will be denied such care.
So either Palin is a delusional conspiracy theorist, or she understands reality but was willing to screw old people to engage in made-up scare mongering. Either way the lipstick rottweiler is a disgrace to American democracy.
294. I wonder where the next big ‘cover up’ story will come from?
304
306 And here’s another - bizarrely from the Met Office
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/02/the-met-office-getting-a-clue-one-of-the-coldest-winter-in-100-years/
260: oldnat @ 18:54
Actually I don’t want to impose any system. I would lke to see everyone given the same level of choice as that enjoyed by the wealthy, no more.
However, I was orginally trying to use education as an illustration following on from Southam Observer’s original assertion that if the state steps back the poorest must be disadvantaged. I don’t belive that is necessarily true and the education vouchers issue is, I think, a sound example of where it need not be true.
Must go time for dinner.
305.
What an appallingly sensible and well-argued post. Religious Swingback devotees are as mad as those who believe that it is automatic that present poll levels will be maintained till polling day when there will ber a uniform national swing (or set of regional swings).
274. Southam
You may want to rethink your view of German education. I’ve just found this in the wiki article:
Children from poor immigrant or working class families are less likely to succeed in school than children from middle or upper-class backgrounds. This disadvantage for the financially challenged of Germany is bigger than in any other industrialized nation.[11] However, the true reasons stretch beyond economic ones. The poor also tend to be less educated.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Germany
294. A lot of it is random. I never experienced any sexual abuse at my school, or knew anyone who did. Physical abuse was far more prevalent, and several teachers engaged in acts which today would merit a jail sentence.
However, only a few years before me, this pupil claims it went on, which I found surprising. A sad thing about this Guardian article is that many people came away with the impression that the long-dead Brother Brickley was the “named” paedo, when he wasn’t.
“I can still see him coming at me now, a black-clad threshing machine, strangely convinced that a 70 per cent test result was ample justification for brief but brutal punishment. Brother Brickley was a legend, the Irish Christian Brothers’ forerunner to mad Father Jack in the Channel 4 comedy, Father Ted. While Jack flails at a world which won’t provide enough drink, Brickley flailed at his pupils to bang Latin into them.
Two blows - the minimum punishment - from his leather strap could render your hands incapable of writing for the rest of a lesson. Brickley, the most slap-happy of his peers, even had a name for his weapon: Excalibur. He wore it in the pocket of his black cassock as a Western gunslinger would carry his six-shooter.
I recall how Brickley, one Saturday, arbitrarily raised the pass mark to 8 on 10, snaring many boys who would otherwise have passed. He and Excalibur then set about most of the class. The most surprising thing was that I escaped his wrath; the lust for beating thwarted by an unusually high pass mark. He had previously claimed other victims, most famously John Birt, now the BBC’s director-general. A few years later, the press descended on a nearby school when a teacher leaked the punishment book recording hundreds of beatings in a year.
Most people thought this excessive. At St Mary’s College, Brickley alone was capable of hammering hundreds of pupils and in much less than a term. None of us thought to call the press. In Liverpool in the 1960s, it was what the Brothers were known for.
Now they’re known for something else. In Ireland, England and elsewhere, the Christian Brothers are now issuing public apologies for much darker sins, and offering help to those who were sexually abused by members of their order.
In Crosby, sexual abuse was a sad and furtive business. I was targeted by another senior Brother and so was a friend. The teacher was the kind of Catholic clergyman who left a good impression upon the wider world. The school had a high reputation - it got academic results and discipline was not in doubt.
When I was 12, I was taken by him from a PE lesson to the changing rooms. There was a reason for this - I had been persistently late for school and had already suffered the numb hands of a beating from one of the Brothers. Now I had offended again.
The Brother sat down on a bench in the deserted room and ordered me to remove my shorts and lay face down across his knee. I braced myself for the downstroke of the strap, but it didn’t come. He placed his hand on my bare backside instead and left it there for what seemed like an age. Eventually, he told me to get up and dress. I had a been a brave boy, and had shown my manliness by not flinching when punishment was expected, he said. He believed I had learnt my lesson. I was free to go.
