Howdy, Stranger!

It looks like you're new here. Sign in or register to get started.

politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Analysis of the Q1 local by-elections finds CON struggling to

SystemSystem Posts: 11,002
edited March 2018 in General

imagepoliticalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Analysis of the Q1 local by-elections finds CON struggling to benefit from the almost total collapse if the UKIP vote

The real story of the local by-elections in the first quarter (and I suspect one that will be repeated in just five weeks time) is the collapse of UKIP losing 90% of it’s vote compared to last time and showing that it’s not just UKIP voters now voting Con, but UKIP candidates not even standing as UKIP but instead as “Name of local area” candidates.

Read the full story here


«13

Comments

  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,772
    First?
  • MortimerMortimer Posts: 13,921
    Second, like Corbo.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,772
    Can't help feeling that a fair percentage of the previous UKIP vote will be going to DNV.

    What I find interesting for May is that both the Tory and Labour vote is likely to be up significantly compared with the last time because of the collapse of support for both UKIP and (to a lesser extent) the Lib Dems. I expect, on current polling, the Tory vote to be up slightly more than Labour creating a theoretical swing in their direction. But I also expect that swing to be completely swamped by more powerful regional effects with Labour doing really well in London but not at all well in the midlands, for example. How that will shake out in seats is anyone's guess.
  • ElliotElliot Posts: 1,516
    What would be most interesting is seeing these numbers in swing seats.
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 49,958
    edited March 2018
    Elliot said:

    What would be most interesting is seeing these numbers in swing seats.

    Probably too small a sub-set to make much sense.
  • geoffwgeoffw Posts: 8,092
    Not at all keen on the visual effects in those simple graphs.
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,765
    Most of the seats coming up in by elections were last contested in 2015, a good year for the Conservatives. They imply NEV's of c. 37% for Con and 36% for Lab.
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 47,789
    Ted Malloch, the guy who wanted to destroy the EU, subpoenaed by the Mueller investigation.

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/mar/30/fbi-questions-ted-malloch-trump-campaign-figure-and-farage-ally
  • viewcodeviewcode Posts: 18,232
  • Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 60,933
    Good afternoon, everyone.

    Cheers for this, Mr. Hayfield. Pretty similar picture across the board, with the purples falling faster than a concrete donkey.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited March 2018
    Jeremy Corbyn has said Labour must "do better" as a row continues over how the party deals with hostility to Jews.

    In a Passover message, he said it was easy to denounce anti-Semitism abroad but sometimes harder to see it closer to home.

    It came as Jewish Labour peer Lord Winston said Mr Corbyn had "encouraged and endorsed" anti-Semites.

    Speaking to the BBC, a Labour Party spokeswoman said the letter was not being ignored but that suspending Christine Shawcroft would not be a personal decision for Jeremy Corbyn as there were formal processes for such matters.

    http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-43597132
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603
    edited March 2018
    We're going to do very poorly in May in London.

    Here's a concrete example of where Corbyn is winning the argument.

    My sister recently had her house done and she needed some work done on the outside water pipe, the only provider is Thames water, they quoted £5.5k for the work. She obviously didn't want to pay, so she asked someone who would know what it should cost. They said there is currently a regulation change coming in that will force Thames water to charge less for what she needs done, she told Thames water and they confirmed that if she waits until April the price will drop to just over £1.5k for the same water issue fix. They refused to budge on the price until after April. They can't move into the property until this is done. They've been waiting since January.

    She's not naturally to the left, my family is fairly right wing, but when she saw Corbyn propose to renationalise Thames Water she's now ready to listen to him even though she disagrees with most of his platform.

    We've got to a stage where our "free" markets are so broken that reasonable people are being driven to unreasonable ideas. The government must act now on the broken utilities market or they will continue to lose voters like my sister and my brother in law.
  • Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 60,933
    Mr. Max, in some areas, that's true.

    Unfortunately, just because some markets need changing (better protection against hostile takeovers, for example, as well as new problems caused by the internet) that doesn't mean the Corbyn alternative isn't worse. Of course, the current problems are apparent to everyone, whereas the problems to come under Corbyn (should it happen) are ephemeral. It's why it's critical the Conservatives both get to grips with the problems and (Labour sensible types too) they staunchly defend free markets and capitalism.

    When capitalism gets stuff wrong, you end up in a situation like your sister is suffering. When socialism gets stuff wrong, people have to break into zoos to kill the exhibits just so they don't starve to death.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 38,517
    Off-topic:

    A rocket launch in seven minutes or so. Sadly there will be no landing attempt.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mp0TW8vkCLg
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    MaxPB said:

    We're going to do very poorly in May in London.

    Here's a concrete example of where Corbyn is winning the argument.

    My sister recently had her house done and she needed some work done on the outside water pipe, the only provider is Thames water, they quoted £5.5k for the work. She obviously didn't want to pay, so she asked someone who would know what it should cost. They said there is currently a regulation change coming in that will force Thames water to charge less for what she needs done, she told Thames water and they confirmed that if she waits until April the price will drop to just over £1.5k for the same water issue fix. They refused to budge on the price until after April. They can't move into the property until this is done. They've been waiting since January.

    She's not naturally to the left, my family is fairly right wing, but when she saw Corbyn propose to renationalise Thames Water she's now ready to listen to him even though she disagrees with most of his platform.

    We've got to a stage where our "free" markets are so broken that reasonable people are being driven to unreasonable ideas. The government must act now on the broken utilities market or they will continue to lose voters like my sister and my brother in law.

    I hope you told them that if Thames Water was nationalised, they’d probably have had to wait six months to get them to schedule the work in the first place.

    You’re right that, up against Corbyn, we are going to have to explain capitalism again from first principles, the current younger generation don’t remember when it took BT months to install a phone line and the smelly trains with slam doors broke down all the time - when their staff weren’t on strike.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited March 2018
    It is just me but who the hell uses a motorway service station for petrol? With 24hr supermarkets all having petrol stations and sat navs / waze app, even if you are running low, one tap and it will reroute to the nearest petrol station. They are never more than 1 mile off the motorway.

    Gone are the days of fear of pulling off into a town you have never visited and getting lost.

    http://www.bbc.com/news/business-43590387
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    edited March 2018

    Off-topic:

    A rocket launch in seven minutes or so. Sadly there will be no landing attempt.

    ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mp0TW8vkCLg

    How boring. Are we going to have to explain to our children that once upon a time, rockets only ever went up and never landed back again?
  • oxfordsimonoxfordsimon Posts: 5,831

    Jeremy Corbyn has said Labour must "do better" as a row continues over how the party deals with hostility to Jews.

    In a Passover message, he said it was easy to denounce anti-Semitism abroad but sometimes harder to see it closer to home.

    It came as Jewish Labour peer Lord Winston said Mr Corbyn had "encouraged and endorsed" anti-Semites.

    Speaking to the BBC, a Labour Party spokeswoman said the letter was not being ignored but that suspending Christine Shawcroft would not be a personal decision for Jeremy Corbyn as there were formal processes for such matters.

    http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-43597132

    He is still failing to get the right tone. It is not about Labour doing better. It is about Corbyn accepting some personal responsibility for the tonal shift in Labour politics that has allowed this situation to develop.

    Most people accept that the Labour movement is not stuffed with anti-semites - but they also see that Corbyn's actions/inactions in this area are setting a tone which has allowed it to become more openly expressed.

    Unless and until Corbyn accepts that he has some personal responsibility for this, it won't go away.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 38,517
    Sandpit said:

    Off-topic:

    A rocket launch in seven minutes or so. Sadly there will be no landing attempt.

    ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mp0TW8vkCLg

    How boring. Are we going to have to explain to our children that once upon a time, rockets only ever went up and never came landed back again?
    They're going to try to recover a fairing on Mr Steven. ;)

    It looks as though they're using up their stock of Block IV and earlier rockets, before they move onto the hopefully final Block V next month. I don't think they've flown any rocket more than twice so far, so that's starting to look suspiciously as a limit for that hardware version.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited March 2018
    Sandpit said:

    MaxPB said:

    We're going to do very poorly in May in London.

    Here's a concrete example of where Corbyn is winning the argument.

    My sister recently had her house done and she needed some work done on the outside water pipe, the only provider is Thames water, they quoted £5.5k for the work. She obviously didn't want to pay, so she asked someone who would know what it should cost. They said there is currently a regulation change coming in that will force Thames water to charge less for what she needs done, she told Thames water and they confirmed that if she waits until April the price will drop to just over £1.5k for the same water issue fix. They refused to budge on the price until after April. They can't move into the property until this is done. They've been waiting since January.

    She's not naturally to the left, my family is fairly right wing, but when she saw Corbyn propose to renationalise Thames Water she's now ready to listen to him even though she disagrees with most of his platform.

    We've got to a stage where our "free" markets are so broken that reasonable people are being driven to unreasonable ideas. The government must act now on the broken utilities market or they will continue to lose voters like my sister and my brother in law.

    I hope you told them that if Thames Water was nationalised, they’d probably have had to wait six months to get them to schedule the work in the first place.

    You’re right that, up against Corbyn, we are going to have to explain capitalism again from first principles, the current younger generation don’t remember when it took BT months to install a phone line and the smelly trains with slam doors broke down all the time - when their staff weren’t on strike.
    Many in the younger generation take so much of the benefits of capitalism for granted, their iPhone, social media, deliveroo, Uber, Amazon prime, Netflix...

    The likes of the nationalized BT and Post Office of old wouldnt have given us those things.
  • Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 60,933
    Bah. Being younger is no excuse for ignorance about the recent past. And, as an aside, if we judged demographics by political attention you'd think everyone is in/fresh out of university, or retired.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    Continued...

    The most worrying thing about corbynonomics was all the we must kill the city in order for proper businesses to succeed...How am I supposed to get my startup idea funded if jezza has killed off all the evil capitalist venture capitalists? Is my business not a proper business worth supportong?
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274

    Jeremy Corbyn has said Labour must "do better" as a row continues over how the party deals with hostility to Jews.

