politicalbetting.com

“In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible.” (Orwell -1946) The last 2 days have given us 2 examples of how language is used to obscure the indefensible. But not from the political world. For a change. Example No 1 The  announcement by BP that its CEO, Bernard Looney, left because, when providing answers in an earlier investigation about his relationships with colleagues, “he now accepts that he was not fully transparent in his previous…

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Starmer should be sceptical of big leads On the face of it the latest Wikipedia polling table is very good for LAB and the party is heading for a landslide whenever the election is called The only problem is that there is a very large group of voters who went with the Tories in 2019 who continue to say don’t know. Most pollsters simply do not include them. According to the latest YouGov 23% of Conservative voters at the last…

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This is just a quickie but I am hearing a fair bit from Mid-Beds that a name that keeps on coming up on the doorstep is the chairman of Central Bedfordshire Council, Gareth Mackey. .He’s an independent councillor, who has announced he would stand as an independent, having previously said he would run in the constituency at the General Election. He’s clearly got a lot of name recognition in the parts of the seat that are covered by the Central Beds…

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Heseltine was always a strong supporter of the EU unlike almost of the modern Conservative leadership. During the Thatcher and Major years he was a leading cabinet minister and was at one stage was Deputy PM. He is now 90 years old. Mike Smithson

Oldies are most likely to be affected Those of us who have been following politics for some time will remember how important a policy the pension triple lock was at GE2010. This ensures that the state pension rises each year in accordance with prices, earnings or 2.5% which ever is the highest. Based on current trends as the Express is reporting that pensioners should be getting an 8.5% uplift this year. That does not now look likely if the reports…

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So far none of the major parties has managed to dominate the betting in the October 19th mid Beds by-election and as can be seen the LD. CON and LAB odds are very close to each other. All three of them think they can win so the betting is not really a guide to what’s going to happen. The LDs are the current favourite and that’s partly down to their extremely successful by-election record this parliament in which they have…

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Since 1988, the Republicans have won the Presidential popular vote only once, in 2004. Popular opinion is that the recent Republican Electoral College advantage is somehow immutable. It is not. Indeed, 2024 could see Trump win the popular vote, and Biden the Presidency. Simply: Trump has gained share in States which are either Democratic strongholds (New York and California) or in places where he already has the delegates (Florida and the Deep South). By contrast, Trump and the Republicans have…

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