The overwhelming emotion was of relief at escape. The humiliation of undressing and splaying yourself across a teacher’s knee was nothing compared to the pain of a beating. And at 12 I had no notion why a grown man might want to see and touch a naked boy.
It was only when sharing a drink with a friend years later that I discovered that he, too, had been pulled from a lesson. He was then told to undress and asked to “measure” himself by the same man to make sure he was “developing”. Then I knew. Looking back, I am mightily relieved that we were day boys, not the boarders or orphans who suffered gross abuse elsewhere. I suspect that I should also be grateful that the Brother’s desires were so lightly gratified. To the best of my knowledge, abuse at St Mary’s was confined to this desperate, furtive stuff… and to lashings of licensed violence.
I wonder who, if any, of my contemporaries will contact the Brothers’ newly-installed helpline. That they have belatedly turned penitent still astonishes. They were so steely in enforcing their codes. Even their surreptitious thrill-seeking was cloaked in pedagogic duty.
At St Mary’s, one of their great devotions was rote learning of the catechism. It started with the biggest of questions: “Why did God make me?” The answer, burnt into my brain, was: “To know him, love him and serve him in this world, and to be happy with him forever in the next.” If you needed further guidance, Bro Brickley would make sure Excalibur taught you the full warmth of God’s love.
Steve Boulton is editor of World in Action”
http://www.nospank.net/s-b54.htm
314 - Interesting.
Does anyone else think it’s odd that Status Quo members got an honour and Joanna Lumley didn’t?
Rumours that she turned one down or just snubbed for making Labour look cosmically stupid?
303. I mentioned differences in context of healthcare, and was primarily thinking of the fact that Hamburg is a diverse and urban city-state with a high proportion of single parent families, while Bavaria is a predominantly rural, homogenous and Catholic family oriented place. But I’m sure you were aware of that already.
309.
“I wonder where the next big ‘cover up’ story will come from?”
A certain Party leader’s barber?
Not only is farming and dependency a problem along with destructuion of food culivation. But this country is so overpopulated that if something that dislocated food supply what would happen? We would be left at the mercy of food aid and probably left to die like in a third world country.
Labour have turned this country third world in terms of their degradation of the institutions of National Salvation.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/telegraph-view/6924801/A-recipe-for-disaster.html
I know i am one of the few but how many folk keep food just in case their is a problem? Could be bad weather, disease, war, fuel protest. National Government does not keep food like in the Cold War period - Basically you are on your own, which is ironic given the way Labour claim to share everything: Maybe they think sharing starvation in a didaster fair?!!!
317 - Hasn’t she already got an OBE?
Off topic (and particularly for Screaming Eagles)…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/newyear/
New Year, New Government, New Doctor, New Doctor Who Logo?
316. Which if true perhaps adds further credence to the over centralisation/ urbanisation / population density considerations?
In the spirit of analysis I’d like to point out that UKPaul has used the word ‘lie’ five times in his only substantial post at 18. The only other post to contain the word on this thread being a single one from Martin Day.
21 - she does, but it was 15 years ago. I know for a fact that she was nominated for something more - and I would imagine by more than one person - so it’s a bit of a mystery.
Betting query, is there anything available for the Moray seat?
317. Plato
Lumley was awarded an OBE in 1995
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joanna_Lumley
315 At primary school, I took it for granted that teachers would hurl things at you, slap you across the legs, lash out at you, if you offended them.
Not, that they were always unjustified in doing so. Children, en masse, can be pretty obnoxious.
321 And Ellen Yachtperson is a Dame ??!
314. “The poor also tend to be less educated.”
Not in Britain!
322.
“New Year….. New Doctor…..”
Yes, who will be the new Chief Medical Officer at the DoH? I wonder if we will have to wait 30 years to hear the real story of the swine flu cock-up which has led to hundreds of thousands of people in this country being given Tamiflu for conditions which were clearly nothing like flu.Nicely compromising their immune system as well as making them very ill in some cases.
