Danny
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Post by Danny on Oct 16, 2023 19:20:40 GMT
Based on the figures quoted one could therefore argue that the Palestinians know what's coming to them. Yet they still carry out actions that they know, from past experience, will result in thousands of fellow Palestinians being killed and maimed. Well of course they do. Did you not notice what happened to the British empire once the will and power to maintain it by force disappeared? Germany had the brilliant idea of persuading people to walk to their point of death without a fight. If they hadnt, there would have been dead Germans all over the place as jews fought to inflict as much damage as they could before they were killed. In Gaza now, israel is kidding the Gazans along to move to the south. Hopefully without the intention of ultimately killing them, but instead forcing the Egyptins to take them as refugees. Because in a few weeks they will be starving there, assuming the Israelis dont bother shooting them. Which for all sorts of bad publicity reasons they would rather not do. However, the Gazans know they have I guess three choice. Stay put and starve. Depart probably for Egypt. Take up arms and probably be killed, but maybe take a few of the bastards with them. Israeli politicians have promised a final solution to the problem of palestinians within Israel. The only final solution is to get them out of Israel, one way or another. |
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Danny
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Post by Danny on Oct 16, 2023 19:29:42 GMT
I think it is fair to say that Rishi didn't get into British politics for 'the money' or 'self publicity' given he's incredibly wealthy outside of politics and doesn't crave the limelight. Its still rather the answer to the question what do you get for the man who already has everything? Having a go at being PM! May of course always had an ambition to become PM, and took the job on the terms it was offered, poisoned chalice. Johnson seems to have lost it by his own personal behaviour, Cameron left because he refused to be the face of Brexit. Truss....was an accident of the perverse voting system and a split party, as per Corbyn, so both became leaders of MPs who hated them already. |
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Danny
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Post by Danny on Oct 16, 2023 19:38:50 GMT
He believed in Brexit when it was unpopular to do so Indeed. And now it is unpopular again and becoming steadily more so, do you think that is why his support is falling? |
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Post by c-a-r-f-r-e-w on Oct 16, 2023 19:46:20 GMT
The short answer is that Covid has some differences compared with colds, which we have been through in the past, though some of it on the side thread, but also it’s possible that even colds might be worse for us than some might think. alec may elaborate on this. There is another issue that these infections can worsen the effects of each other: so Covid can worsen RSV, RSV can worsen Flu etc. And they talk about deaths in article, but there is also the impact of long Covid, and how Covid may impact other deaths due to cardiovascular ailments etc. There is also the economic impact of Covid even when people aren’t dying of it, alongside disruption to things like education and indeed healthcare. And the problem of going into hospital for a routine check up then dying due to contracting Covid while there, which doesn’t tend to happen with non-infectious diseases so much. To give a quick summary… Covid was never as dangerous as it was portrayed. To be fair, it might have turned out so, but it didnt. Sure, bad enough, but there was a huge propaganda campaign deliberately aimed at scaring people so as to boost compliance with regulations. Had we known in particular about the age distribution of deaths (the old) and most of the cases (the young), then expert advice might have been very different. much more like happened in Sweden. Where indeed the decisive issue why they acted differently to most other countries seems to have been doctors not politicians chose what to do. Which rather implies the doctors already knew it was milder than portrayed and it was political logic not medical logic which dictated what happened.
As to long covid, yes, there aere already colds caused by corona viruses related to covid. It’s I’m not not so different. If there is long covid, then there will very likey be long everything else. The good news is we already experienced the 'long' effects of similar diseases and they are already factored into our normal lives. The bottom line remains there really isnt anything we can do to prevent spread of covid, so its academic whether if we could end all those diseases it would be net beneficial. Well I’m not disagreeing there might be issues with the way they went about lockdown Danny, or that they might have hyped things. In fact, Whitty himself said IIRC that they did a lot of damage in the early lockdown before they relaxed things a bit with bubbles. And more recently we saw in the WhatsApp messages (I think I posted some of it from the Telegraph?) about how fear may have been stoked to get compliance. But the stuff I am looking at more these days is not so much about the National response, but things like exploring ways in which Covid might be unusually harmful. E.g. the action of the spike protein etc., which can also be an issue in vaccines |
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Post by c-a-r-f-r-e-w on Oct 16, 2023 19:53:37 GMT
“Women and young voters propelled Donald Tusk to the cusp of power in Poland’s elections after he promised to liberalise its strict abortion laws.
The ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party won the most votes in Sunday’s election but not enough to win a majority.
An updated exit poll yesterday with 40 per cent of the votes counted, had PiS with 36.6 per cent and Mr Tusk on 31 per cent.