    In a Passover message, he said it was easy to denounce anti-Semitism abroad but sometimes harder to see it closer to home.

    It came as Jewish Labour peer Lord Winston said Mr Corbyn had "encouraged and endorsed" anti-Semites.

    Speaking to the BBC, a Labour Party spokeswoman said the letter was not being ignored but that suspending Christine Shawcroft would not be a personal decision for Jeremy Corbyn as there were formal processes for such matters.

    http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-43597132

    He is still failing to get the right tone. It is not about Labour doing better. It is about Corbyn accepting some personal responsibility for the tonal shift in Labour politics that has allowed this situation to develop.

    Most people accept that the Labour movement is not stuffed with anti-semites - but they also see that Corbyn's actions/inactions in this area are setting a tone which has allowed it to become more openly expressed.

    Unless and until Corbyn accepts that he has some personal responsibility for this, it won't go away.
    Its because he doesn't really think he has done anything wrong, just like his response to Russia attack.
  • TheJezziahTheJezziah Posts: 3,840

    Sandpit said:

    MaxPB said:

    We're going to do very poorly in May in London.

    Here's a concrete example of where Corbyn is winning the argument.

    My sister recently had her house done and she needed some work done on the outside water pipe, the only provider is Thames water, they quoted £5.5k for the work. She obviously didn't want to pay, so she asked someone who would know what it should cost. They said there is currently a regulation change coming in that will force Thames water to charge less for what she needs done, she told Thames water and they confirmed that if she waits until April the price will drop to just over £1.5k for the same water issue fix. They refused to budge on the price until after April. They can't move into the property until this is done. They've been waiting since January.

    She's not naturally to the left, my family is fairly right wing, but when she saw Corbyn propose to renationalise Thames Water she's now ready to listen to him even though she disagrees with most of his platform.

    We've got to a stage where our "free" markets are so broken that reasonable people are being driven to unreasonable ideas. The government must act now on the broken utilities market or they will continue to lose voters like my sister and my brother in law.

    I hope you told them that if Thames Water was nationalised, they’d probably have had to wait six months to get them to schedule the work in the first place.

    You’re right that, up against Corbyn, we are going to have to explain capitalism again from first principles, the current younger generation don’t remember when it took BT months to install a phone line and the smelly trains with slam doors broke down all the time - when their staff weren’t on strike.
    Many in the younger generation take so much of the benefits of capitalism for granted, their iPhone, social media, deliveroo, Uber, Amazon prime, Netflix...

    The likes of the nationalized BT and Post Office of old wouldnt have given us those things.
    I don't think the privatised version of them gave us those things either.

    I'm sure there are plenty of good arguments against nationalising things like water and trains.

    I'm not sure iPhones or social media is it.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,772
    MaxPB said:

    We're going to do very poorly in May in London.

    Here's a concrete example of where Corbyn is winning the argument.

    My sister recently had her house done and she needed some work done on the outside water pipe, the only provider is Thames water, they quoted £5.5k for the work. She obviously didn't want to pay, so she asked someone who would know what it should cost. They said there is currently a regulation change coming in that will force Thames water to charge less for what she needs done, she told Thames water and they confirmed that if she waits until April the price will drop to just over £1.5k for the same water issue fix. They refused to budge on the price until after April. They can't move into the property until this is done. They've been waiting since January.

    She's not naturally to the left, my family is fairly right wing, but when she saw Corbyn propose to renationalise Thames Water she's now ready to listen to him even though she disagrees with most of his platform.

    We've got to a stage where our "free" markets are so broken that reasonable people are being driven to unreasonable ideas. The government must act now on the broken utilities market or they will continue to lose voters like my sister and my brother in law.

    And your sister and brother in law think they will get better service from a nationalised company? Well, its a view.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited March 2018


    Sandpit said:

    MaxPB said:

    We're going to do very poorly in May in London.

    Here's a concrete example of where Corbyn is winning the argument.

    My sister recently had her house done and she needed some work done on the outside water pipe, the only provider is Thames water, they quoted £5.5k for the work. She obviously didn't want to pay, so she asked someone who would know what it should cost. They said there is currently a regulation change coming in that will force Thames water to charge less for what she needs done, she told Thames water and they confirmed that if she waits until April the price will drop to just over £1.5k for the same water issue fix. They refused to budge on the price until after April. They can't move into the property until this is done. They've been waiting since January.

    She's not naturally to the left, my family is fairly right wing, but when she saw Corbyn propose to renationalise Thames Water she's now ready to listen to him even though she disagrees with most of his platform.

    We've got to a stage where our "free" markets are so broken that reasonable people are being driven to unreasonable ideas. The government must act now on the broken utilities market or they will continue to lose voters like my sister and my brother in law.

    I hope you told them that if Thames Water was nationalised, they’d probably have had to wait six months to get them to schedule the work in the first place.

    You’re right that, up against Corbyn, we are going to have to explain capitalism again from first principles, the current younger generation don’t remember when it took BT months to install a phone line and the smelly trains with slam doors broke down all the time - when their staff weren’t on strike.
    Many in the younger generation take so much of the benefits of capitalism for granted, their iPhone, social media, deliveroo, Uber, Amazon prime, Netflix...

    The likes of the nationalized BT and Post Office of old wouldnt have given us those things.
    I don't think the privatised version of them gave us those things either.

    I'm sure there are plenty of good arguments against nationalising things like water and trains.

    I'm not sure iPhones or social media is it.
    You missed the point I was making, capitalism gave us these things.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614

    Continued...

    The most worrying thing about corbynonomics was all the we must kill the city in order for proper businesses to succeed...How am I supposed to get my startup idea funded if jezza has killed off all the evil capitalist venture capitalists? Is my business not a proper business worth supportong?

    And how are the kids going to buy houses if no-one will lend them the money?

    You and I know it’s bonkers, but we have to keep explaining it to others that communism wasn’t wonderful.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 38,517
    DavidL said:

    MaxPB said:

    We're going to do very poorly in May in London.

    Here's a concrete example of where Corbyn is winning the argument.

    My sister recently had her house done and she needed some work done on the outside water pipe, the only provider is Thames water, they quoted £5.5k for the work. She obviously didn't want to pay, so she asked someone who would know what it should cost. They said there is currently a regulation change coming in that will force Thames water to charge less for what she needs done, she told Thames water and they confirmed that if she waits until April the price will drop to just over £1.5k for the same water issue fix. They refused to budge on the price until after April. They can't move into the property until this is done. They've been waiting since January.

    She's not naturally to the left, my family is fairly right wing, but when she saw Corbyn propose to renationalise Thames Water she's now ready to listen to him even though she disagrees with most of his platform.

    We've got to a stage where our "free" markets are so broken that reasonable people are being driven to unreasonable ideas. The government must act now on the broken utilities market or they will continue to lose voters like my sister and my brother in law.

    And your sister and brother in law think they will get better service from a nationalised company? Well, its a view.
    TBF, in the case of water they might. I'm much more sceptical about renationalisation of ;leccy, gas, telecoms etc.
  • The_ApocalypseThe_Apocalypse Posts: 7,830
    Sandpit said:

    MaxPB said:

    We're going to do very poorly in May in London.

    Here's a concrete example of where Corbyn is winning the argument.

    My sister recently had her house done and she needed some work done on the outside water pipe, the only provider is Thames water, they quoted £5.5k for the work. She obviously didn't want to pay, so she asked someone who would know what it should cost. They said there is currently a regulation change coming in that will force Thames water to charge less for what she needs done, she told Thames water and they confirmed that if she waits until April the price will drop to just over £1.5k for the same water issue fix. They refused to budge on the price until after April. They can't move into the property until this is done. They've been waiting since January.

    She's not naturally to the left, my family is fairly right wing, but when she saw Corbyn propose to renationalise Thames Water she's now ready to listen to him even though she disagrees with most of his platform.

    We've got to a stage where our "free" markets are so broken that reasonable people are being driven to unreasonable ideas. The government must act now on the broken utilities market or they will continue to lose voters like my sister and my brother in law.

    I hope you told them that if Thames Water was nationalised, they’d probably have had to wait six months to get them to schedule the work in the first place.

    You’re right that, up against Corbyn, we are going to have to explain capitalism again from first principles, the current younger generation don’t remember when it took BT months to install a phone line and the smelly trains with slam doors broke down all the time - when their staff weren’t on strike.
    I think you’ve missed the point of Max’s post. Telling people ‘socialism is bad’ will not get these voters to shift to the Tories, in part because it doesn’t actually engage with their concerns but implies that they must put up with it because the other system is ‘worse.’ On top of that, many of these voters don’t see the Tories as a credible voice in the first place.

    @FrancisUrquhart Or the current system - as explained in Max’s post - is giving under 40 voters legitimate areas of grievance. Maybe under 40s have calculated that stagnating wages and difficulty getting on the property ladder are much more important drawbacks in comparison to getting the positives of amazon prime, an iPhone and Netflix.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,709
    edited March 2018
    UKIP are standing a few candidates locally as 'Protect Epping Forest's Heritage' candidates or NIMBYs in all but name opposing any building on the Green belt.

    Nationally they got 17% in 2014 so will see a big collapse in May, the Tories certainly need to take most of that if they are to overhaul the two per cent Labour lead last time the wards up this year were up
  • oxfordsimonoxfordsimon Posts: 5,831

    Jeremy Corbyn has said Labour must "do better" as a row continues over how the party deals with hostility to Jews.

    In a Passover message, he said it was easy to denounce anti-Semitism abroad but sometimes harder to see it closer to home.

    It came as Jewish Labour peer Lord Winston said Mr Corbyn had "encouraged and endorsed" anti-Semites.

