2 May 2024 : LAB 44% / CON 26% / LDM 10% / REF 10%

[oldnat]

May 6, 2024 15:09:57 GMT leftieliberal said:

May 6, 2024 14:05:45 GMT steve said:

"Well good, because I'm not arguing for demographic collapse - quite the opposite. Yes, population growth is slowing, but we're not yet declining, and so we need a managed program of depopulation"


Who shall we start with?
How about people who don't put the toilet seat down in public urinals, or those who only start packing their shopping after they've paid for it at the check out they need to be depopulated.

As the Welsh Parliament is considering criminalising lying by politicians, perhaps we could get even more public support for it by making it a capital offence. I suspect public hangings of convicted politicians [1] would be popular and raise a good deal in income if we charged people to attend.  

[1] Or as Shakespeare put it "Let's kill all the lawyers." Henry VI Part 2, Act 4, Scene 2.

Wasn't that quote from "The Comedy of Errors - The Rise and Fall of the Tudor Master of the Posts"?

As an appropriate sanction for the lawyers [mis]representing Royal Mail, it remains highly apposite.

[Danny]

May 6, 2024 13:59:09 GMT alec said:

The FT discusses the mounting twitchiness about the long term impacts of covid on health and the economy - www.ft.com/content/bb09a03d-4a87-4cea-ae87-986769fd4680

These are big hits, with major consequences. While some clung onto the comfort blanket that long covid was only a major issue in the pre vaccine period, the latest data from the most recent wave in multiple countries suggests the overall numbers are still growing.

Well its a shame then that we squandered a trilion pounds on lockdown which didnt do much good, rather than saving it to fix the actual problems of people who did not die from covid.

[neilj]

Redfield Wilton

Labour leads by 23%.

Westminster VI (5 May):

Labour 44% (-1)
Conservative 21% (-1)
Reform UK 15% (+1)
Liberal Democrat 9% (–)
Green 5% (-1)
Scottish National Party 3% (–)
Other 1% (-1)

Changes +/- 28 April

[Danny]

May 6, 2024 14:05:45 GMT steve said:

Who shall we start with?

Frankly, thats easy. The immigrants, stop them coming. But it will mean we have to move people from non essential jobs like banking to essential ones like care for the elderly. And everyone will have to take a lower income.

[oldnat]

May 6, 2024 16:00:48 GMT neilj said:

Redfield Wilton

Labour leads by 23%.

Westminster VI (5 May):

Labour 44% (-1)
Conservative 21% (-1)
Reform UK 15% (+1)
Liberal Democrat 9% (–)
Green 5% (-1)
Scottish National Party 3% (–)
Other 1% (-1)

Changes +/- 28 April

Variation by one (rounded) % point - which could mean actual changes of 0.01%! Polldrums.

[steve]

neilj

The only thing I find implausible about current polling , other than  of course the liberal democrats are far more popular☺  is the refuker figure.

Refuk unlike UKIP aren't a real political party, they have no members , their candidates are selected by Richard Tice and a small clique of faragist head bangers, the chances of them being  able to put 600+ candidates up are exceptionally limited and even if they can the capacity to canvass for more than two or three of them in areas of greatest xenophobia is just not there.

While they might be able to achieve double digit support in a few constituencies nationally even if they find the candidates I doubt it will exceed 5%.

The question of where the other potential refuk voters go if the don't stand might at first glance seem significant but polling suggests it isn't that relevant.

Polling suggests around 40% of them won't go anywhere ,they simply won't vote at all.
Of the rest around 60% would vote Tory 30%+ Labour , there's a few greens in there as well believe it or not ( of the nimby variety presumably) They don't seem very enamoured of my party what with its belief in treating asylum seekers like human beings.

So maybe 2-3% more for the Tories can't see this as having any significant impact at all.

Of course if they can find and canvass for hundreds of candidates assuming they stand  in Tory seats the negative impact of  splitting the xenophobic vote is actually more damaging for the Tories than if they didn't stand at all

[James E]

An interesting tweet from Election Maps, although not one that I can agree with:

"Aggregate Result in the 197 Wards where all 5 Major Parties Stood:

🌹 LAB: 35.7%
🌳 CON: 22.9%
🔶 LDM: 13.8%
🌍 GRN: 10.8%
➡️ RFM: 9.6%

Looks like the Reform polling numbers are real, even if they can't convert it into seats."

