pjw1961
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Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.
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Post by pjw1961 on Jul 2, 2024 14:38:15 GMT
Poster wars have got a bit more literal. 2 Labour board stolen in Shalford village and 2 turned around away from the road, while the RefUK boards just up the road were mysteriously untouched.
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Post by barbara on Jul 2, 2024 14:57:45 GMT
The leaflet challenge is on. pjw1961 be warned. I'm out and about in the villages of Harvington and Norton this morning, armed with about 250 personally addressed "promise cards" to deliver around places that, before the boundaries were redrawn, have never before been part of the Redditch constituency. Every Labour voter a bonus, I would think. And every Tory abstainer too! Two more sleeps before polling day and about 62 hours before the BBC exit poll announcement. It's beginning to feel a lot like General Election time! With apologies to Meredith Wilson: It's beginning to look a lot like Polling Everywhere you go Take a look at the letter box, its teeth like a snarling crocs With a snap of spring the fingers sting and glow It's beginning to look a lot like Polling canvassers everywhere to bore But the prettiest sight to see is the poster that will be On your own front door Excellent ! |
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Post by shevii on Jul 2, 2024 15:08:20 GMT
If anyone ( James E ) can advise... the We Think tables for Bristol Central are hard to understand. However if I have got this right there is a huge (unexplained) weighting in favour of the Greens: omnisis.co.uk/poll-results/ge-2024-bristol-central/As far as I can see the unweighted is 162 Lab and 115 Green which turns into 153 Green and 120 Lab. Regardless of whether the weighting is fair or not, surely such heavy weighting must come with huge doubts about how accurate the poll is going to be? |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 2, 2024 15:09:00 GMT
alec Hard to like a post reporting the appallingly awful deaths of many young Russians, almost all of whom are probably on the frontline against their will. But, on the other hand, the sooner this senseless waste of life ends the better - and if it finally results in Ukraine being united again, in both NATO and the EU, and Putin on the way out, then the better for everybody.
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Post by barbara on Jul 2, 2024 15:14:39 GMT
The questions were: How will you ensure that womens’ rights are not lost to trans rights and women’s safe spaces are preserved? What are you going to do to get more homes built? What are you going to do to stop building on the green belt? What should the limit on net immigration be? What will you do to achieve net zero? Would you personally like the UK to rejoin the EU within the next 10 years? (My question) What would you do to stop our rivers (i.e. the River Mole) being polluted? What will you do to improve teacher morale? What will you do to improve social care and the NHS (esp. mental health)? Goodness me what a toxic list of questions! Trans, green belt, immigration, net zero, EU, river pollution... it's like reading what's trending on Twitter!  At least the last two were likely to lead to more constructive debate. I could have had a good guess at the kind of place those hustings were being held in from the list of questions. None about homelessness, crime, disability, employment, cost of living. |
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Post by alec on Jul 2, 2024 15:19:39 GMT
@fecklessmiser - Indeed. I have to say that I do sometimes need to have a break from looking at Ukraine stuff, because modern social media doesn't give a great deal of protection from the visual horrors. While I try to keep my posts factual, I do find much of this really rather distressing. As you say, most of the Russians are not there willingly, or if they have volunteered, it's because they've been completely duped by the propaganda machine, and they don't deserve what they are getting. This is compounded by the Russian military's wanton lack of regard for their own troops.
The latest wheeze is sending single soldiers on trail bikes to attack Ukrainian positions. The thinking seems to be that they would be too fast for drones. They're not, they don't handle landmines too well, and the Ukrainian habit of stringing wire across the tracks wasn't hard to predict. So we're now seeing images of piles of (literally) dozens of Russian bodies and their motorbikes.
It's utterly senseless, and the time will come when I can no longer bear to dip into the coverage.