    Speaking to the BBC, a Labour Party spokeswoman said the letter was not being ignored but that suspending Christine Shawcroft would not be a personal decision for Jeremy Corbyn as there were formal processes for such matters.

    http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-43597132

    He is still failing to get the right tone. It is not about Labour doing better. It is about Corbyn accepting some personal responsibility for the tonal shift in Labour politics that has allowed this situation to develop.

    Most people accept that the Labour movement is not stuffed with anti-semites - but they also see that Corbyn's actions/inactions in this area are setting a tone which has allowed it to become more openly expressed.

    Unless and until Corbyn accepts that he has some personal responsibility for this, it won't go away.
    Its because he doesn't really think he has done anything wrong, just like his response to Russia attack.
    I know - and that is the key problem with Corbyn.

    This perception of anti-semitism is not about Labour as a party - it is about the change in the party since he and his cohort took over. Sure, there were problems before - but they are more prominent now and that is due to the 'mood music' coming from the top.

    Corbyn refuses to see it and thus the situation will persist.

    This requires radical action and Jezza the Radical isn't prepared to act.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614

    Jeremy Corbyn has said Labour must "do better" as a row continues over how the party deals with hostility to Jews.

    In a Passover message, he said it was easy to denounce anti-Semitism abroad but sometimes harder to see it closer to home.

    It came as Jewish Labour peer Lord Winston said Mr Corbyn had "encouraged and endorsed" anti-Semites.

    Speaking to the BBC, a Labour Party spokeswoman said the letter was not being ignored but that suspending Christine Shawcroft would not be a personal decision for Jeremy Corbyn as there were formal processes for such matters.

    http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-43597132

    He is still failing to get the right tone. It is not about Labour doing better. It is about Corbyn accepting some personal responsibility for the tonal shift in Labour politics that has allowed this situation to develop.

    Most people accept that the Labour movement is not stuffed with anti-semites - but they also see that Corbyn's actions/inactions in this area are setting a tone which has allowed it to become more openly expressed.

    Unless and until Corbyn accepts that he has some personal responsibility for this, it won't go away.
    How many statements is that he’s made now, and he’s still getting the tone wrong - because he just doesn’t understand the problem and doesn’t get why there’s a fuss being made.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited March 2018

    Sandpit said:

    MaxPB said:

    We're going to do very poorly in May in London.

    Here's a concrete example of where Corbyn is winning the argument.

    My sister recently had her house done and she needed some work done on the outside water pipe, the only provider is Thames water, they quoted £5.5k for the work. She obviously didn't want to pay, so she asked someone who would know what it should cost. They said there is currently a regulation change coming in that will force Thames water to charge less for what she needs done, she told Thames water and they confirmed that if she waits until April the price will drop to just over £1.5k for the same water issue fix. They refused to budge on the price until after April. They can't move into the property until this is done. They've been waiting since January.

    She's not naturally to the left, my family is fairly right wing, but when she saw Corbyn propose to renationalise Thames Water she's now ready to listen to him even though she disagrees with most of his platform.

    We've got to a stage where our "free" markets are so broken that reasonable people are being driven to unreasonable ideas. The government must act now on the broken utilities market or they will continue to lose voters like my sister and my brother in law.

    I hope you told them that if Thames Water was nationalised, they’d probably have had to wait six months to get them to schedule the work in the first place.

    You’re right that, up against Corbyn, we are going to have to explain capitalism again from first principles, the current younger generation don’t remember when it took BT months to install a phone line and the smelly trains with slam doors broke down all the time - when their staff weren’t on strike.
    I think you’ve missed the point of Max’s post. Telling people ‘socialism is bad’ will not get these voters to shift to the Tories, in part because it doesn’t actually engage with their concerns but implies that they must put up with it because the other system is ‘worse.’ On top of that, many of these voters don’t see the Tories as a credible voice in the first place.

    @FrancisUrquhart Or the current system - as explained in Max’s post - is giving under 40 voters legitimate areas of grievance. Maybe under 40s have calculated that stagnating wages and difficulty getting on the property ladder are much more important drawbacks in comparison to getting the positives of amazon prime, an iPhone and Netflix.
    Not to generalise too much, but people just take these things for granted, just like Facebook (and all its services) being free, then the shock and outrage that they are actually the product not the customer.

    Then tweeting, WhatsApping and Instagraming that they are deleting Facebook...
  • alex.alex. Posts: 4,658
    DavidL said:

    MaxPB said:

    We're going to do very poorly in May in London.

    Here's a concrete example of where Corbyn is winning the argument.

    My sister recently had her house done and she needed some work done on the outside water pipe, the only provider is Thames water, they quoted £5.5k for the work. She obviously didn't want to pay, so she asked someone who would know what it should cost. They said there is currently a regulation change coming in that will force Thames water to charge less for what she needs done, she told Thames water and they confirmed that if she waits until April the price will drop to just over £1.5k for the same water issue fix. They refused to budge on the price until after April. They can't move into the property until this is done. They've been waiting since January.

    She's not naturally to the left, my family is fairly right wing, but when she saw Corbyn propose to renationalise Thames Water she's now ready to listen to him even though she disagrees with most of his platform.

    We've got to a stage where our "free" markets are so broken that reasonable people are being driven to unreasonable ideas. The government must act now on the broken utilities market or they will continue to lose voters like my sister and my brother in law.

    And your sister and brother in law think they will get better service from a nationalised company? Well, its a view.
    To be fair, there doesn't seem to be anything suggesting that they are getting a bad service. Just an apparently overpriced one (although govt legislating that a service should cost £X doesn't necessarily mean that £X is the true cost of delivering that service).
  • DecrepitJohnLDecrepitJohnL Posts: 13,300

    Sandpit said:

    MaxPB said:

    We're going to do very poorly in May in London.

    Here's a concrete example of where Corbyn is winning the argument.

    My sister recently had her house done and she needed some work done on the outside water pipe, the only provider is Thames water, they quoted £5.5k for the work. She obviously didn't want to pay, so she asked someone who would know what it should cost. They said there is currently a regulation change coming in that will force Thames water to charge less for what she needs done, she told Thames water and they confirmed that if she waits until April the price will drop to just over £1.5k for the same water issue fix. They refused to budge on the price until after April. They can't move into the property until this is done. They've been waiting since January.

    She's not naturally to the left, my family is fairly right wing, but when she saw Corbyn propose to renationalise Thames Water she's now ready to listen to him even though she disagrees with most of his platform.

    We've got to a stage where our "free" markets are so broken that reasonable people are being driven to unreasonable ideas. The government must act now on the broken utilities market or they will continue to lose voters like my sister and my brother in law.

    I hope you told them that if Thames Water was nationalised, they’d probably have had to wait six months to get them to schedule the work in the first place.

    You’re right that, up against Corbyn, we are going to have to explain capitalism again from first principles, the current younger generation don’t remember when it took BT months to install a phone line and the smelly trains with slam doors broke down all the time - when their staff weren’t on strike.
    Many in the younger generation take so much of the benefits of capitalism for granted, their iPhone, social media, deliveroo, Uber, Amazon prime, Netflix...

    The likes of the nationalized BT and Post Office of old wouldnt have given us those things.
    The internet was invented by the American government and the web by CERN. The encryption on which ecommerce depends comes from an American university (and GCHQ but they kept it secret). The modern world is not entirely due to the private sector.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,772
    Posted without comment from the ONS GDP revisals yesterday:

    "Construction output was estimated to have decreased by 0.1% in the fourth quarter of 2017, revised upwards from negative 0.7% in the second estimate of GDP.

    With the inclusion of VAT turnover data, there have been upward revisions to construction in Quarter 1, Quarter 2 and Quarter 3 2017. This has resulted in the negative growth reported for Quarter 3 2017 in the second estimate of GDP now showing positive growth of 0.4%.

    The annual growth in 2017 of 5.7% is revised upwards from the 5.1% growth reported in the second estimate of GDP and is stronger than the 3.9% growth seen in 2016. This strength reflects strong growth in construction output in late 2016 and the first quarter of 2017."

    I am very surprised, however, that the BoP changes did not bring growth for Q4 back up to 0.5. It seems that there were offsetting falls in business services. Disappointing, particularly when business investment is now estimated to have grown by 2.4% last year.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614

    Sandpit said:

    MaxPB said:

    We're going to do very poorly in May in London.
    ... in law.

    I hope you told them that if Thames Water was nationalised, they’d probably have had to wait six months to get them to schedule the work in the first place.

    You’re right that, up against Corbyn, we are going to have to explain capitalism again from first principles, the current younger generation don’t remember when it took BT months to install a phone line and the smelly trains with slam doors broke down all the time - when their staff weren’t on strike.
    I think you’ve missed the point of Max’s post. Telling people ‘socialism is bad’ will not get these voters to shift to the Tories, in part because it doesn’t actually engage with their concerns but implies that they must put up with it because the other system is ‘worse.’ On top of that, many of these voters don’t see the Tories as a credible voice in the first place.

    @FrancisUrquhart Or the current system - as explained in Max’s post - is giving under 40 voters legitimate areas of grievance. Maybe under 40s have calculated that stagnating wages and difficulty getting on the property ladder are much more important drawbacks in comparison to getting the positives of amazon prime, an iPhone and Netflix.
    I’m sure there are many things wrong with society, and it’s certainly true that a lot of young people think that life is stacked against them when it comes to wages, housing and education.

    Every one of these things will get significantly worse with Corbyn in charge. Every time it’s been tried anywhere in the world, it’s failed and failed miserably, with widespread poverty for all but the few elites running the country. People often say somewhat flippantly that if a certain politician gets elected they’ll leave the country, but if Corbyn gets in and starts enacting his plan then people will leave. Lots of people. The net contributors, those whose taxes pay for everything he wants to give away for free.