Oh!!!…it…………………..
….all makes profits for Glao Smith Klein to do!
316. One of my teachers was tried and acquitted when I was 12. He moved schools. I came across him about 12 years later when I was in practise as a lawyer. He was being tried again. He was convicted of multiple offences.
322 - Doctor Who is never an off topic here.
327 I know see 329 - what did she do then compared with now?
WS.
If that’s the best you an come up with, you should spend more time on google.
326 You don’t seriously expect that seat to change hands,surely?
329 - I see what you mean.
Well Gordon is never one to hold a grudge is he?
330.
“The poor also tend to be less educated.”
Martian Day is currently starring in Fiddler on the Poufe at the Huddersfield Empire?
“If I were a rich man…………..”
326.
“anything available for the Moray seat?”
Isn’t that where the Lib Dem candidate is a former Tory MP?
308 Yes they could have removed those clauses like a shot as soon as Palin pointed them out for purely virtuous reasons or they could have been trying to stealth something through that they knew would be unpopular with the voters and she caught them out.
335.Would just like to see the odds if available, a couple of local factors have cropped up recently in the media.
320 - Are you suggesting more state subsidies for the farming sector or controls so that products have to be sold at a certain price? Neither seem very Conservative to me.
Free trade and the supermarkets - both of which the Tories seem to be in favour of - have been the big players in the decline of farming in this country; hunting is neither here nor there.
337.
No the local theatre company “Crag Rats” went under iirc some time ago.
Huddersfield is full of entertainment just now as the snow has come down and idiots think they can drive their cars on snow on hills that simply are impassible even with a few cm of snow!
Very funny! At least the tyre industry will be booming as nutters shred their tyers!
322/332 And if the Christmas show was anything to go by they need new writers too. Watched it last night and thought the whole thing was tediously contrived. They probably could have done the whole thing in a single episode and it would have been better.
As for the newbie he looks like Jaws (from Roger Moore’s Bond movie’s) little brother.
338.As far as I know the Libdems have yet to select a candidate there.
343 - Well that was Russell T Davies’s last episode, Steven Moffat is taking over as headwriter/Executive Producer
128, I disagree, mostly. I think such categorisation can be useful to a degree, but don’t take the view that anything and everything can be broken down into numbers.
332, some say Mr. Eagles’ favourite Doctor is Colin Baker, and his favourite companion is Martha…
[I must confess that Freema Agyeman is tottytastic, but her character was pure rubbish].
341. Southam Observer January 2nd, 2010 at 8:08 pm
Problem is the european market is not fair to British farmers, it is tilted in the french favour rather like the electoral system here.
It goes beyond economics - it is called National security. Not all farmers are Tories: Indeed a Lib Dem MP was or is a Farmer, that one in Wales Roger Williams!
343 - I was under the impression that this finale was the last thing Russel T. ‘everything must include a liberal agenda message’ Davis was writing for the series…
“Does anyone else think it’s odd that Status Quo members got an honour and Joanna Lumley didn’t?”
Not really. Voice overs are slightly bless deserving than singers in my opinion.
347. rather like the electoral system here “TOO LABOUR”
343, I agree absolutely. However, it was much better than the ridiculous previous Master finale (when the Doctor turned into a Harry Potter house elf), the stupid return of Davros (where apparently his prime character trait of dominion over daleks is utterly rewritten) and the death of Eccles-cake.
Deus ex machina is almost always a bit steamy pile of MODERATED.
349 - What about her campaign for the Gurkhas? You don;t think that’s worthy?
349 - hilarious. Woman who dragged the government into making a u-turn, beat the crap out of a minister, and caused major embarrasment for the PM is now dismissed as a ‘voiceover artist’ by bitter bunker follower.
349. Roger January 2nd, 2010 at 8:12 pm
Thats something we can agree on! The Quo are alright!
Though I always thought you were a chase and Dave Man: RABBIT!
JL maade the mistake of not str1pp1ng off like Helen Mirren!
349.