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Post by barbara on Jul 2, 2024 15:25:58 GMT
In addition to the insanity of making Trump a king the U.S. supreme court has assumed huge additional powers for themselves designed to undermine democratic presidents. While they have stated that a president has absolute immunity for " official " acts what amounts to an official act is for the supreme court to define. Consequently Donald Trump locking up or assassinating his political rivals could be considered an official presidential act and therefore effectively not a crime but if Joe Biden carried out the most minor infringement if the SC decided that presidential immunity didn't apply he could be prosecuted. There's never been an occasion where a president was likely to be criminally prosecuted for his actions in office in over 240 years , other than Trump. There's only one purpose in this legislation it's to allow Trump to be a dictator. I agree it's a catastrophe for the US but my understanding is that the Supreme Court has referred back to lower courts the decision about which actions were official and which not. Chief Justice Roberts has given some guidance but it's still going to be something argued in a lower court. It's expected that there will be a hearing with both prosectuors and defence to thrash out what can be presented under the Jan 6th trial. That's just a correction to your post steve but I 100% agree with you that it's a f***ing disaster. I wouldn't be at all surprised that if Trunp wins in November there will be talks about secession from some of the blue states, particularly California, which is as big as many countries. (156,000 sq miles -same size as Paraguay and 39m popuplation.) |
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soph
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Post by soph on Jul 2, 2024 15:26:14 GMT
If anyone ( James E ) can advise... the We Think tables for Bristol Central are hard to understand. However if I have got this right there is a huge (unexplained) weighting in favour of the Greens: omnisis.co.uk/poll-results/ge-2024-bristol-central/As far as I can see the unweighted is 162 Lab and 115 Green which turns into 153 Green and 120 Lab. Regardless of whether the weighting is fair or not, surely such heavy weighting must come with huge doubts about how accurate the poll is going to be? I believe it is mostly explained by the sample being disproportionately older.
They got just 33 responses from 18-24 year olds, and just 50 from 25-34 year olds. These were bumped to 103 and 125 respectively. On the other end, they got 74 and 87 responses from 65-74 and 75+, which were weighted down to 18 and 20.
Greens' advantage is with younger people, so after the age weighting their numbers go way up, vice versa for Labour.
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oldnat
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Post by oldnat on Jul 2, 2024 15:27:01 GMT
The perils of not looking closely at polling tables -
One of the responses notes "Sample size of 201 in total, and half that for the gender splits, is appalling. Tell us the error bars on that?"
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Post by Mark on Jul 2, 2024 15:31:47 GMT
*** new polling thread alert ***
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Post by mercian on Jul 2, 2024 15:33:01 GMT
More in Common Muslim vote - just for mercian 😀 Our polling in England's 30 constituencies with the highest Muslim population finds strong growth of smaller parties, but with Labour comfortably leading: 🔴 Lab 58% (-6) 🔵 Con 15% (-8) ⚪ Other / Independent 9% (+7) 🟠 LD 7% (+1) 🟢 Grn 6% (+4) 🟣 Ref 6% (+3) Changes w 2019 Yes Labour seem to have largely reduced the potential problem by saying that they'd recognise Palestine as a state. They must have decided that it's safer to p--- off the Americans than their muslim voters. |
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Post by mercian on Jul 2, 2024 15:37:41 GMT
It would be easier, given our system with all power vested in the executive and a pliant HoC, for a UK Prime Minister to establish a dictatorship. There are essentially no checks and balances built into our system. I believe the armed forces swear allegiance to the monarch. In the last resort, that would be a check. |
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pjw1961
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Post by pjw1961 on Jul 2, 2024 15:43:49 GMT
It would be easier, given our system with all power vested in the executive and a pliant HoC, for a UK Prime Minister to establish a dictatorship. There are essentially no checks and balances built into our system. I believe the armed forces swear allegiance to the monarch. In the last resort, that would be a check. Unless the armed forces leadership liked the PM - which suggests more chance of a right-wing dictator than a left-wing one. |
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steve
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Post by steve on Jul 2, 2024 15:48:20 GMT
Keir Starmer isn't as far as I know religious, however his wife is, she's Jewish and Mr and Mrs Starmer have chosen to bring up their children in the Jewish faith.They're teenagers I believe.
As I'm sure most people are aware Friday evening's are quite important in the Jewish calendar for some it involves a special meal known as a Shabbat.
I've no idea whether the Starmer's choose to have this but it's quite likely.
Today Starmer said if at all possible he would like to spend Friday evening's with his family, he said obviously this wouldn't always be possible.
Perfectly reasonable you would think, not if you're a Tory or a Tory enabling media shill.
They've collectively thrown all their toys out of the pram with ludicrous assertions of part time prime minister etc.
Odd they would get so excited given that when Theresa May was prime minister she built in " me time" every Saturday and every Sunday morning she did some sort of religious observance.