    And Jews of course, why would they want to live in a country where the government doesn’t care about racist abuse they receive?
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited March 2018

    Sandpit said:

    MaxPB said:

    We're going to do very poorly in May in London.

    Here's a concrete example of where Corbyn is winning the argument.

    My sister recently had her house done and she needed some work done on the outside water pipe, the only provider is Thames water, they quoted £5.5k for the work. She obviously didn't want to pay, so she asked someone who would know what it should cost. They said there is currently a regulation change coming in that will force Thames water to charge less for what she needs done, she told Thames water and they confirmed that if she waits until April the price will drop to just over £1.5k for the same water issue fix. They refused to budge on the price until after April. They can't move into the property until this is done. They've been waiting since January.

    She's not naturally to the left, my family is fairly right wing, but when she saw Corbyn propose to renationalise Thames Water she's now ready to listen to him even though she disagrees with most of his platform.

    We've got to a stage where our "free" markets are so broken that reasonable people are being driven to unreasonable ideas. The government must act now on the broken utilities market or they will continue to lose voters like my sister and my brother in law.

    I hope you told them that if Thames Water was nationalised, they’d probably have had to wait six months to get them to schedule the work in the first place.

    You’re right that, up against Corbyn, we are going to have to explain capitalism again from first principles, the current younger generation don’t remember when it took BT months to install a phone line and the smelly trains with slam doors broke down all the time - when their staff weren’t on strike.
    Many in the younger generation take so much of the benefits of capitalism for granted, their iPhone, social media, deliveroo, Uber, Amazon prime, Netflix...

    The likes of the nationalized BT and Post Office of old wouldnt have given us those things.
    The internet was invented by the American government and the web by CERN. The encryption on which ecommerce depends comes from an American university (and GCHQ but they kept it secret). The modern world is not entirely due to the private sector.
    I didnt say it was. Loads of great things have also come out of NASA. But also should be noted that American academia is extremely capitalist when it comes to STEM, most research is at least part funded by businesses and they are very quick to protect and monetarize their IP.
  • stodgestodge Posts: 12,744
    Afternoon all :)

    There's an uncomfortable, perhaps even for some depressing truth coming out on here in recent days. Many of us on here are students of history, many of us on here are old enough to remember how things were.

    Those two aspects shape both our notion of how things are and how they should be. They also imbue us with the notion the past has to be respected, remembered and understood for without such what can the future be but a repetition of mistakes already made and opportunities already lost ?

    For most people, indeed the majority I would venture and especially for those younger than us, none of this matters. The past is a foreign country, of no relevance to now or indeed tomorrow.

    It's that which fuels some of what we see whether it's antipathy to capitalism and opposition to privatised industries through (admittedly) poor experience or the appeals to deeper rooted notions of identity and culture.

    To argue the past to those who have no connection to it or respect for it is pointless. Defending the present to the same people is also pointless - they have no other reference. It's that which allows deeper prejudices to re-assert and grow and resists calls for a better yesterday.

  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,772
    alex. said:

    DavidL said:

    MaxPB said:

    We're going to do very poorly in May in London.

    Here's a concrete example of where Corbyn is winning the argument.

    My sister recently had her house done and she needed some work done on the outside water pipe, the only provider is Thames water, they quoted £5.5k for the work. She obviously didn't want to pay, so she asked someone who would know what it should cost. They said there is currently a regulation change coming in that will force Thames water to charge less for what she needs done, she told Thames water and they confirmed that if she waits until April the price will drop to just over £1.5k for the same water issue fix. They refused to budge on the price until after April. They can't move into the property until this is done. They've been waiting since January.

    She's not naturally to the left, my family is fairly right wing, but when she saw Corbyn propose to renationalise Thames Water she's now ready to listen to him even though she disagrees with most of his platform.

    We've got to a stage where our "free" markets are so broken that reasonable people are being driven to unreasonable ideas. The government must act now on the broken utilities market or they will continue to lose voters like my sister and my brother in law.

    And your sister and brother in law think they will get better service from a nationalised company? Well, its a view.
    To be fair, there doesn't seem to be anything suggesting that they are getting a bad service. Just an apparently overpriced one (although govt legislating that a service should cost £X doesn't necessarily mean that £X is the true cost of delivering that service).
    The overpricing suggests market failure. Why could other contractors not do the work Thames Water had to do? If they could TW would charge a more moderate price.
  • ElliotElliot Posts: 1,516

    Sandpit said:

    MaxPB said:

    We're going to do very poorly in May in London.

    Here's a concrete example of where Corbyn is winning the argument.

    My sister recently had her house done and she needed some work done on the outside water pipe, the only provider is Thames water, they quoted £5.5k for the work. She obviously didn't want to pay, so she asked someone who would know what it should cost. They said there is currently a regulation change coming in that will force Thames water to charge less for what she needs done, she told Thames water and they confirmed that if she waits until April the price will drop to just over £1.5k for the same water issue fix. They refused to budge on the price until after April. They can't move into the property until this is done. They've been waiting since January.

    She's not naturally to the left, my family is fairly right wing, but when she saw Corbyn propose to renationalise Thames Water she's now ready to listen to him even though she disagrees with most of his platform.

    We've got to a stage where our "free" markets are so broken that reasonable people are being driven to unreasonable ideas. The government must act now on the broken utilities market or they will continue to lose voters like my sister and my brother in law.

    I hope you told them that if Thames Water was nationalised, they’d probably have had to wait six months to get them to schedule the work in the first place.

    You’re right that, up against Corbyn, we are going to have to explain capitalism again from first principles, the current younger generation don’t remember when it took BT months to install a phone line and the smelly trains with slam doors broke down all the time - when their staff weren’t on strike.
    Netflix.
    Not to generalise too much, but people just take these things for granted, just like Facebook (and all its services) being free, then the shock and outrage that they are actually the product not the customer.

    Then tweeting, WhatsApping and Instagraming that they are deleting Facebook...
    Tweeting and Instagramming can be done anonymously though. And WhatsApping doesn't use the content of your messages the way Facebook does.
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,765
    DavidL said:

    Posted without comment from the ONS GDP revisals yesterday:

    "Construction output was estimated to have decreased by 0.1% in the fourth quarter of 2017, revised upwards from negative 0.7% in the second estimate of GDP.

    With the inclusion of VAT turnover data, there have been upward revisions to construction in Quarter 1, Quarter 2 and Quarter 3 2017. This has resulted in the negative growth reported for Quarter 3 2017 in the second estimate of GDP now showing positive growth of 0.4%.

    The annual growth in 2017 of 5.7% is revised upwards from the 5.1% growth reported in the second estimate of GDP and is stronger than the 3.9% growth seen in 2016. This strength reflects strong growth in construction output in late 2016 and the first quarter of 2017."

    I am very surprised, however, that the BoP changes did not bring growth for Q4 back up to 0.5. It seems that there were offsetting falls in business services. Disappointing, particularly when business investment is now estimated to have grown by 2.4% last year.

    So, the construction "recession" never actually occurred.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614

    Sandpit said:

    MaxPB said:

    We're going to do very poorly in May in London.

    Here's a concrete example of where Corbyn is winning the argument.
    They've been waiting since January.

    She's not naturally to the left, my family is fairly right wing, but when she saw Corbyn propose to renationalise Thames Water she's now ready to listen to him even though she disagrees with most of his platform.

    We've got to a stage where our "free" markets are so broken that reasonable people are being driven to unreasonable ideas. The government must act now on the broken utilities market or they will continue to lose voters like my sister and my brother in law.

    I hope you told them that if Thames Water was nationalised, they’d probably have had to wait six months to get them to schedule the work in the first place.

    You’re right that, up against Corbyn, we are going to have to explain capitalism again from first principles, the current younger generation don’t remember when it took BT months to install a phone line and the smelly trains with slam doors broke down all the time - when their staff weren’t on strike.
    I think you’ve missed the point of Max’s post. Telling people ‘socialism is bad’ will not get these voters to shift to the Tories, in part because it doesn’t actually engage with their concerns but implies that they must put up with it because the other system is ‘worse.’ On top of that, many of these voters don’t see the Tories as a credible voice in the first place.

    @FrancisUrquhart Or the current system - as explained in Max’s post - is giving under 40 voters legitimate areas of grievance. Maybe under 40s have calculated that stagnating wages and difficulty getting on the property ladder are much more important drawbacks in comparison to getting the positives of amazon prime, an iPhone and Netflix.
    Not to generalise too much, but people just take these things for granted, just like Facebook (and all its services) being free, then the shock and outrage that they are actually the product not the customer.

    Then tweeting, WhatsApping and Instagraming that they are deleting Facebook...
    Especially so with the WhatsApping and Instagramming, those two services both being owned by, yes you guessed it, Facebook.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 38,517

    Sandpit said:

    MaxPB said:

    We're going to do very poorly in May in London.

    Here's a concrete example of where Corbyn is winning the argument.

    My sister recently had her house done and she needed some work done on the outside water pipe, the only provider is Thames water, they quoted £5.5k for the work. She obviously didn't want to pay, so she asked someone who would know what it should cost. They said there is currently a regulation change coming in that will force Thames water to charge less for what she needs done, she told Thames water and they confirmed that if she waits until April the price will drop to just over £1.5k for the same water issue fix. They refused to budge on the price until after April. They can't move into the property until this is done. They've been waiting since January.

    She's not naturally to the left, my family is fairly right wing, but when she saw Corbyn propose to renationalise Thames Water she's now ready to listen to him even though she disagrees with most of his platform.

    We've got to a stage where our "free" markets are so broken that reasonable people are being driven to unreasonable ideas. The government must act now on the broken utilities market or they will continue to lose voters like my sister and my brother in law.

    I hope you told them that if Thames Water was nationalised, they’d probably have had to wait six months to get them to schedule the work in the first place.

