Spot the one which didn’t politically weight its sample?
December 18th, 2009
Look what happens to Labour when pollsters don’t adjust
The June 4th election for the EU parliament was the last occasion when we could test the output of a range of pollsters against real votes in a national election - and the outcome is featured in the above UKPollingReport table. The numbers to focus on are the Labour and Tory shares.
Of the four pollsters that did EU election polls ICM and Populus weighted their sample by what respondents said they did at the last general election - YouGov weighted by party ID. Look at how close these firms were with the eventual Labour share.
Only ComRes did not apply any measure to ensure a politically balanced sample and look at its Labour and Tory shares compared with the outcome and the other pollsters
I never understood why in this specific poll ComRes did not apply the standard past vote weighting calculation that it uses for Westminster voting intention surveys but the outcome is helpful in demonstrating what happens when you don’t have such a mechanism.
For the key challenge facing the phone pollsters is that, almost without exception, whenever they make a mass of unsolicited randomised calls they find a much higher proportion of respondents who said they voted Labour at the 2005 general election than actually did do.
This is being highlighted now as a follow-up to yesterday morning’s article on the December ICM survey and to help put in context further polling as we get nearer the general election.
When Anthony Wells at UKPollingReport works out his regular polling averages he has a formula that places much less emphasis on the findings of pollsters that don’t embrace such an approach.
Meanwhile I commend the commentary on current polling by Martin Kettle in his latest Guardian column.
Mike Smithson
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首先
Prima.
1 typical
The Comres for the Greens gave them 15%. Funny that.
Good article Mike, the Kettle article is worth reading, as I said on the prevous thread, a nice bit of sanity.
Oh dear… it seems Phil Woolas might have some explaining to do
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1236806/A-gaping-hole-1-2bn-eborder-net-Crackdown-hopelessly-diluted-meet-EU-law.html
If this serves to raise Labour hopes only for them to be cruelly dashed on a wave of blue votes at the GE - well I for one would laugh for a week.
1. Wibbler are you a Mandarin speaker?
7 Patrick
No
Just a thought. It’s academically interesting in the EP elections that ‘Others’ are now bigger than Labour and Lib Dem combined.
Mike - how can I forget that ComRes poll, which you generously omit to mention was commissioned by the Greens and whose share of the vote was somewhat remarkably shown as being 50% higher than the average of the other four polls listed in your table and a whopping 74% higher than their actual share of the vote achieved in the European elections held just a few days later - not ComRes’ finest hour I would suggest!
It will be recalled that my opponent at the time asked you, Mike, to arbitrate as regards my bet with him and despite your having decided unequivocally in my favour, he has to this day failed to honour his bet with me. This was the first and hopefully the last time this has happened to me on PB and, I would suggest, should be a salutary lesson to all who enter into private bets on this site.
Thankfully, so far as I am aware, since this incident six months ago, the individual concerned has skulked off, hopefully never to return.
10…very bad form reneging on a bet.a capital offence in my book,Peter.
Now we know why the Lib Dems love ICM so much. ICM gave the Lib Dems 20% just prior to Euro 2009. They only got 13.7% of the real votes at the ballot box. Nuff said.
William Hill - Hung Parliament?
No 1/3
Yes 9/4
11 Graham, indeed so and conduct which, if it were to become a regular feature, could seriously damage the reputation and integrity of this site.
This incident was all the more regrettable since the individual concerned, having himself asked Mike to arbitrate, then refused to accept his findings, totally disgraceful conduct in my view.
People often see what they want to see in the polls, and looking at one or even two polls in isolation is a mug’s game.
Don’t forget, at least 3 out of 4 polls are wrong, and public opinion probably doesn’t change fast enough for any two polls to pick up any change…
However, the big picture doesn’t lie. Labour have been rising for over six months…
http://www.titanictown.plus.com/hp/kalman.png
15 Rod, I’m not sure that we simple non-statisticians understand what “Kalman filtered polls” are, but your chart certainly paints an interesting picture. Would it be possible please to include also the LibDems’ corresponding level of support, which I sense would show a very discernible decline over the last six months?
10. Mike - how can I forget that ComRes poll, which you generously omit to mention was commissioned by the Greens and whose share of the vote was somewhat remarkably shown as being 50% higher than the average of the other four polls listed in your table and a whopping 74% higher than their actual share of the vote achieved in the European elections held just a few days later - not ComRes’ finest hour I would suggest!
9 out of 10 owners say that their cats prefer it.
polls are purely an extension of the advertising business, designed to change perceptions.
why they are regarded as scientific tests defeats me.
Polling could be used scientifically, but not if the results are to be published, when the results will invariably be made to match the narratives and the slogans of the poll commissioners. The necessary distortions can be expertly created, to keep the appearance of a scientific test, which is successful in convincing most people.
…even people on this site who know that the polls are frequently distorted in their results, seem to still give them credence. That is the truly amazing part. People seem to have a need to be lied to. At least they obviously prefer that, to being ignored and told their opinion doesn’t matter.
The fiction that opinion matters is maintained, and perceptions are manipulated by those seeking political power.
No wonder there is so little interest shown in the subject of electoral malpractice. People just don’t want to know. And yet there is plenty of evidence that elections are also significantly distorted in their results. The answer to the question - why do they lie to us? is easy. It’s because we let them.
Apart from Mike Smithson, who sets up his own polling, without any preset instructions as to the required result…with Angus Reid Strategies.
They (ARS) are also from the world of advertising by the way, and no doubt are capable of dealing with different types of client. Their polling questions are more emotional response based, and they have found that the answers to these are far more predictive of voting behaviour than the simply logical responses so much the fare of the British polling system.
Alastair Campbell and Charlie Whelan will be requesting ‘Hung Parliament’ polling results to create the expectation for the election they desire. This is already clearly happening in a series of polls all with apparently ‘faulty’ premises. I don’t need to name names of pollsters on this site.
The only question left is whether they want to rig polls alone to get the result they desire, or are they also preparing to tamper with the actual election results as well.
All the trends in British politics are towards dishonesty, lying and distortion. Why would these characters stop at election-fixing? At least it keeps the betting more exciting than it otherwise would do!
Not really, although, conference boost excepted, they do seem to have dropped a bit in the last three weeks…
http://www.titanictown.plus.com/hp/LibDem.png
18 Thanks.
Martin Kettle mentions the importance of Ashcrofts marginals in the likely Tory sucess.
I think Labour and in particular the Liberal Democrats underestimate the massive increase in effective targeting that will be achieved by the Tories in the “Ground war”.
That means more seats for a given share and a reduction in the benefit of the incumbancy for Lib Dem/Tory marginals.
Rod, you are using trend data to support your contention that we are probably, in your view, heading for a hung parliament following a Mar/May 2010 GE.
Have you publicly estimated what you currently expect the final outcome to be in terms of Tory and Labour seats?
21. Yes, my long-range estimate has always been that both parties will fall in the range 250-300 seats each…
oh dear - Paddypower have reopened the book on which airline is next to go bust..
Wizz Air, the Hungarian airline, is the current favourite at 4/1, with Finnair close behind at 9/2. In at 10/1 is our very own British Airways, although this is probably not surprising, given the current climate.
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/columnists/article6960959.ece
OP “Only ComRes did not apply any measure to ensure a politically balanced sample”
None of the telephone pollsters have politically balanced samples: rather, they use weightings to correct the imbalance of their samples. (Older readers might recall I blame final-number randomisation but that is a separate rant.)
Better sampling might be a better aim than frequently revised weights.
+++ PENDANT +++
I never understood why in this specific poll ComRes did not apply the standard past vote weighting calculation that it uses for Westminster voting intention surveys but the outcome is helpful in demonstrating what happens when you don’t have such a mechanism.
E: Go back to grammar school! [Says a Comprehensive boy....
]
On-topic:
ComRes has always been an outlier. Back in my [blog-site] youth - at Anthony’s place - ComRes were always criticised for being too prone to the Conservatives. [Some geezer called "Mark Senior" used to be very vocal....
]
Now we have young Wayne calling their “pro-Labour” bias into question. Six-and-one, and a-half-a-dozen comes to mind.
Obviously we are all betting - SallyC excepted - on the outcome of the GE. Unfortunately we can only go on past evidence. I, for one, am hoping that Angus Reid have the correct methodolgy.
25
Pendant?
(pedant alert)
26 Presumably “pendant” as in hanging or hung Parliament?
#25/26:
The post does say I went to a Comprehensive….
Stuart Dickson December 18th, 2009 at 5:37 am “Now we know why the Lib Dems love ICM so much. ICM gave the Lib Dems 20% just prior to Euro 2009. They only got 13.7% of the real votes at the ballot box. Nuff said.”
A very good point. ICM got the Lib Dems hopelessly wrong. To be 1.5 times the actual result is a shocking error. Was this caused by ICM’s “adding back in” past vote indications into the don’t knows? In which case if the Others are holding above 10% with other pollsters, then we have to treat ICM’s Lib Dem polling forecasts with extreme caution.
Just looking at the performance of the pollsters in their final surveys before Polling Day at the 2009 Euros we would have to conclude that YouGov and Populus were the most accurate pollsters.
That goes against conventional wisdom, which tends to give ICM “blue ribband” status.
re 15. “People often see what they want to see in the polls, and looking at one or even two polls in isolation is a mug’s game.”
Spot on Rod and you do exactly the same day after day after day.
Everything has to fit your thesis and you will disregard data that doesn’t.
Don’t you see how all this undermines your very considerable expertise?
Anybody can create a trend to suit them by selecting the starting point that most fits as you have done.
Try looking at trends over a year and you get a very different picture.
What is valid - who knows? I don’t have a fixed view of the outcome - you do and as a result all your analysis is suspect.
29. TC
Please note that ICM also got the level of the UKIP vote hopelessly wrong too. In fact, their UKIP guesstimate was even worse than their laughably incorrect Lib Dem guesstimate.
21/22.My ‘long-range forecast’ is CON 325-375 and LAB 193-243.
a very good point TC and stuart, played out regionally this will have huge implications in strong lib dem areas where holding on seems to be the aim and in areas where support is at best mmediocre.
i think the lib dems used to be everybody 2nd choice party, a bit like everyone has a 2nd choice soccer team for reasons more irration al than geographical.
nowadays across uk pty ltd the lib dems are few people’s second choice, let alone their first. cheltenham and west woop woop excluded.
Important advice for today:
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/war/snoooooooooooooooooooooooooow!!!!!!!!!!!!!!-20080103631/
Crikey Unite really are busy these days..
Workers at Japanese electronics firm Fujitsu in the UK will stage the first of a series of one day strikes later in a row over pay, jobs and pensions.
Members of the Unite union are protesting about the firm’s plans to cut 1,200 jobs, freeze pay and close a final salary pension plan.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8419879.stm
34. redcliffe62 - “…played out regionally this will have huge implications in strong Lib Dem areas where holding on seems to be the aim… “
The Lib Dems are under severe pressure in more than half of their current seats. They are at great risk of overstretching their resources as they funnel their very limited activist base in these 40 seats plus the 20 or so that they targetting as potential gains. Then factor in that they are fighting on at least 5 fronts: the LD/Con battles, the LD/Lab battles, the LD/SNP battles, the LD/PC battles and the LD/Green battles. Then factor in that the Lib Dems have no clear message, a weak leader and a generally weak group of senior MPs, then quite frankly, you have all the ingredients for a looming Lib Dem catastrophe.
