24-April 2023 : LAB 44% / CON 29% / LDEM 11% / GRN 5%

[oldnat]

May 15, 2023 22:33:47 GMT chrisc said:

May 15, 2023 20:54:55 GMT oldnat said:

I agree there is no right answer. My only minor beef is with people being able to vote in two national elections (and by this I mean “national” as in countries recognised by the UN as independent voting members of the General Assembly not national as in members of FIFA!)”. So happy for Scots to vote in Scottish and UK elections in our slightly weird kingdom of nations. As others have noted the weird thing post devolution is the lack of an English assembly. But I think that particular boat has sailed, at least until if and when Scotish independence is off the agenda and we feel the need to sort out a new solution to our unusual nation of countries.

Why should you have a "minor beef" that someone who is entitled to have a vote in your polity, might be entitled to vote in another polity as well?

If they can also vote elsewhere, it makes damn all difference to you and the governance of your polity. Taking that stance is the kind of silly "othering" nationalism that should properly be ridiculed.

[joeboy]

May 15, 2023 23:49:23 GMT eor said:

May 15, 2023 19:39:42 GMT RAF said:

Well, that depends. When the UK was in the EU, resident EU citizens (and some others) could vote in local elections. Just not General Elections. Also, dual/triple etc., nationals living in the UK, who also have UK citizenship as one of these nationalities have always been allowed to vote in General Elections.

This all raises the question as to whether long term overseas residents in the UK should be allowed to vote in General Election; or even whether there should be an automatic path to UK citizenship for long term residents.

Polling on this subject would be interesting, and I would imagine would show that those resident for 20+ years should be allowed to.vote in UK elections. Those just resident for less than 10 years should not. And with a tight contest between those with 10-20 years' residency tenure.

Yes, those with settled status can apply for nationality after a certain period of time but even so the argument against extending full voting rights to long term residents is quite weak.

I think the two things should be separate - whether you would take UK citizenship is sometimes less aligned with commitment to living and being here than it sounds, cos every country treats the other end of this question in their own way, and some that are very demographically significant for the UK (like India) don't allow dual nationality, so to accept UK citizenship is to choose to stop being Indian. Whilst others (like the US) are fine with multiple citizenships but have such an insane approach to bilateral taxation that you'd have to be out of your mind to not jump wholly one way or the other. 

To me it feels like if you're living here awhile, then who the government is affects you more and more, and so you should have a say in that. Likewise if you've moved away, after a while it has less and less impact on you who the government here is. So I'd go with a reciprocal rule based on residency - live here for x years and you can vote in a GE, likewise after x years living abroad your right to vote in a GE is suspended until you move back. Dunno what x should be - 15 years is a number that rings a bell but that seems too long on both sides, something more like 10 feels fair? 

I'm just chuffed to learn that breathing the free air of the Irish Republic I can still vote against the f***ing Tories. I've read this thread tonite and have now registered for a postal vote. Incidentally, before anyone accuses me of interfering into another country's affairs, remember I'm Irish and I might just have a comeback or two.

[eor]

Question for the legally minded on here - of the many denials made by people who used to edit national papers about having knowledge of phone-hacking, have any actually been under oath?

Wondering specifically about testimony to parliamentary committees, does that potentially attract perjury charges if a witness were later found to have been deliberately untruthful?

[joeboy]

May 16, 2023 0:07:32 GMT eor said:

Question for the legally minded on here - of the many denials made by people who used to edit national papers about having knowledge of phone-hacking, have any actually been under oath?

Wondering specifically about testimony to parliamentary committees, does that potentially attract perjury charges if a witness were later found to have been deliberately untruthful?

I think they have to take an oath first before perjury becomes an issue. My experience as a civil servant of parliamentary committees was that an oath was very rarely taken. That said, I think they insisted Boris take an oath before his evidence on Partygate, which could then leave him open to a perjury charge if he was found to have lied.

I'm happy to be corrected on this if I'm talking rubbish!

[neilj]

May 16, 2023 0:07:32 GMT eor said:

Question for the legally minded on here - of the many denials made by people who used to edit national papers about having knowledge of phone-hacking, have any actually been under oath?

Wondering specifically about testimony to parliamentary committees, does that potentially attract perjury charges if a witness were later found to have been deliberately untruthful?

