Could this be Labour’s best hope?
April 24th, 2009
Will party ratings move in line with economic optimism?
This is the latest Economic Optimism Index from MORI which, as can be seen, has very much turned round and this month reached just -2%. This is the best since Mr Brown become prime minister and perhaps from the Labour perspective is the best indicator that they might just be in with a shout.
The index is taken by subtracting the negative number from the positive one and the results since 2004 are plotted on the chart.
There was a theory some months ago that the trends on this chart would be mirrored during the following weeks in the opinion polls. Thus the peak of negative numbers last year coincided with Labour worst ratings in decades. If that still holds good then Brown Central might see a bit of a bounce.
But will it? It is hard to predict anything other than gloom for Labour in the current climate and it could be that a sea change of opinion has taken place.
So the theory might be amended so that in the absence of other negatives then an increase in economic optimism is good for the government while a decline is bad for the government in all circumstances. We shall see.
MessageSpace Advertising
First ?
2nd
The budget will destroy any hope people had.
Yes! First will be mine one day.
Labour has no hope.
Ask Pandora about Hope….
Repost from the last regarding the latest crop of local by elections -
692. Lib-Dems always do well in local by elections. That never translates to general election performance (or even national local election campaigns)
What these by elections are telling us though, I think, is that the pattern over several months is the Conservatives are starting to lose seats. This is to be expected, given the huge number of seats they hold. What we are seeing is essentially the Tories have reached their local government peak, and will now decline over the next decade (slowly at first, then after two or three years in government, much more quickly) They are in a very similar position to Labour in 96/97, IMO. People forget that in the 97 local elections, the Tories actually began to recover at the same time as they was going down to their worst general election defeat since the Guke Of Wellington.
No, there is another.
Was this before or after the budget?
One can only say then that a lot of people stand to be disappointed by the time the next election rolls around.
7: *snigger*
10- Racist!
It could be that people honestly don’t believe it can get any worse.
They keep being told by their wonderful leaders how it is all under control
The economic indicators are pretty much saying that we are nowhere near the end of this - but people don’t want to contemplate that.
They think that things are at the bottom now - so the only way is up. However that appears to be far from the case.
And when that becomes apparent to the ‘optimists’, they will be even more disillusioned than those of us who are sceptical about the immediate prospects for improvement
I think that the secondary problem for Labour will undo them, whatever the fortunes of the economy.
Everyday seems to bring a new disaster,a fresh outrage.
Andy Burnham loses his briefs on a train.Joanna Lumley (Purdey)sticks the boot in.
Nothing can save Labour now and the longer they prolong the Parliament the worse will be the agony.
As well as the Budget, I think that Smeargate would be a significant factor in deciding whether to re-elect Brown, even if the economic outlook was rosy.
Which it ain’t….
People are in the process of realigning how much of a mess the country is in. Let’s see this Index in three months time.
4 You deserve your place in the sun cht - try getting up at 4am like I do, there’s less competion then, just the odd Loony,etc.
The economic data is consistently worse than forecasts, and the forecasts themselves are generally more pessimistic than Joe Public who is I find startlingly in the dark about just how bad it is going to get.
So polls like this will only reflect more gloom, especially as unemployment rises and more people are directly affected.
I think the national debt is going to be the big election issue, I don’t see that Labour can offer a credible story on that.
13 It is quite remarkable how much trouble the gov is getting itself in.
11: Hello derek
I think ratings will move in line with economic optimism. Unfortunately for Labour I think economic optimism will decrease over the next year.
I noticed one of the most read stories on the BBC website this morning was that Bay Trading was bankrupt - partly because credit supply chain insurance was withdrawn. In December and January we had a host of big name high street firms going under, following the Woolworths bombshell.
High street shops is where many will “notice” the recession day in day out.
The big name bankruptcies halted for a few weeks in the middle of February. If we get another wave, economic confidence will be shattered.
An odd post by Mike methinks. I appreciate that there is little in the way of good news for the Government, but extrapolating a hypothetical positive from an unproven theorem is over egging the pudding a weee bit!
Ans: The computer says NO.
Contrary to being “Labour’s best hope”, this is Labour’s worst nightmare.
They have clearly misled an awful lot of voters about how fast the economy is going to recover. When those voters find out the truth there will be mass Post-cognitive Dissonance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buyer%27s_remorse
OT
We got a statement today from HSBC for our son’s Child Trust Fund.
When he was born in 2005, we were sent the £250 voucher and the accompanying literature strongly suggested that we would want to add to this amount. We didn’t as we are making our own provisions, but I know quite a few people who have topped it up.
Anyway, our £250 has now become £202 due to the stock market falls. It doesn’t bother us, as this was free money anyway, but lots of people will be receiving these statements around this time of year who have put some of their own money in. All adds to the stream of bad news and for many of these people it is a personal indication, in black and white, that they have lost money.
This affects people in a lot of different ways.
Flintoff is flying home to have some cement poured into his powedered knee joints.
Thats his Ashes place gone then
This relationship was indeed strong late last year and early this year, but has started to weaken of late.
One reason for this may be an increasing disconnect in some of these confidence surveys between expectations for the broader economy and personal income expectations.
In the Nationwide consumer confidence survey, for example, the net balance for ‘economic situation in 6 months’ improved from -36 in January to -22 in March. But the net balance for ‘household income in 6 months’ remained at -4 - itself a series low.
The budget can only have further damaged the sentiment underlying this latter index.
And then of course we have smeargate and expensesgate which may well muddy the waters even further….
@13: They cleared the decks in the Queen’s speech, planned a series of high-profile international events, and a budget. Unemployment and other lagging indicators are only going to get worse over the next 12 months, and there is the expenses publication to come.
I’m now convinced that the plan was to go “unexpectedly” this summer, and that the biggest fallout from the Jacqui and McBride affairs is that this has now been scuppered.
There’s nothing but downside for the government from here on out.
Darling risks “Crisis What Crisis” headlines
I know this week is seen as a throwback to the 1970s, but maybe Alistair Darling is taking things a little too far.
Speaking at a business breakfast in Washington (he’s there for a G7 finance ministers meeting), the Chancellor appeared to echo Jim Callaghan’s relaxed “Crisis What Crisis?” verdict* on the economy.
Darling said that we should be “confident” that the British economy would grow, despite the current difficult situation. He even hinted that his failure to get the GDP figures right was down to current volatility because “economic date becomes much harder to read”.
He said: “I expected the first quarter of this year, in particular, to see a large contraction in the U.K. economy, but we must also remember that there is huge uncertainty when large shocks hit economies everywhere, economic data becomes much harder to read, so there is little doubt that the economic situation across the world, here in America, and in Britain, has been both difficult and uncertain in the last few months.
“Yet I think there are reasons to be confident about the economy.”
FOOTNOTE: We at the Standard have an interest in the ‘Crisis What Crisis’ era because it was a Standard hack whose question prompted Callaghan’s reply. It was, of course, the Sun that produced the memorable headline that dogged the PM, even though he never actually uttered the words.
http://waugh.standard.co.uk/2009/04/darling-risks-crisis-what-crisis-headlines.html
21: I think this is Mike, trying valiantly, but in vain to provide balance, and trying to find postives for Labour. All credit to him for that, it must a struggle.
10 minutes late! Could this newfound confidence be something to do with the stalling in the housing market?
Property people are desperately trying to pretend the industry is about to recover. There’s still a long way to go i’m afraid. The new confidence is misplaced and won’t last. Seeing YouGuv’s 17 point Tory lead, I do as a lefty feel a certain satisfaction having suggested Brown would be a disaster from the start - with just a short wobble last december after the dead cat bounce. I think labour are finished (till after the election) - it’s just a question of how voters split between Tory/Lib Dem. As I have repeatedly said Cmaeron is not doing everything he can (unlike Blair) to get a landslide, so I wouldn’t expect things to get into that territory.
15 - Or try not going to bed before then, that’s what I do
15
It is now one of those little targets I have for myself. But I’m too lazy to be getting up at the crack of dawn.
I can only assume that the ‘economic confidence’ is based on the fall in interest rates. People feel richer, and are spending a little more.
Of course thats hiding to a certain level the truely hideous economic reality of it.
26 - If your right though an election this summer would now be even more ‘unexpected’.
Utter nonsense. When will you pundits realise we are destined for a depression? After all few saw the collapse coming. We will see China, India,Brazil, Russia then the USA surge ahead next year while we continue to decline. Remember this post.
@33: It certainly would! The only thing that mitigated against that scenario is the relative state of the party finances. I’m assuming that Labour’s campaign will be underwritten by Unite, so they can effectively go at any time?
Well just to play devil’s advocate, the FTSE, Sterling and Gilts are all up.
@34: *anecdote alert* It is certainly true to say that my medium term business plans don’t expect huge revenue growth in the UK, and we’re disposing resources more towards the USA right now.
Expect another wave of retail bankruptcies in the next few weeks.
When you are at the bottom of the recession, and we are close but not there yet, then its logical to think that in 12 months time things will be ‘better’. Its hard to think it will have any real effect on voting.
1Q 09 GDP figures show decline of 1.9%. Darlings estimate of 2 days ago junk already.
35 - I would imagine that Unite will act as a backstop funder for Labour, but still I suspect that the Conservatives will have a 2 or 3 to 1 funding advantage.
38. Is there anything behind that post, or is it just a hunch?
39, I wonder how Darling feels as Brown’s glove puppet.
the Government lacks competence in all areas in which it is involved. if Brown were CEO of a private company he would resign in shame.
Yes, it is the economy, which, as Michael White reminded us on TDP, is not quite the same thing as the public finances (aka Gordon Brown’s debt).
34 Brazil is looking quite tempting for my twilight years. Buy a bit of land, get in well with the local gangster boss, pay a little money not to be disturbed….
…and watch the girls go by. Sorted.
Broken Britain but a memory.
@41 (runnymede)
I’m (obviously) not james a but as with Bay Trading, credit supply chain insurance seems to be almost nonexistent. This could have huge effects on the retail sector.
27. The tories will pick up on that, Darling fiddles while the economy burns. He wanders from media outlet to conference wailing about how the economy will be fine as we plunge further and further into debt.
43 — how many CEOs of private sector banks “resigned in shame”?
62% still think the Economy will get worse or stay the same
Basically, I don’t think anything is going to save Labour.
The ‘Agent Orange’ substance of the budget will have killed off any realistic ‘green shoots’ of economic optimism. Labour’s economic credibility is shot to pieces. Commentators pore over their economic projections expecting, looking for and finding their perpetual spin and lies. As Southam mentioned earlier, the biggest obstacle to economic recovery is the Labour Government itself.
Any attempt at buying the electorate with giveaways (which was at the basis of their last minimal recovery) and optimistic projections now will be outweighed by concerns regarding the public debt and skepticism over the lack of honesty within Labour.
Labour have dug a hole for themselves that they cannot climb out of and at the moment seem perfectly happily just to keep digging. At some point the hole will get so deep that the sides will collapse in on them (if they haven’t started to already).
http://www.cnbc.com/id/30370037
Come on Green Shoots!
The economy is like a high diver who has jumped from the board with no water in the pool.. and the charts of output look awful..
Yes, we know. The UK Q1 GDP figures are horrible. But for a truly frighteningly experience we thought we would direct you specifically to the two following components: annual change in total production output, and the quarterly fall in manufacturing output.
As Reuters neatly sums up, at -12.3 percent and -6.2 per cent respectively both notch up the biggest declines since records began in 1948. So much for competitive devaluation you might say.
Graphically here’s how the decline in the manufacturing sector specifically contributed to the overall output measure making up GDP (the total figure):
UK output Q1 - ONS
It’s worth noting that the only element that actually registered any quarterly growth at all within the production element was ‘agriculture, hunting, forestry and fishing’ at +0.3 per cent. The only other output category registering growth being the ‘government and other services’ category at +0.5 per cent, as can be seen in the table below (click to enlarge):
6161.jpg
All of which contributes to make up this delightful graphic:
GDP Q1 chart - ONS
And just for fun, so as to put the manufacturing decline into some longer graphical context, here’s February’s Index of Manufacturing released on April 7th, which registered a 6.5 per cent three-month decline (the overall index of production registering a 5.8 per cent three-month fall):
UK Production Index - ONS
As the ONS explains that shows (our emphasis):
…in the three months to February, the seasonally adjusted chained volume index for the output of the production industries decreased by 5.8 per cent compared with the previous three months and was 11.1 per cent lower than the same three month period a year earlier.
In the latest three months, manufacturing output decreased by 6.5 per cent, mining and quarrying output decreased by 4.3 per cent and output of the electricity, gas and water supply industries decreased by 1.0 per cent, compared with the previous three months.
Given today’s measures that provides some optimism on March’s IoP index number. Based on the total production measure of 88.2 in today’s first quarter figures and production index measures of 88.3 and 89.2 in January and February respectively, March’s IoP figure is likely to show further declines … however, the pace of that decline may indeed be slowing.
But even if that is the case, as many economists have noted, the big surprise in today’s numbers actually came from the decline in services output — so is it the case that services are just positioning themselves to take over from manufacturing on pace of decline? As Philip Shaw from Investec Securities wrote in a note:
Services output collapsed by 1.2%, compared with last quarter’s fall of 0.8%, and against a background where surveys of the sector have chalked up a welcome improvement.
Meanwhile, Ross Walker at RBS tells Reuters (our emphasis):
It’s disappointing. The industrial production collapse was shown in the monthly numbers, so the surprise is in the service sector contraction. The consensus had been looking for a very fractional improvement there on the back of PMIs and retail sales numbers. An improvement will probably show up in the Q2 — we can be more confident that Q2 will show a less break-neck rate of contraction than Q1.
So from that weaker starting point, and given that the surveys have shown more convincing signs of stabilising, you can still be confident of a less sever decline but still pretty terrible. For 2009 there are downside risks to Darling’s 3.5 percent contraction, and increased scepticism about the public finances. But the main problem with the public finances is 2010 and 2011. Retail sales tells us that people are spending less on cars and conservatories, but the money you save on this you can spend on a lot of smaller things on the high street. In terms of Q2 GDP it gives confidence that maybe we’ve already had the worst contraction, but not the last.
http://ftalphaville.ft.com/
48…they were “bounced” before they could do the honourable thing.
How can anyone feel confident about the economy when there’ll be 80% of our GDP to pay back.. and when we haven’t even started to make inroads?
Economic optimism will come after a Tory victory and people see that there’s at least a plan in place to get us back on track.
Anyway… the economy was doing very nicely in 1997 but the public had long since made up its mind that the Tories had been in too long.
I will be 32 in May 2010. It’ll be the first time I’ve voted for the winning side, and I cannot wait. Possibly the only Tory landslide I’ll see before I reach retirement age. I’ll be marching down to the polling station. Beer, friends, red bull, watching all the counts on TV… cannot wait.