Reform only stood in 20% of all seats. They are reckoned to have taken around 11% of the vote in these, compared to an average poll rating of 12.6%.

Unless their choice of these was random, they might reasonably have expected to exceed their poll rating rather than falling short of it. Also, the above figures can be compared to the average poll ratings for these 5 parties:

Lab 35.7% (-8)
Con 22.9% ( 0)
LD 13.8% (+4.2)
Grn 10.8% (+4.8)
Ref 9.6% (-3)

So the Lab+LD+Grn share of 60.1% is actually 1 point more than in the polls, while the Con + Ref share of 32.5% is 3 points lower.

[pjw1961]

May 6, 2024 16:23:00 GMT James E said:

An interesting tweet from Election Maps, although not one that I can agree with:

"Aggregate Result in the 197 Wards where all 5 Major Parties Stood:

🌹 LAB: 35.7%
🌳 CON: 22.9%
🔶 LDM: 13.8%
🌍 GRN: 10.8%
➡️ RFM: 9.6%

Looks like the Reform polling numbers are real, even if they can't convert it into seats."

Reform only stood in 20% of all seats. They are reckoned to have taken around 11% of the vote in these, compared to an average poll rating of 12.6%.

Unless their choice of these was random and untargeted then they might be expected to exceed their poll rating rather than falling short of it, as they appear to have done. Also, the above figures can be compared to the average poll ratings for these 5 parties:

Lab 35.7% (-8)
Con 22.9%
LD 13.8% (+4.2)
Grn 10.8% (+4.8)
Ref 9.6% (-3)

So the Lab+LD+Grn share of 60.1% is actually 1 point than in the polls, while the Con + Ref share of 32.5% is 3 points lower.

Almost by definition those 197 wards won't be a truly representative sample of wards, even for this round of elections. Reform concentrated its limited efforts primarily in a few areas. Not sure these figures tell us much. 

[c-a-r-f-r-e-w]

May 6, 2024 14:05:45 GMT steve said:

"Well good, because I'm not arguing for demographic collapse - quite the opposite. Yes, population growth is slowing, but we're not yet declining, and so we need a managed program of depopulation"


Who shall we start with?

didn’t Douglas Adams already figure this out? 

“The Golgafrinchan Ark Fleet Ship B was a way of removing the basically useless citizens from the planet Golgafrincham. A variety of stories were formed about the doom of the planet, such as blowing up, crashing into the sun or being eaten by a mutant star goat. The ship was filled with all the middlemen of Golgafrincham, such as the telephone sanitisers, account executives, hairdressers, tired TV producers, insurance salesmen, personnel officers, security guards, public relations executives, and management consultants.”

hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Golgafrinchan_Ark_Fleet_Ship_B

(Though not the telephone sanitisers, obvs.)

[mercian]

May 6, 2024 11:52:26 GMT athena said:

Charles III is a vastly wealthy, fantiasticly privileged, opinionated, short-tempered old man with an extremely narrow experience of life. Not so very different from a number of UKPR2 contributors in many ways... but because of who he is, his foibles, biases and failures of understanding are far from innocuous.

Well at least you can't mean me because I'm not vastly wealthy. 

EDIT: beaten to it by pjw this time. You guys must practically live on here! 

[alec]

Ukraine: Expect some big hits on Russian targets inside Russia with UK made weapons soon.

The Russian Foreign Ministry has said Russia can strike "any British military installations and equipment in or outside Ukraine" if Ukraine uses British weapons to strike them.

Empty threats; call their bluff.

[pjw1961]

May 6, 2024 16:43:02 GMT c-a-r-f-r-e-w said:

May 6, 2024 14:05:45 GMT steve said:

"Well good, because I'm not arguing for demographic collapse - quite the opposite. Yes, population growth is slowing, but we're not yet declining, and so we need a managed program of depopulation"


Who shall we start with?

didn’t Douglas Adams already figure this out? 

“The Golgafrinchan Ark Fleet Ship B was a way of removing the basically useless citizens from the planet Golgafrincham. A variety of stories were formed about the doom of the planet, such as blowing up, crashing into the sun or being eaten by a mutant star goat. The ship was filled with all the middlemen of Golgafrincham, such as the telephone sanitisers, account executives, hairdressers, tired TV producers, insurance salesmen, personnel officers, security guards, public relations executives, and management consultants.”

hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Golgafrinchan_Ark_Fleet_Ship_B

(Though not the telephone sanitisers, obvs.)