While Mr Tusk’s Civic Platform came second, he has two potential coalition partners, Third Way and the Left, which puts him in pole position to deny PiS a third successive term in government.
The opposition leader campaigned hard on social issues, such as abortion rights, to mobilise his voters.
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He [Tusk] was rewarded by a surge in turnout among 18-to-49-year-olds, who gave most of their votes to Civic Platform. Overall turnout was 72.9 per cent, the highest rate since the first election held after the fall of communism.
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A higher proportion of 18-to-29 year-olds (68.8 per cent), 30-to-39 year-olds (72.3 per cent), and 40-to-49 year-olds (78.5 per cent) voted than those over 60, according to an Ipsos exit poll.
Among senior voters, a group that traditionally votes for the socially conservative PiS, turnout was 67 per cent. Of those, 53 per cent backed the incumbent government.
But Mr Tusk was also able to win support from the over-50s and the 9.8m people above 60, which was vital because there are more older than younger people in Poland.
The age group with the highest turnout was the 50 to 59 year-olds, with 83.2 per cent. Among that group, 44.2 per cent cast their ballot for PiS, while 32.9 per cent chose Civic Platform.
A combined 16.9 per cent opted for Third Way and the Left. More than 31 per cent of over-60s voted for Civic Platform, with a combined 12.7 per cent for Third Way and the Left.
Meanwhile, Confederation, the far-Right party that was expected to do well with younger voters and had been tipped as a potential coalition ally for PiS, underperformed. Even if it was to ally with PiS, the two parties would not have enough combined seats to command a majority.”
Telegraph
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Danny
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Post by Danny on Oct 16, 2023 20:00:14 GMT
Watching the ITV News, I do wonder what sort of weird bubble the government live in if they think that the general public are watching all this and thinking that we need to be supporting Israel unequivocally. The cognitive dissonance is a chasm. Might indeed be costing them more vote share in most recent polling? |
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Post by birdseye on Oct 16, 2023 20:26:35 GMT
EC currently reckon LAB would comfortably win the new seat of Wellingborough and Rushden in GE'24 (and it's mostly made up of the current seat of Wellingborough), even though they break the seat down as: Economic position: 10° Right National Position: 15° Nationalist Social Position: 7° conservative Packaged together as 'Strong Right' tribe 65% homeowners in a fairly rural seat with 83% car owners and 87% ethnic white. I can take a guess at CON's local campaign in that kind of seat and if punters on Betfair only give CON 21% chance of winning it (as per EC's model) then I'll put a few quid on the Blue horse (assuming they pick a properly local candidate, which I assume they will). Only other thing to consider is that LDEM clearly have no chance in that seat but will they give it a go anyway - noting they like to consider themselves as the 'by-election' specialists? www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/fcgi-bin/calcwork23.py?seat=Wellingborough%20and%20RushdenFascinating link to electoral calculus but I wonder how serious the conclusions are. It described our local voters as "kind yuppies" - geriatric oldies would have been a better fit given the average age. |
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pjw1961
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Post by pjw1961 on Oct 16, 2023 20:32:19 GMT
Political Betting and Opinion Polling (1 of 3) Thanks to johntel for the reference to the academic paper. I have got hold of the full paper and read it. I have some specific observations on the paper itself, which I will include in the second post of this sequence, but reading it also crystalised some more general points on the issue at hand, which form the subject of this first post. The paper handily reveals the philosophical basis for the proposition that betting markets are a useful indicator of political outcomes. It makes several references to what it calls the "Hayek Hypothesis" which it defines as the idea that "markets can work efficiently even when the participants' knowledge of the environment or other participants is limited". This is of course one of the dominant ideologies of the last 50 years and the authors tend to treat it as a given fact for their purpose rather than a contested economic theory. Wikipedia notes: "In 1945, F.A. Hayek argued in his article The Use of Knowledge in Society that markets were the most effective way of aggregating the pieces of information dispersed among individuals within a society. Given the ability to profit from private information, self-interested traders are motivated to acquire and act on their private information. In doing so, traders contribute to more and more efficient market prices. In the competitive limit, market prices reflect all available information and prices can only move in response to news." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient-market_hypothesisThis is not the place to discuss the merits or otherwise of market ideology - the wikipedia article notes some of the objections to it raised from capitalist sources. Socialists would doubtless have other critiques. Instead I will confine myself to its applicability to political betting markets. Some of the more extreme advocates of the efficiency of markets talk as if the market mechanism itself is enough to achieve this efficient pricing (in the context of an election, the pricing being the odds of particular outcomes occurring), but we can ignore such zealotry and agree that market prices are driven by information together with a dash of irrational human emotion. So the question for political betting - as opposed to, say, the stock market or betting on horse races - is what are the sources of information available? I can think of the following: 1. The useful (a) Advance knowledge of an exit poll - this would be really useful for 'beating the market' but by definition will only be available late on the day of the election itself. The polling companies know the value of this data and take steps to keep it confidential. (b) Knowledge of postal voting prior to the election date - not as good as (a) but still valuable as these are real votes. As I have noted, it is a criminal offence for anyone to release this information in advance of the polls closing on election day. I have never heard of a confirmed case of it, and I doubt it occurs very often, if at all (c) Opinion polling data - this is likely to be the main driver of changes. For example, looking at the 2010 election the betting markets had the Conservatives as firm favorites to win an overall majority but as the polls showed 'Clegg mania' and a Lib Dem serge, a lot of betting money shifted toward the Lib Dems to do well and so changed the odds. This was, of course, just the betting market following the polling. There is a caveat to (c), that these days, as well as headline voting intention, polls contain a lot of other more granular data, especially the big MRPs which seek to stratify populations. Those with the capacity to mine this data might be able to 'beat the market' as Dr Mibbles did in 2017. (d) Past electoral history of the electoral unit (polity, constituency, etc.) that is voting. This is freely available to everyone and doesn't change. It will be the basis for the starting odds when adapted for current polling, but won't drive any changes in the market as it doesn't change until after the election. 2. The not useful (IMO - reasons given) (e) 'Insider' knowledge - Of course insider trading in betting markets is frowned on and often outright illegal (inside company profit information or stories from the stable lads on how well a horse has trained for example) but market theory puts quite a lot of emphasis on the idea that the market has perfect knowledge that will factor such things into the market price. It is my contention that in political betting meaningful insider knowledge does not exist. There is no one who knows for certain what voters will do in the polling booth. Anyone who has taken part in a party political campaign will know and agree that the parties do not have reliable knowledge of how many votes they are going to get; canvass returns are just not that good. Political activists when they talk among themselves as to how a campaign is going invariably talk in subjective terms about how it feels on the doorstep. Furthermore, political campaigns suffer from confirmation bias, frequently optimistically over-estimating their own position. All this is very different from knowing that company XYZ made a £5m loss last quarter, which is 'proper' insider knowledge. (f) 'Expert' opinion - Political pundits add to the gaiety of the nation but are worthless as predictors (and generally heavily biased too). Nate Silver wrote an excellent article on 538 that showed how inaccurate they are. So the real experts in this case are professional psephologists and pollsters, but they are notoriously reluctant to make firm predictions without heavily caveating them with 'unless this changes' or 'as things stand' type comments. For experts to be driving more efficient markets they would need to be secretly advising betting syndicates or large punters. I know of no evidence, or even suggestion, that this happens. (g) 'Common sense' - most betting is going to herd toward the 'likeliest' outcome, and usually it will be right (a self-fulling prophesy but an unprofitable one since the bookies will be offering short odds). However all that amounts to is punters knowing points (c) and (d) - freely available information. So to sum up, the political betting market has only one reliable source of information, fleshed out by 'guessing' what is happening. It is just a shadow reflection of opinion polling, because opinion polling is the only useful information there is. My contention is that betting markets simply reflect polling and get the 'wrong result' whenever polling does, so proving themselves no more efficient than polling, and in post 3 of 3 I will endeavour through historical examples to test whether this can be substantiated. My second post, on the academic paper, will have to wait for tomorrow, as this one has taken a long time to write. |
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neilj
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Post by neilj on Oct 16, 2023 20:55:36 GMT
With most votes counted now it looks a good day for Tusk and his coalition partners
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Post by alec on Oct 16, 2023 21:11:43 GMT
Danny - "Its a very interesting question whether the massive vaccination campaign is what turned covid from being a winter only disease into an all year round one." No it isn't. The massive vaccination campaign is what turned covid from being a year round killer of hundreds of thousands of people to being a year round killer of a few tens of thousands of people. Stop being so silly. "Again, was this a consequence of the vaccine campaign, and the the phenomenon you kindly brought to our attention, of 'immune imprinting' (in this case on an imperfectly effective vaccine)" Again, no. It is the consequence of the failure to maintain measures to prevent transmission. You may recall that in 2020 I often said that we've never in human history ever vaccinated our way out of a pandemic. We've always used vaccines alongside transmission reduction measures. The failure is the failure to adopt a vaccine plus strategy. Very simple.
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Post by crossbat11 on Oct 16, 2023 21:16:33 GMT
pjw1961
A tour de force on political betting. I very much look forward to Instalment 2!