How low can people go…?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8419948.stm
OGH - Thanks for the articles insight.
redcliffe62 I think you are right about the Lib Dems losing their “protest vote” windfall when there are other alternatives.
Stuart Dickson, ICM seem to have badly over sampled “left wing” votes and badly undersampled right wing ones.
Ignoring BNP, although I count them as left wing…. The difference from the total left wing and the total right wing votes to that which was in the final result are as follows.
YOUGOV Telegraph 3/6 3
YOUGOV Telegraph 29/5 4
POPULUS Times 28/5 5
ICM/Sun.Tel 28/5 15
COMRES/Green 16
Yougov 3/6 was only 3 points over the left wing vote total (Lab+LD+Grn) and just -0.2 below the total right wing vote (C+UKIP).
If it was a date issue, then Yougov’s 29/5 would have also been badly out. It was not.
Heavy snow here in W Sussex 4 inches or so. A 24 is open though where I am .
I hear the M40 is closed not sure where? I am supposed to be going up to somewhere near Warwick today.. dont think I will be going…
I am really enjoying the irony of holding the Copenhagen summit at precisely the same time as northern Europe is hit by classic Baltic frozen-nuts weather. Life is full of wee schandenfreude moments. It is just to pause and savour them.
Denmark will see temperatures down to -12 degrees (!!) locally, but even more importantly, there are very strong easterly and north-easterly winds blowing in straight from Russia, over the Baltic. Get you longjohns on Gordon!
http://www.dmi.dk/dmi/index/danmark.htm
12. Good spot there Stuart which might make the Lib Dems wonder a little about putting their faith in the ICM results as the ‘truest’ indication of their support.
The other odd thing about that poll is that the overestimate of Lib Dem support is balanced by an underestimate of UKIP - does that perhaps suggest the ‘we hate everybody’ vote is mobile between the two parties?
25. There are outliers and then there’s just getting it wrong. most of the time, we’re not privileged to know what the actual position is; we just have to take a best guess, usually based on a mixture of what feels right, what the polling consensus is and the results from things like local by-elections, none of which are by any means a reliable measure.
In this case, we do know what the real position was as the election they were trying to measure was actually held. YouGov (twice) and Populus both scored all six parties within the margin of error. ICM had four of the parties within MoE but were about 6.5% out on both the Lib Dems and UKIP i.e. more than two MoE’s - something which should only happen statistically once every several hundred polls. More realistically, it was a methodological error.
So with ComRes, who only got two of the six parties within 3% (which frankly is rubbish. Most politics watchers could do better by just guessing). They said the Tories would only score half as much again as the Greens; they won three-and-a-half times the vote: that’s a credibility-losing result. To get so many shares so far out is clearly the result of poor methodology and Mike’s entirely right in his analysis.
#40: M40 Oxfordshire - Closed southbound between J6, Watlington and J5, Stokenchurch, congestion to J7, Thame,
Last updated: 18th December 2009 at 08:10
Re Daily Mash “Working class people who drink all day and make no attempt to raise their children are obviously not the problem. It’s the middle-classes and their obsession with trying to understand how their children think and feel while slipping some Muscadet into a big jug of Ribena.”
Hits the nail on the head about our ridiculous “Chief Medical Chap”. Good riddance.
http://tinyurl.com/yag6782
“CHIEF MEDICAL OFFICER TALKING SH*T AGAIN”
46, aye, I liked that as well. The plank thought we’d all die of SARS, then bird flu, then swine flu (which admittedly has been more serious than both prior plagues of doom but is still hardly an apocalypse).
43 runnymede yes I agree that the protest voters are shared between UKIP and the Lib Dems.
Why did ICM get it so badly wrong?
46
“Chief Medical Officer speaks rubbish” is hardly new news…
46. Very good. Donaldson seems to have morphed into a strange New Labour puritan - his class-based remarks were very odd indeed I thought.
When for our resident jocks:
http://order-order.com/2009/12/18/who-knew-what-and-when/
Why does the issue about ICM’s LD polling matter?
With ICM and Yougov showing a 9 point lead for the Conservatives over Labour, Yougov show the Lib Dems at 16 whereas ICM have them at 18. In the LD marginals that 2 point difference (of 18) could mean the loss of another 5 LD seats plus a reduction in the LD gains from Labour…..
If Stuart hasn’t seen it.
http://conservativehome.blogs.com/thetorydiary/2009/12/cameron-rejects-early-referendum-on-scottish-independence.html
I’m sure he’ll be interested.
HAVE YOU ALL GOT YOUR BUCKETS READY!
Puke buckets at the ready for the 48 hour “Superhero Gordon Saves The World Again” narrative.
It’s now looking like another fudged summit deal is going to be announced this afternoon, just in time for the teatime news channels. No doub’t the unellected rotting fish will be hailed as the worlds saviour!
On Sunday the Mori poll will be in one of the left wing rags, prob the Observer. Even the poll is one week old the narrative will be that it is a fresh poll showing a Labour largest party theme. This poll will be of course mixed with the Copenhagen triumph to suggest a Brown triumph. The BBC and Sky newspaper review panels will be bursting at the seams with Labour lapdogs including old Mucky Mag and Polly Sillybee!Expect the headline to read something like “Poll lead gives Brown early Christmas present”. !
36. Kristin
It would seem Unite and Derek Simpson are hell bent on a suicide mission.
Fujitsu may just as well move all these jobs to Poland or Slovakia and not have to suffer such aggravation and sheer stupidity.
Does Unite believe that their war-chest will save their members’ jobs - of course not. It will only protect the pensions of Simpson and his friends.
This attitude of Unite, building up a war chest to fight the Conservatives if they win the next election, is the same dinosaur thinking exhibited by Carwyn Jones, the newly elected leader of the Labour Party in Wales and the Leader in the Welsh Assembly.
Mr Jones, in the election hustings broadcast by the BBC said that he was the best candidate as “he could protect the Welsh people from a future Conservative government.” Protect them from what? - Mr Jones did not elucidate.
I cannot understand why trades union members and party members elect such stupid people to positions of power. Don’t these people realise that the economic power has moved away from western Europe and that in future all jobs in the UK will have to be justified on an economic basis. If they cannot be justified, then unemployment will far exceed anything seen since the start of the industrial era.
Currently the trades unions are strongest in the public sectors and areas like transport. It is apparent that 2010 will see a series of damaging and useless strikes in the vain effort to protect jobs and pensions that are no longer affordable.
The key question is: will these strikes be delayed until after the election for political reasons? The hign court judge may have been right about the BA strike being politically motivated.
53.
Fortunately for my party coldstone, the Tories just never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever learn.
It is like Groundhog Day: they just keep making the same old mistakes over and over again. They are the supreme retards of European politics.
56. In what way is letting the Scottish parliament call the referendum rather than imposing one from Westminster the wrong decision?
testing my new iMac
57. David H,
Simple: there’s more appetite for a referendum in England than in Scotland.
All the SNP want is the established principle of having had a referendum; then they can force one every two years until the public gets bored and relents.
56, supreme retards? Could be worse. At least they aren’t the architects of the arc of prosperity.
56. Any ideas about guido’s story on Scottish bloggers?
http://order-order.com/2009/12/18/who-knew-what-and-when/
As for the CMO could he explain why French teenages don’t binge drink?
56 - Stuart, and what mistake would that be exactly for those that don’t know the situation ? You can’t just keep rattling off this ‘groundhog’ stock answer of yours. Cameron’s announcement is consistent with his long held opinion as far as I’m aware.
“I am 100 per cent behind preserving the United Kingdom. I will not put it at risk by having a referendum we do not need. If the Scottish Parliament decides it wants a referendum, the UK can’t stand in its way, but to preempt it by having a referendum without it coming from the Scottish Parliament would be tricksy and wrong.”
The SNP should call an referendum and stop buggering about or expect others to play their silly games.
56
Only the member of a nation with the worst death rates in Europe is qualified to call someone a retard….
55 To be fair, a lot of unions in the private sector have been far more reasonable, accepting wage cuts, and cuts in hours, in order to preserve jobs during the recession.
Unite, however, are moronic.
+++ SNOW ALERTS +++
Is ‘Eathrow open? I am about to pack the missus to her mother in Serbia.
Is the Hither-Green to Charing Cross line open?
54 ‘Expect the headline to read something like “Poll lead gives Brown early Christmas present”.
Good. Hopefully the newly confident Brown will be tempted to call an election.
56. Unlike Labour and Lib Dems who are the supreme champions of European politics.
The City is now to be trashed with EU Regulation.
Redcar Steelworks is closed with loss of 10,000 jobs, while Tata picks up $1 billion of carbon credit for closing it.
Britain’s EU contribution has doubled.
Labour talk of Conservative tax policies being designed on the playing fields of Eton.
Labour’s was done on the sofas of Number 10 Downing Street, while they were all half asleep, where Blair has created a tax free status for himself, with a law passed by himself, where he earns $10 million a year tax free, as a British resident and domicile, much of it carbon credit related, through association with Tata Steel and Yale University.
Yet none of this is discussed in a supine media intimidated by years of Labour rule.
Now will Gordon Brown be closing the Blair millions of lost tax, self-made loophole? I doubt
Does Blair Have His Snout In The Carbon Trough?.
The joke is that New Labour came in attacking Tory sleaze. Neil Hamilton, Jonathan Aitken and Jeffrey Archer were on the fringe of the party making a few thousand dishonestly.
The Blairs and their croneys are making multi-millions as the country is sent to the dogs. Let’s have a few more Tory mistakes please and become Europe retards once more.
They seem to cost us far less than Labour’s endless championing of the world.
54/66 MORI polls being as volatile as they are, I wouldn’t be surprised by either a 12% Conservative lead or a 1% Labour lead.
I think the rumour though, that they’re trying to hawk it to the highest bidder is unfounded. That would be really demeaning for a big polling organisation, and there would be every danger of the details leaking out, before publication. It would also damage their reputation, as it would imply that they’re attempting to make their polls newsworthy, rather than accurate.
59. The only interest in England in a referendum was on the Lisbon Treaty; there’s virtually no interest in a Scottish independence referendum, which is presumably the subject in question.
You won’t be able to ask the question more than once in short succession anyway, partly because it will effectively be telling the electorate that they ‘got it wrong’, partly because it will look like the SNP’s obsessed with the issue in preference to governing responsibly and partly because Labour will probably take back power in Holyrood not too long after Brown is ejected from Downing Street and a Tory government is in place in London.
Some fun new year predictions from Saxobank here…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/financialcrisis/6835576/US-pensions-go-bust-gold-crashes-China-flops-Bunds-soar-predicts-Saxo.html
Completely off topic, but why has it taken me 42 years to make the acquaintance of the Hon. Charlie Mortdecai? Or has SeanT sought to model himself on Kyril Bonfiglioli’s creation?
12,43 Re Lib dems and ICM.
Taking the ICm 12 month average for 2004, for the parties was within 1% of actual 2005 GE vote share.In fact the Tories and Lib Dems did beter by 1% ,Labour and others 1% worse.
For 2009 ICm annual average is 41%,28%,19%,12%.With the same correction a result of 42%,27%,20%,11% seems a good bet.
66.
Yes pls lets have one !
I have just read Adam Boulton’s blog “Gordon Saves The World Again?”
Some of the comments suggesting Boulton’s Labour bias are quite amusing, also not a single positive comment about Brown!
Surely Boulton must read this and feel like a Lawyer defending a mass murderer in court, who has already privately confessed his guilt to the lawyer!