Spaffer of course spent many of his evenings at parties or on holiday.
Not a word was said about either.
It's almost as if they're a bunch of hypocritical straw grasping bawbags
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c-a-r-f-r-e-w
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Post by c-a-r-f-r-e-w on Jul 2, 2024 16:25:40 GMT
"The stat that stood out for me is that we used to have 4 workers supporting one pensioner. Now that's dropped to just over 3 supporting one pensioner. Bearing in mind that's with the record levels of immigration we've had in the last few years"
alec
These are utterly pointless statistics (I mean, completely, totally and absolutely pointless) unless you add in the equivalent time series of productivity gains
It was me that quoted those statistics, even if right that due to greater productivity we don't need so many workers (current problems with getting enough workers to fill jobs suggest otherwise) you are missing the elephant in the room. Namely the burden of paying for a growing pensioner population on a decreasing number of people, this isn't just the pension itself, which with the rachet effect of the triple lock means more people will get rising pension
You also need to take account of the other costs of old age, health and care costs being the biggest thing.
There will be some pensioners who will be net tax contributors, but most won't, when you take into account the extra services/benefits they get. In addition of course they get the tax break on not paying National insurance on any of their pension, private or state
I'm not saying they shouldn't get all of the above, I am saying it will put an ever increasing burden on the working age population when we already have record levels of tax
It's a big issue and to bury our heads in the sand and pretend it's not, isn't a solution
Huge amounts of money and workforce go into something like, say, cosmetics and especially the marketing of them when the world isn't any better a place because people have been convinced to buy a new type of smellie at ridiculous prices. Consumable clothing that can even be single use is another area of unproductive waste. Built in obsolescence on appliances, marketing the next i-phone, excessive selling of financial products.
Just importing more people moves the problem on to the next generation and will be harder to fix and, if the world does sort itself out and population growth flattens and poorer countries pull themselves up then there won't be that supply available anyway.
The solutions aren't easy (as you say) but they do exist.
Yep, the problem with the right-wing approach to the problem of labour shortages in key areas - which is to import lots of cheaper labour - is that it doesn’t tend to solve the problem.
If it solved the problem, they probably wouidn’t do it. Because they make more money out of not solving the problem. A bit like those times big Pharma doesn’t pursue cures, but instead the temporary alleviation of symptoms.
The obvious issue with importing labour to solve labour shortages, is that it creates new labour shortages. Immigrants are treated as if they don’t themselves have needs, but they do of course: they themselves need doctors and nurses and teachers and accountants and hairdressers and leafleters and so on. Furthermore, they may also need caring for at some point, so you are creating even further demand for carers.
Alongside you are also creating extra demand for housing, electricity, hospitals, motorways et cetera, so now you need even more labour to build the extra houses and hospitals and motorways and power generation et cetera et cetera.
The right-wing approach is liable to drive down wages though, and save business the expense of investing in greater productivity. So it’s great for capital, not so good for the workers. Also creates demand for middle-class services, whose careers tend to be protected from competition by language barriers, credentialism, professional associations (which Thatch left alone, unlike working class unions), and trade regs.*
The left-wing approach, as you suggest would be to redeploy labour to where it’s most needed. For this to happen though, as you rightly say, you’re probably going to need to pay more for carers. The right-wingers will then cry: how are you going to pay for it? And then the left-wing response to that is to subsidise it. The right-wingers then complain where do you get the money for the subsidy from? Well you could tax less productive areas, like a sugar tax for example. (Which may also help reduce future health costs in itself). Or invest in something that has big returns.
This would also make things better for the immigrants, as they are less likely to be exploited for cheap labour, and with better-funded posts, might have more opportunity for a career path. (Because that is another problem: not only do they get exploited for cheap labour, they tend to get fewer opportunities for climbing the ladder).
But this is anathema to the right, because this requires more state action and investment, and they want a small state, or even no state. Lets them be free to be driving down wages and exploiting people.
In other words, there is a better solution, but the right hate it. (Worth bearing in mind at this point, that the right may also create artificial scarcity of labour in key areas. We could’ve been training more doctors, but they capped the numbers. I’ve posted about how Streeting is aware of this issue, and says he’s going to do something about it, so we shall see).