“it’s odd that Status Quo members got an honour”
Did they perhaps offer Gordo…
“Whatever you want……” ?
340 - No odds available, so I’ll offer you 2/1 against the Tory.
355, yet Brown’s ratings are down, down, deeper and down…
341. Southam
Given Labour’s link to a certain supermarket family, I think it is somewhat wrong to link the Conservatives with supermarkets especially when there is no question that there is a wing of the right of centre movement that is no friend of supermarkets (considering them centralised and monopolistic in their practices and therefore anti-free market).
341. Southam
Given Labour’s link to a certain supermarket family, I think it is somewhat wrong to link the Conservatives with supermarkets especially when there is no question that there is a wing of the right of centre movement that is no friend of supermarkets (considering them centralised and monopolistic in their practices and therefore anti-free market).
354.
” a chase and Dave Man: ”
What? Our Roger? A Tory hunting supporter?
Oops apologies for the duplication
359.
” there is a wing of the right of centre movement that is no friend of supermarkets (considering them centralised and monopolistic in their practices and therefore anti-free market).”
…..and their influence in CallmeDave’s mob is roughly parallel with that of Neil Kinnock.
360. wage slave January 2nd, 2010 at 8:17 pm
340 What’s happening in Moray? I would find it hilarious if the SNP managed to come unstuck in a seat they have held since 1987.
363 - As President of the PB Dire Straits fan club, i’d say “Money for nothing” is very apt for our Dear Leader
348. Was it his last one excellent! I nearly cried with hilarity/ embarrassment at the Obama worship it was awful!
262. wage slave January 2nd, 2010 at 8:19 pm
LOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooooooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOL!
Neil Kinnock! 
Just out of interest as Neil has turned down even the chance of being the head of the National Theatre, could Brown be putting an olive branch out to Kinnock for a last minute job to appeal to those 1992 voters who helped Neil loose the election?
There is losing and losing you see! A kinnock lose in Browns mind is better than whats on offer to him!
356 - Tim, whilst you’re about, do you think 14/1 for 2 or more GE’s in 2010 represents good value?
““Does anyone else think it’s odd that Status Quo members got an honour and Joanna Lumley didn’t?”
Not really. Voice overs are slightly bless deserving than singers in my opinion.
by Roger January 2nd, 2010 at 8:12 pm
Erm, she made the Minister for Immigration look like a stupid 11 yr old.
She’d be a Baroness or better in my book - I suspect she may have turned something down…
368 - I think its probably priced about right.
362. Wage Slave you old reprobate! You don’t mention your boss anymore. Have you stopped being a Tory’s toyboy? Ah never mind…
So you reckon old Zacky baby doesn’t have Dave’s ear on occasion then ?
370 - Ta, noticed that Ladbrokes have that on. Was trying to work out if Shadsy was trying to take some more of my money.
365. The Screaming Eagles January 2nd, 2010 at 8:21 pm
I have not heard that song for a while!
It always reminds me of time spent in Kent/West Sussex in the mid to late 1980s!
365. Local Hero for should be Gordon’s theme tune.
Mark Knopfler turned down a kings randsom to allow a piece of his music to be used in an ad I shot. Top man!
374. Maybe he just thought the ad was that MODERATED?
374 - I like Mark Knopfler even more now
372 - The best value bet on Ladbrokes politics section is the 6/4 on Labour to win the handicap.
The best value politics bet on the other bookmakers at the moment is Paddy Powers 10/1 on Tory seats 250-300
291. tolerance has meant us giving cover and sanctuary to vicious islamacists, tolerance has meant us allowing extremist training grounds in out national parks, tolerance has meant those that utter criticism of such gifts of diversity are threatened with incarceration.
372 - Am already on the handicap.
The second suggestion, are you mistaking me for Rod Crosby?
318 Socrates
Indeed I did! I take it that you no longer claim that there is validity in talking about a “British” education system, then.
I might even say something along the lines of “It’s this sort of pedantry that often leads otherwise intelligent unionists to look petty”, but I wouldn’t. I’m far too nice!