SNP blogging scandal on Guido now
http://order-order.com/2009/12/18/who-knew-what-and-when/
Only in Scotland…..
“they find a much higher proportion of respondents who said they voted Labour at the 2005 general election than actually did do.”
I find this somewhat disturbing. The common wisdom is that the side that is about to lose, finds it both HAS and HAD fewer friends. A proportion of these people think that they voted Labour in 2005 when it is likely that they didn’t.
The old saying ‘The thought is father to the deed’ could apply here.
Or, as is more likely, I have no idea of what is going on.
Some ‘fun’ predictions from the Bank of England here, too -
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/dec/18/commercial-property-bank-report
64
Hmmm isn’t BA in the private sector? I seem to remember the Tories made a song and dance about privatising it back in ‘87. Ah yes! there wouldn’t be any of these problems once BA was in the private sector Oh No!
66
No, Gordon is an absolutist. If he thinks he can win he will go for a total victory. If ‘now’ is good then ‘tomorrow’ might be better - Gordon isn’t a piker, self-aggrandizement demands he wins big.
64. The comparison between BA’s pay rates and those of other airlines is instructive - the BA staff are a pretty pampered lot. This I suspect is the result of BA being given such a privileged position post-privatisation, especially re. slot allocation.
That has allowed it not only to maintain artificially high wages but also to continue with a frequently arrogant and high-handed attitude toward its customers.
77 I said *many* private sector unions, not all.
Ultimately, if Unite drive BA into bankruptcy, so be it. Other airlines will just take their place.
80. Personally I would no more miss BA than I would British Leyland or the National Coal Board.
I accept that phoning enough people at random is likely to produce a biased sample. At the gross over-generalisation level Labour voters are more likely to be at home, more likely to have time on their hands, less likely to have the general policy of not responding to cold calls that operates in this house etc. What I don’t accept is that there is as much science or precision in the adjustments made by polling organisations as they like to claim.I have seen numerous comments on this site about false memories about who people voted for at the last election. Who would want to admit voting for these numpties now? Weighting by party ID helps to pick up unhappiness within a party but again what adjustment is made? What % of Tories will really vote for UKIP over Lisbon and what % just want to sound off about it?
It is also interesting that the weighting is particularly inaccurate in respect of the smaller partes where the margin of error is a very high percentage of their vote. What I am really complaining about is claims that the MOE is + or - 2%. I simply don’t believe it.
81 I have more confidence in BA’s pilots and aircraft maintenance than most airlines, but like the dreadful airports run by BAA, they’re now a business to avoid if at all possible.
81
The great mistake, was creating BA in the first place. Taking its two main airlines BOAC and BEA who only had one thing in common the word British was a marriage made in hell.
The answer, not to weld BA to other airlines who have similar problems, but to break it up.
Ending up with a premium scheduled airline, and a Flycheopo which can take on the likes of Ryanair etc.
The Martin Kettle article is excellent in terms of past analysis. As for the question of polling methodologies, opinion polls should be taken but not inhaled, and our host’s article is a good illustration why.
Cons hold in Reigate, about at 10% sing from Cons to LD on 2008 result but slightly increased majority on the Dec 07 by election. Con 391, LD 313, Labour 161, UKIP 125, BNP 41.
Very mixed bag of UK economic data this morning -
The Q3 business investment figures have been revised up which adds to the likelihood of Q3 eventually showing small positive growth.
The more timely stuff is a little worrying though; consumer confidence down for the second straight month in December, with a notable nine point drop in the year-ahead view of UK economic prospects to -6.
November gross mortgage lending slipped more than usual for the month as well, and broad money growth was flat in the same month (inflation obsessionists pls take note). The Bank lending survey also showed another contraction in credit provision in October.
There’s just a suggestion here that the upturn we’ve seen over the last few months might start to flag over the next few…
87, if true it’d seem a little odd, because Mori took the good step of suspending polling to try and improve their methodology after the mayoral/local elections in 2008, I think.
69. David Herdson - “… Labour will probably take back power in Holyrood not too long after Brown is ejected from Downing Street and a Tory government is in place in London.”
David, have you ever observed Iain Gary in action? Does he look like a First Minister-in-waiting to you?
And even if Iain Gray’s party should become the largest party again, do you really, really think the Lib Dems would be eager to jump straight back into bed with them after their horrific experience in the 1999-2007 Lib-Lab coalition government?
If you think Alex Salmond’s minority government has its difficulties, that ain’t nothing to what a minority government under Iain Gray would face.
The Scots electorate are not daft.
PSNBR was £20.3B, which I believe to be a record, though not as high as the forecast £23B.
84: The great mistake, was creating BA in the first place. Taking its two main airlines BOAC and BEA who only had one thing in common the word British was a marriage made in hell.
Rubbish. International only airlines without a domestic (and I include Europe as domestic here) feeder base have (with a few limited exceptions) failed in Europe and the US. Singapore, Emirates and Etihad are exceptional in what they do (and could not do it without modern ER aircraft). Airlines like Braniff, PanAm and BCal are the more appropriate analogies for an independant BOAC.
Especially for coldstone, a link from the Daily Mail and a really inconvenient statistic in it:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1025151/Number-work-days-lost-strike-action-soars-quarter-hit-million.html
“Official figures showed 1.041million working days were disrupted by stoppages last year - an increase of 250,000 over 2006.
Some 96 per cent of those lost were in the public sector.”
64 Sean Fear
The trades unions are now fairly weak or even nigh non-existent in most of the private sector. The main exception is transport, especially air and rail travel.
That is why I bracketed transport with the public sector. However, it is the moronic-lead unions like Unite and RMT that can cause havoc in 2010 - but will they wait until after the election?
I feel Mike’s OP does not sufficiently take into account the arguments presented in this cogently-argued piece:-
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/conference/2007/09/labour-majority-increase
Does anyone else laugh simply at this URL? It has the effect on me of Les Dawson beginning “The wife’s mother….”
93
I didn’t dispute the problems in the public sector, I pointed out that the most newsworthy was happening in the private sector. Also that when BA was privatised the main selling point was that, ‘market discipline’ would soon produce a new reality, didn’t happen: did it?
86 - In the absence of Mark Senior, I’ll say Great Sankey Parish Council (Whittle Hall Ward) Lib Dem hold. Go back to your parishes and prepare for Recreation/Footpaths Committee!
82 DavidL What I am really complaining about is claims that the MOE is + or - 2%. I simply don’t believe it.
It is very important to distinguish between statistical margin of error, and possible systematic bias.
The former is a straightfoward mathematical construct. If you have a giant container in which there are a 400,000 blue balls, 300,000 red balls, and 200,000 yellows balls, and you pick out 1000 balls at random (typical of the sample size of most polls), then you won’t get exactly 400 blue balls; you’ll get a sampling error which can be mathematically shown to be typically + or - 3% or so. That is what people mean when they talk of ‘margin of error’. If you repeat the test many hundreds of times and average the result, that random error will be largely eliminated; the average of your samples will be accurate, but any particular sample won’t.
Suppose now that the red balls are a bit lighter, and tend to be concentrated in the top of the container. Your sample might therefore systematically pick up a higher proportion of red balls than exist in the whole container. No matter how many times you repeat the experiment, that systematic bias would still occur.
Pollsters effectively have this kind of problem, in that they pick up more Labour supporters than they should; to compensate, they weight the results. That is separate from the ‘margin of error’.
What we don’t know is whether that weighting (which seems to have worked quite well in the past) is correctly calibrated for the rather different circumstances of today, with Others higher than formerly, and a very large Lab->Con swing.
94. I’d like to laugh at ridiculous clowns like Sion Simon but then I remember they have been running the country for twelve years.
The comments at that Conservative Home piece are fascinating. Not much support for Cameron’s Scotland policy there!!
He really is out of his depth on constitutional questions, be it Europe, Scotland, or the law (eg. his infantile Megrahi statement).
http://conservativehome.blogs.com/thetorydiary/2009/12/cameron-rejects-early-referendum-on-scottish-independence.html
98, surely ‘ruining’?
Reference 15,16 and Kalman filtered polls.
A Kalman filter is a smoothing/averaging technique that’s used in many engineering applications. It uses multiple readings in order to provide improved precision by using earlier/later data as a factor to “sharpen” the result. I’ve got a long-running disagreement with Rod about using it for dissimilar polling methodologies together - throwing them all into the mix and hoping that the methodological systematic errors inherent in each individual technique all somehow cancel out.
For example, Mark Senior pointed out that under Mori’s methodology, the 40/31 ICM poll recently would have been a 37/34 poll - so what figures do you load into the algorithm? And why?
To use inconsistent data as an input will produce unreliable (and artificially precise) outputs. It CAN be used with simply using a consistent input - that is, loading it up with the data from one polling company (or, if you know enough about the methodology and the raw data is suitable for such processing, altering the output of another polling company to conform with your baseline pollster’s methods (so if you are using Mori as your baseline pollster, you’d use the 37/34 figure as the ICM poll).
Incidentally, this data in the post can be used to investigate Mike’s “don’t just average the polls” argument. His “Take the poll with the worst Labour share” stance might not look as rigorously mathematical, but the average of these European polls have Con 27.2 (not bad), Lab 17.6 (not too good) and LD 15.2 (also not too good). Total error of 3.9% (would be beaten by 2 of the polls out of 5).
If you took the worst share for Labour (16%), there’s two with that score. Assume they’re both right and take the midpoint (sampling error), you get 28, 16, 13.5. No score more than 0.3% away, total error of 0.8% for the Big Three. Now that’s not mathematically rigorous, of course (I’ve blatantly average a couple of polls there anyway), but it marches with Mike’s thesis. And both the polls where he would use that method had all three of the Big Three within the MoE (two of the three that didn’t comply with Mike’s stance had errors outside MoE for a Big Three party).
Which means - maths and science ain’t gonna give you the answer on the day. Rules of thumb, feel for the polls, gut instinct - informed by appropriate use of maths and logic and with effort applied to avoid letting your preconceptions and what you want to happen overwhelm you - is all you’ve got. So yes, use as much maths and logic as you possibly can, up to as much as the data can support AND NO MORE.
95 - People being killed by lightning are more newsworthy than people being killed by cars. However, I suggest that car safety is of more use than protecting the public against lightning strikes. Similarly, dealing with the general malaise public sector industrial relations problems is far more important than tackling one private sector dispute.
New Labour’s sleeze is endemic, yet no one resigns. Martin Bell keeps quite about the likes of Sion Simon ‘renting’ from a relative. Gordon Brown gets off lightly over his expenses, and there is little focus on Treasury Ministers helping themselves to expense allowances whilst promissing crackdowns on cheating taxpayers.
How long the farce of Gordon Brown’s antics to save the planet will continue is open to question, but the latest borrowing figures don’t look good.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8420049.stm
102
Well as Dave has promised to, ‘Ringfence’ the parts of the public sector that most of those problems occur in, I’m not sure what you mean. Is it the intention of an incoming Tory government to immediately, ‘take on’ the public sector unions, to break and destroy them regardless of the consequences? If so put it in the manifest.
98
Tories of course have a better, ‘breed’ of clown.
Tory MP Bernard Jenkin, MP for Essex North, is appealing against a massive demand for £63,250 he claimed for rent on a property owned by his sister-in-law.
He says he was not informed about a rule change banning MPs from renting from relatives and insists his claim was approved by the Commons fees office
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1236501/250-MPs-face-repay-1million-expenses.html#ixzz0a26ONrIu
Come to think of it his father was a total arse, its obviously genetic.