50- I wonder if the only thing keeping foreign investors here is the belief that the tories will win the 2010 election. Imagine if Brown had gone in ‘07 and won…
Just responding to this comment at the end of the previous thread:
“692. Lib-Dems always do well in local by elections. That never translates to general election performance (or even national local election campaigns)
What these by elections are telling us though, I think, is that the pattern over several months is the Conservatives are starting to lose seats. This is to be expected, given the huge number of seats they hold. What we are seeing is essentially the Tories have reached their local government peak, and will now decline over the next decade (slowly at first, then after two or three years in government, much more quickly) They are in a very similar position to Labour in 96/97, IMO. People forget that in the 97 local elections, the Tories actually began to recover at the same time as they was going down to their worst general election defeat since the Duke Of Wellington.
by GIN April 24th, 2009 at 1:58 pm
Err- well I don’t accept the first point, since where we win local by-elections we often go on the build a significant local government presence and that *does* translate to general elections, because it gives Lib Dems credibility with the electorate that they can win, which is often their biggest negative.
Meanwhile, if the Tories do end up losing seats this June it could be a real problem, they would not have won the General Election, there would still be 10 months left before that campaign even officially starts. If the story is of Lib Dem progress then the Tory media narrative is knocked off course: it gives the momentum to the Lib Dems just at the crucial time, i.e. when the punters are actually about to vote.
If we think Labour is now holed below the waterline, it is not just the Tories who gain. These local wins are not yest a trend, but if they become so and the polls also reflect this, then it becomes much more difficult to forecast the future.
Anyone offering a price on Lib Dem-Conservative coalition?
I see Mr Dickson is back. He might be interested in the following:
Aboyne result is interesting as it is the first time the first preference leader has not won the AV election.
1st Preferences
Conservative 1144
Rosemary Bruce, Liberal Democrat 969
Independent 842
SNP 617
BNP 44
Independent 19
After much transferring of votes, Rosemary was elected on the 5th count with 1566 votes ahead of the Tories’ 1468.
Shows that Cameron’s Tories still have a lot to do to broaden their appeal in Scotland and make themselves more transfer friendly…
Just out of interest what was the pattern in the run up to 1997? Where Labour sweeping all before them or was the picture more mixed?
I wonder what Tony Blair is thinking now? He got out right at the top (economy-wise). Leaders around the world still greet him with pleasure and with a degree of respect greater than that due to a former British PM and I think most leaders like him. I imagine he must be looking at the fat smug incompetent who hounded him from office and thinking “Wow, God really likes me.”
What is the fat smug incompetent thinking when he sees everyone yearning for the return of the flim-flam artist? It makes me laugh.
Hmm, wasn’t there a different theory last October that people would switch to Brown for comfort during the crisis and then, once everything was safe, would leave their comfort zone for Cameron?
test
60. Backslider. That was the pathetic reed to which some Labourites clung.
41. Can’t speak for james a’s thoughts, but there is a nice parallel from earlier times.
Famine. The worst months for famine deaths in N. European countries wasn’t in the middle of winter when the weather was at its worst, but in March, April, May when everything was greening up and growing - but there was nothing to harvest, folk had been on short rations for weeks and the stored supplies were finally exhausted.
We’re now in the mid-winter of the financial crisis (if we’re lucky) and there’s still a long way to go.
57 Clearly the independent in third must have played a big part in the final outcome.
There’s a most amusing petition on the Number 10 site, but I can’t post the link without falling into the spam trap…
How do I get around it?
FPT (#733)
Dan: “I’ll still say that the Lib Dems will end up with the second highest number of seats north of the border next time”
Why don’t we have a little bet on the your above forecast Dan - I’ll even give you odds?
How about my £20 to your £10, that says the LibDems will fail to secure first or second in the Scottish popular vote at the next General Election?
59. Personally I think Blair is angry with himself for not facing Brown down over so many issues while he was PM. He had the chance to carry out real reforms to the welfare state after 1997 but he sacrificed Frank Field to appease Brown. Time after time we heard about how Blair reforms were watered down in the face of Treasury objections, Blair should have taken Prescott’s advice and sacked Brown, he’s no Heseltine, apart from his hard core acolytes he’s no support in the PLP and would have never been an effective leader in waiting.
There’s a ceasefire in effect until after the election and when Labour gets slaughtered, the Blairites will be looking for vengence, Blair’s memoirs will be interesting reading!
60: ‘Hmm, wasn’t there a different theory last October that people would switch to Brown for comfort during the crisis and then, once everything was safe, would leave their comfort zone for Cameron?’
Yes, when the economic crisis was supposedly Labour’s ‘Falklands moment’ someone in the Guardian wrote that Cameron was praying for the economic good times to return. All seems a bit mad now, but there you go…
57 - the next General Election will not be fought on STV but FPTP.
@56: Although we hear that a lot, and it makes logical sense, I’m not sure I agree with that contention in practice.
At the 2005 election, for instance, although the Lib Dems made 3 gains from the Tories, for example, they also lost 5.
If you look at their top target seats,there was only a swing from CON->LD in a very few, and the Tories increased their majorities in most.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/vote2005/html/gainsandlosses_ld.stm
Even if you bring Labour into the equation (which is where the LDs surely *must* focus their attention at the next election, whatever the sainted Vince says), the numbers don’t look a lot better.
Given how relatively well the LDs do in local elections, I think that other factors are far more important in their GE success/failure than local government encumbency.
The General Election is going to be a nasty shock for SNP supporters. And Labour of course.
57. Do those numbers also suggest the Tory would have won a FPTP (Westminster?) election?
65- “…apart from his hard core acolytes he’s no support in the PLP…” If that was the case, Blair was crazy to make him Chancellor.
64 - I’m not sure what you mean? The last bit of my post that you didn’t quote went on… ‘(on possibly the fourth highest vote share).’
45-MM-Welcome to Brazil!
70 - No Aboyne is the most Tory bit of the constituency and include some grand residences such as Balmoral…
‘How can anyone feel confident about the economy when there’ll be 80% of our GDP to pay back.. and when we haven’t even started to make inroads?’
Becuase a signifigent proportion of people are stupid, and probably don’t even know what GDP means.
Alistair Darling’s fantasy Budget exposed
Paul Waugh
24.04.09
Alistair Darling’s key economic forecast in Wednesday’s Budget was destroyed by official figures out today.
They show the economy has slid even deeper into recession.
The statistics revealed output had slumped by 1.9 per cent in the first three months of this year – the sharpest fall in growth for 30 years.
Mr Darling, who predicted in his Budget speech the economy had contracted by 1.6 per cent, was accused of misleading MPs.
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23680600-details/Alistair+Darling+s+fantasy+Budget+exposed/article.do
After a long absence..
My general view is that the UK is completely f*****ed after recent events. None of the UK political parties has a prayer of solving the current problems which include a) the lack of a credible revenue generating alternative to service industries since 1979. Sarkozy and Co are indeed laughing now, b) it was inevitable that the financial services tax revenue bubble would burst never to be replaced c) the housing market bubble is over permanently, c) the productive immigrants are leaving, d) real wages need to be reduced by 40% ,d) social security should be scrapped, e) the quangocracy needs to be shut down, f) we need to deport all non productive foreigners and g) reduce the headcount.The hacks on this reflector including their mainstream politico bosses are far too squeamish to talk about what needs to be done. Prediction: fascism is about to enjoy yet another unexpected renaissance throughout Europe. Quel surpris! NOT.
57.”After much transferring of votes, Rosemary was elected on the 5th count with 1566 votes ahead of the Tories’ 1468.
Shows that Cameron’s Tories still have a lot to do to broaden their appeal in Scotland and make themselves more transfer friendly…”
Really, your candidate won on second preference votes?
I will be interested to see the local reaction to this result!
Just got back from an in-depth fact finding mission (a.k.a. “long lunch”). Have the two Scottish results been declared yet?
57. Dan
Congratulations to the Lib Dem candidate: Malcolm Bruce MP’s wife!
What an absolute stinker for the Scottish Tories. ChristinaD must be gutted.
The Lib Dem vote stood still (26.7% compared to 26.1% in 2007), but the Tory vote plummetted from 49.8% to 31.5%.
The Ind candidates clearly spelt a huge role, as did the Labour Party throwing their support behind the Lib Dems.
The quality of the parties’ candidates cannot be ignored.
OOps! Just seen the Aboyne one. What about the other one?
57. Which is why the Tories won’t gain many seats at Westminster in Scotland next time. There will be little tactical voting for the Tories, and their overall share/increase will be too low to carry them to victory in more than a couple of seats.
Moreover, LD/SNP votes are more interchangeable. The LDs will collapse, largely to the benefit of the SNP, where the LDs are weak; and the SNP will make less progress, to the benefit of the LDs, where the LDs are strong.
Labour should benefit too, from an opposition divided three ways…
77. I think that you will find that Third Way authoritarians have been in power in the UK for over a decade now.
65 re Brown vs Blair on welfare reforms?
The question is, was Blair a Blairite, at least in the current sense, on public sector reform?
Was it not Blair who placed his faith in parachuting in supremely talented individuals (not unlike his good self) — czars, elected mayors, superheads and the like?
81. LD gain from IND
More delusion in the bunker
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/iain_martin/blog/2009/04/24/angry_gordon_brown_to_david_cameron_its_your_fault
78. Who was the mystery independent who did so well in third place?
78 - I can see that you are very disappointed, who was the Independent who came third?
73 Me, I had a great time in Brazil a couple of years back - wandering round looking at the wildlife (jaguars in the Pantanal etc etc).
I think I could be very happy there.
82. I see the double-plus swing-back theory has been polished enough to be let out of the driveway.
86. How about this cracker?
“PS I was told by a usually very reliable Labour source that Brown, helping out with the stapling, had at one point lost his temper and actually stapled his own hand by mistake. That simply cannot be true and I refuse to believe it.”
OK it may be the work of the Phantom Bullsh!tter, but the mere fact that stories like this are doing the rounds says it all!
Remember, this man controls over a hundred thermonuclear warheads!!
88.Marcia, we are gutted, particularly to lose a by election in this way through STV. I have been waiting for a result like this to occur.
The independent was popular a local.
89 - “looking at the wildlife (jaguars in the Pantanal etc etc).”
You’re not fooling anyone - your previous post (45) reveals the real ‘wildlife’ you were looking at!
re 57 & 82. I agree very much with that. The Tories are going to find Scotland a much tougher nut to crack than they think. Interesting that to win an overall majority at Westminster six Scottish seats are included in the top 114 targets on the UNS.
It ain’t going to happen so they’ll need to make greater inroads into Labour seats in England.
81. Lib Dem won in Inverness with 60% of the vote (so no need for transfers). SNP second, Lab third, SCP fourth, Con fifth(!), Soc sixth.
81 - Inverness West:
Lib Dems win without need for transfers.
LD 1503 60%
SNP 556 22%
Lab 210 8%
Christian 115 5%
Con 111 4%
Soc 27 1%
Bear in mind the SNP comfortably topped the poll on first prefernece last time and claim that they are targeting the Inverness Westminster seat. Poor SNP result (as you can tell by Stuart Dickson’s brevity)
Serious question: what does Cameron have to do to make the Tories appear credible to Scots? Other than maybe fight about five general elections - can he do anything to detoxify them in Scotland the way he has in England and (especially so) in Wales?
[81] Lib Dem gain from IND with nearly 60% of the vote.
Independent who came third was well known face in Aboyne having run one of the Pubs/hotels.
Hopefully Mrs Bruce will be giving up her 30k a year job as hubby’s diary secretary.
91 Have any of the odds on GE timing or Brown being ousted by his own party moved???
94.Mike, I think you are wrong on this occasion. The Scots will vote tactically for the conservatives where they need to up here. At the end of the day, in a GE, its the first and only vote that matters.
93 Guilty as charged, m’lud…
97. Put up lots of well-known local faces in rural seats?
72 Sorry Dan, I was mixing up the two elements of your post - I meant to refer only to the following: “I’ll still say that the Lib Dems will end up with the second highest number of seats north of the border next time”
I take it that by “next time” you are referring to the next UK General Election. On this basis, my £20 to your £10 says you’re wrong - are we on?
92. It’s AV not STV when there’s only one vacancy.
81 the previous result was
Scottish National Party 965 28.81 %
Liberal Democrat 840 25.08 %
Independent 778 23.23 %
Labour 536 16.00 %
Conservative & Unionist 230 6.87 %
Interesting results! Like Christina, I await the reception of the Aboyne result by the local populace with some interest. Unlike her, however, I think the voters will understand that their new Councillor was the person who could muster the greatest overall support - in particular, support from her opponents. If they don’t understand that now, they will cotton on pretty quickly!
64. The LDs could quite easily fall to fourth in the popular vote, but hold most if not all of their Scottish seats, perhaps even making gains.
89-MM-I don’t look for this kind of wildlife!
Anyway, it’s usually sunny, which is good. The beaches are beautiful, but like all other places it also has its problems.
But you’re looking for this kind of wildlife I guess you’ll be very happy indeed!
93-
[94] That is interesting, since the only possibly vulnerable Lib Dem seat is Argyll and they have real gain prospects in Edinburgh South, Edinburgh North, Glasgow North and Aberdeen South- so Lib Dems, even on only mildly improved numbers can still be looking at a net gain of possibly four in Scotland.
Not sure why there are still so many posts on Labour/Conservative battle. It is a lost cause for Labour.
108 NO! You are wrong, Rod! If the Lib Dems are in fourth, they will be eliminated, shortly after the Greens or the SSP or whoever. Unless they can stay in the rwace, they will be eliminated. You have to have a generally high level of support to win an AV/STV election.
77. Sadly, I agree with much of this analysis. The more I think about it, the more I reckon it is possible Britain is heading for an apocalyptic recession - in fact, a Depression - which will overturn many assumptions, not just about economics, but about democracy, immigration, race, the welfare state, free trade, etc.
The Telegraph, for instance, has an article which says “Britain faces decades of austerity”.
http://tinyurl.com/cc9z9n
Decades?? The idea that the centre left - and/or the centre right - can preserve, intact, all its favoured social norms in the face of such appalling predictions is absurd. We may see the return of real extremism.
Consider, for instance, the reaction of a country wracked by unemployment and civil strife - to a horrible terrorist outrage committed by Pakistani migrants living in Britain. There would be violent anger.
On a happier note (please God!) to anyone who hasn’t done it yet, I strongly recommend watching Brown’s extraordinary “expenses” video on Youtube. I’ve only just got round to it - belatedly.
Just…. BIZARRE. His gleeful smile is totally detached from anything he is saying, and the smile is at times so manic it looks like he is physically aroused.
Which must make him the first man ever to achieve orgasm while saying the words “Harriet Harman”.
67. marcia - “… the next General Election will not be fought on STV but FPTP.”
Well… quite!
[110] that is what I like, optimism.
112
I think he meant fourth overall, as in the whole of Scotland. It’s quite possible under FPTP, that the LD share of the vote could fall, whilst their seat numbers go up.
97. his biggest handicap in scotland is his largely southern english party, many of whom are anti-scottish (partly because of their recent lack of electoral success there - a vicious circle).
112. I’m talking about fourth in the popular vote across Scotland at the next FPTP Westminster election…
[116] Precisely
104 - Peter assuming I have a tenner to my name next year - you’re on.