    You’re right that, up against Corbyn, we are going to have to explain capitalism again from first principles, the current younger generation don’t remember when it took BT months to install a phone line and the smelly trains with slam doors broke down all the time - when their staff weren’t on strike.
    Many in the younger generation take so much of the benefits of capitalism for granted, their iPhone, social media, deliveroo, Uber, Amazon prime, Netflix...

    The likes of the nationalized BT and Post Office of old wouldnt have given us those things.
    The internet was invented by the American government and the web by CERN. The encryption on which ecommerce depends comes from an American university (and GCHQ but they kept it secret). The modern world is not entirely due to the private sector.
    You miss the main area where governments *really* make a difference: standards. The US missed a massive opportunity when they had three different competing mobile phone standards, Europe agreed on one standard and reserved the relevant frequencies. This simple move enabled the growth of companies like Nokia and Vodafone.
  • RobDRobD Posts: 58,941

    Sandpit said:

    MaxPB said:

    We're going to do very poorly in May in London.

    Here's a concrete example of where Corbyn is winning the argument.

    My sister recently had her house done and she needed some work done on the outside water pipe, the only provider is Thames water, they quoted £5.5k for the work. She obviously didn't want to pay, so she asked someone who would know what it should cost. They said there is currently a regulation change coming in that will force Thames water to charge less for what she needs done, she told Thames water and they confirmed that if she waits until April the price will drop to just over £1.5k for the same water issue fix. They refused to budge on the price until after April. They can't move into the property until this is done. They've been waiting since January.

    She's not naturally to the left, my family is fairly right wing, but when she saw Corbyn propose to renationalise Thames Water she's now ready to listen to him even though she disagrees with most of his platform.

    We've got to a stage where our "free" markets are so broken that reasonable people are being driven to unreasonable ideas. The government must act now on the broken utilities market or they will continue to lose voters like my sister and my brother in law.

    I hope you told them that if Thames Water was nationalised, they’d probably have had to wait six months to get them to schedule the work in the first place.

    You’re right that, up against Corbyn, we are going to have to explain capitalism again from first principles, the current younger generation don’t remember when it took BT months to install a phone line and the smelly trains with slam doors broke down all the time - when their staff weren’t on strike.
    Many in the younger generation take so much of the benefits of capitalism for granted, their iPhone, social media, deliveroo, Uber, Amazon prime, Netflix...

    The likes of the nationalized BT and Post Office of old wouldnt have given us those things.
    The internet was invented by the American government and the web by CERN. The encryption on which ecommerce depends comes from an American university (and GCHQ but they kept it secret). The modern world is not entirely due to the private sector.
    While the infrastructure may have been developed in academic circles, none of the uses/products described above were.
  • ElliotElliot Posts: 1,516
    The Russian government really is scum.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,772
    Sean_F said:

    DavidL said:

    Posted without comment from the ONS GDP revisals yesterday:

    "Construction output was estimated to have decreased by 0.1% in the fourth quarter of 2017, revised upwards from negative 0.7% in the second estimate of GDP.

    With the inclusion of VAT turnover data, there have been upward revisions to construction in Quarter 1, Quarter 2 and Quarter 3 2017. This has resulted in the negative growth reported for Quarter 3 2017 in the second estimate of GDP now showing positive growth of 0.4%.

    The annual growth in 2017 of 5.7% is revised upwards from the 5.1% growth reported in the second estimate of GDP and is stronger than the 3.9% growth seen in 2016. This strength reflects strong growth in construction output in late 2016 and the first quarter of 2017."

    I am very surprised, however, that the BoP changes did not bring growth for Q4 back up to 0.5. It seems that there were offsetting falls in business services. Disappointing, particularly when business investment is now estimated to have grown by 2.4% last year.

    So, the construction "recession" never actually occurred.
    Nope, its actually booming. And has been for about 18 months now. Maybe explains why JCB were taking on more staff somewhat better than frankly silly figures from the ONS.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    Elliot said:

    Sandpit said:

    MaxPB said:

    We're going to do very poorly in May in London.

    Here's a concrete example of where Corbyn is winning the argument.

    My sister recently had her house done and she needed some work done on the outside water pipe, the only provider is Thames water, they quoted £5.5k for the work. She obviously didn't want to pay, so she asked someone who would know what it should cost. They said there is currently a regulation change coming in that will force Thames water to charge less for what she needs done, she told Thames water and they confirmed that if she waits until April the price will drop to just over £1.5k for the same water issue fix. They refused to budge on the price until after April. They can't move into the property until this is done. They've been waiting since January.

    She's not naturally to the left, my family is fairly right wing, but when she saw Corbyn propose to renationalise Thames Water she's now ready to listen to him even though she disagrees with most of his platform.

    We've got to a stage where our "free" markets are so broken that reasonable people are being driven to unreasonable ideas. The government must act now on the broken utilities market or they will continue to lose voters like my sister and my brother in law.

    I hope you told them that if Thames Water was nationalised, they’d probably have had to wait six months to get them to schedule the work in the first place.

    You’re right that, up against Corbyn, we are going to have to explain capitalism again from first principles, the current younger generation don’t remember when it took BT months to install a phone line and the smelly trains with slam doors broke down all the time - when their staff weren’t on strike.
    Netflix.
    Not to generalise too much, but people just take these things for granted, just like Facebook (and all its services) being free, then the shock and outrage that they are actually the product not the customer.

    Then tweeting, WhatsApping and Instagraming that they are deleting Facebook...
    Tweeting and Instagramming can be done anonymously though. And WhatsApping doesn't use the content of your messages the way Facebook does.
    Point was two of those services are owned by Facebook, and the other does what Facebook does (just badly).
  • alex. said:

    DavidL said:

    MaxPB said:

    We're going to do very poorly in May in London.

    Here's a concrete example of where Corbyn is winning the argument.

    My sister recently had her house done and she needed some work done on the outside water pipe, the only provider is Thames water, they quoted £5.5k for the work. She obviously didn't want to pay, so she asked someone who would know what it should cost. They said there is currently a regulation change coming in that will force Thames water to charge less for what she needs done, she told Thames water and they confirmed that if she waits until April the price will drop to just over £1.5k for the same water issue fix. They refused to budge on the price until after April. They can't move into the property until this is done. They've been waiting since January.

    She's not naturally to the left, my family is fairly right wing, but when she saw Corbyn propose to renationalise Thames Water she's now ready to listen to him even though she disagrees with most of his platform.

    We've got to a stage where our "free" markets are so broken that reasonable people are being driven to unreasonable ideas. The government must act now on the broken utilities market or they will continue to lose voters like my sister and my brother in law.

    And your sister and brother in law think they will get better service from a nationalised company? Well, its a view.
    To be fair, there doesn't seem to be anything suggesting that they are getting a bad service. Just an apparently overpriced one (although govt legislating that a service should cost £X doesn't necessarily mean that £X is the true cost of delivering that service).
    Remembering the Nationalised utility monopolies and p*****g myself laughing. Remembering Corbyn proposes to run them as workers co-operatives and rolling on the floor laughing at the sweet innocence of youth.
  • ElliotElliot Posts: 1,516

    Elliot said:

    Sandpit said:

    MaxPB said:

    We're going to do very poorly in May in London.

    Here's a concrete example of where Corbyn is winning the argument.

    My sister recently had her house done and she needed some work done on the outside water pipe, the only provider is Thames water, they quoted £5.5k for the work. She obviously didn't want to pay, so she asked someone who would know what it should cost. They said there is currently a regulation change coming in that will force Thames water to charge less for what she needs done, she told Thames water and they confirmed that if she waits until April the price will drop to just over £1.5k for the same water issue fix. They refused to budge on the price until after April. They can't move into the property until this is done. They've been waiting since January.

    She's not naturally to the left, my family is fairly right wing, but when she saw Corbyn propose to renationalise Thames Water she's now ready to listen to him even though she disagrees with most of his platform.

    We've got to a stage where our "free" markets are so broken that reasonable people are being driven to unreasonable ideas. The government must act now on the broken utilities market or they will continue to lose voters like my sister and my brother in law.

    I hope you told them that if Thames Water was nationalised, they’d probably have had to wait six months to get them to schedule the work in the first place.

    You’re right that, up against Corbyn, we are going to have to explain capitalism again from first principles, the current younger generation don’t remember when it took BT months to install a phone line and the smelly trains with slam doors broke down all the time - when their staff weren’t on strike.
    Netflix.
    Not to generalise too much, but people just take these things for granted, just like Facebook (and all its services) being free, then the shock and outrage that they are actually the product not the customer.

    Then tweeting, WhatsApping and Instagraming that they are deleting Facebook...
    Tweeting and Instagramming can be done anonymously though. And WhatsApping doesn't use the content of your messages the way Facebook does.
    Point was two of those services are owned by Facebook, and the other does what Facebook does (just badly).
    I believe WhatsApp has agreed to not share data with Facebook until they can prove to the authorities better checks are in place.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,772
    Elliot said:

    The Russian government really is scum.
    Now, now, were you not taught that if at first you don't succeed you try, try again?
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    Elliot said:

    The Russian government really is scum.
    That’s raises an interesting point, given that she’s a Russian citizen. One assumes she’ll be fast tracked for asylum in the UK (or wherever she’d like to go) given her own government have tried to kill her once.
  • alex.alex. Posts: 4,658

    alex. said:

    DavidL said:

    MaxPB said:

    We're going to do very poorly in May in London.

    Here's a concrete example of where Corbyn is winning the argument.

    My sister recently had her house done and she needed some work done on the outside water pipe, the only provider is Thames water, they quoted £5.5k for the work. She obviously didn't want to pay, so she asked someone who would know what it should cost. They said there is currently a regulation change coming in that will force Thames water to charge less for what she needs done, she told Thames water and they confirmed that if she waits until April the price will drop to just over £1.5k for the same water issue fix. They refused to budge on the price until after April. They can't move into the property until this is done. They've been waiting since January.