Interesting question, I do know Piers Morgan denies knowing about phone hacking but declined to go to court to state it under oath...

[neilj]

Translated into human speech I think they are complaining the 'left' want control over their own bodies, the utter swines...

[moby]

May 15, 2023 13:19:10 GMT alec said:

Dave - I always maintained (long before we knew we were going to have a referendum on the EU) that dismissing all criticisms of our relationship with the EU as the result of racists or loonies was a grave error. The real target should have been what we would once have viewed as extremist right wing neoliberalism, and the way it distorted the operation of markets such that capital hoovered up far more of the economic gains that labour. Free markets, including in the movement of people, was one of these issues, but it was wrong to blame immigration in isolation, as we can now see.

Instead, it was the combination of immigration alongside neoliberal laissez-faire government that did the damage. Immigration did, without doubt, boost our economy, but in the absence of activist governments ensuring equitable redistribution of those gains, the benefits aggregated primarily to a selective few, which the disadvantages were felt by most.

The left made the tiresome mistake, which it is still making today, of labeling such concerns as fundamentally racist, rather than actually addressing what those concerns were really about. I can't for the life of me see why it is automatically assumed that to limit the rights of foreigner nationals to live and work in your country is a purely racist opinion - it is clearly not, although of course, it can be.

People were unhappy, largely because living standards had effectively stagnated for a couple of decades and none of the mainstream parties had anything to say about that except more of the same. Had the left done it's job, enough voters may had been able to identify the real culprit.

I agree with some of this but also a tad simplistic imo. The problem is how do you capture the nuances of nationalism, class and a failing economic model in a binary referendum? The answer is you can't and the shit storm of brexit and it's outcome is what results when you attempt to deal with huge and politically contentious issues such as 'how wealth is distributed' by referendum. You at least acknowledge the primacy of the 'immigration' issue as relevant to people feeling disempowered or disenfranchised. You then go on and blame the left for failing to ensure equitable redistribution of the economic gains from free movement. The arguments about the distribution of wealth are surely always with us anyway! and they continue to be with us post brexit? What the EU referendum added was the narrative about 'free movement' of non British nationals being able to live and work here into the mix and whether this was a good thing overall for the indigenous population. Farage and his ilk made hay with It and knew exactly what they were doing. The fact is they appealed to the nativist tendencies in us and sorry to say it, some of us fell for their repeated dog whistles more than others and this is what got them over the line. Whether you call it racism or nativism or simply the disempowered looking for someone to blame is moot. So the question remains......which part of this narrative were 'the good reasons for voting for brexit'? Are people able to say now....'I have taken back control', the 'neo liberals' are no longer making the decisions and 'laissez-faire' attitudes are dead. I doubt it!  Cameron only agreed to a referendum reluctantly for political reasons to stop the Tories being eaten by UKIP. The 'left' didn't really want a referendum on the EU at all. No alec nothing good came out of brexit, just as nothing good came out of the Nazis being voted in as the largest party in the Reichstag in 1933, just as nothing good came out of Trump, Bolsonaro, Erdogan etc

[steve]

Thanks Tory party

Normally you had to wait for a GOP CPAC to see such a collection of delusional psycho babbling far right loons gathered in one location now we have the popular front of conservative nationalism and the national conservative popular front ( bloody splitters) to entertain us here.

Because of the neutered state of the main stream media the full hilarity of their insanity isn't covered in sufficient depths, instead the BBC announces the deranged pontificating of whatever nutter is on stage as if they were announcing a new bypass for Skegness( an excellent idea by the way Skegness should always be bypassed).

The Tory party finally drifting out into the mid Atlantic in search of la la land.

[neilj]

If even Harry Cole is saying this you know the tories have got a problem

[neilj]

Not sure what the plan going forward is, the use of the word 'only' seems very authoritarian The logical conclusion is to ban divorce, make it illegal for unmarried couples and single sex couples to have children, take children away from single mothers/fathers?

[Deleted]

May 15, 2023 21:55:11 GMT pjw1961 said:

May 15, 2023 21:13:21 GMT hireton said:

The same could have been said about the USA twenty years ago. Ignoring this threat is to encourage it. Or will Labour supporters want to recognise the "legitimate concerns" of NatCon believers?

