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Month: December 2008

The final bet of 2008: Will Gord survive till midnight?

The final bet of 2008: Will Gord survive till midnight?

What I am carrying forward into 2009 At midnight tonight, assuming nothing untoward happens to Gord, I pick up on quite a hefty bet that I placed in the early summer at 5/6 that Brown would still be Prime Minister at the end of the year. And if by any remote chance he doesn’t there are a another couple of bets I placed at 6/1 and 5/1 at a different time that he would be out by the end of…

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Which one is likely to be out first?

Which one is likely to be out first?

Is the William Hill 7/4 on it being Gord a value bet? Thanks to Noisy Summer on the the previous thread for picking this up but William Hill has just launched a new online market on which of the three party leaders – Brown. Clegg or Cameron – will leave their post first. The bookie makes Clegg the 11/10 favourite with Brown at 7/4 and Cameron at 5/2. I think that they have got this wrong and that the Brown…

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Is this the main argument for a 2009 election?

Is this the main argument for a 2009 election?

Can Labour expect a drubbing on June 5th? Cast your mind back to the last Euro Elections which were held on the same day as the local elections on June 10th 2004. In the weeks beforehand the Tories had suffered serious opinion poll reverses as UKIP’s strength started to emerge and all the predictions were that the Tory leader of just eight months, Michael Howard, was going to fail at his first major electoral test. Yet when it came to…

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Is politics down to the great mortgage divide?

Is politics down to the great mortgage divide?

Have the interest rate cuts been behind the Brown bounce? Starting with the usual caveat about not reading too much into poll subsets there is some quite interesting data from the latest Ipsos-MORI poll linking the tenure of respondents to their voting intention. From what I can see the firm only started providing this information in November so there is almost nothing we can compare current figures with. But what we see in the panel above is an enormous split…

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The PB Poster of 2008: the Final round

The PB Poster of 2008: the Final round

Your chance to choose from the final four We are now at the final stage in the battle to become PB Poster of 2008. There are now just four people left in the contest:- David Herdson – winner of the “most insightful” category SeanT – winner of the “most amusing” category JackW – winner of the “best tipster” category SallyC – winner of the “best newcomer” category Voting will be by email to this address. Simply give your email the…

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Is this what’s driven Labour’s recovery?

Is this what’s driven Labour’s recovery?

But what happens if optimism begins to wane? One of the great things about Ipsos-MORI is that it has been around for a long time and in many cases has been asking the same questions in the same way for getting on for three decades. One of those questions has been the firm’s “Economic Optimism Index” where polling respondents are asked “Do you think that the general economic condition of the country will improve, stay the same, or get worse…

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When Gord became part of the panto……..

When Gord became part of the panto……..

Movieposter.com What does this say about public opinion? There’s an amusing piece by George Grant and Roger Waite in the Sunday Times about how Gordon has become the butt of some of the humour in this year’s pantomimes. “..The scene is a basement in the City. Cinderella, a redundant investment banker, is sobbing because she has been forced to take on a cleaning job. Suddenly, after a blinding flash, Gordon Brown is standing before her. “Don’t be afraid, Cinderella,” he…

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Is this how an election campaign might look?

Is this how an election campaign might look?

What do we think of the Indy on Sunday’s mock ads? There’s a great piece in the Indy on Sunday about how a 2009 general election might look in terms of the ads that will be appearing on poster sites up and down the country. The paper asked half a dozen top advertising agencies to come up with some ideas and reproduced above are just three of the twelve that are featured in the article. I’m not sure how the…

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