True story - "tired TV producers" was a misprint. It was meant to be Tri-TV producers (i.e. a sci-fi touch), but Douglas Adams was amused enough to decide to leave it in the script. 

[steve]

I've been thinking now most of the population live in urban areas we don't get to see much of nature these days so I thought let's see what people know about the natural kingdom with a little game of guess the animal.

I'm not certain but I think this one is a Shetland pony.

[pjw1961]

I've done the 'average opposition lead' number for April and amazingly it has crept up a little to 20.5 (15.6 for the whole parliament) and that despite me now including all polls. I was expecting by now we would see some swing-back, but no. I'm not sure when we last saw such a pattern. There was movement back toward the Conservatives prior to 1997 and it was underway by now.

[oldnat]

May 6, 2024 17:42:25 GMT steve said:

I've been thinking now most of the population live in urban areas we don't get to see much of nature these days so I thought let's see what people know about the natural kingdom with a little game of guess the animal.

I'm not certain but I think this one is a Shetland pony.
View Attachment

It's a St Mirren supporter.

[oldnat]

[eor]

May 6, 2024 17:42:25 GMT steve said:

I've been thinking now most of the population live in urban areas we don't get to see much of nature these days so I thought let's see what people know about the natural kingdom with a little game of guess the animal.

I'm not certain but I think this one is a Shetland pony.
View Attachment

Due to the miracle that is baby sign language, my daughter was able to resolve that one on her very first visit to an animal sanctuary. 

You will find it is in fact an unusually large and stripey rabbit. 

[c-a-r-f-r-e-w]

May 6, 2024 17:39:09 GMT pjw1961 said:

May 6, 2024 16:43:02 GMT c-a-r-f-r-e-w said:

didn’t Douglas Adams already figure this out? 

“The Golgafrinchan Ark Fleet Ship B was a way of removing the basically useless citizens from the planet Golgafrincham. A variety of stories were formed about the doom of the planet, such as blowing up, crashing into the sun or being eaten by a mutant star goat. The ship was filled with all the middlemen of Golgafrincham, such as the telephone sanitisers, account executives, hairdressers, tired TV producers, insurance salesmen, personnel officers, security guards, public relations executives, and management consultants.”

hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Golgafrinchan_Ark_Fleet_Ship_B

(Though not the telephone sanitisers, obvs.)

True story - "tired TV producers" was a misprint. It was meant to be Tri-TV producers (i.e. a sci-fi touch), but Douglas Adams was amused enough to decide to leave it in the script. 

And happily, he didn’t include pollsters, PJ!!

[c-a-r-f-r-e-w]

May 6, 2024 15:37:50 GMT pjw1961 said:

May 6, 2024 14:05:45 GMT steve said:

"Well good, because I'm not arguing for demographic collapse - quite the opposite. Yes, population growth is slowing, but we're not yet declining, and so we need a managed program of depopulation"


Who shall we start with?
How about people who don't put the toilet seat down in public urinals, or those who only start packing their shopping after they've paid for it at the check out they need to be depopulated.

I do that at the trolley self-checkouts in Tesco; the reason being that any attempt to place bags in the bagging area causes the automated system to have an immediate nervous breakdown and stop working, so I have given up trying. Not at manned checkouts though, when I pack as the stuff is processed. Does that mean I get my sentence commuted to life imprisonment?

Self-Checkouts are mostly to be avoided, PJ*. (They’re like something that could’ve been included in Terry Gilliam’s film Brazil, or else manufactured by the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation. “Share and Enjoy!”)

hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Sirius_Cybernetics_Corporation

* excepting occasional items, like a last-minute pack of hobnobs on election night…

[eor]

May 6, 2024 16:23:00 GMT James E said:

An interesting tweet from Election Maps, although not one that I can agree with:

"Aggregate Result in the 197 Wards where all 5 Major Parties Stood:

🌹 LAB: 35.7%
🌳 CON: 22.9%
🔶 LDM: 13.8%
🌍 GRN: 10.8%
➡️ RFM: 9.6%

Looks like the Reform polling numbers are real, even if they can't convert it into seats."

Reform only stood in 20% of all seats. They are reckoned to have taken around 11% of the vote in these, compared to an average poll rating of 12.6%.