I'm not ignoring it. I am very alarmed about the trends in the Conservative Party, given it is one of the two major British political parties. However, I don't see it as a winning proposition and nor do many Conservatives. What more moderate Tories lack is the guts to throw these people out of their party wholesale and it may indeed be too late to do so. 

I take your last sentence to be a reference to trans issues. I don't believe Starmer as has ever used the phrase "legitimate concerns" (nor have I in my comments on this site as I appreciate it is a loaded term), although I am happy to be proved wrong if you can find a reference. What he has said is that if you want to make a change you have to take the public with you and the more recent polling on this issue demonstrates that unfortunately the Scottish Parliament ultimately failed to do this:  www.heraldscotland.com/politics/23256763.gender-recognition-reform-polls-people-say/

Just to emphasise, I support the change the Scottish Parliament proposes and oppose the UK government veto. The only thing I would contend is that Trans rights activists have on occasion been too ready to dismiss all concerns expressed by women as due to bigotry (and certainly there was plenty of that from the far and Christian right), when some came from very dark and terrible places of women who have suffered horrible abuse by men. A degree of sympathy and understanding was needed in dealing with winning those people round (which was doable I think) by assuaging their fears that that was not always forthcoming. Just telling them they were transphobes and not recognising their trauma was just going to force them into the arms of the genuine bigots. 

so do you consider those as "illegitimate " concerns then ?

[steve]

The national conservatism road show delivers its opinion on the rest of the population of the UK.

[steve]

The slimmed down version of the regime's bonfire of European union retained laws has been announced, most of the changes relate to defunct legislation which like many laws in UK statute exist but are of no current relevancy.

But I did notice one item that interested me.

Legislation that gave access to a valuable EU-wide criminal database, known as Ecris, has also formally been torn up.

Ecris holds conviction information on third-country nationals and stateless people. However, by leaving the EU, the UK automatically lost access to this exceptionally valuable investigation tool and the repeal will be seen as a formality as the brexitanians continue to undermine our safety.

[alec]

mercian - "I thought the 'British Right' was supposed to have been bought by Russian billionaires/Putin?"

It might be a joke to you, but for those of us who actually care about our country and our compatriots, as opposed to merely caring for ourselves, this stuff matters.

It's a bit of both. The agendas of Putin and the far right billionaires coincide in various ways, and in the right flank of the modern Tory party, they've found the useful idiots they need. .

[Danny]

May 15, 2023 10:49:20 GMT steve said:

Those who chose to vote leave did so despite the facts, maybe they were gullible, maybe they were stupid, maybe they didn't want to believe the evidence, maybe they were convinced by the lies and promises of the leave campaign and their main stream supporters, maybe they just wanted to give Cameron a kicking or didn't like Corbyn or the inept remain campaign.Maybe they thought somehow despite reality it would be a good idea. Maybe they thought voting against something that most educated people and professionals clearly wanted to keep would make them feel empowered.

When looking at polling questions it is very rare to get unanimity amongst respondents. but when people were asked whether they thought they would be better off or worse off (financialy) if brexit took place, then the great majority of leavers said they expected to be either better off or no worse (80s%), whereas an even bigger proportion of remainers said they expected brexit to make them worse off (90s%).

There was a wide range of reasons given by leavers why they chose to leave, but the unanimity in their believe they would be financially unaffected cannot be a coincidence. I think the pundits are wrong to claim what was critical was boosting fishing, or migrants, or sovereignty. Before anyone would act on that desire, they first needed to be reassured it would not cost them any money. And that is precisely what Dominic Cummings understood, and why Leave had a big red bus. It didnt matter if the real financial gain from brexit was 30 bn or 10bn or 1 bn or nothing. Just so long as you could get into people heads the idea it would not cost anything, then they would be willing to consider voting out for one of various offered reasons.

Cummings understood that if he could get the debate to be about how much Britain would gain financially then he had won, because this gave the impression that number was positive. So the big lies on buses worked because if the debate was 'no its not 30bn less in payments its just 10 bn', then anyone not looking too hard would count that as a financial benefit of some sort.

No one got a special referendum ballot showing the type of Brexit they might have wanted , the clusterfuck we've ended up with was entirely predictable.