87 Geoff. Ipsos Mori do not have a contracted client for their monthly polls so need to market each one. Obviously if the results look particularly interesting previous clients will want exclusive rights and Mori can sell the poll rather than just publish it on web site.
The 6% lead poll did fit a narrative and polls since have confirmed some tightening of lead. There is no evidence it was carried out in any way differently from the notrmal Monthly Monitor. The delay in publishing was due to fact the customer was a Sunday paper.
Ipsos Mori polls may, due to strict filtering, move more than those which tend to dampen changes through weightings but as a temperature check indicating polling movements they are second to none. As an organisation they keep a great archive of all their polling, freely available for people like us to use and look back at decades of data. Their willingness to keep the Monthly Monitor going in spite of no contracted customer shows their professionalism and should be applauded.
[82] - “…biased sample. .. Labour voters are more likely to be at home, more likely to have time on their hands, less likely to have the general policy of not responding to cold calls that operates in this house..false memory..”
Interesting points in that post. It’s clear to me that, due to false recall, it’s dubious whether it is possible to correct an inevitably biased sample in such a way. To an extent the pollster ends up guessing what the extent of false recall is.
I’d take a different approach. Labour voters are not over-represented in the sample because they are Labour voters, but because they are poor, and not posh. The pollsters would be better off correcting their samples for variables that better correlated with the likelihood to respond to their polls.
I hate to say it, but I suspect that something like the MOSAIC system of categorising people, used by marketing people, is probably the way to go.
I’m not sure I’d do this by weighting up a small number of respondents in the categories that don’t respond, though. Doing that effectively reduces the size of the sample. Better to only take the first x in one category, and to keep phoning until you reach y in another.
There is an article in today’s Labourgraph, not on their website unfortunately, which says that archaeologists in Mozambique have dug up evidence of 100,000-year-old porridge.
This, apparently, offers exciting insights into human life at that time.
It seems such a waste of money to go all the way to Mozambique to study this. Anyone who wants to know what life was like among feral porridge-eating backward proto-humans circa 100,000 years ago need only travel as far as London Kings Cross on any weekday morning, then catch the 1030 East Coast train to Dundee. By 1619 you’ll be ensconced in the authentic world of 100,000 years ago.
Could be a game changer for the SNP?
‘because they are poor, and not posh’
I think that’s much too simplistic Timothy. There are a lot of people in between you know.
Easterross I suggest you comment on 107 asap.
p.s.
I suspect that John R is a fellow Tory.
“UK car production rose by 15.7% in November compared with a year earlier, the first increase in more than a year, industry figures have shown.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8420019.stm
[108] - Yes, it is too simplistic, but my point is that some people are more likely to answer the phone than others for social reasons, rather than political reasons. I think that’s a crucial distinction. Therefore the sample needs to be corrected for social inaccuracies and not political ones.
107. John R.
You are Frankie Boyle, AIFMF(S)P.
112. I think trying to identify those factors would be pretty tricky, and political weighting is a short cut to getting to broadly the same place. I suppose you could argue that YouGov’s approach is not so very far removed from what you are suggesting though.
112. TLZ.
But aren’t social factors supposed to be covered by the demographic weighting which all pollsters do, regardless of what political adjustments they make (or not)?
[106] Yes that does seem a better approach although it is likley to prove more expensive. Even then you have the problems of differential turnout to contend with. Yet another problem is the % of new voters who did not vote in the last election and the very significant percentage who did not vote at all. One predictable outcome of a Government going long like this one is that that element becomes even more significant. There are yet more smudges and fixes built into these assumptions which pollsters are loath to acknowledge.
I personally think that the success of Boris in London was getting out the vote which had not bothered with the Mayoral election before. I suspect that there is a significant Tory vote that was disheartened in 2005 and did not bother to vote who may be more motivated than 5 years ago. I of course have no scientific or mathmatical construct for these opinions (which rather suspiciously accord with what I want to happen) but I am left to conclude I may well be at least as accurate as the average pollster.
Meanwhile we have politics and political coverage dominated by the latest poll. It may be fun but its not real…
‘Obviously we are all betting - SallyC excepted - on the outcome of the GE.’
Fluffy, I do have a bet on the next GE.
Not one that will sink the finances if I loose, though it might break my heart.
Since Stuart Dickson mentioned Megrahi…
http://news.scotsman.com/politics/Report-to-slate-MacAskill-over.5894531.jp
Members of Holyrood’s justice committee have made it clear that they do not believe the minister followed Scottish Prison Service (SPS) guidelines in allowing Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi to go home to Libya on compassionate grounds because he was dying of prostate cancer.
They will say the minister should have sought a second opinion supporting the prognosis that Megrahi only had three months to live.
They will also criticise him for the flimsiness of the medical evidence. Only the prison doctor was willing to state Megrahi would die in three months while four cancer specialists refused to back that opinion up.
Megrahi, of course, was released four months ago, and (as far as we know) is not yet dead.
Magnificent post, Andy Cooke in Room 101. I just have to accept that some people are much more intelligent than I am.
My household gods are the Spread firms. Sometimes they are incorrectly aligned and they have their inbuilt prejudices and fears but otherwise they are as good as it gets.
Right now at 560-570 they are aligned.This is in sharp contrast to the misalignment which was so marked last year and earlier in this.
The inbuilt prejudices and fears relate to an overweighting of Labour.They are intimidated by the fact that the Conservatives have to win so many Seats to justify that 345-350 billing.
To make it worse, the big hitters have consistently been on the side of Labour and only the tiddlers and the fiddlers like the Tories.
The polls are all good fun and do provide a framework but the swingometers are just plain funny.
The bookies have some protection with their margins but theirs’ is a thankless task and the advantage lies with informed punters.
Betfair is always interesting and by far the best guide to ‘Most Seats’ and ‘Overall Majority’.
104
1) I’m not a Tory (the party I’m most likely to vote for at present is, curiously, the same one I believe that you vote for).
2) I said nothing about taking on the unions - it might surprise you to know that I think that unions often do a good job. The problem in the public sector is a cultural problem, caused as much by poor management as by Neanderthal unions. The Royal Mail is a case in point.
Gabble you missed out some detail..
“So far this year, 914,117 cars have been made, which is down 34.4% on the same point a year ago.”
62. SimonStClare - “… what mistake would that be exactly for those that don’t know the situation?”
I know exactly what Cameron & Goldie should do to stymie the SNP and our goal of Scottish independence. I also have a pretty good game plan for Brown & Grays’ successors and Clegg & Scotts’ successors too.
However, for very obvious reasons, I have no intention whatsoever of presenting my draft straegic plans on a public forum. I would not even outline them in a private conversation.
Stymieing the Scots is their job, not mine. I wish them all the very best of British. They’ll need it.
122. Stuart Dickcon.
In which case it would be reasonable to assume that you’re talking out of your hat.
The reason ICM are out on the LD score is probably down to the fact that ICM’s model has gained its reputation from being tested against FPTP.
It fails for the third party under PR.
The simple fact is that LDs get alot of their votes from people who can’t vote for their first choice. Under PR they can.
113. I had no idea who Frankie Boyle was and had to Google him.
I see from the fount of knowledge that “He is a recovering alcoholic, having started drinking at the age of 15 and stopping at 26, and former drug user, who is now teetotal” and that his other activities have “caused him to neglect his family”.
So he’s a sort of Scottish Everyman figure, then?
120
I’ll be voting Libdem, I’m fed up with Buggin’s Turn.
The Unions do in the main a good job, ( I was a rep) but they should also remember, the Union doesn’t pay your wages. Unions have to accept political and economic reality as we all do.
I would like to see a party of the centre left, that is not tied to the unions, and certainly not financed by them.
121
IIrc, the UK makes cars which end up on the continent (which is one of the arguments against ‘refunds for wrecks’ or ‘cash for bangers’…whatever). So this would indicate that the continent (except Spain) is out of recession, or the industry is looking toward an upturn in sales - on the continent.
119/125.
The unions *do* often do a good job. Their problem is that they only get noticed by the public at large when they do a bad job.
123 - The same is true of the Tories and Labour.
Interestingly, tactical voting does take place under proportional representation. My Swedish friend (who is that rare thing, a right-wing Swede) usually votes for a party whose policies he does not support to help to make sure that they cross the threshhold for entry into Parliament, because they are a reliable coalition ally of the party that he does support.
124
Remember he couldn’t have become the man he is without one of Devon’s most famous products, ‘Bucfast Tonic Wine’ the West Country’s gift to Scotland.
Ahem
Buckfast of course.
“UK car production rose by 15.7% in November compared with a year earlier, the first increase in more than a year, industry figures have shown.”
And how much did that cost the taxpayer in support which happily spilled over to other countries. Good old British taxpayer supporting the economies of Germany, France and Japan.
Without the EU straight jacket the support, if appropriate, could have been better targeted.
But it looks odd to support one of the top three sources of carbon emissions in the run up to Copenhagen. Surely the support should have been to RandD which moves to less polluting forms of motive power?
It rather demonstrates to me that all this hoo-ha is more about taxing than anything else.
131, on Copenhagen, I must confess a certain amusement at the freezing conditions and snow both here and there whilst listening to the believers tell us how hot the Earth is getting.
130. Thanks for the tip. If I’m ever in Smackistan, I’ll take a few bottles along. Then I’ll have something affordable to give away to muggers.
The best way to lance the boil of Scotch nittery IMHO would be to hold a referendum on it but only in England. No representation without taxation, and all that.
It would be an absolute hoot to see Scotland expelled from the union on the back of English votes. Imagine, just imagine Alex Salmond trying to run something more complex than a bath!
Of course, there would need to be delicate negotiations beforehand about who should pay for the restoration of Hadrian’s Wall. The Romans were less civilised than we were and even they thought an open border was a bit much.
131 Witan, the huge majority of UK car production is by Honda, Nissan and Toyota and a lot of their products are exported so its the recovery in those markets and car scrappage schemes there that are helping UK manufacture.
What’s important as signal of recovery are UK car sales, much of those will be imported vehicles (which have been helped by UK scrappage scheme), and with over half the domestic car market being company cars it’s the health of companies, and their willingness to purchase new, that will help most there.
133, if Brown had been a Roman they would have crucified him by now.
134 Presumably, just as the scrappage has led to a spike in used-car prices, it’ll lead to a collapse in them a few years down the road as the subsidised new ones bought recently get unloaded second-hand?
135. A lovely old tradition that shouldn’t just be forgotten. Certainly not for the likes of MacSporran.
110
Gabble that merely underlines the predicament we are in.
You think this is good news - but it is entirely due to the scrappage scheme, which is by definition a short-term pump-prime effect. It is a microcosm of the whole economy, which the government has desperately tried to keep going with “stimulus” measures which cannot last.
When this stimulus all ends, down we go again. There is nothing sustainable about any “recovery” that i have seen so far - witness today’s falling consumer confidence and falling mortgage lending.
Brown is desperately trying to engineer some kind of ephemeral recovery before the election, and he is doing OK at first glance. But we are still fundamentally in a very bad place with the personal and public debt in this country, and the massive fall in financial services.
128. antifrank - “My Swedish friend (who is that rare thing, a right-wing Swede)… “
Right-of-centre Swedes are not nearly as rare as popular mythology would contend.