113
Gordon Brown (and New Labour) as the man who destroyed Atlee’s legacy?
[115] Lib Dems only 405 behind in Edinburgh South, 1348 in Aberdeen South, 2153 in Edinburgh North, and 3338 in Glasgow North. Hardly requires aleap of faith to beleive that they are still in contention.
A couple of obscure byelection gains and suddenly it’s ‘winning everywhere’….
97.I’m not sure Cameron has de-toxified them that much in Wales. My prediction is that the Labour - Tory swing in Wales willbe less than the national average.
I don’t think Mike’s point about Scotland is entirely relevant. The current polls must be taking into account the Tories’ lack of progress up there, so if they’re underperforming in Scotland, they must be slightly ‘overperforming’ in the rest of the country.
Anyone who thought the economic crisis would be Brown’s falkands moment must have been deluded as he was as to his own capabilities, and woefully ignorant of finance and the position we had got ourselves in. The idea that he was going to / had it within his power to wave some magic wand is patently laughable. Dont forget the press is largely opinion and written by ignorant people. Facts win our though. Brown would never save the world. He saved the banks, if you count zombie banks and nationalisation as being saved. The only thing he managed to do was keep the payments system and cashpoints running, hardly acrowning achievement when he presided over the system that led to the crahs in the first place !
Off topic:
It seems that the penny is beginning to drop in the rump of the left (well the New Statesman anyway) that the BNP is a left wing party (apologies if this has been linked before).
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/daniel_hannan/blog/2009/04/24/new_statesman_bnp_is_to_the_left_of_labour
what was the economic confidence index in 97?
126
Well look at their economic policies:
Nationalisation
Higher tax
More council houses (for whites obv)
It’s hardly right wing now.
I see Pravda have taken down Woolas interview from the article on the decision on Gurkha’s, I wonder why?
Has anybody got a link to Krusty the Clown giving his statement on this issue?
124- I think Cameron has detoxified them to an extent, just not in the Valleys.
The swing against Labour will be shared by Plaid in the valleys and the Welsh speaking strip, Lib Dems in one or two seats and the Conservatives the rest.
What will be interesting is whether Labour even come first in Wales, let alone get the fourth seat.
128. nobody votes for them because of their economic policies.
124 - I agree with your final point. Indeed, from a narrow viewpoint of seat count, David Cameron would prefer to underperform relatively in Scotland because there are richer pickings for the Tories elsewhere.
125 - I’ve always thought that the economic crisis would be Brown’s falkland moment, I think Gordon Brown is the Leopoldo Galtieri of our times.
125. It IS his Falklands moment. He’s playing Galtieri.
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/45687000/jpg/_45687564_adraper_226.jpg
Revealed the true identities of Tim Bot and Andrew B(ot)
re 124. The current national polls are giving a picture for Britain and Scotland accounts for only about a tenth of that.
I’ve long argued that the UNS should not apply to Scotland.
124 Frank “If they’re underperforming in Scotland, they must be slightly ‘overperforming’ in the rest of the country.”
A very important point. One which Mr Crosby sometimes seems to forget when he (perhaps quite rightly) points to particular seats where the Conservatives are likely to do less well than UNS would suggest.
Sorry if someone has posted this earlier, but…!
Has anyone seen the English/UK front-cover of The Economist [Not available "on-line"
]
Black-background, nastie-fore: total Hoon!
The headline:
Desperate measures
Their by-line:
Gordon Brown’s deceptive budget
And the Scotch ^ wonder….
124. “My prediction is that the Labour - Tory swing in Wales will be less than the national average.”
A bold prediction - considering the Tories in Wales equalled or bettered the national swing at each of the previous three elections, 1997, 2001, 2005, and the long-term trend there is against Labour…
http://www.titanictown.plus.com/wales.jpg
137. We really need at GE to sort all these many points of contention out, don’t we? Next May seems an eternity away.
136 - Yes, but the point is the type of seat. The Conservatives may well be under-performing (relatively) in safe Labour seats.
110 - I’m not convinced that Argyll is the Lib Dems only vulnerable seat (I’m not convinced at Westminster level it is), but Michael Moore’s seat is under severe threat and Gordon can’t be taken for granted (although you may know more on the ground). Given the Scottish and local results in East Dumbartonshire I wouldn’t put that in the safe column either but I can’t really see Labour gaining it back)
I’d say the following seats are nailed on for the Lib Dems:
Orkney and Shetland
Caithness and Sutherland
Ross Cromarty etc
West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine
Fife NE
Dunfermline West
Edinburgh West
I’d put the following into a safe (but) category. There should be no reason for them to go, but an opposition party will target them and in all but the most unlikely circumstances fail to win:
Inverness
Dunbartonshire East
Argyll and Bute
I’d put Gordon and especially Roxburgh etc into a vulnerable category.
I’d be surprised if more than one Lib Dem seat fell (two at a push) and I expect Edinburgh South to be a nailed on gain.
So if the Lib Dems pick up one of the other three seats you mention they increase their seats. Interestingly the Glasgow North Party is appointing a full time organiser which suggest serious intent there.
So 11-12 Lib Dem MPs would be very likey - a figure that the Tories simply cannot reach and one the SNP will find very very difficult to reach given the Westminster boundaries.
96. Dan - “… as you can tell by Stuart Dickson’s brevity…”
Err… I am at work Dan. Some of us do actually have other responsibilities.
People forgot within 2 or 3 years of the bottom of the last property crash how bad it was. I met a newly-qualified accountant in 1998 who thought property was dead safe and only ever went up. He had no idea that until 3 years previously, it had been falling or at best moving sideways. No idea at all.
The property market is IMO experiencing these little bounces because, then as now, the last property crash was so long ago that some people just could not imagine how bad it could get. “Prices down 23%? Oh, we must be over the worst then. Better buy now.” Except that property prices will likely mean-revert to 3.5 times the average wage, an average depressed because the top earners have left the country and because of deflation. So there could be another 30 or 40% to go.
Likewise, a lot of these people can’t remember a recession, because the last time we should have had one, Broon simply reinflated the bubble and ensured the eventual crash would be worse. So all those who think the worst is over are in dreamland - it’s going to get a lot, lot worse.
I really think the Tories will have to let inflation rip to 10% to get the real value of the debt down, hiking interest rates to 12% or so to keep a lid on it but also to recapitalise the banks properly (i.e. not just with more debt) by incentivising saving.
That will be very painful for anyone who borrowed 6x their salary to buy a rathole in Stoke Newington in the bubble, but frankly, those who did are too stupid not to wind up poor in the end anyway. They’d better start getting used to it, ASAP.
131 - Then perhaps we could concentrate on debating with the BNP on their economic policies also. It might reduce the impact they have.
Simply dismissing them and trying to brush them under the carpet as Labour in particular have attempted to do hasn’t diminished their attractiveness as a protest vote from a certain segment of society.
Let’s point out that their policies in other areas are also completely wrong and that you’d end up with yet another version of the Labour party - which sure as hell nobody wants right now.
36 Correction - the pound has fallen by about 1 centime against the Euro today.
re 137. Absolutely right. If the Tories are performing just one half of one point on the swing better in England that opens up many more new prospects. This between a 7.45% and 8% swings ten new seats would come into play.
142. Dan - “Interestingly the Glasgow North Party is appointing a full time organiser which suggest serious intent there.”
Excellent!!
The more work the Lib Dems put in in Glasgow North, the more likely the SNP will come up through the middle.
136. There’s big flaws with UNS. As I keep saying, getting the vote shares accurate is the easy part, translating that into seats is much harder.
135. Why do people keep getting Tim Tim’s true identity wrong?
143 - Ha! Cause THAT’S the reason you’re not reading anything into that result!
53 Madasadish ” Retail sales tells us that people are spending less on cars and conservatories, but the money you save on this you can spend on a lot of smaller things on the high street.”
What money, they are 1.4 trillion in debt? Any economist who thinks that there will be a spending slurge is going to be disappointed. As the government spending cuts come into play that will surely be worse.
144. John R. Well, that’s one viewpoint. I also happen to think prices will continue to fall. One of my most basic indicators is that the bottom will not come until every single last one of these ghastly television property shows disappears for good. Only then will all the excess optimism have been burnt out of the market.
I wish the pollsters would treat Scotland (and, to a lesser extent, Wales) totally separately from England - the political landscape is completely different.
147 Mike - The effect could be bigger. IIRC, the big marginals poll last year suggested the over-performance was concentrated in the marginals (which in this context means a large number of seats).
Politically that does seem to make sense. Almost by definition, safe Labour seats have a smaller proportion of target voters for the Conservatives; there’s more tribal loyalty. Equally, safe Conservative seats have fewer voters who aren’t already committed to the Conservatives. So the ’switchers’ are likely to be concentrated in the seats which are not regarded as ’safe’ for either main party.
120 That’s excellent Dan. I’ll email PtP with our respective posts Nos. 104 and 120, confirming this bet between us. Please would you do likewise, where his email address is arklebar@talktalk.net
wibbler predicts Brown’s next wizard wheeze: making Susan Boyle a peer of the realm.
Meanwhile, Facebook is now a democracy
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8016532.stm
EDIT: apathy is already a problem in Facebook elections. Quote:
Mr Ullyot expressed disappointment that there was not a bigger turnout
Another article about the BNP by a leftie:
http://www.liberalconspiracy.org/2009/04/24/labour-heartlands-fertile-ground-for-the-far-right/
The penny is dropping.
155. Peter from Putney and Dan
IMPORTANT - you two have clearly not read each others’ posts correctly:
Dan was talking about SLD seats
Peter was talking about the SLD’s share of the national vote
NOT THE SAME THING!!!
137. Forget? I posted a long article last year showing why regional effects are unlikely to amount to more than a 5 seat difference from UNS.
And yes, given the choice, the Tories would prefer to write-off Scotland, if that meant that they would do better in the East Midlands, for example.
But of course, it’s not quite a simple as that. Parties don’t have the power to move voters around like chips on a cr@ps table, and it’s daft not to chase every vote, wherever it may be.
However, it does look as if the Tories will underperform in Scotland, and overperform elsewhere, relative to the national swing, to their overall slight benefit in seat terms…
The pattern was reversed in 1992, with the Tories doing exceptionally well in Scotland, and consequently less well elsewhere, to their overall detriment of about 5 seats…
124. Frank Booth based on recent General Elections and subsequent polls suggests that the ‘English variation’ works out at to be:
Conservatives +2-4%
Labour -0-2%
Libems +/-1%
Of course we have no idea how that additional vote might be spread across England.
However, it does give a best case scenario for the Conservatives in England on the last Yougov Poll (C45 L27 LD18) as:
Con 49
Lab 25
LD 17
Whatever the situation in Scotland or Wales such results if achieved in an election would be pretty devastating for both the English Labour and Libdem parties. That said the best case scenario is pretty unlikely but I suspect the differentials will have some effect and if associated with disproportionate regional swings (as suggested to some extent in London, SW and the Midlands in some polls) might be quite significant
156 - It would appear that the person in the photo with that article has a back-to-front version of facebook…
160
Labour and LDs are going to get mullered in London and the Southeast.
162: And the SW…well the south in general really.
160. I might need to revise my prediction. Labour - Tory swings in Wales will be complicated by Plaid, who could be an outlet for discontented labour voters. However I think the percentage increase in the Tory vote in England will be higher than Wales (by that I mean 2010% - 2005%).
As for seats? Between 7 and 10 in the principality.
142 Dan, fairs fair and congratulations to Rosemary Bruce. At present we do seem to be vulnerable to council by-elections under STV unless we are in the high 40s % on first preferences. I hope several hundred Tory voters in Aboyne who couldnt be a*sed to vote yesterday hang their heads in shame tonight. We held the Dumfries council byelection some months ago winning a fair share of transfers but from memory we lost John Porter’s Aberdeen ward in an STV byelection after his death.
As for your predictions more to follow.
The comments from BNP activists on the New Statesman article are frightening because they show a tremendous grasp of demographics and electoral sociology. There is (ostensibly) a comment from Nick Griffin himself.
154 - This is my belief also. It would also help to explain why the party in power always seems to have an inbuilt electoral advantage.
50% tax rate could actually cost the Government money
By Charlie Parker | 14:57:42 | 24 April 2009
The Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS) has concluded that the new 50% rate of income tax on those earning more than £150,000 could actually cost the Government money.
The Government has estimated that the tax take from the new rate will be £2.4 billion. The tax would in gross terms deliver some £7 billion but the Government has estimated that the rich will respond to the tax by working less, retiring earlier, emigrating,contributing more to their pensions or using other tax avoidance schemes. The net effect of which will reduce the tax take to £2.4 billion, according to the Treasury’s own estimates.
However the IFS said that these projections ignore the effect of a reduction in consumer spending as a result of the higher tax. It said ‘Even if HM Treasury is right about the responsiveness of income, indirect tax revenues could fall by up to £1.5 billion. This reform alone could actually cost money.’
The cost could occur if consumer spending patters resulted in a fall in revenues of more than £1.5 billion which IFS forecasts show to be a real possibility. This could be the case if more people than expected retire early in order to avoid it or if the accountancy community develops effective loopholes around it.
http://www.citywire.co.uk/Adviser/-/news/other/content.aspx?ID=338467
166 There was a very interedting programme on Radio 4 last night about the BNP. It concentrated on Griffin’s efforts to get into the European Parliament, but it also did a lot of field work on the Mostyn (sp?) By Election in Manchester. Worth listening to, if only to hear the disgruntlement of their voters.
163. SW CC results will be a big pointer for Lib Dem performance at the GE, potentially.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/budget/5209225/Borrowing-puts-UKs-AAA-rating-in-danger-after-Budget-2009.html
Post on last thread by mistake. This doesnt sounds like especially good news. What would be the real world implications of a downgrade ?
152 (ken) in fact if the market over-corrects, as it usually does, then something more like 2.9 times average deflated salary is possible, which puts us into > 60% total fall territory. Put another way, this would take prices back roughly to those of 1998.
Contracting at 5% a year, I wonder how long it would take for the economy to shrink to a point where it was smaller than the one Labour inherited?
153. Eh, there’s divides all over the place. There’s no more difference between Wales and England than between the South-East and the North for example. And South East Wales is more different from Rural NW Wales than some parts of England.
Scotland there’s a greater argument due to a larger nationalist presence, but overall you still run into the same problems. Regional samples would make it more accurate, but not just along country boundaries.
170. I thought we didn’t take local results into account.
174 It depends on who wins, obviously.
142 Dan 147 Mike regardng Dan’s SLD predictions.
I agree the following should be safe
Orkney and Shetland
Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross
Ross, Skye and Lochaber
North East Fife
Edinburgh West
Dunfermline West
The following should be safe but in a GE rather than a council byelection I am far from certain they are
Gordon
West Aberdeenshire
Inverness, Nairn etc
I think the following are at serious risk
Argyll (to the SNP)
Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (to the Tories)
East Dunbartonshire (believe it or not to Labour)
As for possible gains
Edinburgh South: should be a shoe-in but will be a dog-fight with the Tory candidate and Nigel Griffiths 3rd
Edinburgh North: unlikely
Aberdeen South: should be a shoe-in but Aberdeen council debacle will ruin their chance
Glasgow North: highly unlikely even if it includes what is/was Chris Mason’s ward.