I agree. May went round in circles for years trying to find any solution which would satisfy everyone, and ended up getting fired. No solution was possible to meet the promises. However, what was impotant was to persuade people it would not cost them anything, and then even if they didnt fully believe a promise about immigration, or fish or whatever, at least it was worth a punt. Leave didnt have to work hard on those promises once they had the financial one covered. That was what really mattered.

And thats why well paid car workers voted to lose their jobs and become fruit pickers.

[steve]

For those who might want to know that politicians are human being as well here's a link to an interview with Ed Davey it might even make jib reconsider his insults directed at him.

www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/may/16/we-didnt-show-we-cared-enough-we-wont-make-that-mistake-twice-ed-davey-on-love-loss-and-the-lib-dems

[alec]

ONS employment data; days lost through long term sickness rise again, hitting record levels.

Mystery.

[moby]

May 16, 2023 6:37:59 GMT steve said:

The slimmed down version of the regime's bonfire of European union retained laws has been announced, most of the changes relate to defunct legislation which like many laws in UK statute exist but are of no current relevancy.

But I did notice one item that interested me.

Legislation that gave access to a valuable EU-wide criminal database, known as Ecris, has also formally been torn up.

Ecris holds conviction information on third-country nationals and stateless people. However, by leaving the EU, the UK automatically lost access to this exceptionally valuable investigation tool and the repeal will be seen as a formality as the brexitanians continue to undermine our safety.

Spot on. Exchange of information and intelligence between neighbouring countries about third country nationals is crucial in relation to investigating religious radicalisation. We were supervising many people in prisons and in the community and knew next to nothing about their history. We depended on this database to aid us. Yet another brexit benefit appears to be we won't have to bother now because the Tories have immigration under control as the figures will undoubtedly show when they are released in the next few days.

[neilj]

This believe it or not is from the Daily Mail's Dan Hodges

[hireton]

It's interesting that the debate on the franchise for UK General Elections seems to have totally ignored the right of Commonwealth citizens to vote. This from the official UK Government website:

"The definition of a 'Commonwealth' citizen includes citizens of British Crown dependencies and British overseas territories. A 'qualifying' Commonwealth citizen is someone who has leave to enter or remain in the UK, or who doesn't require that leave."

So I look forward to finding out why somebody from the Kingdom of Eswatini with leave to remain in the UK should get a vote but not somebody from Germany or any other country.

[steve]

hireton

You might also like to consider why someone resident in the UK from Australia got to vote in the Brexit referendum when someone resident in the UK from Austria didn't!

Or the bizarre case of people from Malta and Cyprus resident in the UK whom were allowed to vote in the referendum , not because they were obviously impacted as European union citizens but because their countries are also in the commonwealth.

[jimjam]

Brought tears to my eyes Steve.

[Danny]

May 15, 2023 13:23:28 GMT alec said:

It's odd, how we've accepted being conditioned into thinking that 'endemic' means 'do nothing'. It doesn't. As the tweet explains, endemic actually means learning to live with preventative measures for ever, or at least, until something better comes along.

Ah, this is the same problem as whether anyone rescued off a mountain should be exepcted to pay for the rescue team and helicopter. or whether mountain climbing should be banned.

You could stop people falling off mountains or having misadventures in remote places by simply banning anyone from going there. That would work. But it would be utterly unacceptable.

The issue is about the benefit from a measure compared to its inconvenience. Having a net curtain round your bed all night seems to many a good tradeoff to prevent being bitten alive all night. Wearing a mask 24/7 doesnt seem a good idea to reduce your chance of having a cold...a bit. but especialy if it means instead of getting several colds you get one really bad case and end up in hospital.

[alec]

Danny - "Ah, this is the same problem as whether anyone rescued off a mountain should be exepcted to pay for the rescue team and helicopter. or whether mountain climbing should be banned.

You could stop people falling off mountains or having misadventures in remote places by simply banning anyone from going there."

No it isn't. There's absolutely no connection in your daft analogy. There is nothing inconvenient in drafting proper indoor air quality standards, as the CDC in the US have just done.

There is also no connection between covid-19, a vascular disease which remains the fourth biggest cause of death in the world, and a common cold. In the US, common cold appeared as cause of death on 3 death certificates last year.

Time to stop being stupid. Come on! You can do it!