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Post by Deleted on Oct 16, 2023 21:30:00 GMT
pjw1961 A tour de force on political betting. I very much look forward to Instalment 2! I bet you’re not. |
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Post by crossbat11 on Oct 16, 2023 21:45:32 GMT
With most votes counted now it looks a good day for Tusk and his coalition partners This election outcome is both welcome and surprising news. There were some real concerns about how free and fair the election was going to be, and with PiS likely to be invited by President Duda, a PiS ally, to have the first go at forming a government, then it may still be a little premature to assume that Tusk's coalition will move smoothly into government. The Law and Justice Party is Orban-esque in its attachment to democratic norms. Kaczynski may not go quietly. Two interesting aspects for me. Firstly, how the traditional Polish centre-right party, Tusk's Civic Platform, is likely to head up a coalition with significant centre left elements within it. They're tacking centre left rather than propping up PiS. Secondly, as in Spain, the Far Right party in Poland, Confederation, underperformed. PiS were probably hoping they would save the day and keep them in power but they came well short of doing so. The Law and Reform government in Poland were the poster boys for populist right wing politics in Europe and the prospect of them being ousted is a real boost both for the EU and for liberal democracy everywhere. |
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Post by jimjam on Oct 16, 2023 22:49:05 GMT
PJW,
One factor your helpful post did not address was how large bets can shift markets when few bets are placed; and how these can be arbitraged in 2 'horse' races.
So, place a big bet on the outsider; their odds shorten and the favourites lengthen with the result that a larger bet on the favourite can be placed ensuring a return whichever of the 2 contenders wins.
In Hayekian terms this may be considered a market distortion and akin to an abuse of oligopsony.
Difference being, though, that other buyers may enter should they wish so the strategy has risk hence regulation is not appropriate.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 16, 2023 22:50:40 GMT
Not sure if it was a bit of a double bluff, reverse psychology or just gallows humour, but Harry Cole, Sun political editor, just opining on Sky Press Preview about visiting Tory MPs being a bit glum about their prospects in Mid-Beds.
He came out with an anecdote about the Tory candidate being invited in for tea and biccies by a constituent. Whilst this initially seemed very encouraging, the voter admitted that, although a lifelong Tory, she would be voting LAB, and was just feeling sorry for him.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 16, 2023 22:55:54 GMT
PJW, One factor your helpful post did not address was how large bets can shift markets when few bets are placed; and how these can be arbitraged in 2 'horse' races. So, place a big bet on the outsider; their odds shorten and the favourites lengthen with the result that a larger bet on the favourite can be placed ensuring a return whichever of the 2 contenders wins. In Hayekian terms this may be considered a market distortion and akin to an abuse of oligopsony. Difference being, though, that other buyers may enter should they wish so the strategy has risk hence regulation is not appropriate. Fantastic word, jimjam! A new one on me, but highly suitable now I've checked it out! |
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Post by Deleted on Oct 16, 2023 23:03:43 GMT
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Post by mercian on Oct 16, 2023 23:16:35 GMT
I'm a bit confused now. I never mentioned Stroud and I do know it quite well. The tweet you responded to was about councillors in Stroud leaving Labour over Starmer’s response to the situation in Israel and Gaza I repeat the tweet below to help your recollection Ok. I think I was just expanding on the point, and suggesting that Starmer's stance might damage Labour's chances in other places as well, particularly inner cities. Sorry if that wasn't clear. |
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oldnat
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Post by oldnat on Oct 16, 2023 23:19:17 GMT
PJW, One factor your helpful post did not address was how large bets can shift markets when few bets are placed; and how these can be arbitraged in 2 'horse' races. So, place a big bet on the outsider; their odds shorten and the favourites lengthen with the result that a larger bet on the favourite can be placed ensuring a return whichever of the 2 contenders wins. In Hayekian terms this may be considered a market distortion and akin to an abuse of oligopsony. Difference being, though, that other buyers may enter should they wish so the strategy has risk hence regulation is not appropriate. Fantastic word, jimjam ! A new one on me, but highly suitable now I've checked it out! |
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oldnat
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Post by oldnat on Oct 16, 2023 23:24:11 GMT
Though looking at the US report, the dancing may be more relevant to Delhi than Taunton - "Cricket — a sport massively popular in India, a country of 1.4 billion — is being played in the Olympics for the first time since 1900. The version being played in 2028 is called T20, a shorter, three-hour variation. Cricket fans were overjoyed."