Unless their choice of these was random, they might reasonably have expected to exceed their poll rating rather than falling short of it. Also, the above figures can be compared to the average poll ratings for these 5 parties:

Lab 35.7% (-8)
Con 22.9% ( 0)
LD 13.8% (+4.2)
Grn 10.8% (+4.8)
Ref 9.6% (-3)

So the Lab+LD+Grn share of 60.1% is actually 1 point more than in the polls, while the Con + Ref share of 32.5% is 3 points lower.

Random might not be a terrible assumption - for example around here they stood in almost every ward in Sandwell and none at all in Coventry or Wolverhampton, three areas that returned very similar breakdowns of party support in the West Midlands Mayoral contest. And from a skim through the results, they seemed to get quite similar levels of support in every Sandwell ward that they did contest, 200-300 votes pretty much everywhere. 

Coupled with the fact that the council elections themselves weren't in a representative set of areas to start with, and the turnouts everywhere were well below what would be expected in even an apathetic GE, then 11% across the seats they stood in might be as deep as it's wise to delve. Doesn't prove much but doesn't give a strong reason to doubt the VI numbers either?  

[alec]

Quite a turnaround - www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/infectioncontrol/109934

"WHO Overturns Dogma on Airborne Disease Spread."

"Traditional beliefs on droplet transmission help explain why the WHO and the CDC focused so acutely on hand-washing and surface-cleaning at the beginning of the pandemic. Such advice overwhelmed recommendations for N95 masks that filter out most virus-laden particles suspended in the air. Employers denied many healthcare workers access to N95s, insisting that only those routinely working within feet of COVID patients needed them. More than 3,600 healthcare workers died in the first year of the pandemic, many due to a lack of protection."

Long overdue, but a great example of where credentialed medical experts got something completely and totally wrong, dismissing those who flagged this error as 'armchair experts', and who subsequently dug in very deep and worked tirelessly for four years to deny the evidence and delay the shift to widespread acceptance of airborne infection as the primary route. To put this in context, there was a (now famous) Chinese publication from March 2020 which stated very clearly that the epidemiology of the early SARs 2 outbreak in Wuhan was such that only airborne transmission could explain it, and this was ignored by virtually 100% of western health authorities.

We are currently making a similar category error with the notion that SARS 2 'is just a cold', but I hope it won't be another 4 years until that false dogma is put to bed.

[mercian]

May 6, 2024 16:09:53 GMT oldnat said:

May 6, 2024 16:00:48 GMT neilj said:

Redfield Wilton

Labour leads by 23%.

Westminster VI (5 May):

Labour 44% (-1)
Conservative 21% (-1)
Reform UK 15% (+1)
Liberal Democrat 9% (–)
Green 5% (-1)
Scottish National Party 3% (–)
Other 1% (-1)

Changes +/- 28 April

Variation by one (rounded) % point - which could mean actual changes of 0.01%! Polldrums.

It does seem that the public has made up its' mind. There has been little change for months if not a couple of years. I expect there will be giveaways before the election, but I don't think even that will move the dial more than a few percent up for the Tories and probably won't affect the Labour VI at all.

[shevii]

May 6, 2024 16:30:21 GMT pjw1961 said:

May 6, 2024 16:23:00 GMT James E said:

Almost by definition those 197 wards won't be a truly representative sample of wards, even for this round of elections. Reform concentrated its limited efforts primarily in a few areas. Not sure these figures tell us much. 

Dunno if that is true or not (it may be) but I don't see reform as being like LDs or Greens with an activist base to target their strong areas well. I just see them as something that appears on the ballot paper and a certain demographic will vote for them with or without any election work.  I suspect they stood candidates where they could find them and where they had an organiser in the area who understood the procedure for nomination, simply by the default of more reform types living in the area producing more activists that may have upped their percentages at these locals a little bit but it may still have been a bit random as to where they had an activist willing to take on the task of election organiser.  My 99% white ward had a random Workers Party candidate stand so that was down to him wanting to stand rather than a Galloway target ward.

I assume reform have funding so I wouldn't put it past them to field candidates in all seats as they have promised to do, although I think it was you who said something about Farage still using this as a bargaining tool and that is definitely a valid theory.

[mercian]

steve
"Refuk unlike UKIP aren't a real political party, they have no members "

I raised this with one of their representatives and was told that they became a members' party last Autumn, though I've seen no evidence of a recruitment drive.