* (Although protections may be getting eroded for younger people in particular. AI eroding language barriers, middle class careers like lecturing getting casualised etc.) |
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Post by mercian on Jul 2, 2024 17:03:03 GMT
A questionnaire seeking to determine how closely your views align with any party - frequently sneered at, but people love to complete!
(It does, however, seem to be contributing to serious academic research on political attitudes)
...
Unsurprisingly, it suggests that I am 68% in agreement with SGP, 64% with SNP, 54% with LD, 43% with Alba and only 27% with Lab.
Bit of a surprise for me. I got 41% Con, 29% Ref, 5% Lab(!), -11% LibDem and -25% Green. Interesting contrast. You have more affinity with 4 parties than I have with any! I suppose one criticism is that it doesn't seem to take much account of past performance and none of one's opinion about the leaders and other prominent members of the parties. |
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Post by mercian on Jul 2, 2024 17:23:05 GMT
In addition to the insanity of making Trump a king the U.S. supreme court has assumed huge additional powers for themselves designed to undermine democratic presidents. While they have stated that a president has absolute immunity for " official " acts what amounts to an official act is for the supreme court to define. Consequently Donald Trump locking up or assassinating his political rivals could be considered an official presidential act and therefore effectively not a crime but if Joe Biden carried out the most minor infringement if the SC decided that presidential immunity didn't apply he could be prosecuted. There's never been an occasion where a president was likely to be criminally prosecuted for his actions in office in over 240 years , other than Trump. There's only one purpose in this legislation it's to allow Trump to be a dictator. I agree it's a catastrophe for the US but my understanding is that the Supreme Court has referred back to lower courts the decision about which actions were official and which not. Chief Justice Roberts has given some guidance but it's still going to be something argued in a lower court. It's expected that there will be a hearing with both prosectuors and defence to thrash out what can be presented under the Jan 6th trial. That's just a correction to your post steve but I 100% agree with you that it's a f***ing disaster. I wouldn't be at all surprised that if Trunp wins in November there will be talks about secession from some of the blue states, particularly California, which is as big as many countries. (156,000 sq miles -same size as Paraguay and 39m popuplation.) I seem to remember that its GDP is higher than most countries too. |
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Post by mercian on Jul 2, 2024 17:29:07 GMT
*** new polling thread alert *** I can't see it. |
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neilj
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Post by neilj on Jul 2, 2024 17:35:28 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Jul 2, 2024 17:51:06 GMT
*** new polling thread alert *** I can't see it. You probably weren’t invited. |
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Danny
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Post by Danny on Jul 2, 2024 17:57:03 GMT
One obvious route is through recycling asset values upon death. As things stand, if you plan it properly in the UK you could leave a billion pounds to your chosen successor, tax free. The glaring hole in inheritance tax is the ability to give away as much as you like to anyone,so long as you do it 7 years before death. And apart from that a couple can leave 750,000 to anyone they like tax free and another 250,000 to their descendants. So you can give away most of it tax free in your lifetime, just keeping your last million or two for old age. Its a rather insane vast giveaway to the very rich. |
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Danny
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Post by Danny on Jul 2, 2024 18:23:42 GMT
Danny - do you ever take any notice of what other people say? Always. I am definitely at the bottom of the market, and Id suspect the reason sales have stalled is that so is much of the public. My central point was that the reason we have introduced electric vehicles at horrendous development costs is to stop burning fossil fuels. But thus far we have saved hardly any fossil fuel usage in the UK... because the power stations are still burning it to power the cars. The difference in mileage costs is mostly about tax on fuel but not on electricty, and nothing to do with reducing co2 pollution. Whats the point of subsidising going electric with tax breaks if it doesnt save CO2 emissions? (there is another issue here, is it better to tax whatever fuel is used so as to deliberately discourage so much travel and thus fuel usage of whatever sort?). Inevitably, government WILL impose tax on electric motoring eventually at a comparable rate to what is now on fuelled vehicles. In the long run it will not be cheaper. Absolutely not. Electricity used for vehicles is EXTRA electricity we would never have needed had we not chosen to switch to electric vehicles. This means we have had to generate all the EXTRA electricity they need, and we do that by burning EXTRA fossil fuels. If there were no cars to charge demand would be less and we would stop burning fossil. Yeah, thats why we had subsidised sales of diesel vehicles...until someone realised they were polluting in a different way. Now the fact is we really havnt saved much if