Someone will know but was the Inverness West ward moved into Danny Alexander’s seat at the 2005 GE? Jimmy MacDonald the councillor whose death caused the byelection certainly was a councillor in Charles Kennedy’s seat when he was councillor for the area west of the Caledonian canal.
Regardless of which seats we argue over, I think all the Scots on PB will agree that GE night 2010 in Scotland looks like being a rollercoaster. Clearly many of us reckon it will be more like the mini Tory recovery seen in 1992 rather than the standstill of 2005.
113. If I may add an addendum to my own Cassandra-esque prophecies: I don’t think the Doomsday Scenario (extremism, racial conflict, civil strife, etc) is likely - I just think, for the first time, that it is POSSIBLE.
Even so, there’s a fairly extraordinary editorial in today’s Guardian, which, along with Martin Kettle’s piece on Tory policies, gives an nsight into the new Defeatism of the Left.
They basically admit Labour are going to lose. They basically admit the economic policies of New Labour have failed. They basically admit the public sector will now be savaged.
The only question is what to axe/chop/chuck etc. The paper makes a feeble defense against the privatisation of the BBC, on the grounds that this would culturally impoverish the nation.
The mere fact that the Guardian is discussing, very seriously, the selling-off of the Beeb shows how much the political terrain has changed.
BTW I reckon they should sell it. F*ck the license. Allow advertising. Let it make money. It could be a superb global broadcaster, once unshackled.
172. the link to salaries is not as simplistic as you make out - you will have to clarify why you think mean reversion should apply to this ratio (in particular) rather than to price rises over time.
136 Mike because of the way the 2005 boundary changes in Scotland stuffed the Tory party as it did in the 1990s, my best prediction for the Scottish Tories is +6 and that woud be a fantastic result. Even if there was a landslide, unless the LibDem vote collapses, which it will not do everywhere, though I am hoping it will where it counts (for the Tories)there are at best only 12 Tory gains out of 58 seats available.
177. advertising alone is enough to prevent a broadcaster being ’superb’ - watch any american telly, or the IPL, to see why.
177: You could possible make the arguement now that the BBC IS culturely impoverishing the nation as it is. Looking at the fall of ITV, and Channel 4, and independent radio, they cannot compete on any level with the slavering bloated beast the BBC has become.
Americans are getting fed up with the Great Messiah already, and it not 100 days till next Wednesday.
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics2/53_say_next_president_likely_to_be_a_republican
May I just make a brief point about debt-to-GDP. (Sorry to bring economic reality into this and all.)
Let us assume that at the end of this contraction (somewhere between a recession and a depression), we end up with debt-to-GDP of 100%. Let us also assume we have a fiscally prudent Conservative government.
Under this government, for the five years of its rule, it balances the budget, has 3.5% inflation and 3% economic growth. Will debt to GDP still be 100% at the end of this period? (After all, none has been repaid.)
No, it will have reduced very substantially because the combination of inflation and economic growth (i.e. nominal GDP), will have made the denominator significantly larger. How much larger? Well, in nominal terms, GDP will be 37.7% higher at the end of the period. So debt-to-GDP will have fallen from 100% to 73% in five years with *no* repayments.
If the government allows modestly higher inflation, or indeed runs a budget surplus, then the debt-to-GDP number can come down even more rapidly. When Lawson was Chancellor in the mid-80s, this potent combination - only a decade from the Labour government going begging to the IMF in 1976 - government debt was being eaten up so quickly that the question was raised about whether the government could buy corporate debt with its surpluses as well as government debt. (The worry was that repayments and economic growth were leading to no functioning government debt market in the UK.)
In other words, 2034 my arse. Given prudent economic management (i.e. a non-Labour government), we can see debt-to-GDP back to 40% by 2018 or 2020.
178 I’m not clear why the rate of price change should outweigh the underlying fundamental relationship between the cost of a house and people’s ability to buy one.
When oil went to $147, there was plenty of comment to the effect that the price was driven by supply-demand fundamentals and must therefore return to some lower level. Indeed it did. Are you saying that it would have been equally feasible, in either case, to suppose that the mean reverted to would be the rate of price change? Would that not permit permanent price rises for ever?
@181:
The decline of ITV is not the BBC’s fault.
ITV is in decline partially because broadcast media is dying and they were too thick to realise it, partially because they’re losing advertising revenues to digital and satellite channels more adept at giving people what they want, but mostly because ITV’s output is utter, unreconstructed sewage.
177. One of the reasons I watch the bbc is the absence adverts, they’re ghastly. That said I wouldn’t want to pay for itv/channel4, so I can’t really complain.
183. Robert. Quite. People always ignore the denominator in these types of ratios.
177 Allow advertising? Are you kidding? The BBC is already packed with advertising. There’s one advertiser - the BBC itself. Ads for its website, ads for other programmes, ads for its radio stations….
One question BBC supporters never seem able to answer is why, if licence fee funding is the reason for BBC quality, all TV should not be funded the same way.
The introduction of the 50% tax rate for those earnoing over £150,000 and (tappered) elimination of the personal allowance for those with taxable income over £100,000 should boost the donations to the Tories and reduce private donations to Labour.
Given the dire finances of Labour, the tax changes might not have been such a good political move after all.
20% wrong, and he’s in charge of economy
Chris Blackhurst
24.04.09
As if producing the most dismal Budget in memory wasn’t bad enough, we’ve now had this. Two days after he “commended” his speech to the House of Commons, the Chancellor’s forecasts are shown to be false.
Ordinarily, in the world removed from economic predictions, a fall of 0.3 per cent may appear trivial. But this is desperately concerning. The drop in output for the first three months of the year of 1.9 per cent versus 1.6 per cent in the final three months of last year means economists are predicting a contraction for the economy this year of four to 4.5 per cent, not the 3.5 per cent Alistair Darling claimed. Each full percentage point roughly equates to another £10 billion in borrowing. Suddenly and unbelievably, a record debt of £175 billion appears to be hurtling towards £185 billion. What was bleak has now got even bleaker.
…
The Chancellor is losing credibility at about the same rate he is forced to revise his estimates. And this, at a time he wants investors to believe in him sufficiently to buy £240 billion of government bonds. It would be funny if it wasn’t so serious.
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23680607-details/20+wrong,+and+he%E2%80%99s+in+charge+of+economy/article.do
BBC News just announced total pay freeze in Post Office from Directors to local posties. National strikes likely to follow?
180 What a load of f*cking stupid shite. You are fast becoming the most laughable commenter on this site. Commercial TV can be superb.
Three letters for you:
HBO.
It consistently produces drama way superior to anything the much richer BBC can cough up. Why?
How much could the BBC save if it just stopped commissioning ‘Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps’?
185- Yes, when did ITV last make anything funny? Plus all that money they wasted in ITV Digital trying to get people who had a Sky Box with Premiership football to buy yet another box so they could watch exciting Championship action. Who needs Man U - Liverpool and Arsenal - Spurs when you can watch Barnsley - QPR… (Although knowing you lot, some of you would prefer that!)
193 - About £8 from the look of it.
177. SeanT: BTW I reckon they should sell it. F*ck the license. Allow advertising. Let it make money. It could be a superb global broadcaster, once unshackled.
With the management the BBC has at the moment, they would lose money hand over fist if that organisation was privatised.
All the great directors and editors that made great programmes like ‘Brideshead Revisited’ have either left or died out. I say let the Beeb rot; a new organisation or company should take it’s place.
@192:
I agree with you Sean, but you will note that HBO is not advertiser-funded, which goes a long way to explaining its quality.
Advertisers are the enemy of quality.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/30387565
Could we be about to see the end of the house price crash in the US?
185: That as well
ITV are responsible for a lot of their own errors. But the BBC has been allowed to expand, and expand further and further.
113 Yes, there has been a considerable amount of delayed reaction to Brown’s video clip, concerning his intention to change MPs allowances.
I really don’t like the man at all, but as he gurned, innanely grinned and jiggled entirely inapproriately throughout, I did feel some sympathy, wondering whether he was genuinely in need of some help.
If, on the other hand, it was just a rather pathetic attempt to be chummy, the clip is undoubtedly destined to beome an all-time YouTube classic, to be savoured alongside Kinnock’s damp experience on Brighton’s shoreline and Rewood’s nid-nodding attempt at miming the Welsh National Anthem.
180 ed.
Then why does some of the best contemporary drama come from US TV?
The West Wing
House
Grey’s Anatomy
to name just three popular series are unmatched on the BBC.
Go to HBO and AMC and it’s even better
Sopranos
The Wire
Mad Men
Breaking Bad
There’s nothing the Beeb does that comes anywhere near these.
183. See your point, Robert.
But an assumption of 3% growth throughout a Tory government’s administration is nothing short of heroic - especially as the moneymaking machine of the City will be crippled, perhaps permanently, by the Brown Bust.
Where else is this 3% growth gonna come from? Consumer spending fuelled by rising house prices?
Please.
We face a decade of subdued growth, weighed down by debt. AT BEST.
185. The reason why they are failing is there business model is out of date. Sky and the other cable/ satellite models by copying the subscription model of the BBC (accepted BBC is annual and with additional considerations) effectively has have cornered the TV market. ITV, C4(although they did try), C5? didn’t/couldn’t do so and consequently, I suspect their days are numbered. It’s a shame really because I watch more ITV & C4, C5 channel programs (mainly the newer channels) than I do BBC programs.
200. Brown is Nuts, Peter, and sympathy wont alter the fact.
183 - There are problems with that analysis, robert - although I wish it could be true - in that that the structural deficit is so large in the UK (Gordon and Darling haven’t balanced a budget since 2001) that the Conservatives would have to take an axe to public spending so significantly that damage might be done in the short term.
That structural element becomes larger as you find unemployment rising (not least for those currently employed in the wasteful areas - ie not the doctors, nurses, teachers and police but the administrators and quango-ites - of the public sector that the Conservatives are going to have to cut)
Politically, it’s going to take the whole of a first term to bring the budget slowly back to balance and that means more borrowing!
In the meantime, we also have to question where you get 3% growth from when the key drivers of growth are all underperforming;
1) Financial sector (which used to be disproportionately strong in the UK) screwed and unlikely to grow significantly in the near future (especially if we tax all the wealth generators out of the country);
2) World recession leads to lower export demand;
3) No likely return to the debt/housing bubble fueled consumer spending of 2007.
So you paint a wonderful, neat picture but I think the reality is a bit more Dali-esque.
HBO is mostly crap. (It does make some very good shows though)
Personally just get rid of my bug-bear, BBC3 in total. I can see nothing on there would easily be dropped with no one shedding a tear, or consumed into BBC1/BBC2.
198
Why? have the all dropped to $0
[176] Well Easterross I think you have nailed the Lib Dem battlegrounds, and your comments are not unreasonable.
The Nats always seem to underperform, and I think Dan is probably right when he thinks that the SNP will struggle to get above the Lib Dems in terms of the number of seats, even while they comfortably outpoll them (the Conservatives and perhaps even Labour too) unless Labour are facing total wipe out, which would also bring more joy to the Conservatives than the six that I agree is a fairly optimistic Conservative target.
198. no
Read post 200 so referred back to 113 and last sentence meant LOL, one ruined keyboard as a result… coffee, he hesitates to explain…
The ‘best bits’ were shown at the end of This Week last night…
201-
The West Wing- Crap
House - Not as crap, but still crap
Grey’s Anatomy - Super Crap
to name just three popular series are unmatched on the BBC.
Go to HBO and AMC and it’s even better
Sopranos - Most over-rated show to come out of America.
The Wire - Havent seen it, but enough people I know say its great so I accept that
Mad Men - The second most over-rated show to come out of America
Breaking Bad - Havent seen it…
212- Curb your Enthusiasm is funny though. Rome was OK…hmmmm I think thats about it
206. What is HBO? An unpleasant personal condition?
202 - Snap!
I’m one of the few tories that doesn’t hate the BBC, but I do hate the TV License.
However, my views have hardened with BBC3/4, Woss’s salary, buying Lonely Planet etc. The TV tax has to go* and the BBC needs to be trimmed down to a couple of TV channels, a few radio stations and an internet presence.
*I would fund from either general taxation as they do in most of the world, or consider Paxo’s idea of an endowment.
209 - Hey Cic - when you next over in the land of the skint?
212: You have no taste.
‘Feeble nation’ jibe sparks row
MPs are demanding an apology over remarks made by the outspoken historian Dr David Starkey. Dr Starkey described Scotland as a “feeble little nation” and said Robert Burns was a “deeply boring provincial poet.”
Russell Brown, Labour MP for Dumfries and Galloway, said…
Brian Donohoe, Labour MP for Central Ayrshire, said…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/8016440.stm
This reminds me of the Jeremy Clarkson “One-eyed Scottish Idiot” stramash: if Iain Gray and the other Labour numpties had just ignored it it would not have blown up out of all proportion.
Labour MPs are just so thick. Or is their some great logic I am missing here?
A police officer is being investigated after allegedly writing on a website that he was keen to “bash some long haired hippys” at the G20 protest.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/8016620.stm
Is it just me or are policemen getting thicker these days?
216
CHT could you elaborate on Paxo’s idea svp. not heard it b4
213- Wait, I forgot the Larry Sanders show! Thats definatly the best American TV Series
212
My Name is Earl - top stuff!
The Sarah Connor Chronicles - superfab!
@219:
Oh dearie me. Has somebody stirred the Caledonian Pixies?
Crown Blogspot has been busy this week:
Gordo’s panacea for expenses:
http://thecrownblogspot.blogspot.com/2009/04/gordon-brown-dance-of-comedian.html
Adam Boulton Budget spoof:
http://thecrownblogspot.blogspot.com/2009/04/adam-boulton-spoof-on-sky-calls-gordon.html
Labour’s Budget Broadcast:
http://thecrownblogspot.blogspot.com/2009/04/new-labours-2009-budget-video.html
Apologies if any or all of these have been previously posted.
212 you forgot Deadwood - the best TV swearfest ever
Sopranos was to TV gangsters as X-Files was to TV sci-fi: if I’ve invested years in watching a high-concept, slow-burning show, I THINK FOR MY TIME I’M ENTITLED TO A PROPER BLOODY ENDING IN RETURN!
182…HRC will be the next POTUS.
@223:
YOU ARE WATCHING FOX.
That said, I’m currently balls deep in Joss Whedon’s new vehicle, Dollhouse. It’s officially ACES.
simon9999 - I didn’t realise your name referred to your placing on an intelligence test of 10,000 people.
I am of course only refering to HBO and other pay tv stuff. Theres some great US TV on the free networks too! (And great BBC stuff. And great ITV stuff if you go back in time about 20 years…)
230- Whatever you say Mr “Lets do what America orders us to do”!