    She's not naturally to the left, my family is fairly right wing, but when she saw Corbyn propose to renationalise Thames Water she's now ready to listen to him even though she disagrees with most of his platform.

    We've got to a stage where our "free" markets are so broken that reasonable people are being driven to unreasonable ideas. The government must act now on the broken utilities market or they will continue to lose voters like my sister and my brother in law.

    And your sister and brother in law think they will get better service from a nationalised company? Well, its a view.
    To be fair, there doesn't seem to be anything suggesting that they are getting a bad service. Just an apparently overpriced one (although govt legislating that a service should cost £X doesn't necessarily mean that £X is the true cost of delivering that service).
    Remembering the Nationalised utility monopolies and p*****g myself laughing. Remembering Corbyn proposes to run them as workers co-operatives and rolling on the floor laughing at the sweet innocence of youth.
    Whilst public sector workers are assumed to be pro-Labour, it would be interesting to know what many of them think of the idea of nationalising things like utilities. I'm not convinced support would be exactly unanimous...

  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    edited March 2018
    Elliot said:

    Elliot said:

    Sandpit said:

    MaxPB said:

    We're going to do very poorly in May in London.

    Here's a concrete example of where Corbyn is winning the argument.

    ...

    She's not naturally to the left, my family is fairly right wing, but when she saw Corbyn propose to renationalise Thames Water she's now ready to listen to him even though she disagrees with most of his platform.

    We've got to a stage where our "free" markets are so broken that reasonable people are being driven to unreasonable ideas. The government must act now on the broken utilities market or they will continue to lose voters like my sister and my brother in law.

    I hope you told them that if Thames Water was nationalised, they’d probably have had to wait six months to get them to schedule the work in the first place.

    You’re right that, up against Corbyn, we are going to have to explain capitalism again from first principles, the current younger generation don’t remember when it took BT months to install a phone line and the smelly trains with slam doors broke down all the time - when their staff weren’t on strike.
    Netflix.
    Not to generalise too much, but people just take these things for granted, just like Facebook (and all its services) being free, then the shock and outrage that they are actually the product not the customer.

    Then tweeting, WhatsApping and Instagraming that they are deleting Facebook...
    Tweeting and Instagramming can be done anonymously though. And WhatsApping doesn't use the content of your messages the way Facebook does.
    Point was two of those services are owned by Facebook, and the other does what Facebook does (just badly).
    I believe WhatsApp has agreed to not share data with Facebook until they can prove to the authorities better checks are in place.
    WhatsApp *IS* Facebook, and they paid $19bn for it, despite the fact that it uses an open standard and protocol. The company is nothing except a database of phone numbers, contacts and connections between them.

    I think recent events have shown how much we can trust anything Facebook say to anyone about privacy or data. Your data is their business, a $500bn $400bn business
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,765
    Elliot said:

    The Russian government really is scum.
    I'm sure she'd just love a visit from a Russian representative.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    Re usa crazy mobile phone standards...

    It is also terrible for consumers with more expensive plans and cost of phones. It is the same with poor internet infrastructure outside of major cities in the US.

    Infrastructure is where governments can really drive things eg south korea and Estonia two good examples of being well ahead of the curve when it came to building internet connectivity.
  • another_richardanother_richard Posts: 24,967
    DavidL said:

    Posted without comment from the ONS GDP revisals yesterday:

    "Construction output was estimated to have decreased by 0.1% in the fourth quarter of 2017, revised upwards from negative 0.7% in the second estimate of GDP.

    With the inclusion of VAT turnover data, there have been upward revisions to construction in Quarter 1, Quarter 2 and Quarter 3 2017. This has resulted in the negative growth reported for Quarter 3 2017 in the second estimate of GDP now showing positive growth of 0.4%.

    The annual growth in 2017 of 5.7% is revised upwards from the 5.1% growth reported in the second estimate of GDP and is stronger than the 3.9% growth seen in 2016. This strength reflects strong growth in construction output in late 2016 and the first quarter of 2017."

    I am very surprised, however, that the BoP changes did not bring growth for Q4 back up to 0.5. It seems that there were offsetting falls in business services. Disappointing, particularly when business investment is now estimated to have grown by 2.4% last year.

    At least the trade deficit fell in 2017 to its lowest as a percentage of GDP since 1998.

    https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/nationalaccounts/balanceofpayments/timeseries/d28l/pnbp

    Looking at those continuous heavy trade deficits of the 2000s it should have been obvious that something wasn't quite right with the UK economy.

    It wasn't that long before the 2000s that the trade data would be a major news item and bad figures worthy of political argument.
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 24,585
    Sean_F said:

    Elliot said:

    The Russian government really is scum.
    I'm sure she'd just love a visit from a Russian representative.
    Jeremy Corbyn?
  • another_richardanother_richard Posts: 24,967
    Sean_F said:

    DavidL said:

    Posted without comment from the ONS GDP revisals yesterday:

    "Construction output was estimated to have decreased by 0.1% in the fourth quarter of 2017, revised upwards from negative 0.7% in the second estimate of GDP.

    With the inclusion of VAT turnover data, there have been upward revisions to construction in Quarter 1, Quarter 2 and Quarter 3 2017. This has resulted in the negative growth reported for Quarter 3 2017 in the second estimate of GDP now showing positive growth of 0.4%.

    The annual growth in 2017 of 5.7% is revised upwards from the 5.1% growth reported in the second estimate of GDP and is stronger than the 3.9% growth seen in 2016. This strength reflects strong growth in construction output in late 2016 and the first quarter of 2017."

    I am very surprised, however, that the BoP changes did not bring growth for Q4 back up to 0.5. It seems that there were offsetting falls in business services. Disappointing, particularly when business investment is now estimated to have grown by 2.4% last year.

    So, the construction "recession" never actually occurred.
    Likewise the supposed annual fall of retail in retail sales which led to much huffing and puffing last autumn has also been revivsed away:

    https://www.ons.gov.uk/businessindustryandtrade/retailindustry/timeseries/j5eb/drsi
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614

    DavidL said:

    Posted without comment from the ONS GDP revisals yesterday:

    "Construction output was estimated to have decreased by 0.1% in the fourth quarter of 2017, revised upwards from negative 0.7% in the second estimate of GDP.

    With the inclusion of VAT turnover data, there have been upward revisions to construction in Quarter 1, Quarter 2 and Quarter 3 2017. This has resulted in the negative growth reported for Quarter 3 2017 in the second estimate of GDP now showing positive growth of 0.4%.

    The annual growth in 2017 of 5.7% is revised upwards from the 5.1% growth reported in the second estimate of GDP and is stronger than the 3.9% growth seen in 2016. This strength reflects strong growth in construction output in late 2016 and the first quarter of 2017."

    I am very surprised, however, that the BoP changes did not bring growth for Q4 back up to 0.5. It seems that there were offsetting falls in business services. Disappointing, particularly when business investment is now estimated to have grown by 2.4% last year.

    At least the trade deficit fell in 2017 to its lowest as a percentage of GDP since 1998.

    https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/nationalaccounts/balanceofpayments/timeseries/d28l/pnbp

    Looking at those continuous heavy trade deficits of the 2000s it should have been obvious that something wasn't quite right with the UK economy.

    It wasn't that long before the 2000s that the trade data would be a major news item and bad figures worthy of political argument.
    ISTR stories in the ‘80s about British Airways getting a call from No 11 asking them to delay delivery of 747s by a month or two, because at $300m each they were having a serious effect on the trade figures - figures which you correctly point out used to lead the news on the day they were released. I have no idea why they stopped reporting them, it’s unlike the media in general to shy away from bad news for the government.
  • alex. said:

    alex. said:

    DavidL said:

    MaxPB said:

    We're going to do very poorly in May in London.

    Here's a concrete example of where Corbyn is winning the argument.

    My sister recently had her house done and she needed some work done on the outside water pipe, the only provider is Thames water, they quoted £5.5k for the work. She obviously didn't want to pay, so she asked someone who would know what it should cost. They said there is currently a regulation change coming in that will force Thames water to charge less for what she needs done, she told Thames water and they confirmed that if she waits until April the price will drop to just over £1.5k for the same water issue fix. They refused to budge on the price until after April. They can't move into the property until this is done. They've been waiting since January.

    She's not naturally to the left, my family is fairly right wing, but when she saw Corbyn propose to renationalise Thames Water she's now ready to listen to him even though she disagrees with most of his platform.

    We've got to a stage where our "free" markets are so broken that reasonable people are being driven to unreasonable ideas. The government must act now on the broken utilities market or they will continue to lose voters like my sister and my brother in law.

    And your sister and brother in law think they will get better service from a nationalised company? Well, its a view.
    To be fair, there doesn't seem to be anything suggesting that they are getting a bad service. Just an apparently overpriced one (although govt legislating that a service should cost £X doesn't necessarily mean that £X is the true cost of delivering that service).
    Remembering the Nationalised utility monopolies and p*****g myself laughing. Remembering Corbyn proposes to run them as workers co-operatives and rolling on the floor laughing at the sweet innocence of youth.
    Whilst public sector workers are assumed to be pro-Labour, it would be interesting to know what many of them think of the idea of nationalising things like utilities. I'm not convinced support would be exactly unanimous...

    They voted in droves for Thatcher when she privatised them, as did consumers. Might be different for Corbyn's idea as the firm would be run entirely for the benefit of employees and unions. That would make the sh*t service of the '70s seem like paradise.
  • stodgestodge Posts: 12,744


    Likewise the supposed annual fall of retail in retail sales which led to much huffing and puffing last autumn has also been revivsed away:

    https://www.ons.gov.uk/businessindustryandtrade/retailindustry/timeseries/j5eb/drsi

    The absurd way in which these statistics are presented doesn't help. October 2016 was an incredibly strong month for retail sales relative to October 2015 so it's little surprise October 2017 couldn't compete so comes in much flatter.