any fossil consumption by the electric switch so far. Granted, had labour remained in power for the last 14 years then we would by now be generating much more renewables and we might by now be saving the fossils. And indeed have had less surge in electricty costs post covid. But of course con knew better. As I just wrote, the idiot conservatives stopped the switch to renewables generation by removing subsidies and making planning for onshore wind virtually impossible. Which was first pursuing their goal of cutting taxes and second not spoiling the view of their rural voters. Similarly, nuclear energy as just ordered by the con government is not an alternative way to switch to renewables. Con declined to order new nuclear when they came to power because they understood this, and that it is very expensive. They have only ordered it now because their failure to boost renewables over the last 14 years means we risk running out of power. Though it wouldnt amaze me if an ex conservative MP in the future finds a lucrative job advising a nuclear power company. |
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c-a-r-f-r-e-w
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Post by c-a-r-f-r-e-w on Jul 2, 2024 18:33:14 GMT
(there is another issue here, is it better to tax whatever fuel is used so as to deliberately discourage so much travel and thus fuel usage of whatever sort?). Inevitably, government WILL impose tax on electric motoring eventually at a comparable rate to what is now on fuelled vehicles. In the long run it will not be cheaper. . Theres an argument advanced by some, that there is a goal amongst some to make car ownership something of a luxury affair. Is this a conspiracy theory? You decide! (But if we watch the trends in car ownership, and if the costs keep growing…) Similarly, nuclear energy as just ordered by the con government is not an alternative way to switch to renewables. Con declined to order new nuclear when they came to power because they understood this, and that it is very expensive. They have only ordered it now because their failure to boost renewables over the last 14 years means we risk running out of power. Though it wouldnt amaze me if an ex conservative MP in the future finds a lucrative job advising a nuclear power company That’s the thing really Danny: there are potentially much much safer and cheaper and more efficient ways of doing nuclear fission, which we could’ve been exploring years ago. (As I used to argue on the old board. We might still make something of it, although at the moment we seem to be going more for fusion) |
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Danny
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Post by Danny on Jul 2, 2024 18:49:44 GMT
Interesting poll, people were asked how they'd vote on Thursday if the party leaders were as they were in 2019. The results are a Conservative lead of 6 points over the Labour Party x.com/LukeTryl/status/1808124302874620219'Suggests to two things 1) Starmer is clearly more than just a lucky general benefitting from Tory mistakes, the changing of the Labour brand has mattered 2) Boris Johnson probably could have capped the Reform vote down, but not eliminated it.' This polling is very hard to reconcile with the current situation. It implies that the only thing which matters is the changes of leaders. Whereas the potholes in the roads would be just the same under Johnsons, NHS waiting same, inflation same, Brexit outcome same... and everything else. Its not credible the vote outcome would be as close as they suggest. It might be respondants are imagining an ideal Johnson and an evil Corbyn and that therefore outcomes would have changed, but honestly there is nothing to suggest the general issues would be different now with eg Johnson as PM and Sunak as chancellor. Otherwise, their polling sample has to be very screwed. Which might not be encouraging for the general reliability of polling. |
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Danny
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Post by Danny on Jul 2, 2024 18:55:52 GMT
Not many polls so far this week, suspect most if not all will be released tomorrow Be a bit late on Friday |
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Danny
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Post by Danny on Jul 2, 2024 19:00:34 GMT
my understanding is that the Supreme Court has referred back to lower courts the decision about which actions were official and which not. Chief Justice Roberts has given some guidance but it's still going to be something argued in a lower court. But it will eventually be appealed back to the supreme court if someone doesnt like the decisions. |
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steve
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Post by steve on Jul 2, 2024 19:39:02 GMT
In how low can you go news. The Tory election campaign in Torbay has accused the lib dem candidate Steve Darling of pretending to be blind for electoral purposes. Darling has been registered blind since a child in 1986.  |
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c-a-r-f-r-e-w
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Post by c-a-r-f-r-e-w on Jul 2, 2024 22:44:58 GMT
Danny Regarding cars as becoming increasingly luxury items, just came across this headline: “ Sadiq Khan is extending London’s congestion charge to all zero-emission vehicles from the end of next year.” “The move, which will extend the £15-a-day tax on motoring to battery-powered electric vehicles from Christmas Day 2025, was widely condemned on Tuesday.”
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