221 MTF
It’s similar to the University endowments that Harvard, Cambridge etc have.
The BBC would sell the non core rubbish and receive a lump sum from the public purse. The income from this would fund the core stuff, in particular news. Personally I don’t think it would work as they would overspend then come crying to the government for a bailout ‘just this once’. But I think it’s worthy of consideration.
219. Hard to argue with Starkey’s verdict on Burns.
Why Don’t You All Just Switch Off Your Television Set And Go Outside And Do Something Less Boring Instead?
228 - Could you have said anything more depressing, graham?
I recorded and have now watched The Wire end to end; can anyone tell me what happened?
(I did like the investigation scene that consisted almost entirely of the 2 detectives saying f*ck)
Further to 219:
here is the strory from Feb 2009, stirred up by the Scottish Labour idiots:
‘Scottish politicians urge BBC to take Clarkson off air over Brown jibes’
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/feb/06/jeremy-clarkson-gordon-brown
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/celebritynews/4531186/Top-Gears-Jeremy-Clarkson-calls-Gordon-Brown-a-one-eyed-idiot.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7873624.stm
Iain Gray features very prominently = very poor judgement
192,201. i hate watching TV with loads of adverts in, even if it is otherwise good TV. i would stop watching the BBC if it had adverts. admittedly i watch very little TV anyway, so i am probably no loss to the broadcasters.
i’d rather see it slimmed down significantly and concentrate on quality over quantity.
I mean, The Prisoner was on ITV.
The Prisoner! High-concept surrealist cold war paranoia-fuelled Sci Fi allegory, full of existential angst and multiple layers of meaning, all wrapped up in the clothing of Summer of Love Freakadelica.
ON ITV.
That was then. Now look at it.
235. Crikey that takes me back…showing your age there!
Best and most condemnatory TV review EVER, from The Guardian:
“The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency makes ‘Lewis’ look like ‘The Wire’.”
234: Hard to argue with his description of Scotland as well…
233. Just sell the damn thing, but give it a public service remit. Let it run advertising on channels as it likes, but allow people to subscribe to pay TV versions with no ads, etc etc.
It’s gotta be flexible.
The fact British TV hasn’t produced a single drama series to match the spleandours of Sopranos, West Wing, House, Wire, Mad Men, Six Feet Under, Grays Anatomy, and so on, is just a disgrace. Why are we paying an annual stipend to be served up mediocre leftwing pap?
The Beeb has to go. Everything has to go. Sell schools, prisons, unviersities and hospitals, too. How much would we get for Oxford and Cambridge? Trillions.
Sell them. Let them compete with Harvard and charge what they like.
205
” take an axe to public spending spending so that short-term damage might be done”
Not only short term, but medium and long term damage.
The UK’s future is being heavily pruned.
240
I never understood the ending of the Prisoner, but then I dont think anyone did?
203. a lot more people can afford sky or alternatives nowadays, and they have done a good job marketing/bullying people into watching them (i.e. you can’t watch any good films or sport unless you subscribe…) so the “terrestrial” advantage of ITV and C4 has nearly disappeared.
C5 was always doomed by being pointless and never going for good quality.
242. Lewis is utter bilge. TV to watch while asphyxiating yourself with a hose from the car exhaust.
158 Stuart - there was originally some confusion concerning my bet with Dan (my fault), but this was resolved in post #104. The bet is based on Scottish LibDem seats at the next UK GE.
Thanks for pointing this out, however.
seanT: there are plenty of great businesses in the UK:
Vodafone is one of the two largest mobile phone companies in the World, with operations across Europe, in Africa, India and the US.
BP and Shell are two of the five largest Independent Oil Companies in the world.
GlaxoSmithkline is one of the top five pharma companies in the world.
HSBC is one of the largest banks in the world, and one of the few to have come out of this crisis with its reputation improved.
Among smaller companies, we have some real crackers, both public and private:
ARM designs the chips that go into practically every one of the billion mobile phones in the world.
Sage is the world largest provider of business software to SMEs
BSkyB is not only the dominant pay-TV company in the UK, but is repeating its success in Italy, and may go on to do the same in Germany.
The bulk of Formula One cars are designed and built in Britain. We have a good biotech industry. We supply the technology to power most of the Internet gambling in the world.
None of these things are thanks to G Brown, Esq. But the UK has surprisingly thriving business and industry, even beyond the obvious “finance”.
239 - In this age of superfast internet, I’d rather see the broadcasters put the stuff out with adverts in initially and then put in online the following day without the ads - with the acceptance of a small fee for providing a fast, stable connection.
That way those who want to sit through the ads can do so and others can see it ad free for a small cost if they’re willing to wait.
Alternatively, use your digibox, record it initially and fast forward the ads when you get to them.
Adverts are, to be honest, totally avoidable but annoying when they happen.
233
I’m trying to imagine a revamped BBC with a grievance.
Uhuh.
No change there then.
252 - I quite like imagining (as I think I’ve posted before) a BBC owned by Richard Desmond.
176. I wonder if Ming Campbell were not the Lib Dem candidate for NE Fife if it would move it into the probably safe rather than certainly safe? The Lib Dems took a lot of flack over the Tay Bridge Tolls and despite the fact they now have a say in the running of Fife Council they have not delivered their long promised secondary school for the Newport/Tayport area.
I should say, that if the BBC hate advertising, then they should be banned from advertising themselves. On radio there’s almost as much advertising on the BBC as there is on commercial stations. Same with News 24.
@251:
Are you not familiar with this miracle of modern Internets, BitTorrent?
I get all my TV torrentage from UKNova, EZTV.
I haven’t knowingly watched a TV advert in years.
Like Councilhousetory I generally like the BBC except I hate their cheerleading for Brown Central, I now watch only a few minutes each morning of Breakfast TV (usually to catch the 90 seconds of Scottish news on the hour/half hour) and I deplore their habit of using news bulletins to advertise forthcoming programmes.
Didn’t HBO collaborate with the BBC in making the more recent Andrew Davies versions of some of the great classics? I also enjoyed “Rome” except of course the gratuitous sex and violence
National disaster for England alert!! The Wembley pitch is to be dug up again. Having spent several hundred million pounds on the place couldn’t they get the correct brand of grass seed?
Significant from this latest poll that about a quarter of the population reckon that the UK`s perilous economic position will not make much difference to their lives. That presumably includes the 2% of £150k earners.
The other 23% (we can presume) will be the folks in the bottom section of the social pyramid. Life for them is one perpetual struggle …and they know that, for them, things will continue to be about survival. From one week to the next.
The major political parties wrote off the poor, years ago. That is why so many punters don`t bother to vote.
244 “How much would we get for Oxford and Cambridge? Trillions.”
The British state doesn’t own them.
So, it is like putting Sean Thomas up for sale.
236…and HH could well be running the remnants of the New Labour gig. menopausal joy all round!
250. Never disputed that. But your assumption of average 3% growth over five years following this recession is ludicrously optimistic. Even, dare I say it, Darling-esque.
It’s above trend, for a start, which is thought to be 2.75% - and that was before the City was f*cked. Trend is probably more like 2.5% now, or even lower.
Then you have to remember house price rises will not be fuelling bukkakes of consumer spending. Also, slashing public sector wages and investment etc will reduce economic activity. Higher taxes will also drag down the economy. And so on and so forth and so on…
Lower growth for the next five years is now a nailed-on cert, I fear. The real and serious worry is no growth AT ALL - e.g. Japanese stagnation.
3% a year? Dream on.
245 - I think you missed the point there bono. The public sector NEEDS to be pruned back and massively so as the “growth” of the last decade has been unnecessary, over-extensive and wasteful.
The short-term damage I referred to was political (in that people are for some reason overly emotional about defending public spending without understanding how completely unnecessary alot of it currently is) and also in that some mistakes might be made in identifying which roles should go unless a total review of activity can be undertaken first.
250 - On your list of companies, robert - BP and Shell will see lower profits than recently due to falling oil prices; Big Pharma is not exactly a guaranteed success during a recession (who’s paying for the new, expensive drugs when meeting ordinary bills is tough enough) and HSBC still has a global recession to face and therefore will show massively lower profits (and it’s growth will be outside the UK).
You fail to take into account that the world is slowing and you can’t export if nobody wants to buy. You can’t grow if everyone is cutting back.
The UK is worst placed than most but the state of the entire global economy makes your growth predictions unmeetable in the short term.
257 - The gratuitous sex and violence was actually somewhat tame compared to what you would see if you actually went back to that period Rome. They had a completely different ethical framework.
253 just content yourself with imagining the current collection of executives with the BBC in the hands of Richard Desmond.
256: I do use torrents when my wifes not watching. She doesn’t like me hogging the bandwidth, and seems to have a moral objection to me watching something 2 days earlier than I can on sky…
Sky+ has cut down on me having to view adverts as well. I rarely if ever watch programmes when they actually broadcast, apart from a few on the Beeb.
219/238 - I agree. I saw Starkey and he had lost all rationality (and quite a lot of phlegm and the audiences’ support) by then.
Highlighting it will just encourage him to do it again meaning he’ll probably go further and ruder to satisfy his enourmous ego and need for publicity.
256 - That’s where I get my tv from to be honest, Martin. I just didn’t want to make my primary suggestion one that, let’s be honest, is of dubious legality. Personally, I think torrents rule and all power to the mouse-hands of the nice people who edit out the ads before they put their recordings online.
264 - My exact point! I’m sure the output would be awful but the thought of all those Guardianistas squirming and gibbering….
259. But they only exist thanks to the British state. Nationalise then sell.
F*ck it. Time for blue sky thinking.
And, since you mention it, the soul of Sean Thomas was recently sold to Mammon Inc, publishers of commercial fiction.
Wall Street Journal: ‘UK 1Q GDP Sees Biggest Fall Since 1979, GBP Slides’
http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20090424-707368.html
CNN: ‘British economy: Sharpest decline since ‘79′
http://money.cnn.com/2009/04/24/news/international/Britain_Q1GDP.reut/?postversion=2009042407
The Australian: ‘UK economy’s biggest fall in 30 years’
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25382929-2703,00.html
Press Trust of India: ‘UK economy shrinks most in 30 yrs; Q1 GDP falls 1.9 pc’
http://www.ptinews.com/pti%5Cptisite.nsf/0/CD5C476357A7ED99652575A2004B9972?OpenDocument
261,262. exactly. what would a pro fund manager know about these things compared with the two parodies of uninformed right wing hyperbole.
254 Politicalhistorian, Sir Ming took 3 attempts to wrestle the seat away from Barry Henderson the Tory MP who preceded him. Arguably post Sir Ming the seat might move into the “everything to play for” category. I think he will retire next year which is why I kept suggesting that if the LibDems have any sense they will select their excellent candidate from the Glasgow East by-election to replace him. A very able lad who I dont think could be blamed in any way for their disastrous result.
@265:
Yes, this.
But why should I have to wait six months/forever for the latest American shows to be picked up in the UK?
I need my BitTorrent, so I can watch Dollhouse, Caprica and 30 Rock.
255 - the BBc advertise in their own programmes for other programmes as well. It’s what I like to call ‘cross polination’. If there’s some trendy lefty with a new show about 20th century music or whatever on BBC2 or 4, you can bet money they’ll be on Question Time the week before.
266 - I think he gets a bit high on the approval of the audience and is driven to say more and more outrageous things, and then there is a “tumbleweed” moment when the room goes silent and everyone thinks “did he really say that?”
271 - Have you seen the performance of the average fund manager, ed?
Nice to see you keeping up your usual standards of posting complete boll*cks.
@271:
Oh, this is priceless.
A resident commie apologist is now holding up “pro fund managers” as bastions of economic competence.
259 Gwynfa, how much do you think we could raise to run PB.com by selling SeanT or even hiring him out!!
278 - I thought that SeanT was usually on the other side of the transaction?
273 - That’s one of the biggest problems for the broadcasters as a whole (and movies).
In the world of the internet, you have to ensure simultaneous broadcast time/global release for the most popular tv and movies otherwise people WILL download it and watch it themselves.
273: Well at least Sky do show US shows as close as possible to the US tranmission date.
Back in the dark old days we used to be years behind. There was something like a 3year gap between the US and BBC showing of Star Trek:TNG.
SeanT is a PRO FUN MANAGER.
281. Believe it or not, at one time in the 1980’s RTE were showing episodes of Dallas and Dynasty up to 18 months before they were first transmitted on the Beeb!
281 Who remembers the drama of the tapes arriving from America for the BBC to screen the episode of Dallas where we found out who shot JR. It made the national news IIRC.
269 “But they only exist thanks to the British state. Nationalise then sell.”
Oxford and Cambridge University are completely independent institutions that long predate the British state.
Want Brown to go, sign up here.. http://bit.ly/N1FZ
274. big difference between commercial advertising (which i find pretty irritating) and advertising of forthcoming programmes (which is my main means of finding out about other programmes, and is only occasionally irritating).
Oh my Christ, it’s PIMM’S O’CLOCK, you ruddy great Jemima.
271. I am so hyperbolic on economics I managed, last year, to guess that Britain would not recover in the summer of 2009, as I said on this site at the time.
In this I turned out to be much more accurate than the dourly sensible…. Chancellor of the Exchequer.
FWIW I don’t think Robert had quite thought through the detailed premise of his hypothesis - I think he was trying to prove that government debt can come down quicker than you expect, and he is right: it can - that’s what happened in the 90s.
But his figure of 3% growth for the five years after this recession is VERY optimistic, as I reckon he would probably admit, on reflection.
246. I thought that was the point, a determined two fingers up to anyone trying to explain it.
193. How much could the BBC save if it just stopped commissioning ‘Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps’?
Some dignity for starters
266 Dan, Starkey has always made clear his hatred of Scotland and all things Scots. The contrast with Simon Schama is obvious. Starkey described James VI and I as a king of England even though he became king of Scots before his first birthday.
285. Gwynfa. The British State? The Crown goes back to at least 1066 and in some ways goes further back.
276. based on the evidence that someone pays them for their opinion rather than scrolling past it on an anonymous betting site - better than yours i would imagine.
277. i am not actually a commie apologist. sorry to disappoint. who do you think are the bastions of economic competence anyway? sex memoirists?
293: British..not English.
280. i think we are still quite some way from having a significant amount of the nation’s TV watching occurring over the internet. it is fast growing though.
287 - that’s not exactly what I meant, but I find even that annoying. Those little captions that pop up to remind you something else is on, or a host trying to plug something else. If you try to watch Match of the Day these days you get adverts for tennis, F1 and pretty much anything else thrown at you because they’re all ’sports’.
What I was refering to more was the BBC’s habit of using some programmes to build up the recognition of individuals/ideas/subjects, before they feature in other programmes. I’m seeing too many people ‘guesting’ on one show, only to plug their other show. It’s advertising by any other name.
294 - I’ll take my 15 years in equities and finance for which I DO get paid (and very well thank you) and take it against your uninformed lack of ability any day thanks, ed.