However, in Sweden (as in Scotland) the “centre” is further to the left than in most other Western countries. So, for example, the Swedish Liberal Peoples’ Party (which sits in the same Euro Parliament group as the Lib Dems) is considered solidly “borgerlig” (”bourgeois”) in its homeland; however it probably looks like a bunch of raving socialists to most English Conservatives.
Ted but what is the balance of trade in cars and components?
A more targeted scheme would have seen those export industries supported at a much higher level through domestic consumption whch would be topping up the export production to regain much more of the previous total production levels.
128 The words ‘raving’ and ’socialist’ sit so well together.
141, they do, although perhaps they veer a little close to being a tautology
It’s cold. Fortunately the enormo-haddock have a heated pool which has prevented them from suffering an icy death.
Obama is apparently having a meeting with 20 world leaders (including Gordon & Sarko) with Guardian reporting that Lula, Brazil (or Lulu as Obama calls him) is representing China. Hu is in the conference centre rather than in discussions.
Can Barry save the world?
143. Barry McKenzie?
143 Correction - it’s Ethiopia representing China while Lula is in conference hall looking glum along with Hu.
Ethipia representing China?
Justice deal funding ‘under threat’
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5hIQiO5aREpV7vBhL9zkkCZUvPeTQ
Downing Street desperate for political credit for GB role at Copenhagen
Talks in Copenhagen are stalling and now at a critical stage. Air Force one has landed and President Obama has arrived via the back door. There’s no agreement yet on emission cuts.
But Gordon’s political adviser is desperately trying to milk every last drop of advantage out of the stalling talks. Amongst the gems they are briefing the media are:
“Any impartial observer would come in and think Gordon is chairing it”
and
“Obama and Gordon were giggling like schoolboys”
and
“I don’t think it would be possible for any leader to do more meetings than Gordon.”
I bet other world leaders would be far from impressed at such grandstanding.
http://timesonline.typepad.com/politics/2009/12/downing-street-desperate-for-political-credit-for-his-role-at-copenhagen.html
Julie Kirkbride not standing at the election.
Morning everyone, I see from the media hysteria that there’s been an ickle bit of snow in the cultural void around London.
Advice - Put on an extra Manchester United replica shirt and stop whinging.
This however has to be a poof.
Tories pledge to revive struggling seaside towns
Published Date: 18 December 2009
THE Tories today set out a strategy to help revive Britain’s down-at-heel seaside towns.
David Cameron pledged that coastal areas, beset by unemployment and on the “frontline” of the fight against climate change, would be high on the Conservatives’ agenda.
Is Dave seriously predicting that British coastal resorts are going to be lost cities of Atlantis?
147 - What a loss to Parliament, expenses fiddling and MMR hoaxing that is.
148 - Spoof even.
Male life expectancy around the world
Albania: 75 (https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/al.html)
Armenia: 69 (https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/am.html)
Uzbekistan: 69 (https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/uz.html)
Azerbaijan: 62.5 (https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/aj.html)
North Korea: 61 (https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/kn.html)
Cambodia: 60 (https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/cb.html)
Eritrea: 60 (https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/er.html)
Mauritania: 58 (https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/mr.html)
Ivory Coast: 55 (https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/iv.html)
Glasgow: 54 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/glasgow_and_west/7584450.stm)
Bonnie Scotland!
107. JohnR: lol!
I love your daily commentary on Smackistan. Stuart Dickson’s fantastic reaction @ 56 (and he be my favourite nit) shows why we love it so much!
Another Labour MP going to step down:- spend more time with his family/ill gotten gains/new directions/make way for new blood/make way for all PC short list/get out whilst the going is good/avoids ignomy of defeat at GE.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/wales_politics/8419651.stm
MP is Kim Howells.
145, China’s invested a shitload in Africa.
Maybe they’ve set their faces against a deal and want the Ethiopians to be the middlemen?
148, good.
151, random fact about Albania: they were China’s only ally at one point during Mao’s reign.
149.
This however has to be a poof.
That’s up there with SallyC’s pubes.
152. Thank you Casino.
I am very, very fond of Stuart.
House prices to fall in 2010?
ING suggests the recent rises are due to a lack of properties on the market.
http://www.ing.com/group/showdoc.jsp?docid=426804_EN&menopt=prm|pre
139. That’s coz we’re ‘Ardcore.
The more you own, and have to lose, the more conservative (and sensible) you become.
The sale of council houses must have been the single most transformational policy of the last 50 years.
It shifted England permanently and decisively to the Right.
For some reason, owning *your own home* never took off as much in Scotland.
WHY?
154 Good for Albania. I wonder if they’ve ever considered sending colonists to Glasgow to civilise it?
I guess with an economy as small as theirs, the hardship payments made to people for going there might be unaffordable.
153 - A lot of MPs retiring next year do fall into that category, but I do wish people wouldn’t label indiscriminately.
In fact, Kim Howells is well into his sixties, has had 20 years as an MP, is hardly likely to come back into government at his age and emerged clean from the expenses scandal. It seems far more plausible that he’s simply decided to call it a day.
Why use the occasion to make the usual snide point? Personally, I just wish the bloke a long and happy retirement.
Milan (including Beckham) v Man Utd!
154 - I have a soft spot for Albania ever since Attila the Stockbroker rhymed “Hoxha” with “codger”.
Also:
Lyon v Real Madrid
CSKA Moscow v Sevilla
Bayern Munich v Fiorentina
Inter Milan v Chelsea
Olympiakos v Bordeaux
Stuttgart v Barcelona
Porto v Arsenal
It’s an interesting table as the averages across a number of pollsters aren’t that far out although I understand the dangers of averaging a number of pollsters.
Lending to British businesses down for 9th successive month
LONDON (Reuters) - The flow of lending to businesses fell for the ninth straight month in October as firms continued to pay down debt, Bank of England data showed on Friday.
Bank lending to businesses fell by 4.8 billion pounds in October after a 4.6 billion pounds decline in September, the BoE’s “Trends in Lending” report showed.
That was lower than the 15.5 billion pounds record decline seen in July. But in percentage terms, lending was down 7.6 percent on the year, the biggest fall since the series began in 1999.
The BoE’s regional agents and the major UK lenders continued to report that some large businesses were accessing capital markets, with some using the proceeds to repay bank debt in order to reduce leverage.
Policymakers have been worried, however, that credit still remains scarce for smaller businesses who cannot tap the capital markets. Many of these companies are still suffering because of the drying up of bank lending resulting from the financial crisis.
The survey said that demand for new lending was expected by the major UK lenders to remain broadly flat for the remaining months in 2009. Major UK lenders generally expect loan availability to the corporate sector to improve and the cost of borrowing to decline.
The BoE survey also showed that the flow of total net mortgage lending was stable in October at 900 million pounds.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKTRE5BH18R20091218
156. Stuart is great when he’s not tediously posting links to inane articles on Alex Salmond’s toilet habits in parochial little publications such as the Daaaaylee RecAAArd!
Other than that he’s not a bad bloke. He’s not a Socialist for a start.
Relax, Ed is on the case…
The Prime Minister went to bed at around 2.30am, ordering Ed Miliband, the Climate Change Secretary, to continue talks through the night.
But a UK source close to the negotiations said that the overnight discussions went badly. No progress was made and, in some areas, the talks went backwards.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/copenhagen/article6961422.ece
Breaking
http://iaindale.blogspot.com/2009/12/exclusive-kirkbride-confirms-she-wont.html
167 in some areas, the talks went backwards.
what, like Yoda in Star Wars?
“Progress no making are we. Finger phucking pull out must we and proles up with evil new taxes stitch must we. Move a get people get,” said Ed Miliband by about five in the morning.
167. A simpleton directed by delusional fruitcake…great stuff
167 And Gordon had a three-Nokia breakfast, whilst booming “idiot f*cking boy-child…”
All this talk of Copenhagen reminds me that, according to the Department itself, DECC exists to be a “campaigning department”. Oh dear…
Morris Dancer has time on his hands.
To the tune of Squeezebox, by The Who:
Gordo’s got a chequebook, Britons have to work all night
Well the nation’s in debt and the Treasury’s wrecked, there’s no escaping the truth that the UK’s fecked
Cause he’s spending all day, pissing our money away
Gordo’s got a chequebook, Britons have to work all night
He’s spending all day, pissing our money away
Gordo’s got a chequebook, Britons have to work all night
He says back me, come on just back me
Come on and fund me like you do, I just love taxing you
Gordo’s got a chequebook, Britons have to work all night
Cause he’s spending all day, pissing our money away
Gordo’s got a chequebook, Britons have to work all night
A seasonal message from Julie Kirkbride.
A very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to everyone in Bromsgrove.
I want to take this opportunity to confirm to you, my constituents, that I will not be representing you all after the next General Election.
I am sad to be leaving but this is entirely my decision.
I would like to wish my association the very best of luck as they find my successor in the new year.
A country weeps, and a car with a “Measles on Board” sticker drives off into the sunset.
147: ‘“Any impartial observer would come in and think Gordon is chairing it”’
Didn’t Prescott do a twitter whatsit yesterday saying Brown had been asked to chair the meetings? So what was going on there? Was Prezzo a) deliberately disseminating falsehoods b) the victim of a deception himself c) misinterpreting his party’s spin as fact. I want to know!
173 - After the general election, a different Who lyric will be relevant:
“meet the new boss
same as the old boss”.
Pietersen out. England 168/4.
All three wickets today bowled.
176, the election theme could be ‘won’t get fooled again’.
For what it’s worth I do think Cameron will be miles better than Brown and substantially better than Blair, if only for not lying to Parliament to provoke an unnecessary war.
167 Who in their right mind appointed the arrogant, hectoring bully Gordon Brown as a negotiator? No wonder it’s all falling apart; the other delegates are probably so riled by Jonah shouting at them from across the table, that they’re refusing to sign up to anything just to spite him.
176: Won’t get fooled (by labour) again.’
179, worth recalling he had a PR success at the G20. I’d be surprised if they didn’t get something along those lines this time.
I hope they don’t though.
Could combine a great list of Who songs
‘My (debt) generation’
‘Subsitute (for another guy)’ by Gordon Brown
‘Who are you?’ (inspired by Nick Clegg)
‘Boris the toff spider’
182. ‘You better you debt’.
183, “though knowing I’m so eager to spend can’t make voting for me any easier…”
Just flown into Phuket from the UK and am watching the sun go down drinking a large G andT.
Looks as though i got out just in time yesterday morning.
Staying in a French hotel in Nai Harn and i will give updates once i have spoken to some of the guests from all parts of Europe as to their current opinion of our illustrious leader.
On the way out here had a great deal of pleasure reading Andrew Marrs a History of Modern Britain.
I didnt realise that Goldfinger from the Bond novels was based on a real Goldfinger who was responsible in the mid 50s for the introduction of Tower blocks into the UK.
This wound Fleming up so much that he named one of his major villains after him.
182. Come now, how can you not include “Won’t get fooled again”
#182 - ‘I’m free’ - Zac (incorruptible) Goldsmith
181. *raps* Gordon Brown is not able to chair the G20 table.
Apparently the ball which bowled Pietersen should have been a no-ball…
179 Curiously the name Gordon Brown doesn’t feature much, if at all, in foreign reports.
Looks like a number of leaders are having meetings, not well co-ordinated, the Danish are being ignored, all waiting for Obama & Hu to agree then put pressure on India & other G77 countries to align behind that.
182 - “I hope I die before I get old (but not until the rules on inheritance tax have been changed so that I can leave my estate in a tax efficient manner)”
185 Erno Goldfinger was a better architect than Fleming was a writer, timmo!
‘Dim Fool Wizard’ Damon McBride and/or Derek Draper
174 - Translation mode on:
“A very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to everyone in Bromsgrove.”
