Could this affect Commons seats projections? Most people with an interest in politics and election outcomes are familiar with the term – Uniform National Swing. But how many understand how the numbers are made up and that there are two very different approaches to making the calculations. I raise this because I have to admit that until not so long ago I got it all wrong. My assumption was that if Party A was up by a tenth on the…
guardian.co.uk Has Kettle got it right about Mr. Brown? There’s a biting column on Mr. Brown and the economic crisis by Martin Kettle in the Guardian this morning on the reluctance of the Prime Minister to take any responsibility whatsoever for what’s gone on in Britain’s banks. Discussing first Mr. Brown’s tendency to put tactics ahead of strategy Kettle looks at what’s gone on the the past few weeks and makes the case that a reluctance by Brown to accept…
Whose going to be convinced that Labour now gets it? I’ve played this brief YouTube piece by John Prescott several times and I’m none the wiser. What’s the point of it? Why is Labour going to all this trouble to prove that that somehow the party understands and is fully embracing the new media? My guess is that it’s is in response to a growing feeling within the movement that this is an area where Labour lags behind the Tories….
Can he do as well as last year? (After Roger’s brilliant performance forecasting the 2008 Oscars I’ve asked him to write an article for this year – this might provide good material for betting although the prices don’t look very good – MS) 2009 Oscars. I’m going to give the nominations in the important categories followed by my tips for the winners. I should remind anyone thinking of having a flutter that I recently tipped Barclays at £5 a share…
Mail online Have the spinners lost control of the “official statistics”? There’s a big story running this morning about with the highly embarrassing news that the number of foreign workers increased by 175,000 to 2.4 million last year while the number of British workers fell by 234,000 to 27 million. To me what makes this interesting is not the jobs story but that what used to be the all-powerful Number 10 spin operation had no idea of what was coming…
Cartoon first published on December 11 2008 Is “She” the shorthand for the end of NuLab? A key media development in the past eight weeks has been the regularity with which programmes makers and writers have looked to former Woolworths employees, almost all of them women, to illustrate what’s gone wrong with the economy. BBC2’s Newsnight did it again last night. So while “Mondeo Man” and “Worcester Woman” might have defined key voters in recent elections the 2009/2010 general version…
Guest slot: Rod Crosby on the Tory “Tough Nuts” When punters and pundits try to forecast the next election they usually turn to basic swingometers of the Baxter or Wells variety. There is nothing wrong with that, provided we accept these simple tools are really only capable of forecasting the broad “shape†of the result, and not exact seat totals. Nor are they capable of making reliable predictions for individual seats. More sophisticated analysis of Nationalist and LibDem performance, and…
Marf’s own site is LondonSketchbook.com Rod Crosby’s guest slot looking at 38 seats where the uniform national swing might not apply will be published before 6pm.