Tomorrow marks the second birthday of PB.C. Thanks to everybody for their support and for making the site what it is. Thanks to my son Robert for handling and maintaining the technical side and his fiance, Lucille for the design. Thanks to Philip Grant (Book Value and one of the first people ever to comment here) for being the stand-in editor and thanks to those who are helping keep PB.C a seven day operation by providing articles and commentaries. Thanks…
HOW BADLY WILL LABOUR DO ON MAY 4TH? Labour is in the fortunate position of being expected to do badly in the local elections on May 4th. Anything other than a complete disaster can be portrayed as a success by Labour’s spin-doctors. So will Labour face a complete disaster, on a par with the wipe-outs of 1968, or 1976-1978? In fact, this is unlikely. In 1968, Labour were reduced to 350 councillors in London (compared to 1,400 Conservatives). In the…
HOW DO PARTIES CHANGE? “How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb?†A: Only one. But the lightbulb has to *want* to change. It’s my second-favourite light bulb joke (I’ll work the favourite in later), but I wanted to introduce a thread on why political parties change, and how, and why not. The first thing to bear in mind is that people generally join political parties because they like them as they are. Sometimes people join because…
For some reason the comments thread on today’s posting does not work. Let’s see if this one operates.
How to increase the yield and reduce the political damage In the row over the Labour party’s alleged “cash for honours†scandal nobody has raised the issue of the pricing levels involved. Is Tony Blair “selling†them too cheaply? This post is not about the rights and wrongs of handing out honours in return for large donations but whether the party has got its basic fundraising strategy right. For from the perspective of my day job as a professional big…
Our first “guest” contribution by Sean Fear Local by-elections might be thought to be of interest only to political trainspotters. However, they matter because they have, historically, been a very good indicator of the standing of the three parties in local contests. The share of the vote won by each of the three main parties in local elections each May will always be much closer to the vote share won in the preceding few months’ by elections than to the…
Introducing PB.C Flashback At the site party in January Mike Killingworth (Innocent Abroad) suggested that the archives should be kept because they give an interesting snapshot of what people were thinking at a particular time. As a result I have taken the thread of May 5-6th last year, General Election night, and produced an edited version of the interaction on the site from 9.30 pm to 1am the following morning. It makes a great read and I’ve put it as…
Paul Maggs has devised and will manage the following competition. Simply predict: 1. Who the new leader will be? 2. The percentage of the first preference votes your predicted new leader wins 3. The percentage of the overall votes (after re-distribution of second preferences) your predicted new leader wins You may make your predictions to one decimal place Scoring Your score will be the difference between your prediction and the actual result at both stages of the voting (regardless of…