If you signed that petition, I know where you live.
“I want to take this opportunity to confirm to you, my constituents, that I will not be representing you all after the next General Election.”
I want to take this opportunity to promise you, David Cameron, that I’ll get out of your hair and never be heard of again.
“I am sad to be leaving but this is entirely my decision.”
I am annoyed to be told to leave by CCO.
“I would like to wish my association the very best of luck as they find my successor in the new year.”
FU all.
182 My Generation (New Labour re-dux)
1.”Out in the (Downing) Street”
2.”I Don’t Mind” (James Gordon Brown)
3.”The Good’s Gone”
4.”La-La-La-Lies”
5.”Much Too Much (Debt)”
6.”My Degeneration”
Side two
7.”The Kids Are All Right (Wing)”
8.”Please, Please, Please - Go”
9.”It’s Not True” (aka “the Manifesto Song”)
10.”I’m a Man”
11.”A Legal Matter”
12.”The Pox (on all your houses)”
191,
186: Was there at 180
‘Squeeze(the bankers)box’
Best of all, Behind Blue Eyes (slightly edited)
“No one knows what it’s like
To be the bad man To be the sad man
Behind blue eyes
No one knows what it’s like To be hated
To be fated To telling only lies
But my dreams They aren’t as empty
As my conscience seems to be
I have hours, only lonely
My love is vengeance That’s never free
When my fist clenches, crack it open
Before I use it and lose my cool
When I smile, tell me some bad news
Before I laugh and act like a fool”
‘the kids are alright (hug a hoodie remix)’ by David Cameron
‘I can see for miles’ by Gordon Brown (to be sung ironically)
197, So you were. I doff my cap to your precedence.
185 Cricketing connection - Ernst Blofeld was named after Henry Blofeld’s dad Tom who belonged to same club as Fleming.
Hugo Drax named after Fleming’s friend Sir Reginald Drax or more correctly Admiral Sir Reginald Aylmer Ranfurly Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax.
Bell bowled, shouldering arms. 189/5, four batsmen bowled today.
Yuletide theme - sung to Gordon Brown’s face:
“You scumbag you maggot
You cheap lousy faggot
Happy christmas your arse I pray god it´s your last.”
202 - My real name (slightly misspelt) has been used in an American cartoon for a walk-on role. Since as far as I know my name is unique, I have often wondered how the artist came across me. The reference wasn’t particularly flattering.
My sister’s name, which is also as far as I know unique, was used for the protagonist of a BBC drama in the early 1990s.
200. The W!nker’s Song (misprint) Gordon Brown.
Public sector borrowing hits record high:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8420049.stm
205. The first time I googled my “other” name, one of the first links was a photograph of a headstone with my name on it!
205. Ooooh. Riddles!
Can’t be ar$ed trying to work it out though. Antifrank will do fine for me
205. It wasn’t Ottilie, was it?
Circa 1995.
Welcome to ‘The Camp’
I guess we all know why you’re here.
My name is Tony and I got the gig last year
And if you want to follow me you have to play pinball
So put in your earplugs, put on your eyeshades
You know where to put Clause Four !
208 - Had you upset someone..?
208 - There is a brilliant horror story with that as the premise, the name of which eludes me. I’ll rack my brains and see if I can find it for you.
210 - That story was written before I was born! If that was my name, I’d be extremely proud.
208. I just get Daniel Craig in his swimming trunks.
207. PollyB.
You have to love the Brownie at the very end of that article.
208 You were lucky - my “alter ego” turned out to be a Scouse pa€dophile!
212. No, but they can just throw me in the same hole once I’m gone to save on costs, I suppose.
The obvious song of course is:
James Gordon. He’s the man, the man with anti-Midas touch. A spider’s touch.
Such a cold finger. Beckons you, to enter his web of sin. But don’t go in.
Golden words he will pour in your ear, but his lies can’t disguise what you fear.
For a golden girl knows when he’s kissed her, it’s the kiss of
death, from Mister Gordon Brown.
Pretty girl, beware of the heart of Gord. This heart is cold.
Golden words he will pour in your ear, but his lies can’t disguise what you fear. For a golden girl knows when he’s kissed her, it’s the kiss of death, from Mister Gordon Brown.
Pretty girl, beware of the heart of Gord. This heart is cold.
He loves only Gord.
Only Gord.
He loves Gord.
He loves only Gord.
Only Gord.
He loves Gord.
213 (cont) - The internet is a wonderful thing, Sandy Rentoul. Here it is, in its entirety:
http://www.donaldtyson.com/august.html
Not much sign of a Lib Lab pact in the offing here:
Labour Chief Whip chooses punked up Nick ‘Ziggy’ Clegg for his Christmas card
http://conservativehome.blogs.com/leftwatch/2009/12/labour-chief-whip-chooses-punked-up-nick-clegg-for-his-christmas-card.html
The Australian tax office just cited wikipedia in a decision.
http://www.news.com.au/business/tax-office-relied-on-wikipedia-reference/story-e6frfm1i-1225811594544
221. Like Clegg’s retort.
“Mr Clegg said: “Both myself and Nick Brown have good reason to be embarrassed. I posed for pictures in ridiculous fancy dress 20 years ago - and he is an MP for the Labour Party.”
223 Excellent response!!
223 Clegg just went up in my estimation
205. Cracker?
223 - Zing!
Nick Brown seems oddly rattled by the Lib Dems. Guido had a report that he was keeping very close tabs on his Lib Dem opponent in his constituency. Given that he polled 55% in 2005 (and over 70% previously), you’d have thought he had absolutely nothing to worry about.
216. Indeed. The entire article is a masterclass in damage limitation. The ‘not as bad as forecast’ line comes in very handy on all occasions.
202 Hugo Drax named after Fleming’s friend Sir Reginald Drax or more correctly Admiral Sir Reginald Aylmer Ranfurly Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax.
Richard Drax (grt grandson?) looks a dead cert to retake Dorset South for the Tories
228. Guido is having none of it
Nailing Brown’s Big Lie :GDP Can Grow During Fiscal Squeezes
Time and time again during PMQs Brown claims that the Tories would choke off a recovery by cutting government spending. This he uses to justify the fiscal nihilism that has seen the PSBR hit a record high of £20.3 billion last month. Suicidal unfunded spending.
http://order-order.com/2009/12/18/nailing-browns-big-lie-gdp-can-grow-during-fiscal-squeezes/
229. Bond himself shares his motto ‘non sufficit orbis’ with the Bond family of Dorset, relatively near neighbours of the Drax family.
229 Apparently grandson of Sir Reg.
Full name Richard Grosvenor Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax married to Tigg Legge-Bourke’s (Wills and Harry’s nanny) sister.
Knocks the Rees-Moggs into a tin hat.
221. That’s absolutely pathetic. So Clegg dressed up for a fancy-dress party 20 years ago? So-the-f*uck-WHAT?
Didn’t we all? Didn’t we all wear a stupid costume in our youth? Don’t we still enjoy going to these parties?
And.. why not? We’re all human beings who like haven’t a bit of fun, aren’t we?
FFS. It’s this sort of rubbish that puts people off politics. And it’s why you get freaks instead.
Jesus.
Europe League last 32 draw:
Ajax v Juventus!
228: the ‘not as bad as forecast’ is a very insidious use of BBC newspeak.
233. Nick Brown certainly has a decent claim to ‘freak’ status
Fulham v Shakhtar Donetsk.
I see we have another misogynist attack from tim.
Just imagine if Zac hired tim. We would have tim on here saying “Vote for Zac, not his slap head opponent”.
Liverpool v Unirea Urziceni.
239. Sounds like an infection.
What was Nick Brown thinking? Who the hell would want to receive that at Christmas time?? Taking a swing at a political opponent is hardly a festive gesture. It would be like the Tory candidate in Morley and Outwood sending out that picture of Ed Balls in a Nazi uniform….”You vill hav a happy Christmas..”
And especially weird, given how much snide commentary came Cameron’s way from Labour for the Tories’ Christmas-free Christmas cards!
229 Drax family have the greatest surname in the UK in my opinion and Richard manages to add fellow Dorset family the Grosvenors to the four he inherited!
The Mirror tried to claim he adopted Richard Drax rather than the full name to de-Toff himself at Cameron’s orders. Wonder who that Richard Drax regional BBC TV for years before was then?
Everton v Sporting Lisbon.
238 - I wouldn’t work for Zac until he has “forsaken all his wealth” so he can live a “truly green life”, he’s too unhappy at the moment.
And there’s nothing misogynist about attacking the MMR hoaxer Kirkbride, she tried to put all our children at risk.
I see Nick Brown remains as charmless as ever.
242 They’d still benefit from adding a “de Pfeffel” !
What a cheap and unfunny shot at Clegg.
Season of goodwill clearly hasn’t made it that far.
Europa League last 16 draw:
Atletico Madrid/Galatasaray v Everton/Sporting Lisbon
247 - It’s not as though there won’t be some entertaining photos of Nick Brown knocking around either. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if some of them surfaced over the festive period, now that the newspapers have an excuse to print them.
242. The Draxs have generally used the short version of their name as far back as I can remember.
Lille/Fenerbahce v Liverpool/Unirea.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2009/dec/18/copenhagen-climate-change-summit-liveblog
Oh noes…Barry’s killing copenhagen.
Ajax/Juventus v Fulham/Shakhtar Donetsk.
Off topic. but I’ve given up on this MORI poll now, it’s already well out of date and will be dismissed as such by whoever.
This is the problem with their not having a client, the fieldwork has to be done, they have to sell it and then it’s too late to matter.
Prior out, caught in the deep sweeping. England 211/6, still 8 runs short of saving the follow-on.
252, Oh no! How will Obama be able to face he millions of Ickkle children that he has condemned to a lingering death, broiled under a merciless Sun.
178. Morris Dancer - “the election theme could be ‘won’t get fooled again’.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zydAs5bRW1U
FOLKS - I’ll POST THIS AGAIN BECAUSE IT’S GONNA HAPPEN !!
HAVE YOU ALL GOT YOUR BUCKETS READY!
Puke buckets at the ready for the 48 hour “Superhero Gordon Saves The World Again” narrative.
It’s now looking like another fudged summit deal is going to be announced this afternoon, just in time for the teatime news channels. No doub’t the unellected rotting fish will be hailed as the worlds saviour!
On Sunday the Mori poll will be in one of the left wing rags, prob the Observer. Even the poll is one week old the narrative will be that it is a fresh poll showing a Labour largest party theme. This poll will be of course mixed with the Copenhagen triumph to suggest a Brown triumph. The BBC and Sky newspaper review panels will be bursting at the seams with Labour lapdogs including old Mucky Mag and Polly Sillybee!Expect the headline to read something like “Poll lead gives Brown early Christmas present”. !
254.
They don’t HAVE to sell it. Up until last month, they didn’t appear to bother and just published it monthly any way.
It may be out of date, but be sure that it WILL impact the narrative for that has been their and their purchaser’s intent all along.
Since last time it was The Observer we can guess that it will be yet another attempt to shift the mood music in Labour’s favour.
The Observer can do what it likes, but manipulation by MORI in this way is discreditable, partisan and unethical.
It is a dangerous game and will add impetus to the argument that publication of opinion polls should be banned during the election campaign. Especially, if those whom they ‘campaign’ against win power.