[alec]

A few numbers on the latest workplace sickness figures;

Although the workforce remains marginally smaller than in 2019, on the latest data there were 194,000 people on short term sick leave in the latest quarter compared to between 174,000 - 178,000 for the same quarter in 2017-2019, so an increase of 11.5%, at a time of no significant flu or other seasonal viruses, and at a time when covid cases were slightly below recent levels.

Long term sick numbers reached a new record of 2.55m people, up from 1.99m, 1.97m, and 2.00m in 2017-2019 respectively, so an increase of around 27.6%. In absolute terms, that extra 0.5m is almost exactly the level of severe long covid picked up by other ONS surveys.

For reference, the same quarter in 2015 showed 2.0m long term sick and in 2010 it was 2.2m, so lets put to bed the silly notion that this is only about nasty evil Tory NHS cuts. The level of long term sickness in the UK workforce was completely stable from 2010 to 2020, and then exploded by nearly 30%, and is still rising.

Wake up folks! Someone's lying to you.

[steve]

alec

I would urge you to check those figures again, covid is not the forth biggest cause of death in the world, it was ,for a period , last year.Covid deaths are now just 2% of the peak rate in 2022.

[Danny]

May 15, 2023 21:15:05 GMT James E said:

A bit of analysis of Opinium's recent English regional cross-breaks.


Overall, the 8 Opinium polls since the start of March show an average of Lab 43%, Con 28%, so a swing of about 13% compared to GE 2019. By English region the averages are:

London
Lab 53% (+5)
Con 24% (-8)
Swing 6.5%

South
Lab 38% (+16)
Con 34% (-20)
Swing 18%

Midlands
Lab 45% (+12)
Con 32% (-22)
Swing 17%

North
Lab 50% (+7)
Con 25% (-14)
Swing 10.5%

There is a very obvious pattern- the more people locally were already voting labour, then the fewer others there were to possibly switch, and indeed the fewer who did switch. Its approximately consistent with a fixed percentage of opponents moving to lab. I quickly plotted it (sorry its a mess with no scales, its percentage increase vs labour vote), and its remarkably close to a straight line relationship. Minimum opposition vote is 40%. Labour gained a fixed percentage of all other voters beyond that, so the poorer they were doing somewhere previously then the more they gained.

Attachment Deleted

That might be interpreted as a block tribal non-lab vote which is pretty much unchanging and unreachable, presumably something similar for tribal labour followers. But then a large block of floating voters who are behaving in a very predictable way switching sides essentially as a uniform swing everywhere. Doesnt matter which region, the trend is exactly the same.

This differential regional pattern makes a huge difference when it comes to seats.

Sounds though as if each region has been affected exactly the same by the policies and actions of the political parties. Its just a question of starting from a different base amongst the floating voters. All floating voters behave identically throughout the nation, its just that in different regions they are a bit more biased one way or another initially, but they change sides at the same rate.

[alec]

steve - "I would urge you to check those figures again, covid is not the forth biggest cause of death in the world, it was ,for a period , last year.Covid deaths are now just 2% of the peak rate in 2022."

You're going on the official stats, which are hugely under counted. If you follow the mortality experts who work backwards from excess deaths to calculate the true impact of covid, you get to the real death toll. It's way bigger than you think, and I'm afraid I have to say this - you're being suckered here.

There is no world in which covid is remotely like a common cold, even allowing for vaccination.

[Danny]

May 15, 2023 21:55:11 GMT pjw1961 said:

I'm not ignoring it. I am very alarmed about the trends in the Conservative Party, given it is one of the two major British political parties.

There are indications voters would prefer to replace con with a different political party in the big two. I say that because lib rise in 2010 seemed to affect con number of MPs more than lab MPs, lib collapse in 2015 favoured con, and similarly in the locals lib and lab did not seem to be fighting each other so much as separately fighting con. Con seem to have understood this trend, and thats why they adopted Brexit to gain the leave block vote. But that is fading away now, and may yet wholly reverse if con are blamed for brexit. The process must have lost con more of its tradiional supporters, and it didnt have enough even in 2010.

Not that lab are especially popular either.

[Danny]

May 15, 2023 22:43:11 GMT c-a-r-f-r-e-w said:

Hello everyone, just a quick post to let you know the news from the Times that BJ is buying a £3.8 million mansion with a moat.

Did he keep the wallpaper and sell it on ebay?