As Sean put upthread, the same goes for me. I wasn’t knocking Robert’s overall concept, merely pointing out the error of his thinking re growth in this post-bust world and the extent to which the public sector spending could be trimmed immediately to balance the overall budget.
http://www.gofourth.co.uk/the-real-face-of-caring-conservatism
Prescott trying to involve Hannan’s comments on Fox News on his Labour blurb for the Euros. Shame that very people knows who he is and/or care;).
@293:
IIRC, the earliest endowment anyone can find actual evidence of Oxford being used as academic institutions, there’s the endowment that Unversity College has in its archives for the “maintenance of twelve scholars” dating from 1249.
There are buildings in Merton College older than 1249, but they have no proof they were constructed for academic purposes.
298. all of your intelligent thought is expended on that pursuit, i suppose. that’s efficient asset allocation for you.
292 - though Schama is boring as hell. I don’t think I’ve ever got through one of his programmes. The thing about Starkey is he’s not fun in a conventional sense, but you get the sense that he’s quite brilliant as well as a bit mad. That, and his fascination with some of the darker aspects of history, make his programmes much more enjoyable to watch.
Honestly, the only time I have found Simon Schama to be the least bit entertaining was when he was drunk out of his mind on the US election coverage and tried to pick a fight with Gore Vidal, despite the fact that Vidal was agreeing with him already.
293: ken @ 16:54
The English Crown does indeed go back for nigh on a thousand years. The British state however came about long after Oxford and Cambridge Universities were founded.
301 - As I’ve said before, there’s no point in debating with you. You’re a thoughtless moron who is happier spouting unconsidered crap rather than actually standing back and realising quite how wrong your entire zeitgeist is.
#295 [ by Slackbladder April 24th, 2009 at 4:55 pm ]
293: British..not English.
Speak for yourself: not for the majority!
297. actually what annoys me the most about advertising is watching one programme and getting more or less the same adverts in every break. at least have the imagination to make a series of similar adverts and cycle them. and have some respect for viewers with a concentration span of more than 15 minutes (not a high proportion of TV watchers, i’ll grant)
303. HurstLlama. But surely the British state is the successor to the Crown and the Crown supported the development of the universities?
304. i can see, in that case, why you haven’t gone to the trouble of learning how to debate. it would be quite an effort from the position you are in.
OK guys, that’s a wrap. The fourth horseman of the Apocalypse has finally shown up. Pestilence.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8016909.stm
I make that a full house?
And now I’m off to watch some awful American commercial TV on DVD. Lay-turr…
@307:
“Supported the development of” sounds very weasel-wordy.
304 - Bless. Whereas your every post is considered and backed up with relevant facts?
303,307. rather a pointless distinction, i reckon - if you go back even 200 years, both state and universities would be unrecognisable from what they are now.
it is certainly true that they have always been fairly separate, which was the original point - but then try removing them from UCAS and see how brilliant they are then, eh?
312 - Oxford and Cambridge would be more than happy to be removed from UCAS.
308 - If, by debating, you mean that I should accept your nonsense as fact then no, I haven’t, by your definition, had any such training.
Unlike you, I can see through someone talking absolute balls.
Is that your surname by the way?
O/T - Just been doing some geeking and there are only two Labour PM’s that have used their first names. All the others have used a second name.
Tony Blair and Clement Attlee used their first names, the others were
James Ramsay MacDonald
James Harold Wilson
Leonard James Callaghan
James Gordon Brown
312 - That’s a dangerous thing to say. I suspect they’d do just fine. Though probably with rather fewer British students.
I see No.10 has allowed a “Gordo, resign now” petition on the official e-petition website
If it gets traction like the road pricing one could be interesting, just from a comical Ali point of view.
@313:
Oxford and Cambridge applications are already de facto Independent of UCAS anyway.
You have to submit a separate application to the Universities’ application service, in order to get accepted into a college.
302. Eh I disagree, I prefer Schama to Starkey, in terms of their programme’s at least.
315 - What do they have against the name James, James?
Re 299. Ed. Arguably Daniel Hannan and the other SE Con MEP’s have the second biggest mandate behind them of any sitting politicians in this country behind Boris Johnson.
If that is his situation what does it make of the rest of them including every single Labour representative?
173 wales, scot & ni have different parties so ARE different and pollsters need to recgnise this
315 James,
Why do Labour hate James (except for Len Callaghan who chose James as his first name). Would history have been different with Jamie MacDonald, Jimmy Wilson and Jimbo Brown?
315. Attlee didn’t use his first name.
He was only either “Mr. Attlee” or “C.R. Attlee”
302 David have you seen the advert on Channel 4 (haven’t a clue what it is for) featuring Starkey, Tony Robinson, Kevin McCloud and A N Other (Jon Snow?) dressing up in drag and pretending to be a Womens’ Institute team in a pub trivial pursuit game? Starkey as the screaming queen he is, a class act.
323 - I don’t know but as a James I find it a bit of an insult.
324 - In the 40’s and 50’s nobody really used their names, everyone was Mr or Mrs this or that!
303: Ken @ 17:03
That is certainly a point of view, though not one I would share. However to discuss both the points in it would take more space and time than, perhaps, would be useful to either of us.
312 Ed, they’d be absolutely over-the-moon if this came to pass.
313,316,318. ok you would have to threaten slightly more than remove them from UCAS. they do rely on tuition fees etc though don’t they.
however, i’m sure there would be ways and means of forcing them to accept nationalisation followed by sell off to the highest bidder?!
(318. they are currently semi-detached i think)
323 Big Jimmy Brown, scourge of capitalists.
Anthony Blair and Jimmy Brown proudly present ‘The stitch up’ a farce in 3 parts.
327
Just so and none of the ridiculous Ms either. I dont know if I am alone , but Ms anything irritates the hell out of me. It immediately says something to me about the person.
329. i guarantee they would not be. you might be surprised how much they care about not going down the semi-private harvard type route.
327 not to mention the distinctions between gentlemen and players in cricket.
Mr D. R. Jardine
Larwood H.
330 - You would have to sabotage the student visas that their replacement students would need before you could force them to accept nationalisation.
315.
And the winner of Fascinating Trivia of the Week Award is… ta da.. James Burdett!
Your gold star is in the post.
330 ed, the point is that Oxford, Cambridge & London would be able to charge (and get) much higher tuition fees in the open market. The Universities would be much better off. The fees would end up just below those of Harvard or Yale.
“however, i’m sure there would be ways and means of forcing them to accept nationalisation followed by sell off to the highest bidder?!”
Robert Mugabe could certainly find a way.
284. Yes - I was 11.
The debate about the Navy, and Britain being an island, and most people in the world living near the sea, and most trade being by the sea, made me wonder what the world would be like (ecologically, politically, economically, etc) if the whole planet was covered by a patchwork of small and medium-sized islands, with small seas and channels between them, instead of big continents and vast oceans.
335. simple. ban foreign students. “are you thinking what i’m thinking?” becomes a major plank of education policy.
321. I totally agree- I feel that Prescott really is going to have explain to voters who Hannan is and they really aren’t going to care.
Casino Royale wrote: Doh. That’s Bosnia. Still.. whatever. Same thing. Landlocked country etc…
Even though that comment was written yesterday, about 14 trillion threads ago, the pedant in me wants to point out that Bosnia-Hercegovina is not a landlocked country. It’s got a few miles of squiggly coastline in between the two adjacent bits of Croatia.
108. The LDs could quite easily fall to fourth in the popular vote, but hold most if not all of their Scottish seats, perhaps even making gains.
112. 108 NO! You are wrong, Rod! If the Lib Dems are in fourth, they will be eliminated, shortly after the Greens or the SSP or whoever. Unless they can stay in the rwace, they will be eliminated. You have to have a generally high level of support to win an AV/STV election.
You are talking at cross porpoises. Rod was talking about the next GE (FPTP) for the LDs in Scotland, Augustus was talking about AV/STV in local elections.
The Internets do not lie:
http://twitpic.com/3wdw6
340 - The true subtlety of last week’s anti-terror raids becomes apparent.
A stunning set of election results from yesterday’s byelections for the LibDems . As I keep on saying , the Conservatives are not only losing support from their peak in 2007/2008 but they are polling fewer votes than they achieved in 2002 - 2004 , the seat they lost to Labour in Erewash they won comfortably in 2003 . The Aberdeenshire seat they lost was reputavly their 2nd or 3rd safest seat in the whole of Scotland . I believe the Inverness West ward in fact spans 2 parliamentary constituencies .
337. i honestly don’t believe they would want to though.
remember that head-in-the-clouds academics are the majority in the decision making process - quite a different mindset to the bean counters who are lobbying for more tuition fees.
325 - I have indeed, Easterross. Good stuff. I am enjoying Starkey’s new Henry VIII series as well. I recorded them, as one does, without thinking I’ll ever get around to watching them. But I got through the first couple last night.
342 - The pedant in me says that can’t be right, as 14 trillion threads would take 19 billion years… But even after that Gordo would be the worst PM in history…
327. Interestingly, the Times starting dropping the “Mr.”, when referring to politicians, around 1981.
Eden, when Foreign Secretary in the 1930s-50s was usually referred to as “Mr. Anthony Eden.” [must have been the film-star-like glamour surrounding him]
Attlee was rather unusual in that he was never on first-name terms with the Press. [he despised them]
337
You are correct. LSE already charges over 10k for a one year Masters.
@346:
Hooray! Friday wouldn’t be Friday without our Mark Senior Moment.
256. Torrents? OK. Newsgroups even better.
Someone commented on not having seen ‘Breaking Bad’ and you probably won’t be able to unless you use newsgroups. I doubt a UK network will buy it but for contemporary drama it is unmatched.
And anyone who doesn’t rate ‘The Sopranos’ or ‘Mad Men’ is devoid of all aesthetic and dramatic sensibilities.
You’d better stick to ‘Big Brother’ or ‘The X Factor’.
315. 336. No prize. We knew that already.
327. I was looking up newspaper reports in the library recently about the 1974 general election (or was it 1951?) and I noticed that they almost always referred to “Mr Thingy” or “A. Thingy”. It made me think that a newspaper-reader of the time might have struggled to know the first names of MPs or ministers.
347 - As somebody on the “inside”, I would say you are making a sweeping generalisation.
I had this conversation several times over the course of several years and the response of most of the academics I speak to isn’t, what if, but, when, they go private, like the US.
Recent decisions like cutting Imperial and LSE’s research funding, plus handing over even more money to failing universities, and freezing (/minimal increases) to the top ones, is only going to strengthen that feeling. And don’t forget the “widening participation” targets are deeply unpopular at the top universities.
Many can foresee exactly a US style system, the top 10-15 universities being private and having elite funding, the next group “state” funded but still very good, and then your community colleges.
We’re due at least one more poll over the weekend, right?
@337:
Part of the motivation in introducing top-up fees was as a sop to try to stop Oxford and Cambridge from seceding from the state funding machinery.
As it happens, the fees mollified Oxbridge for a bit, but I doubt they’ll do so forever.
341. I’m sure you are right that Prescott’s tiny little coterie of blog stalkers will need it explaining in words of one syllable.
344. Ha ha ha ha ha!
322. There are different parties all over the place. At a GE things do not simply divide down country lines.
If they did split it up you’d still have the same complaints about such a party being irrelevant in this bit or that bit of the country. When you poll for national % and elect on FPTP you’re going to get these problems. Splitting the countries up helps but only to a limited extent. The North of England and the South East will still behave differently and muddy the waters. Rural and urban will still be different and so on and so on.
355/7
They are already building their reserves in anticipation of going private. Oxford and Cambridge could probably charge 20k a year as a private uni. Imperial and LSE not far behind. Labour’s unintended consequences part 697.
@356:
We were expecting a ComRes/IoS poll, but we’ve now learned that’s been called off due to the Indie’s extreme poverty.
352. Martin. I know. I’m stunned. It has to be clear Labour landslide next year at the GE, Libdems with over a 100 seats and the Conservatives obliterrated. It’s devasting.
;o)
362, fiddlesticks!
No others? Are we to be bereft of post-Budget polls?
346. Go back to your constituencies and prepare for government, Conservatives can’t win here is the message then.
364. MD Perhaps the Sun/ NOTW will save us from poll “cold turkey”?
354. It was certainly so in 1974, John.
http://www.titanictown.plus.com/papers/1974F.png
http://www.titanictown.plus.com/papers/1974O.png
The fawning respect for politicians stopped for some reason in 1981/2. Check that out.
366, we can but hope. It seems ridiculous not to have a few post-Budget polls.
I hope Vettel and Webber do well in qualifying. Backed Red Bull to win at 5.7.
Edit: for those thinking likewise the bestbetting site has Vettel at 11/1 and Webber at 19/1, so better to go that way.
368 - Well we did seem to have a load just before the budget. Maybe just reflects that timing of Easter and the Budget this year.
Has Mark Senior advised he lost his Bet with MM!
Senior must have had the dumbest bet in the site history there!
368. I know but its the recession. See even that is Brown’s fault! These papers haven’t got the dosh to throw around anymore.
352. Martin
Should we start a Mark Senior Fanclub?
370. ‘The Conservatives are the party of recession, no recession here.’ Then we’ll have the Mandelson line ‘You Tories are loving this recession’
Same old.
for Rod Crosby @ 5.12pm
……..also used “Major”(Attlee)
Off topic and regarding the 50p tax hike. Has the curse/ revenge of Brown this week fallen upon the Football Premiership. Does anyone else think we might see an exodus of top (foreign) players abroad as a result of this over the next few years with few coming in?
339 Somewhat like ancient Greece perhaps? There would be political fragmentation, a huge variety in forms of government, and lots of little navies.
263 “Rome” was okay, but it suffered (as I remarked about 300 Spartans) with getting a lot of the details correct, while making a travesty of the bigger picture.
And you’re undoubtedly right that Roman sex and violence would have been a good deal more interesting than anything seen on “Rome.” It’s probably only fair to add that a Roman would find many aspects of our own culture appallingly lewd.
375 - No, they won’t be paying it on the whole! The likes of Henry, when he was at Arsenal, was paying basically no tax at all.
They will only stop coming to the Premiership if the clubs can’t afford to pay the top dollar.
373. woody662 April 24th, 2009 at 5:50 pm
It’s funny after Senior made that bet he stopped posting apart from the odd occasion! I hope he honours his bet!
Are ther going to be any more polls out in the next few days?
371, maybe he’s refusing to take the tough decisions to prolong the recession so he doesn’t have so many opinion polls saying how rubbish he is
350 I find overfamiliarity intensely irritating, particularly when estate agents you’ve never spoken to before are immediately on first name terms with you.
I wish we could revert to the custom of referring to MPs (and others) as Mr. , Mrs., or Miss.
380 - No he just has a petition calling for his resignation on the Downing Street Website…
381, I agree, Sean.
381 - Yes I find it very irritating from cold callers and call centre twits.
383 - Something else for the Morris Dancer Manifesto!!
377. What you mean there is a loophole that Gordon is not going to close? I’m indignant. All those fat cats in football being allowed by this Government to avoid tax! Quick call Harriet the Wonder Woman, she’ll sort it out! It’s shameful!