    The 2016 figure was for some reason (weather ?) very strong so the corresponding months in the preceding and following years "look" weaker.


  • edbedb Posts: 65
    Sandpit said:


    ISTR stories in the ‘80s about British Airways getting a call from No 11 asking them to delay delivery of 747s by a month or two, because at $300m each they were having a serious effect on the trade figures - figures which you correctly point out used to lead the news on the day they were released. I have no idea why they stopped reporting them, it’s unlike the media in general to shy away from bad news for the government.

    Haven't you just given a great example why? What could be more ridiculous than delaying receipt of a 747 to fix a political number? Or caring about a number that is massaged in this way?
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 38,517


    They voted in droves for Thatcher when she privatised them, as did consumers. Might be different for Corbyn's idea as the firm would be run entirely for the benefit of employees and unions. That would make the sh*t service of the '70s seem like paradise.

    But that was then. In the last three decades, we've had some really bad behaviour by large privatised entities, and a constant background complaints about them by consumers and the left.

    A problem is that whilst the left have had campaigns going on for years against the privatised utilities, the utilities themselves have not been robust enough in saying why the current system is better for the consumer. Add in the scandals, and the public's mood may well have changed.
  • ElliotElliot Posts: 1,516
    Sandpit said:

    Elliot said:

    Elliot said:

    Sandpit said:

    MaxPB said:

    We're going to do very poorly in May in London.

    Here's a concrete example of where Corbyn is winning the argument.

    ...

    She's not naturally to the left, my family is fairly right wing, but when she saw Corbyn propose to renationalise Thames Water she's now ready to listen to him even though she disagrees with most of his platform.

    We've got to a stage where our "free" markets are so broken that reasonable people are being driven to unreasonable ideas. The government must act now on the broken utilities market or they will continue to lose voters like my sister and my brother in law.

    I hope you told them that if Thames Water was nationalised, they’d probably have had to wait six months to get them to schedule the work in the first place.

    You’re right that, up against Corbyn, we are going to have to explain capitalism again from first principles, the current younger generation don’t remember when it took BT months to install a phone line and the smelly trains with slam doors broke down all the time - when their staff weren’t on strike.
    Netflix.
    Not to generalise too much, but people just take these things for granted, just like Facebook (and all its services) being free, then the shock and outrage that they are actually the product not the customer.

    Then tweeting, WhatsApping and Instagraming that they are deleting Facebook...
    Tweeting and Instagramming can be done anonymously though. And WhatsApping doesn't use the content of your messages the way Facebook does.
    Point was two of those services are owned by Facebook, and the other does what Facebook does (just badly).
    I believe WhatsApp has agreed to not share data with Facebook until they can prove to the authorities better checks are in place.
    WhatsApp *IS* Facebook, and they paid $19bn for it, despite the fact that it uses an open standard and protocol. The company is nothing except a database of phone numbers, contacts and connections between them.

    I think recent events have shown how much we can trust anything Facebook say to anyone about privacy or data. Your data is their business, a $500bn $400bn business
    No, it is a subsidiary. Facebook'' dishonesty has been a matter of looking the other way while maintaining plausible deniability. It doesn't mean they just outright lie about a privacy commitment they have made.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,400
    alex. said:

    alex. said:

    DavidL said:

    MaxPB said:

    We're going to do very poorly in May in London.

    Here's a concrete example of where Corbyn is winning the argument.

    My sister recently had her house done and she needed some work done on the outside water pipe, the only provider is Thames water, they quoted £5.5k for the work. She obviously didn't want to pay, so she asked someone who would know what it should cost. They said there is currently a regulation change coming in that will force Thames water to charge less for what she needs done, she told Thames water and they confirmed that if she waits until April the price will drop to just over £1.5k for the same water issue fix. They refused to budge on the price until after April. They can't move into the property until this is done. They've been waiting since January.

    She's not naturally to the left, my family is fairly right wing, but when she saw Corbyn propose to renationalise Thames Water she's now ready to listen to him even though she disagrees with most of his platform.

    We've got to a stage where our "free" markets are so broken that reasonable people are being driven to unreasonable ideas. The government must act now on the broken utilities market or they will continue to lose voters like my sister and my brother in law.

    And your sister and brother in law think they will get better service from a nationalised company? Well, its a view.
    To be fair, there doesn't seem to be anything suggesting that they are getting a bad service. Just an apparently overpriced one (although govt legislating that a service should cost £X doesn't necessarily mean that £X is the true cost of delivering that service).
    Remembering the Nationalised utility monopolies and p*****g myself laughing. Remembering Corbyn proposes to run them as workers co-operatives and rolling on the floor laughing at the sweet innocence of youth.
    Whilst public sector workers are assumed to be pro-Labour, it would be interesting to know what many of them think of the idea of nationalising things like utilities. I'm not convinced support would be exactly unanimous...

    I doubt it would, but I believe the idea of nationalising utilities is also not unanimously dismissed immediately even from those trending right.

  • They voted in droves for Thatcher when she privatised them, as did consumers. Might be different for Corbyn's idea as the firm would be run entirely for the benefit of employees and unions. That would make the sh*t service of the '70s seem like paradise.

    But that was then. In the last three decades, we've had some really bad behaviour by large privatised entities, and a constant background complaints about them by consumers and the left.

    A problem is that whilst the left have had campaigns going on for years against the privatised utilities, the utilities themselves have not been robust enough in saying why the current system is better for the consumer. Add in the scandals, and the public's mood may well have changed.
    Water was privatised in 1989. The voters didn't change their mind in 1992 or 1997 or 2001 or 2005 or 2010 or 2015 or 2017. Next time it might be different. Might.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    He successfully applied for a British passport in the 1970s but it was stolen in the 1990s. When he tried to reapply in 2006 the application was rejected because his surname is not on his birth certificate and officials could find no record of the earlier passport.

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/30/antiguan-who-has-lived-59-years-in-britain-told-he-is-in-uk-illegally

    Hmmmm....
  • viewcodeviewcode Posts: 18,232



    At least the trade deficit fell in 2017 to its lowest as a percentage of GDP since 1998.

    https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/nationalaccounts/balanceofpayments/timeseries/d28l/pnbp

    In the previous thread you (rightly) excoriated Gordon Brown for a) using an expanding GDP to disguise growing public spending, and b) considering government expenditure to be a good.

    In the post above you use an expanding economy to present a trade deficit as having fallen ("at least the trade deficit fell in 2017 to its lowest as a percentage of GDP since 1998")

    In previous posts @Casino_Royale has presented government expenditure as "investment".

    I think from these and similar posts that the post-Brexit Conservative party will coalesce around an economic position that - say - Milliband would not find objectionable. We seem to be hellbent on repeating the mistakes of previous decades.

  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    What was it that jezza was saying about tackling antisemites....

    Labour quietly reinstated at least six councillors who posted anti-Semitic messages online, analysis shows, as a party insider told The Telegraph the complaints process is being manipulated by political factions.
  • RoyalBlueRoyalBlue Posts: 3,223
    kle4 said:

    alex. said:

    alex. said:

    DavidL said:

    MaxPB said:

    We're going to do very poorly in May in London.

    Here's a concrete example of where Corbyn is winning the argument.

    My sister recently had her house done and she needed some work done on the outside water pipe, the only provider is Thames water, they quoted £5.5k for the work. She obviously didn't want to pay, so she asked someone who would know what it should cost. They said there is currently a regulation change coming in that will force Thames water to charge less for what she needs done, she told Thames water and they confirmed that if she waits until April the price will drop to just over £1.5k for the same water issue fix. They refused to budge on the price until after April. They can't move into the property until this is done. They've been waiting since January.

    She's not naturally to the left, my family is fairly right wing, but when she saw Corbyn propose to renationalise Thames Water she's now ready to listen to him even though she disagrees with most of his platform.

    We've got to a stage where our "free" markets are so broken that reasonable people are being driven to unreasonable ideas. The government must act now on the broken utilities market or they will continue to lose voters like my sister and my brother in law.

    And your sister and brother in law think they will get better service from a nationalised company? Well, its a view.
    To be fair, there doesn't seem to be anything suggesting that they are getting a bad service. Just an apparently overpriced one (although govt legislating that a service should cost £X doesn't necessarily mean that £X is the true cost of delivering that service).
    Remembering the Nationalised utility monopolies and p*****g myself laughing. Remembering Corbyn proposes to run them as workers co-operatives and rolling on the floor laughing at the sweet innocence of youth.
    Whilst public sector workers are assumed to be pro-Labour, it would be interesting to know what many of them think of the idea of nationalising things like utilities. I'm not convinced support would be exactly unanimous...

    I doubt it would, but I believe the idea of nationalising utilities is also not unanimously dismissed immediately even from those trending right.
    There are overwhelming majorities for renationalising utilities.

    https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/business/2017/oct/01/jeremy-corbyn-nationalisation-plans-voters-tired-free-markets

    I don’t see good arguments for water, the electrical or gas grids or the railways to be in private ownership.
  • brendan16brendan16 Posts: 2,315
    edited March 2018

    He successfully applied for a British passport in the 1970s but it was stolen in the 1990s. When he tried to reapply in 2006 the application was rejected because his surname is not on his birth certificate and officials could find no record of the earlier passport.

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/30/antiguan-who-has-lived-59-years-in-britain-told-he-is-in-uk-illegally

    Hmmmm....


    A case of keeping your passport and other records up to date when you get a second nationality.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    edb said:

    Sandpit said:


    ISTR stories in the ‘80s about British Airways getting a call from No 11 asking them to delay delivery of 747s by a month or two, because at $300m each they were having a serious effect on the trade figures - figures which you correctly point out used to lead the news on the day they were released. I have no idea why they stopped reporting them, it’s unlike the media in general to shy away from bad news for the government.