374. Roger January 2nd, 2010 at 8:30 pm
I watched the Deer Hunter all the way through last night. Their use of music was very good in that film IMO. Mind you I think the use of Music in Platoon more moving. Both films make you think about that conflict though - Glad i was not there.
Think Christopher Walken got an award for his role in that film the Deer Hunter.
340. Only thing I’ve seen in the media is the Tory PPC resigning from the ruling council coalition.
Second only thing I’ve seen is the SNP government funding the Fochabers by-pass.
Both would favour the SNP even more I would think.
379 - No, but if you are looking at 14/1 on two elections in a year, I’d suggest 10/1 on 250-300 Tory seats is a much better value bet.
275. NICE = Death Panel
378. notme January 2nd, 2010 at 8:32 pm
Probably why i am so intollerant and i think others in the general population are!
‘For Services to making an immigration minister look like an 11 year old……’ Get real!!
If one short campaign is worth a title….. Arise Sir Rio Ferdinand!
After all these Met Office long range forecast errors, when will Gordon call for a review or a Cobra meeting?
What is the point of met office forecasts that are so badly wrong? Wet summer, wet autumn and a very cold winter all periods this year that the met office got wrong.
Their “wonderful” computer model is producing the wrong forecasts.
383 - Ta, I’ve just set myself a budget this year, to be on politics this year, on top of my existing bets, am trying to find value out there.
I still want shadsy to set up a market on whether Gordon Brown has an incident with a member of the public during the GE campaign.
378 There is a such a thing as middle ground and some of us think finding it is worth the effort.
I don’t think the Gurkha question was at all straightforward. They were never misled into thinking that part of the deal in their signing up was a right of residency here. The point was made at the time that if they come here that deprives Nepal of some of its most talented inhabitants and of their income (the pension being very substantial by Nepali standards). A point which I didn’t see being made was that they are being given a poisoned chalice by Lumley. I have been to Nepal and I know which I would rather be as between a rich and distinguished Nepali living in Nepal among friends and relations, and a poor immigrant and more or less rootless Nepali on a sink estate in the UK. I would have gone for spending a lot of money (but less than what the scheme to resettle them here will cost the country) establishing a hospital in Khatmandu primarily for the treatment of Gurkhas and with the authority to ship Gurkhas here at our expense if it was thought they would benefit from special treatment which the NHS could give them. Because apart from improved medical care I don’t see what the UK has to offer them.
251. You say this, as if it as a bad thing.
New thread up
381. Martin. I also liked the Deer Hunter-and much more than Platoon. Christopher Walkden won best supporting actor and on the strength of that film Michael Cimino’s next film bankrupted the studio
389. We are way way beyond that middle ground at the moment, a significant swing back (to keep on topic) is necessary.
There was mention upthread of a possible horrible skeleton in Labour’s cupboard which might give Brown a strong motive for wanting to delay (or find a pretext to cancel) the election.
Has everyone see this ? http://bit.ly/5tNFMT
If it’s correct, it terrifies me. I can only imagine what it would do to Brown as he makes his election plans. Or not.
No mention of it on the BBC for some reason.
Off topic, I invented a new word today: broogle (verb) to search for information by ransacking one’s own memory banks, including old or mostly-forgotten memories, without the aid of other sources of information such as reference books or internet searches. [21st C neologism, from "brain" and "google"].
I was asked what the result of the Millwall by-election in September 1993 was, and I was relatively successful in broogling it because I found BNP 1480 Lab 1473 LD 1284 Con 113, whereas the actual result (from googling) was BNP 1480 Lab 1473 LD 1284 Con 134.
The Tories were on their knees in the early sixties. Alec Douglas Home took over from Macmillan and Labour had a bright new leader in Harold Wilson. Labour were expected to win the next election handsomely, but Douglas Home continued to the bitter end, and the Labour lead gradually diminished as time went on. In the end the 1964 election was called and Labour won by around 6 seats.
What the article shows is that the Conservatives always do better than their mid term showing whether they are in government or not. If that is the case in the coming election Labour are in for a wipe out.