;o)
AQ panel: Poet Laureate Andrew Motion, cabinet office minister Liam Byrne, Conservative shadow minister Justine Greening and Liberal Democrat spokesman David Laws.
Byrne’s a smirking turd. I think he’s Priority 1. Won’t be nearly as fun as QT, but the Gurkhas and shrinking economy mean I’ll still tune in.
385, aye. Still need to write it down…
372.
“start a Mark Senior Fanclub?”
Day, Senior, Coxall and Associates. Purveyors of Martinviews to the PBocracy.
(sounds like a jaded firm of provincial accountants!)
382. James - There is one calling for Jacqui Smith to be sacked as well.
381 - I think Rod (Edit: Mr Crosby) has it about right further upthread where he says this familiarity really kicked in around 1981 or so.
Does anyone have any good ideas as to what really started that trend?
I also find it slightly off-putting. There’s an element of politeness in using Mr, Mrs etc.
Take a trip to Germany and, in the grocery store, the staff will have name labels saying Herr Schmitt or Frau Werner. Similarly in France. What have we changed in the UK to make us the odd ones?
381, 383, 385 - Do you tell them that you find it irritating? My experience is that if you draw your annoyance to the interlocutor’s attention, preferably with a steely glare or a hard edge in your voice, they change their form of address.
387.
“cabinet office minister Liam Byrn”
Benito without the brains (or the balls)
387 - Can we put Andrew Motion on the list of people to be fired into space as he is quite simply the worst Poet Laureate ever.
385- yes please I’m loving the Morris Dancer manifesto so far. I’d vote for him.
391. Nah, French grocery stores just have the first name too, these days. At least, the ones in Aix-en-Provence do.
386 - To be fair, if it was only that simple.
They don’t even need to be paid in the UK. If I remember correctly, Arsenal’s scheme was / is that they have a company in a tax haven, and all Arsenal players are share holders. They hen receive money from the company directly into their own off-shore accounts.
For day to day living they get a taxable wage. Those foreign players then also claim Non-Dom status and so bring in cash from their tax haven free of any tax.
In the court case for the divorce of Ray Parlour is was estimated he was only playing 28% on this earnings, and that was because he was British and resident in the UK. The likes of Henry aren’t and so were estimated to pay even less in tax.
David Beckham is never paid directly, he has a variety of companies and wages etc are always paid into those “vehicles” rather that directly to him.
385. I worked at a call centre for a short but horrific period where under threat of dismissal you had to call someone by their first name. Encourages a better atmosphere to sell apparently.
Blame the bosses not the workers, they’re just the rabbits in the cage.
381.
I reckon the practise really took hold with Blair after 1997. And was deliberately stoked by Labour as a way of ‘de-politicising’ what they were doing.
So ‘Tony Blair today visited….’ was designed to project a personality event rather than a political one in the style of ‘The Prime Minister, today…..’.
Now I know politicians before Blair were referred to by the forename and surname but only after the story, whether in print or broadcast media, began with ‘ The Prime Minister….’. And never ‘Prime Minister Blair’, except on American TV.
I believe this was a deliberate plan rather like their largely successful efforts to distort the political language so that ‘government spending’ became ‘investment’. It was all designed to
de-politicise and thus dilute opposition.
Of course, the pigeons are now coming home to roost so the fall will be all the greater.
394 - Has he written anything worse than this?
“I’ve measured it from side to side:
‘Tis three feet long, and two feet wide.”
377. that doesn’t ring true to me - i believe most of them pay a lot of tax. why wouldn’t Hnery have done so?
Id a 6:02pm “There’s an element of politeness in using Mr, Mrs etc.”
No there isn’t. The element of politeness comes from addressing a person in the manner in which they wish to be addressed. If people wish to be called Mr, Mrs, etc then that’s fine by me and that’s what should be used if they wish it so - but there are some of us who simply prefer not to use such titles for ourselves.
If anyone calls me Mr Whaley I always correct them to Steven. I never use Mr unless I’m absolutely forced to - on an official form or something of that nature.
391.
“Does anyone have any good ideas as to what really started that trend?”
Rupert Murdoch acquired The Times and Sunday Times in 1981. Surely not a coincidence?
@381:
It’s a pity you don’t have a doctorate, Sean (or do you), because then you’d have a genuine Grade A supervillain name.
“There’s nothing to fear… but DR FEAR HIMSELF” would be your catchphrase.
396 - Thanks, Andrew. I was going with my own experiences in the Casino stores in the Gers. I guess France isn’t a good generalisation for that concept.
Would still be interested to know why we started down the line of over-familiarity in politics and public life - particularly in television interviews.
I only insist on being called “Mister Coxall” in bed.
399 - “I reckon the practise really took hold with Blair after 1997″
Is there anything you DONT blame Labour for?!
401 - Ed,
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1467295/Parlour-divorce-exposes-Arsenal-offshore-tax-dodge.html
I got it wrong on Parlour, it was 25% not 28%!
“with nearly 30 players having to pay a total of just £76,000 tax,”
378 The bet will be settled Martin , don’t worry . Unlike yourself I do work and have my part time business so don’t have as much time as you do to post your incessant drivel .
402. Well you obviously live up (or is it down?) to your name.
Wally.
@ 344 “Gordon Brown is Jewish”???
WTF?
@ my 411 - meaning “WTF is going on with that one do you reckon” - I hasten to add!
407. Neill.
Not really. They were / are pretty useless
402 - Fair point, Steven.
I’m with Geoff @ 399 where in discussion of matters formal reporting and discussion in the media, I would rather we went with titles and formality over the first name culture. It reminds people of what the person is there to discuss and what they have responsibility for.
406 - At least you don’t insist on “Sir”.
@409:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmauUbBKXII
405 My impression is that French society is rather more formal than ours.
“Sean” is fine for people I know reasonably well, including contributors to blogs such as this, but I resent complete strangers calling me by my first name.
413 - Mr Neil to you, thanks.
407 - It’s the Dolly Bellfield tendency.
361 It would be richly ironic if Labour, in pursuit of its hidden agenda of comprehensivising the universities, accidentally facilitated their privatisation.
414 - It is why I would be unutterably opposed to a change in the form of Parliamentary language of ‘Honourable Member for…’ etc
When you think things cannot get any dirtier or lower, they have the habit of actually getting worse. It has been announced that a musical is to be made about the sordid life and death of Jade Goody. No doubt we will be subjected to a basic “one song” musical in the Andrew Lloyd Webber style. Whinge, Whine, Wail! Next, I fear we will have “Amy” about the trials and tribulations of a junkie airhead. What I really dread, however, is the possibility of a disjointed show called “The Jigsaw Man”, as the media have named teh unfortunate victim whose pieces have been strewn all over the Home Counties. It’s really all too much for me. Please bring back Richard Tauber or Ivan Novello.
test
403 - I think you’re probably right. My own thought was something to do with tabloid journalism. I guess the spread of tabloid standards to the “quality” press probably went a long way towards just that.
402 - I’m with you on this one. As long as conversation is preceded by a low bow (by the ladies) and a curtsy (by the gentleman) and they refrain from turning their backs as they leave after the audience, I’m more than happy being called John.
397. Oracle, apologies I was being satirical. I know the variety of measures that can be adopted. I used to run my own small business and used to be non-IR35.
The 50p tax hike is a straw man that will likely not impact many who have the flexibility of an accountant. The only ones who will get clobbered fully are those trapped on PAYE.
MD manifesto:
All attractive women aged 16-28 to wear mandatory school uniforms.
Less sleaze, lower expenses for MPs. The 2009 Labour Cabinet to be fired into space from some sort of giant artillery piece.
The reversion to proper imperial measurements, for weights, distance, fluid measures and money.
Mr/Mrs/Miss to be the typical form of address instead of first names.
Supporting Manchester United to be a criminal offence.
I’m sure I’ve forgotten some things… can anyone recall them?
@421:
I only insist on being called an “honourable member” in bed.
376 They’d find us lewd? A people who found time to define and differentiate between fe11atio and irrumatio would think us lewd?
418 Mr Neill.
As long as you address me as ‘Sir’ we’ll get along fine.
But seriously, as to blaming New (or old) Labour for all the ills in the world. It’s their own fault since they laid claim to so much and declared, “It’s a New Dawn, is it not” on May 2, 1997.
So rough with the smooth, I say.
421 - It also allows us the thoroughly original and not at all over-used concept of the Dis-Honourable Memeber for those who aren’t keeping up the standards we would expect.
For example, of course, the Right Dis-Honourable Member for Redditch.
422 - Talking of the murder victim, two fo the body parts were discovered in the villages round where I live. It isn’t the sort of thing that usually happens around here.
422. Odin.
Is that Ivan the Terrible?
355. I think your idea of the U.S. education system is a bit off. Most U.S. universities are private. Some receive state support, and their fees are lower for state residents. The quality of these schools varies, and the fees you pay don’t necessarily reflect the quality of the teaching or even the “name recognition” of the school.
Privatizing the top 10 universities seems sweeping–which ones would those be?
Rowan Atkinson - Conservative Conference
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sg-4ATrE8n0&feature=related
376 Sean you are correct about Rome. A well known Scandanavian quoted company in the entertainment industry made a more interesting version of Gladiator. When I tried to borrow it from the DVD Rental club I was told it was out on long loan to one “R.J. Timney of Worcestershire c/o a spare bedroom somewhere in London”
Is anyone bothering to listen to Brown’s speech at the Welsh Labour conference in Swansea? Jon Craig of SKY was pricless shouting over to Brown on his arrival asking him about his budget unravelling. If looks could kill, Paul Flynn would have struck Craig dead on the spot. Brown just grinned at the young labor activists lined up to greet him and virtually wrenched off the arm of one poor chap.
426 - Absolutely, and I guess even those on PAYE will be looking ways to change that status to say being employed as a consultant from their own company for instance.
404 I rather like the idea of “Dr. Fear, Chairman of the Bureau of State Security.”
427 - Why stop with the 2009 Cabinet, MD? Surely we have room for anyone who has ever been a member of a Labour Cabinet since 1997?
439, well, I could just amend that to anyone on my list. In fact, I shall.
370 Martin, I haven’t spotted Mark Senior round here yet today! Surprising really, what with all those good LibDem council by-election results!#
He can either send me the gold sovereign - or £150 to the Awsworth Dog Rescue. I’m sure he will do the decent thing…
Hey Stars,
I was not able to remember the psd of the previous email adress I gave thee (don’t laugh!); can you email me again at philippe.magnan at umontreal dot ca?
The slightly radioactive Shanghai toy is slowling killing me; can’t wait to ship it to ya!
Take care…
One signatory to the petition calling for Gordon to resign raised a chuckle:
Anthony “Tony” Charles Lynton Blair
406.
“Mister Coxall” in bed.”
So your personal life is rather…..
er…… conventional?
361. Oxford had rather adanced plans for “Private Collage” - 100% fee paying. Outside the Uk university-government link, but inside Oxford Uni. Think unlimited numbers and unlimited feed. Nominally for overseas students, but it would inevitably have included many home students.
Hence the top up fee buyoff. Can you imagine the effect on the headline % of state school entrants?
437. Indeed and the irony is that the ones least likely to be able to work an arrangement are probably the quangocrats and government bureaucrats who have been soaking the taxpayer under this Labour Government who will be left deserted once Labour have been slung out.
Oh dear, what a shame, never mind……
444, no he just doesn’t like his employees to get too familiar
432 James Burdett. What has village life come to? Send for Miss Marple!
433 GeoffH It could be Ivan The Terrible, but it might just be teh Midsomer Murders.
429 Absolutely. They had stringent laws against adultery, for example, (and even more stringent customs - a man who found another man in bed with his wife was perfectly at liberty to castrate him, kill him, or (worst of all) order his slaves to rape him). They would have been disgusted by the idea of married women of the higher classes wandering the streets wearing skirts that revealed their legs, or dresses that revealed their cleavages.
Nothing was more degenerate, though, than a man sporting a goatee beard and being a good dancer.
@444:
This is my sex life:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifgHHhw_6g8
408. fair enough. i wonder what the situation is overall. i remember one of mr. Hamann’s payslips being leaked to a tabloid and the tax amount for the month was crazy high, so not everyone is in on it
Anyway, I must depart for a while. HOpefully a poll will appear, like the Telegraph’s last night, in my absence
testing
448 - Well apparantly these murderers came from North London.
I’m looking forward to the lagershed, so that I can fully and colourfully express the full range of my feeling for this Govt. after its decision to p1ss all over the Ghurkas…
432 James, I hope your local Detective Chief Inspector isn’t called Barnaby? All these magnificent “chocolate box” villages in Oxfordshire over to the Cotswolds are just crammed full of axe-murderers, violent fratricidal maniacs and genteel old ladies who drink tea and can spot a drop of arsenic poisoning at 200 yards
455 - Indeed. Although that ranty bloke on the telly who speaks for them probably puts off as many potential supporters as he gains.
Are the Government trying to drink their way out of the recession (or into oblivion)?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1172974/Budget-doubles-ministers-wine-dine-party-claim-Tories.html?ITO=1490
436 One of our contributors last night gave a rather good idea of what Roman punishments really involved. Scourging and crucifixion, though, were the least of it.
According to Martial, sex and violence could be most entertainingly combined by the public rape of women who’d been condemened. Sometimes, they could even be raped by animal specially trained for the purpose, to the delight of the crowds.
Gurner is talking at the Welsh Labour Conferance on Sky - He’s all hand and jumping up and down again!! is he on something? hes having another YOUTUBE MOMENT
Apologies if this has been posted already…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/8016350.stm
Good for RBS!
456 - Nope, although this area has been getting more interesting recently. A few years ago we had someone gunned down outside the local gym by AK47 wielding members of some sort of gang/mafia.
454 - Surely, James, you’re missing the standard excuse. If a bad thing has happened, it must have come from America.
“These murderers, who came from America,…..”
460 - I loved Jeremy Thompsons optimism in saying ‘if you want to keep watching press your red button’.
463 -
434 - I fully understand how it works, I was simplifying for sake of the argument. Maybe I should have said “a bit like” the US, where there is still essentially 3 strands (and yes some ones that take public money are very very good, University of Wisconsin–Madison for one roles off the top of my head).
As for which universities, I’m not going to repeat who has said what, but like people have said many of the bean counters are definitely keen / shouting loudly about the need for higher fees (£10k+ for the next settlement).
However, my real point was that ALL academics at the best universities aren’t against the principle, in the way that was suggested by other posters. Many just wanted to be well funded and free from interference from the likes of the government and their “widening participation” agenda. Many are now realistic that the current level of top-up fees are not enough, and that any colour government is unlikely to pump even more money in.
Put it this way, if I had a child that was under 5 now, I would be starting a college fund to in expectation that if he / she was bright I would be expected to be forking out a lot in fees. And I wouldn’t exactly be shocked if I was the people who I was paying were a private organisation.
456 Dame Agatha Christie is buried very near to me. I sometimes walk the dog over to the church so he can say hello (she was very fond of wire-hired fox terrors).