252 - Its a good job Gordo is there to save the world all in time for the tea time news. Or if they really want to go for the spectacular Hollywood ending, an all-nighter going into the weekend ready for the Sundays.
258 “something like “Poll lead gives Brown early Christmas present”.”
Fear not, young Wayne - he’ll have managed to break his present by Boxing Day…
England have avoided the follow-on.
221/6.
160 - With the ashes from the burnt maps targeting mining ’scabs’ for company in the long retirement some people never got to?
Pardon me if I fail to sniffle at the man shuffling out of Parliament.
And Collingwood is out the very next ball, edging Harris to Kallis in the slips for 50.
261. Marquee Mark
Trying to break in half Barack Obahma’s autobiography will be challenging, even for a superhero!!
265 It’ll be some more DVD’s….that he’ll probably try to play by putting them in the toaster…!
Passed on without comment:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2009/dec/18/searchengines-local-newspapers
England will need some rain or some good second innings batting for a draw.
The Bell dismissal was frankly disgraceful. He really is not worth losing a bowler for.
My namesake is a former decent snooker player but that’s hardly a riddle since I use my real name.
Despite a fall in his world rankings, he’s still above me on Google!
268, don’t feel too bad, Mr. Roe. There are many, many morris dancers above me in the rankings.
267 - Farking hell. Nice traffic for a local paper
File this under: “Mmmmm….one to keep an eye on….”
http://www.upstreamonline.com/live/article202079.ece
Off topic (TFI Friday edition)
Do heads of state send each other Christmas gifts? If so, what could they expect to receive from President Obama if the DVDs were anything to go by?
The Prime Minister gave Mr Obama an ornamental pen holder made from the timbers of the Victorian anti-slave ship HMS Gannet. This unique present delighted Mr Obama because oak from the Gannet’s sister ship, HMS Resolute, was carved to make a desk that has sat in the Oval Office in the White House since 1880.
The president gave Gordon Brown a boxed set of ‘classic’ DVDs.
268. David Roe.
Nicked from the BBC OBO:
Ian Bell, Ian Bell
What a waste of space
How many times will he let us down?
He’s a W.G. dis-Grace.
219. Greetings, earthlings!
A better song would be a play on the Xmas number one 29 years ago:
“Gordon we hate you, Gordon we do!”
273 - I just don’t understand what he has done to deserve so many failures?
He never looks like a great player. Hick and Ramps were much worse in terms of record but I understand more why they got chances as they has such astonishing first class records.
272 were they US rated so they wont work on Uk dvd players..
Labourlist: “We should say sorry”
Interesting article advocating that in order to return after 2010 or even win that election, Labour should plead Mea Culpa (say Sorry) for some of its mistakes (not all of them) over the last 12 years.
Does the author really believe that Gordon will really take on board this advice - especially as he is now enjoying himself reprising playing the role of Saviour to the world! Will the Wise Men (coming from the N, S, E, & W) reward him by bearing gifts? What will be the sign in sky that proclaims his greatness?
It is more likey that we shall have visitors from outer space (and many claimed sightings of UFOs have been made recently) that Gordon will make a full apology - unless he can shift all the blame onto Tony Blair.
http://www.labourlist.org/why-labour-should-apologise-jessica-asato?utm_source=taomail&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2619+Communication%2C+Fri+18th+Dec+2009&tmtid=25646-2619-6-1-81
277, LabourList does sometimes have genuinely interesting articles, and occasionally has a really good one. I still mostly visit it for comedy material, though.
276 - Apparently so, and after initial confusion Gordo had to buy a new DVD player to watch them. Wonder who paid for it?
274 Sunil, I think it continues:
“Though you may be far away, we think of you….”
Yes, we think of your crazy broom-cupboard escapades in Can’t Cope-nhagen and we think:
“prat…”
“To meet a 42 per cent target at the present rate of improvements in emissions intensity, the size of the economy in 2020 would need to be cut by 30 per cent from expected levels, or nearly £507 billion (2005 prices). That would leave GDP lower than it was in 2004.”
http://www.taxpayersalliance.com/research/2009/12/new-research-the-economic-cost-of-a-42-per-cent-reduction-in-carbon-dioxide-emissions-by-2020.html
British Airways cabin crew will be balloted again on industrial action after a planned Christmas strike was declared illegal by the High Court.
Their union, Unite, said it would “move swiftly” towards a fresh ballot, but it did not rule out an appeal against Thursday’s legal ruling.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8420753.stm
281: To be fair to Brown, he’s on his way to doing that anyway.
It’s gone quiet from tim. He must be drooling over Kirsty Allsop on Channel 4.
284. CCHQ Xmas party?
Copenhagen irony time: Obama does nothing, makes speech saying “act, don’t talk”.
Presumably presidents have private scientific advice just as they have private polling advice. My guess is that a lot of world leaders have received advice that climategate could be a game changer. So the third world thinks this is the high water mark for getting $100 bn in free money and the first world thinks that if these talks
are successfully stalledtragically fail to achieve an agreement they could save an awful lot of money by making a deal this time next year.I keep hearing of the “Anti-Midas touch” wouldn’t it be better to give this a name that has traction. The Andrex touch in my view says it all and it doesn’t need explanation.
http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/5649073/cutting-the-deficit-sooner-wont-risk-the-recovery.thtml
Rather embarassing for Mr Blanchflower, but we’ll cope……
284 I disagree with Tim on many things, but if he’s a fan of Ms Allsop then on this at least we are of one mind*
* or possibly some other organ
[281] - “at the present rate of improvements in emissions intensity”
The whole point of most CO2-reduction policy proposals is to increase the rate of improvements in the carbon-intensity of the economy, by improving energy efficiency and reducing the amount of carbon released per unit of energy. This renders the tpa’s argument… irrelevant.
[Whether the declared policies are the best way to do so is another point entirely]
290 - It gives more info on that in the article.
287 - I once named a project “Project Andrex”. The client was not amused.
289: ‘…but if he’s a fan of Ms Allsop then on this at least we are of one mind…’
I fear the quotation at 284 was laced with irony. tim loathes Miss Allsopp. Her TV show in which she advised the viewers to make their own Christmas goodies instead of buying them with a credit card and thus kick-start the recovery was, in tim’s judgement, obscenely anti-Keynesian!
214 (antifrank) - there is a John Wyndham (Day of the Triffids) short story about a bloke who gets a knock on the head and finds himself in a parallel universe in which he is loved up with a woman called Ottilie Harshom. When he wakes up again he wants to find her, but to do so, he has to find out what she’s called back in his original universe, and it’s not Ottilie Harshom.
288 - Fraser Nelson puts up a graph to show that fiscal tightening by the Major Govt began two years after the end of the recession and claims it proves his point.
294 - I know, it’s great. It’s in “Consider Her Ways and others”. I’m a big John Wyndham fan.
293 - Kirsty was a Keynesian extremist.
She believed in spending large amounts of money on expensive foodstuffs and turning them into soap.
293 - Hey, why change a winning strategy? Buying economic prosperity on credit has worked so well for the last 12 years, what could possibly go wrong?
295 tim - It’s Bloomberg’s graph, not Fraser Nelson’s.
Poll News.
RECESSION
Money guru Martin Lewis is the person the public want to lead Britain out of recession.
They believe he would manage Britain’s coffers better than Gordon Brown.
Lewis, who launched moneysavingexpert.com, has helped many people to slash their spending.
The PM came second in the poll, for media consultants Arena BLM.
The full Top 10 is: 1. Martyn Lewis 2. Gordon Brown 3. David Cameron 4. Alistair Darling 5. Alan Sugar 6. Robert Peston 7. Ken Clarke 8. George Osborne. 9. Nick Clegg 10. Lord Mandelson.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2009/12/18/public-want-money-guru-martin-lewis-to-lead-britain-out-of-recession-poll-says-115875-21905689/
286. I reckon you are right, except that the private advice saying AGW is questionable may not be a recent development.
The AGW hypothesis has always been more useful than substantiated.
300 - Martin Lewis another “King of the Credit Cards”.
299 - I know, its Frasers idiot headline.
And to use the argument that fiscal tightening two years after a recession has ended is the right thing to do won’t put him in disagreement with anyone.
Except himself and George Osborne.
I see tim is back. I had been wondering if his absence was down to him being inspired by young Kirstie Allsopp to pop down to his local glassblower and decorate the tree with some fetching handmade glass baubles.
Or, in tabloid speak:
IS TIM BLOWING BALLS FOR XMAS?
300 Clegg and not St Vince?
300 a poll in the Mirror, with no details, done for Arena BLM, who co-incidentally won a £6m account with the Mirror earlier this month? Reaching there tim, reaching.
BBC reporting The Independent newspapers’s for sale. In talks with the Standard owners. The Left is going bust.
304 - Have you settled our bet yet?
I’m thinking of having a Kirstie Xmas and buying £100 of Champagne and washing the car with it.
Even better, asking one of the gardener type people to do it while I watch.
Who you going to trust?
“A ComRes survey of 257 business leaders for The Independent found that the proportion detecting “green shoots” in their sector had dropped from 49 per cent in November to 36 per cent this month…
Confidence in Mr Brown has fallen from 20 per cent before the PBR to 17 per cent. George Osborne, the shadow Chancellor, enjoys a 45 per cent “confidence rating” and David Cameron is on 61 per cent. Mr Osborne outguns Mr Darling on a range of issues. Some 74 per cent of businessmen think that the Chancellor is “out of his depth”, while 38 per cent say the same about the shadow Chancellor. Only 24 per cent believe Mr Darling “understands business”, while 62 per cent say that Mr Osborne does. ”
http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/dec2009/gb20091217_155252.htm
306 - It looks to me like they may have polled Osbornes friends.
303 tim - So you think that rational economists think that borrowing money in a recession, in order to pay people to build sandcastles at low tide which get washed away at high tide, would be a good idea?
Because that is effectively what Labour are currently doing.
STOP PRESS
There will be a new Angus Reid Strategies poll appearing later on this afternoon.
296 Have you tried Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said? That’s a bit of a gem - it’s about a celebrity singer and TV host who wakes up one morning to find he’s not famous and never was. And doesn’t exist.
I like sci-fi when it couldn’t be made or told as anything else. If you ask someone which they prefer, Star Wars or Blade Runner, they are actually being given an intelligence test.
I sometimes wonder what would happen if you gave Gordon Brown the Voigt-Kampff test.
308:Funny tim…you deride people for buying cheap wine and being cheap and vulgar (urgh uPVC windows), and attack Kirsty for wasting money.
You’re a real strange one.
The five best Brown gaffes on video from 2009
http://conservativehome.blogs.com/leftwatch/2009/12/the-best-brown-videos-of-2009.html
312. Hopefully it will show a double-digit Tory lead?
313: Star Wars or Blade Runner…
Can I think about my real answer, or the answer I know I should give?
311 - Frasers post says Major did the same.
Although I doubt that the new school that has been brought forward in a sensible counter cyclical investment decision will be washed away.
And remember Major didn’t have to stabilise the banking system, just pick up the mess of Lawson and Thatchers Govts.
http://news.choices.co.uk/Banking_System_More_Stable,_Says_Bank_of_England_8121822743358.html
312 - Angus Reid will be interesting, but is risky for the Conservatives as there is little upside. We need to be 17% ahead or we will have fallen with them as well. It’s difficult to see an increase happening in this poll.
A lead in the low or mid teens, whilst better than most others are showing will still be a fall from the last couple of Angus Reid polls.