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Post by mercian on Oct 16, 2023 23:24:27 GMT
So the tweets unconditionally condemn Hamas, and then go onto say that the killing Palestinian children is also wrong. They talk about getting humanitarian aid in to give relief to civilian populations. They talk about needing peace and ceasefires to stop more suffering. Who could disagree? If that leads to expulsion, then Starmer's Labour control freakery has gone OTT. Of course. What seems silly though was McDonnell said we should 'demand a ceasefire'! How are we in a position to demand anything? All we can realistically do is provide humanitarian aid and tut-tut over the slaughter. Labour people often decry the British Empire but still want the government to behave as though we were still a superpower, which is frankly laughable. |
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Post by mercian on Oct 16, 2023 23:34:59 GMT
pjw1961 A tour de force on political betting. I very much look forward to Instalment 2! I bet you’re not.  |
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Post by Deleted on Oct 16, 2023 23:38:27 GMT
Though looking at the US report, the dancing may be more relevant to Delhi than Taunton - "Cricket — a sport massively popular in India, a country of 1.4 billion — is being played in the Olympics for the first time since 1900. The version being played in 2028 is called T20, a shorter, three-hour variation. Cricket fans were overjoyed." It's all relative, I suppose. You'd be lucky to get more than 8,000 in the County Ground at Taunton! Mind you, it's a lovely little ground to watch a spot of T20 biff-bash. |
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oldnat
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Post by oldnat on Oct 16, 2023 23:38:38 GMT
So the tweets unconditionally condemn Hamas, and then go onto say that the killing Palestinian children is also wrong. They talk about getting humanitarian aid in to give relief to civilian populations. They talk about needing peace and ceasefires to stop more suffering. Who could disagree? If that leads to expulsion, then Starmer's Labour control freakery has gone OTT. Of course. What seems silly though was McDonnell said we should 'demand a ceasefire'! How are we in a position to demand anything? All we can realistically do is provide humanitarian aid and tut-tut over the slaughter. Labour people often decry the British Empire but still want the government to behave as though we were still a superpower, which is frankly laughable.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXkQucC-2fQ
Not infrequently, "demand" is a word inserted by journalists. |
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Post by mercian on Oct 16, 2023 23:48:28 GMT
Great news in a way. Just a shame that it's not proper cricket. It's a bit like say 5-a-side football compared to proper football. T20 cricket isn't much different to baseball really, just trying to bash the ball as hard as you can straight away. No chance to 'play yourself in' or a teasing few overs from a clever spinner until the batsman finally takes the bait and either scores or gets out. In 1900 there was only one match played, but at least it was over two days and included two innings for each side. Devon and Somerset Wanderers (if they still exist) are the current Olympic champions. |
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Post by Deleted on Oct 17, 2023 0:09:05 GMT
Great news in a way. Just a shame that it's not proper cricket. It's a bit like say 5-a-side football compared to proper football. T20 cricket isn't much different to baseball really, just trying to bash the ball as hard as you can straight away. No chance to 'play yourself in' or a teasing few overs from a clever spinner until the batsman finally takes the bait and either scores or gets out. In 1900 there was only one match played, but at least it was over two days and included two innings for each side. Devon and Somerset Wanderers (if they still exist) are the current Olympic champions. I'll take that! Of course, I take your point. But I think fitting four, or even five, day matches into the Olympic schedule might be a bit tricky. So T20 seems a reasonable compromise between no cricket at all and a 'first class' structure. And it can be very exciting. |
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Post by ptarmigan on Oct 17, 2023 0:35:23 GMT
An increasingly hopeless situation is developing in Gaza with the WHO warning that it is running out of water. The head of the UN agency supporting Palestinian refugees has said that "Gaza is being strangled and it seems that the world right now has lost its humanity. If we look at the issue of water – we all know water is life – Gaza is running out of water, and Gaza is running out of life." There was rightly widespread condemnation and revulsion at Hamas' actions last week, giving rise to heartbreaking and harrowing stories, but there's a distinct lack of similar humanising stories of Palestinian victims in the media as Israel indiscriminately bombs Gaza. Nor does there appear to be any condemnation of the genocidal rhetoric being used by Israel's hard right regime or its commission of war crimes. Worse still, our political class deride those who condemn this state of affairs (shame on Labour) and our national broadcaster smears protestors as pro-Hamas. It probably shouldn't surprise me but I feel quite dismayed by the response of our political leaders who haven't even made the most basic attempt to de-escalate the situation. Whatever awfulness unfolds, they'll all be complicit. |
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Post by Deleted on Oct 17, 2023 1:04:35 GMT
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steve
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Post by steve on Oct 17, 2023 4:30:54 GMT
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neilj
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Post by neilj on Oct 17, 2023 5:04:43 GMT
Even the Daily Mail are having a go at the tories now
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