[mercian]

May 6, 2024 16:23:00 GMT James E said:

Unless their choice of these was random, they might reasonably have expected to exceed their poll rating rather than falling short of it. Also, the above figures can be compared to the average poll ratings for these 5 parties:

Lab 35.7% (-8)
Con 22.9% ( 0)
LD 13.8% (+4.2)
Grn 10.8% (+4.8)
Ref 9.6% (-3)

So the Lab+LD+Grn share of 60.1% is actually 1 point more than in the polls, while the Con + Ref share of 32.5% is 3 points lower.

The fact that the Tory vote was the same as their polling suggests to me that that is their absolute rock-bottom core vote. 

[Deleted]

 United- the gift that keeps giving. 

[pjw1961]

May 6, 2024 20:25:38 GMT mercian said:

May 6, 2024 16:09:53 GMT oldnat said:

Variation by one (rounded) % point - which could mean actual changes of 0.01%! Polldrums.

It does seem that the public has made up its' mind. There has been little change for months if not a couple of years. I expect there will be giveaways before the election, but I don't think even that will move the dial more than a few percent up for the Tories and probably won't affect the Labour VI at all.

I actually think the Conservatives would have a better chance of added to their VI by having a 'fiscal event' where they announce they are putting more money into public services - GP appointments say, or even pothole repairs - than from any tax cuts. However, I guess that it is just not in the Tory DNA to do that.  

[pjw1961]

May 6, 2024 20:29:13 GMT mercian said:

steve
"Refuk unlike UKIP aren't a real political party, they have no members "

I raised this with one of their representatives and was told that they became a members' party last Autumn, though I've seen no evidence of a recruitment drive.

They now allow members, but the members have no control, Farage remaining the majority shareholder of the limited company. 

You could argue that the Conservative, Labour and even Liberal Democrat and SNP members have made such a shambles of electing leaders in recent years that perhaps Farage is showing untypical wisdom

[leftieliberal]

May 6, 2024 15:37:50 GMT pjw1961 said:

May 6, 2024 14:05:45 GMT steve said:

"Well good, because I'm not arguing for demographic collapse - quite the opposite. Yes, population growth is slowing, but we're not yet declining, and so we need a managed program of depopulation"


Who shall we start with?
How about people who don't put the toilet seat down in public urinals, or those who only start packing their shopping after they've paid for it at the check out they need to be depopulated.

I do that at the trolley self-checkouts in Tesco; the reason being that any attempt to place bags in the bagging area causes the automated system to have an immediate nervous breakdown and stop working, so I have given up trying. Not at manned checkouts though, when I pack as the stuff is processed. Does that mean I get my sentence commuted to life imprisonment?

No, you'd get a community sentence, packing other people's bags at the checkout.

[pjw1961]

May 6, 2024 20:25:39 GMT shevii said:

May 6, 2024 16:30:21 GMT pjw1961 said:

Almost by definition those 197 wards won't be a truly representative sample of wards, even for this round of elections. Reform concentrated its limited efforts primarily in a few areas. Not sure these figures tell us much. 

Dunno if that is true or not (it may be) but I don't see reform as being like LDs or Greens with an activist base to target their strong areas well. I just see them as something that appears on the ballot paper and a certain demographic will vote for them with or without any election work.  I suspect they stood candidates where they could find them and where they had an organiser in the area who understood the procedure for nomination, simply by the default of more reform types living in the area producing more activists that may have upped their percentages at these locals a little bit but it may still have been a bit random as to where they had an activist willing to take on the task of election organiser.  My 99% white ward had a random Workers Party candidate stand so that was down to him wanting to stand rather than a Galloway target ward.

I assume reform have funding so I wouldn't put it past them to field candidates in all seats as they have promised to do, although I think it was you who said something about Farage still using this as a bargaining tool and that is definitely a valid theory.

I did see a list of which authorities Reform had put up a full slate of candidates in and there were only 3 or 4, but I can't find it now. Two of them were Sunderland and Havant - which are very different types of place. A better guide to Reform's polling would be to calculate it from the 700 or so "key wards" that are used in the calculation of the Equivalent National Vote share, but only where they stood obviously. Perhaps that was too small a sample. 

I remain suspicious of what Farage is up to (see the recent talk of a Johnson/Farage alliance to "unite the right") but I am beginning to think that part of the strategy is to damage the Conservatives as much as possible at the General Election, so maybe they will field a full slate of paper candidates. I don't see any way they will win a seat though.