313 - By happy coincidence, I finished Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said earlier this month. My current reading is Don’t Point That Thing At Me by Kyril Bonfiglioli, which is magnificently louche and extremely funny.
314 - Buying good food and eating it is good.
Buying good food and turning it into soap is not.
Capisce?
316. Ah, but a double digit Tory lead from AR could still be trending towards Labour, and hold with the narative…
311. Well Keynes thought exactly that (or rather, that paying people to dig holes and then fill them in again would be a good idea).
318 Spin any more tim and you really will get giddy. In your tiny little world nothing anyone else says can ever be taken at face value, yet what you post is according to the gospel of saint tim.
312,316 Are we to judge the portent of the new ARS poll by its messenger?
324 - Why don’t you just post when Fulham, St Helens or Rosslyn Park have scored?
Its the only times your posts have any substance.
313 - I never liked Star Wars (even as a 9 year old, I came out of the cinema complaining that the film was half an hour too long and they should have ended it when they’d rescued Princess Leia), but have a guilty pleasure in Star Trek. The film Blade Runner was OK, but I much preferred and very much enjoyed the book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? The film Total Recall was great fun.
321: No…it’s just an item, a thing. Does it matter if you eat or drink it. As long as you enjoy it. Kristie clearly got enjoyment out of turning it into soap, and people will enjoy getting it as a gift and using it.
At the end of the day tim. You’re a snob. You look down on people you think are ‘beneath you’ who do such vulgar things as buy a bottle of wine for £3 or £4, or have (horror) uPVC windows. You have a smug superiority complex which is simply unattractive, even more so when its laughable at.
318 ‘Although I doubt that the new school that has been brought forward in a sensible counter cyclical investment decision will be washed away.’
One would hope not, as we’ll still be paying off the finance in 40 years time.
318 tim - But the deficit is mainly current expenditure, and also includes total, unmitigated waste (ID cards, burning billions on failed IT projects, regional development agencies, ISA database, council box-ticking, educational box-ticking, tax credits to people on £50K plus, paying town clerks £250K a year, dozens of overlapping advisory quangos, etc etc etc.)
Indeed your favourite minister Mr Darling is, apparently in all seriousness, planning to continue the wasteful stuff - in fact increase it - whilst clobberring capital expenditure.
Either he is totally mad, or totally cynical, or bamboozled by someone else. I wonder which?
Who said the Reds had gone away?
Unions build up £25m war chest and prepare to ‘unleash hell’ on Tories
By James Chapman
Last updated at 11:35 PM on 17th December 2009
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In a sign that the unions have all but given up hope of a Labour victory, they are holding back money from the party’s election campaign and instead building up a £25million war chest to ‘unleash hell’ on an incoming Tory government.
Sources say the money will be spent campaigning against cuts in the public sector workforce and pay, which is continuing to grow under Labour.
Union leaders are pushing for a wave of industrial action.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1236781/Unions-build-25m-war-chest-prepare-unleash-hell-Tories.html#ixzz0a39WPUL5
315 Five best? I’d argue with that, as it doesn’t include “saved the world” - or his Conference brace of interviews with Sian Williams and Adam Boulton….!
Saved the world:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iPaiylUYW0
Sian Williams:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ojlvRG-yGQ
Adam Boulton:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJR-jXhfF8Y&feature=related
325
No I just know there is a poll coming. I dont know any details one way or the other.
313. If you ask someone which they prefer, Star Wars or Blade Runner, they are actually being given an intelligence test.
Since Star Wars is the greatest film ever made in the history of any Universe, anyone who answers Blade Runner is clearly an idiot.
This policy announcement on student’s tuition fees has just been released by Nick Clegg:
“I’m writing to let you know some good news about the Liberal Democrat manifesto - good news for students and for everyone who wants a fairer Britain. This week the Party’s federal policy committee agreed a way to deliver one of our most important policies, the scrapping of unfair tuition fees. We’ve developed a plan to phase out tuition fees over the course of the next six years, to ensure this vital policy is affordable even at this time of economic crisis.
Labour and the Conservatives refuse to address the issue of fees and there is a real danger that both of them would lift the cap on fees which could mean even more debt for students when they leave university. We think that is wrong and our policy will prevent it happening.
It’s simply wrong to penalise people who want to make the best of themselves by saddling them with enormous mortgage-style debts from the day they graduate - especially when we know the root of the current economic crisis was too much debt. And it’s clear that people from disadvantaged backgrounds are far more likely to be put off going to university if it costs them tens of thousands of pounds. In a fair society, university admissions should be based on your grades and intelligence, not the wealth of your parents. You should decide whether going to university makes sense for you - and you shouldn’t have to make the decision based on your bank balance.
We were right to oppose tuition fees from day one, and have been right to continue to oppose any lifting of the cap on the limit of fees. The government has been obsessed with artificial targets for how many people should go to university, while putting barriers in their way in the shape of fees. My priority is making degrees affordable, and that means scrapping these unfair fees, including for those who study part-time. This is vital, because it tends to be older or poorer students who can’t afford a full-time degree, but under current rules they have to pay up-front, while everyone else is allowed to defer their payments.
Of course, at a time of economic crisis, when the government has got the public finances into a mess, it is extremely important to be responsible about making a big financial commitment like this. Students want to be treated like grown ups; they know money doesn’t grow on trees and that big spending committments like this are only affordable over time. That’s why we have agreed together to lay out a financially responsible timetable to scrap fees, step by step, over the six years after the General Election.
Final year tuition fees will be the first to go. Too many people drop out, often put off by the huge costs. We’ll make it easier to stay on, because no student will pay any fees to complete their degree. In 2011, we’ll get help to part-time students, regulating the fees they pay (a vital step towards abolishing them). In 2012, part-time students will be able to access the same loans as full-time students. In 2013, we’ll extend free tuition to second year students. In 2014, we’ll extend that same free tuition to part time students. And in 2015, as the public finances are recovering, we will be able to afford to abolish all remaining fees.
Labour’s recession has made it more difficult to find the money to fund our priorities. That’s why we are right to adapt our plans for big spending commitments and why it is right that our General Election manifesto will focus this time on a smaller number of key commitments. But our message to students is clear: we remain the only party that believes fees are unfair, and the only party with a plan to get rid of them for good.”
This will go down well in the marginals where there is a large student population e.g. Oxford East
330 - As was Majors , and he began fiscal tightening two years after the recession finished.
Was he right or should he have done it sooner?
335: Major didn’t blow the countries finances to kingdom come tim.
It seems that some of you must keep a file on the characteristics of other bloggers in order to be able to comment the way you do!
333. I was ARSSED yesterday.
I did my bit fr the cause ;-0
Tim
Why are you arguing with Gordon Brown’s Golden Rule that the defecit should never exceed 3% over the economic cycle? Do you know better than him?
332 - Apparently saving the world was last year.
It’s notable that five obviously isn’t enough. There are many contenders.
On this subject, I found this link when going through some old emails the other day. I think it’s possibly my favourite.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7643239.stm
320. ‘flow my tears’ is good. I like ‘the man in the high castle’ as well.
307: Not only the indpendent. The guardian is circling the plughole too
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/the-guardian-publisher-in-talks-to-sell-regional-titles-1844215.html
New Thread up.
308 Yes, tim, on the way to PtP…
The Guardian’s live blog from Copenhagen is attracting comments.
But they’ve now taken to moderating away anything critical of what’s going on there.
Two of my posts have been excised today for no reason - other bthan that were critical of Brown wasting money and Phil Jones and his cronies rigging the scientific peer review process.
Number three has just gone u:p “It’s amusing now that any post critical of the AGW scam is automatically being moderated here.
PS: I’ve cross posted to other blogs so you’ll be rapidly exposed”"
It’ll be interesting how long it takes for someone takes affront and removes it.
340 Was “saved the world” really last year?? How ******* presumptuous was that!!!
317. “Reaction time is a factor in this, so please pay attention. Now, answer as quickly as you can.”
327. The whole Mercerism / empathy thing got left out between book and film, which was inevitable, but a pity. Most punters found BR baffling enough as it was.
Total Recall, Blade Runner, Minority Report and pretty well everything else Philip K Dick wrote would not work as anything but sci-fi.
There is one short story about a guy who has nightmares and a steadily worsening phobia of heights. His shrink thinks it’s down to something that happened in his past, but it turns out he’s clairvoyant and that it’s caused by something in his future.
Essentially the same theme drives the plot of The White Hotel, written 25 years later by the dad of PB’s very own SeanT.
Star Wars could equally be remade as almost anything: western, war movie, swords ‘n’ sandals - anything. I think that’s why it was unsatisfactory. It didn’t feel novel.
I can sit through a lot of Trek, but the above is the reason I like the save-the-whale movie instalment the best. As well the fact that it was very funny.
31. “People often see what they want to see in the polls, and looking at one or even two polls in isolation is a mug’s game.”
‘Spot on Rod and you do exactly the same day after day after day.’
Can you give me a single specific example, never mind day after day? On the contrary, I have relentlessly cautioned people (you in particular) from doing so.
‘Everything has to fit your thesis and you will disregard data that doesn’t.’ If I had no particular thesis, I would employ exactly the same techniques, and I have never disregarded a single piece of data. On the contrary, I use all the data, all the time. The numbers don’t lie, and neither do I.
‘Don’t you see how all this undermines your very considerable expertise?’ It’s clear you don’t understand this ‘expertise’ at all.
‘Anybody can create a trend to suit them by selecting the starting point that most fits as you have done.’ I selected the starting point as the first poll of 2009 as that is a perfectly natural starting point for the purpose of showing recent trends. I have not selected that to “fit” anything. I select a reasonable date, run the numbers, publish the output. I could go back further, but it would not alter the recent trend one iota…
‘Try looking at trends over a year and you get a very different picture.’ Er, Jan-Dec 2009 is a year, isn’t it?
Some may wonder how Cameron’s Conservatives have managed to throwaway the certainty of victory at the next GE?
It is clearly a complex issue of causes leading to effects combined general political ignorance on the part of Cameron’s adviser!
Taking the 1st rule of politics: An opposition party must never be seen or heard to be break difficult promises to voters before gaining political.
However, breaking difficult promises will be viewed in the following ways:
a) Political party is unscrupulous and cannot be trusted to govern.
b) Political party is lazy and will do nothing worthwhile in government.
c) Political party does not have any work ethic and want soft policies.
Even, if these thoughts are only realised by 10% of voters in a tight election or one were the voting system favours the incumbent it will be fatal to any OP hoping to gain a GE victory.
Secondly, human beings lie and cheat a lot to gain prospects and property. A Political Party’s will be expected to be lying and cheating by a sceptical electorate. Therefore, voters will expect some promises to be broken in government. Woe betides an Opposition party breaking political promises before entering government (excludes Economics were reverse rule applies: woes betide a political party being dishonest about money).
Putting this all together leads to one place. Cameron’s decision to break his party promise of Lisbon Treaty Referendum severely damaged his parties credibility with enough voters to cast the next GE into uncertain of outcome.
He and the Conservatives have damaged their creditability with this rather complacent, lazy and opportunistic policy u-turn! Stories about the Government have enjoyed a degree of traction and believability that they should have lacked without the OP’s misjudgement
37.
“the Lib Dems have no clear message, a weak leader and a generally weak group of senior MPs,”
Himmel!! have they stolen ALL the Tories clothes?
PS. Why has nobody on here yet blamed Gordo for the snow?
Gordo is to blame for the snow. !!!!!!!!!!!!