The village fair reeks of people being bumped off in somewhat surprising circumstances…
432 - My aged parents reside in a pretty little Thames-side village in Oxfordshire. The residents therein make the kind of people Tom Barnaby has to deal with look like paragons of normality.
403. Scanning The Times digital archive, it would appear that 1st May 1981 was the day the world changed, two months after Murdoch acquired the paper…
464.
I thought the Red Buton would launch him into outer space !!
I TRIED IT DIDN’T WORK - HAVE TO WAIT UNTIL POLLING DAY!
Martha Kearney’s week makes interesting reading:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8016491.stm
‘So is a Conservative victory a done deal? Another frontbencher spelled out the only scenario in which he thinks they could lose.
“Labour ditches Gordon and then forms a pact with the Liberal Democrats before the election to present themselves as a new force in politics.”
That does not seem too likely to me.’
465 (correction) And I wouldn’t exactly be shocked if I was the people who I was paying were a private organisation.
->
And I wouldn’t exactly be shocked if the people who I ended up paying were a private organisation.
449 And they’d certainly have found homosexuality between adult male citizens appalling. Homosexuality was something you did with your slave boys.
One awful thought has begun to consider the possibility of starting to cross my mind. Let’s suppose that next budget day - presumably March next year - the chancellor stands up in Parliament and tells it like it is. He is honest about the debt levels, realistic growth rates etc. Unemployment by that time will be somewhat higher presumably, the banks will have written off more of their debt than at present, and the state of the economy is truly appalling. Gordon then stands up and announces that due to the serious nature of the economy, the world in crisis, the potential of not being able to sell all the gilts he needs to do to keep things going, the unemployment rate etc., the need for continuity and not being diverted from the urgent task of solving the current problem etc etc, he will not hold an election in May/June but will continue to govern “for the duration of the present emergency”. If he did this, and then survived the inevitable vote of confidence, how could he be dislodged? Would the Queen have to step in, and would she do so? She did so in Australia in the 70s with Gough Whitlam.
I know if this happened it would mean an even bigger defeat for Labour when the election eventually came, but he does seem to like postponing the inevitable. As I say, it is a nightmare scenario, (and I hope unrealistic), but Trash Gordon seems to be willing to say and do anything in order to survive, including putting self before party, and party before country on a regular basis.
In my most hopeful fantasy an MP repeats to Brown the speech made by Leo Amery to Chamberlain in May 1940, repeating Cromwell’s speech to the Long Parliament: “You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go.” Of course, in this fantasy, Gordon listens and takes the advice, so it is totally unrealistic. sigh.
Well, I can always dream…..
468 - Good grief. That’s dedication, Rod. Nice work.
In my mind, it’s strangely ironic that it was May Day.
470. Or a slight change in the electoral system. An “optional” AV.
An “X” will do just fine, but if anyone wants to use “1,2,3″ that would be OK too.
472 - It wasn’t always your slave boys.
473 - We would have a vote of no confidence under that sort of scenario
I think a lot of Labour MPs would see the sense and vote Brown out
436. Easterross - “Is anyone bothering to listen to Brown’s speech at the Welsh Labour conference in Swansea?”
You show true dedication to your vocation. You are hereby admitted to the brotherhood of incorrigible politics nerds.
(Is there really nothing worth watching on the telly tonight?)
Can somebody explain this to me,
Since 1997, crime has officially fallen by 40% and there are 24,000 more prison places. Why are prison bursting at the seams and thus we are having to let people out after as little as a 1/3 of their sentence (and government reports have said we need another 10,500 places asap) ?
470 I would be the end of the Lib Dems. They would send large parts of their vote to Cameron, Mark Senior excluded.
476 Boys of the lower classes, at any rate. “Designed for b*ggery in the same way that a Porsche is designed for speed” in Anthony Blond’s unforgettable phrase. B*ggering the sons of Senators or Knights would have been a serious faux pas.
417. Could you be any more pretentious?
@472:
And this differs from my life… how?
483 Well, I can’t really comment on that!
Labour to unveil their snooping laws next week…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/5215413/Every-phone-call-email-or-website-visit-to-be-monitored.html
475 - Yet didn’t we all determine that AV in single seat elections is sub-optimal, Rod?
Not least as shown by last night’s result where the straight result winner failed to win - which ever of your paradoxes that equated to.
465. I admit being invested in the argument, as I went to a state school–are you working in languages? Had a few friends who went to U of Wisconsin-Madison language school…
The “widening participation” argument is never going to end, although with the fee system it will shift from your end to the government–who gets the limited scholarship/loan cash?
@486:
I should point out that what happened last night is the *point* of AV: the Lib Dem was the first to get 50% of the total votes after redistribution, not the Tory, who at no point ever got 50%.
Therefore the Lib Dem was the winner.
462 James, one of my few claims to fame is that if any of you have watched the “Hamish MacBeth” series about a daft west coast Scottish policeman (played by the superb Robert Carlisle) with his wee scottie dog, I was the first murder victim in the first book “Death of a Cad”. I was that cad!!
Marion Chesney Gibbons aka Marion Chesney and various other names who wrote the books was a client of mine and wrote them while living in the former croft cottage in East Sutherland I bought for her and her husband Harry Scott Gibbons a former newspaper foreign correspondent who is now himself an author.
She presented me with a copy of the book when it was first published and it was some years later an American client told me it had been dedicated to me.
459- Speaking of ancient and medieval brutality, Obama has given the green light to his attorney general to launch the nation’s first-ever postpartisan presidential inquisition/witch hunt, beginning (but not ending?) with Bush-era attorneys who gave legal advice on techniques for eliciting information from terrorists:
“We’re on unfamiliar ground now. No president before has sought to punish his predecessor for policy decisions, no matter how wrong or wrong-headed. Lyndon B. Johnson’s management of the Vietnam War was often ham-handed, as anyone who was there could tell you, and his policy makers sometimes verged on criminal incompetence. But Richard Nixon was never tempted to send LBJ or any of those presidential acolytes to prison. Abraham Lincoln, by his lights, would have had ample opportunity to hang Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee, but even the rabid Republicans who survived the assassination stopped short of putting Davis in the dock, finally releasing him from imprisonment at Fort Monroe when judgment overcame lust for revenge. Lee was never touched…
Rahm Emanuel, once described as the president’s alter ego (if indeed such an outsized ego could have an “alter”), said as recently as Sunday that “it’s not a time to use our energy and our time in looking back in any sense of anger and retribution.” This was in line with what the president had said all last summer when he was campaigning for the White House, what he had said on his inauguration, and in line with his oft-stated goal of restoring bipartisan civility and mutual goodwill to governing the country. Mr. Emanuel’s reassurance was regarded in Washington as putting paid to an ugly era, an emphatic determination to “move on” to something close to national unity.
The president hadn’t counted on the rage of the jackals on the leftmost fringe of his party, organizations like MoveOn.org, which want only the “unity” of the lynch mob.”
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/apr/24/the-steady-descent-into-the-third-world/
@490:
You mean “Obama wants to find and punish those who authorised torture”? Good.
Pity that we all know that Rumsfeld will never get banged up, because we all know he was torturer-in-chief.
I’ve just lost a wee bit respect for Vince Cable, making his Budget Statement on ITV1:
“I won’t take this opportunity to remind you of the warnings I gave…”
For the first time I can recall, he sounded ever so slightly high and mighty, a bit out of character for him.
He also spoke of the need to be open and honest, yet bearly mentioned spending cuts (a bit of civil servant pension cutting, fine fair enough but perhaps a bit of populist open goal scoring).
Overall, I’ve heard better from him.
Assuming ITV1 don’t do a grand tour of the parties with the Budget responses (could you just imagine what some of the others would say?), we’ve had our lot of party political broadcasts til next month’s Euros campaigns.
I have to say I think Osborne was the best out of the three.
465/487- I’m glad to see such praise for the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a school of which I’m proud to be an alumnus. It’s a lovely town, too, and I alway miss it when the spring weather arrives.
487 - No, I work in science and technology. The only reason I mentioned Madison, was it sprang to mind at the time, and I have had the pleasure of visiting.
The “widening participation” problem, isn’t that it is about financial issues, it is the pressurising, via targets, of having to take so many people from certain backgrounds, and not basing the decision solely on ability or potential.
489 -
488 - You are correct and I accept that, Martin.
However, it is one of the examples of the various paradoxes Rod came up with. I just can’t remember which one.
366. I would have thought we’ll be getting a new ICM/NotW marginals polls before much longer. They usually do them six monthly in April and October, so…..
491- By that standard, FDR and LBJ should have been strung up from the most convenient Washington cherry blossom trees. This is a dangerous path of vengeance for such a “postpartisan” president.
Nearly 2 years to the abolition of UK pensions!!!
491 Torture can elicit useful information, as the torture of Guy Fawkes demonstrated. Torturers of that era, of course, would have laughed at the idea that what was done by intelligence personnel under Bush amounted to torture.
482 NU I do exactly the same thing. Anyone who knows me well and hears someone calling me John automatically knows that unless it was a chap I was at school with, the person using my first name either doesn’t know me or is someone I dont like. My friends ad family call me Mark. Often when people ask me my name expecting me to tell them my Christian name, I advise them it is Mr……… and give them my surname. Society has become far too informal.
It is equally absurd when some so called media celebrity announces he or she is having a party for “only 500 close friends”. Such characters clearly dont know the difference between friends, social acquaintances and hangers-on.
We are all truly blessed if in our entire lifetime we each have 5 to 10 real friends.
@498:
Well, you know my feelings about bipartisanship. I think it’s a bloody stupid affectation you Americans need to get over.
Re. 497. Looking back through the PB archive it appears the last ICM/MotW marginals poll was on October 4th;
http://politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2008/10/04/is-labour-doing-worse-in-the-marginals/
*IF* the news of screws follows their previous form we should get a new marginals poll in this month and this weekend is the last Sunday of the month, so I’d not be surprised to see a new poll of the marginals tomorrow.
502 - Indeed, and I believe that in Roman times a confession wasn’t valid unless torture was involved.
500- That too. I’ve never discovered why it is that some otherwise serious people think that modern wars should be fought with both hands tied behind our backs, unless they’re indifferent (or worse) as to the outcome of such wars. The Bush administrations “torture” techniques are indeed laughable compared even to what was seen as standard operating procedure in more recent modern wars.
504 - I can’t work out if that comment was meant for me or not, Martin.
I assure you I’m not American. I’ve lived and worked there. As I have in most of the Anglo-sphere but I’m British to my very core. Which is why I despise Labour so much for what they’ve done to the country.
506 - The evidence of a slave was not admissible unless obtained under torture, James. Certainly not the case for the landed/equestrian classes.
507 Well as an ex soldier I can say that the reason is that otherwise you lose your humanity and any moral premise upon which you base your “fight” is lost.
507 We (and the US) fought both World Wars very ruthlessly indeed. Sleep deprivation of captured agents was standard practice - although that is now regarded as torture. It is in fact one of the most effective interrogation techniques available.
I think the Bush administration was incompetent in many respects but far too much fuss is made about the “torture” of terrorist suspects.
There’s no need for any enabler or orderer of torture to be strung up; a televised broom handle up the jacksie wielded by some gurning trailer-trash in uniform will suffice perfectly well.
510 - Nice tidy wars that people only really see on the telly are one thing. When people start leveling the centres of cities in your country, the body bags come home in the thousands, a there is a real and credible threat of your country being invaded, the population suddenly gets terrible unsqueamish, it suddenly become “do whatever is necessary”.
PENSION TENSION
OK everyone. Lets consider the example of a 45 year old senior manager on £120k a year pensionable. He is on a 60ths final salary scheme, the cost of which is about 25% pensionable pay (doesnt matter whether he or his employer pays the contributions).
In a typical year he/his company does well and he gets a £30k bonus. Total pay £150k.
Now the next year he does very well (eg delivers a major project) or his company does very well (lots of Corporation tax…) and he gets a bonus of £60k.
An extra £30,000. What does he keep of that?
Firstly its 50% x £30,000 income tax = £15,000.
OOOOOH there’s a little extra to pay - its £120,000 x 25% = £30,000 ie the cost of the pension x 30% NOT 20% = £9,000.
So thats £15,000 + £9,000 = £24,000.
OOOOOH thats £6,000 left for him. (Cant be bothered with the NI!)
80% marginal rate THANKS LABOUR!!!!
Cripes even Michael Crick is starting to realise the end is nigh:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/newsnight/michaelcrick/2009/04/labour_loses_its_teeth.html
Now if Labour cannot attack on the ‘Toffs’ front or on the cuts front what on earth are they going to campaign on? The surveilance society and authoritarianism?
test
512 Reading Max Hastings’ “Nemesis” is a grim but salutary experience. We and the US didn’t beat the Japanese by being nice people, although we didn’t descend to their level of wanton sadism, either.
Have you done your duty and signed the petition?
http://tinyurl.com/dfrxm6
509- If waterboarding a terrorist destroys the moral premise upon which a war is based, I can only conclude that such premise must be completely obliterated by actually bombing/shooting/otherwise killing said same terrorists.
New thread
516- The moral absolutists of proper war conduct will be the death of us if we let them. If Obama really doesn’t put the brakes on prosecuting Bush administration attorneys, he’ll be showing a naivete worthy of his far-left roots.
In terms of the thread I’m not sure it will make much difference. Of course people are saying they think things might improve in 12 months. Thats a general feeling and trying to optimistic but news could change that. Either way I’m not sure it will effect the GE result. Labour have been in a long time, perhaps the economy even picking up might make it better for the Conservatives who can switch back to mending Broken Britain etc. I do think Conservatives need to convey a string clear message about where they want to take Britain. If they don’t do that then there could be a much closer result and years of bad drift.
Last here too!
518 The philosphy of war is very difficult. Battle is dirty, unpleasant and dehumanising but in close combat it boils down to kill or be killed. But there is always a danger with the means justifying the ends that the values you are fighting over get left behind. If you fight a war on a premise of moral supremacy - belief in democracy, the rule of law, liberty etc etc to then decide that this doesn’t matter any more, is not only arrogant but perverts the “cause”.
Don’t get me wrong I’m not being puritanical about this, or even taking a position, but rather trying to explain that there are fine lines. In the fog of war itself these lines become very blurred but to take deliberate decisions, in a calculating way, to cross those lines is potentially dangerous and hypocritical.
I’m still undecided about what Obama is doing - it is a very difficult subject and I wouldn’t pretend to know what is right or wrong. But the debate is very important.
478 Is there really nothing worth watching on the telly tonight?
On the contrary, Stuart, there are two absolutely brilliant new series on BBC 1 - Have I Got News For You (plenty of material to cram in there), followed by the wonderful Reggie Perrin, starring Martin Clunes.
514 - what makes me laugh is as I read this Gordo the Clown was wittering on about “tory cuts before breakfast, Tory cuts before dinner….” and all I thought of was “you low life scum your committed to cuts too”
Surely his days of getting away with this bollox are over, its just no one thought to tell the Clown in chief.