    Haven't you just given a great example why? What could be more ridiculous than delaying receipt of a 747 to fix a political number? Or caring about a number that is massaged in this way?
    Absolutely, that’s the sort of crap that happens when services are nationalised. BA’s priority should be to get their new planes in the sky earning money, not having to care about what the government of the day thought about the balance of payments numbers.

    There’s been massive investment in water (and rail, and telecoms...) since privatisation, mainly because water infrastructure isn’t competing with healthcare and education for the attention of the Chancellor. The solution to crap service by water companies is allowing more competition, not by entrenching monopoly positions further.
  • another_richardanother_richard Posts: 24,967
    viewcode said:



    At least the trade deficit fell in 2017 to its lowest as a percentage of GDP since 1998.

    https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/nationalaccounts/balanceofpayments/timeseries/d28l/pnbp

    In the previous thread you (rightly) excoriated Gordon Brown for a) using an expanding GDP to disguise growing public spending, and b) considering government expenditure to be a good.

    In the post above you use an expanding economy to present a trade deficit as having fallen ("at least the trade deficit fell in 2017 to its lowest as a percentage of GDP since 1998")

    In previous posts @Casino_Royale has presented government expenditure as "investment".

    I think from these and similar posts that the post-Brexit Conservative party will coalesce around an economic position that - say - Milliband would not find objectionable. We seem to be hellbent on repeating the mistakes of previous decades.

    The trade deficit did fall though in 2017 be nearly a third from 2016 in actual money.

    By measuring the trade deficit as a percentage of GDP you allow easier comparison with previous years which would otherwise be rendered increasing ridiculous by the cumulative effects of economic growth and inflation.
  • CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,074
    Sandpit said:

    Jeremy Corbyn has said Labour must "do better" as a row continues over how the party deals with hostility to Jews.

    In a Passover message, he said it was easy to denounce anti-Semitism abroad but sometimes harder to see it closer to home.

    It came as Jewish Labour peer Lord Winston said Mr Corbyn had "encouraged and endorsed" anti-Semites.

    Speaking to the BBC, a Labour Party spokeswoman said the letter was not being ignored but that suspending Christine Shawcroft would not be a personal decision for Jeremy Corbyn as there were formal processes for such matters.

    http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-43597132

    He is still failing to get the right tone. It is not about Labour doing better. It is about Corbyn accepting some personal responsibility for the tonal shift in Labour politics that has allowed this situation to develop.

    Most people accept that the Labour movement is not stuffed with anti-semites - but they also see that Corbyn's actions/inactions in this area are setting a tone which has allowed it to become more openly expressed.

    Unless and until Corbyn accepts that he has some personal responsibility for this, it won't go away.
    How many statements is that he’s made now, and he’s still getting the tone wrong - because he just doesn’t understand the problem and doesn’t get why there’s a fuss being made.
    Corbyn is part of the problem. When Lord Levy says that Corbyn is “a good man” and that he “encourages and supports anti-semites” there is a dissonance there which is painful to see. Good men don’t encourage and support anti-semites. Corbyn can never be part of the solution, unless he fundamentally changes his world view. And what are the chances of that?
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 38,517
    RoyalBlue said:


    There are overwhelming majorities for renationalising utilities.

    https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/business/2017/oct/01/jeremy-corbyn-nationalisation-plans-voters-tired-free-markets

    I don’t see good arguments for water, the electrical or gas grids or the railways to be in private ownership.

    Your post shows the issue with your thinking.

    The intelligent way to look at this issue is to look at the problems in an industry, and to work out how to fix them - if necessary - without breaking the things they are doing right (if anything). That might be 'a change in ownership structure', a reorganisation, etc, etc.

    Instead, it seems in your mind it is a case of rationalising renationalisation. You ask above for good arguments why they should be in private ownership, as if their natural realm is in public ownership.

    That's arse about face. Changing ownership structures does not magically fix problems.

    We see this with the railways: the answer is apparently renationalisation, and it therefore becomes a case of setting the question so the right answer is reached. In the process, many of the arguments they make are rather (ahem) rubbish.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited March 2018
    brendan16 said:

    He successfully applied for a British passport in the 1970s but it was stolen in the 1990s. When he tried to reapply in 2006 the application was rejected because his surname is not on his birth certificate and officials could find no record of the earlier passport.

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/30/antiguan-who-has-lived-59-years-in-britain-told-he-is-in-uk-illegally

    Hmmmm....


    A case of keeping your passport and other records up to date when you get a second nationality.
    Something doesn't smell right to me...What are the chances that after having their passport stolen doesn't do anything about it for 15 years, has no proof of a previous application and the state just happens to have lost all record of you. A very unlucky man.
  • RobDRobD Posts: 58,941

    brendan16 said:

    He successfully applied for a British passport in the 1970s but it was stolen in the 1990s. When he tried to reapply in 2006 the application was rejected because his surname is not on his birth certificate and officials could find no record of the earlier passport.

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/30/antiguan-who-has-lived-59-years-in-britain-told-he-is-in-uk-illegally

    Hmmmm....


    A case of keeping your passport and other records up to date when you get a second nationality.
    Something doesn't smell right to me...What are the chances that after having their passport stolen doesn't do anything about it for 15 years, has no proof of a previous application and the state just happens to have lost all record of you. A very unlucky man.
    But sometimes things do happen. I find it hard to believe he’s making it up, especially as he has owns a home and has an extended family in the UK.
  • oxfordsimonoxfordsimon Posts: 5,831

    He successfully applied for a British passport in the 1970s but it was stolen in the 1990s. When he tried to reapply in 2006 the application was rejected because his surname is not on his birth certificate and officials could find no record of the earlier passport.

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/30/antiguan-who-has-lived-59-years-in-britain-told-he-is-in-uk-illegally

    Hmmmm....

    There is zero evidence of discrimination of any sort.

    And Abbott is wrong to describe him as a 'law-abiding British citizen' - as, at this stage, his status is uncertain. He is certainly a long-time resident - but until the situation is resolved, he is, unfortunately, of uncertain status.

    It doesn't look like he has done anything wrong. But it is surely right that the Home Office follows proper procedures to examine all similar cases in an even-handed way.

    Not everything is about race - unless you are Diane Abbott.

    Though she only cares about certain races.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited March 2018
    RobD said:

    brendan16 said:

    He successfully applied for a British passport in the 1970s but it was stolen in the 1990s. When he tried to reapply in 2006 the application was rejected because his surname is not on his birth certificate and officials could find no record of the earlier passport.

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/30/antiguan-who-has-lived-59-years-in-britain-told-he-is-in-uk-illegally

    Hmmmm....


    A case of keeping your passport and other records up to date when you get a second nationality.
    Something doesn't smell right to me...What are the chances that after having their passport stolen doesn't do anything about it for 15 years, has no proof of a previous application and the state just happens to have lost all record of you. A very unlucky man.
    But sometimes things do happen. I find it hard to believe he’s making it up, especially as he has owns a home and has an extended family in the UK.
    I am not sure there are qualifiers that one is here fully legally.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,042
    Cyclefree said:

    Sandpit said:

    Jeremy Corbyn has said Labour must "do better" as a row continues over how the party deals with hostility to Jews.

    In a Passover message, he said it was easy to denounce anti-Semitism abroad but sometimes harder to see it closer to home.

    It came as Jewish Labour peer Lord Winston said Mr Corbyn had "encouraged and endorsed" anti-Semites.

    Speaking to the BBC, a Labour Party spokeswoman said the letter was not being ignored but that suspending Christine Shawcroft would not be a personal decision for Jeremy Corbyn as there were formal processes for such matters.

    http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-43597132

    He is still failing to get the right tone. It is not about Labour doing better. It is about Corbyn accepting some personal responsibility for the tonal shift in Labour politics that has allowed this situation to develop.

    Most people accept that the Labour movement is not stuffed with anti-semites - but they also see that Corbyn's actions/inactions in this area are setting a tone which has allowed it to become more openly expressed.

    Unless and until Corbyn accepts that he has some personal responsibility for this, it won't go away.
    How many statements is that he’s made now, and he’s still getting the tone wrong - because he just doesn’t understand the problem and doesn’t get why there’s a fuss being made.
    Corbyn is part of the problem. When Lord Levy says that Corbyn is “a good man” and that he “encourages and supports anti-semites” there is a dissonance there which is painful to see. Good men don’t encourage and support anti-semites. Corbyn can never be part of the solution, unless he fundamentally changes his world view. And what are the chances of that?
    Well, even if Corbyn is a "good man", all it takes, as the old saying goes, for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614

    brendan16 said:

    He successfully applied for a British passport in the 1970s but it was stolen in the 1990s. When he tried to reapply in 2006 the application was rejected because his surname is not on his birth certificate and officials could find no record of the earlier passport.

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/30/antiguan-who-has-lived-59-years-in-britain-told-he-is-in-uk-illegally

    Hmmmm....


    A case of keeping your passport and other records up to date when you get a second nationality.
    Something doesn't smell right to me...What are the chances that after having their passport stolen doesn't do anything about it for 15 years, has no proof of a previous application and the state just happens to have lost all record of you. A very unlucky man.
    The Guardian runs a lot of these stories, and in nearly every case there turns out to be a key detail missing that turns it on its head.

    Which is not to say the Home Office don’t mess up, they do, and hopefully they’re learned from their previous mistakes sending nasty letters in error.
  • viewcodeviewcode Posts: 18,232

    By measuring the trade deficit as a percentage of GDP you allow easier comparison with previous years which would otherwise be rendered increasing ridiculous by the cumulative effects of economic growth and inflation.

    True, but I think relative measures in isolation are incomplete: one should also include absolute measures. Two examples that immediately spring to mind are house prices and changes in party vote shares.

  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,400
    RoyalBlue said:



    There are overwhelming majorities for renationalising utilities.

    https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/business/2017/oct/01/jeremy-corbyn-nationalisation-plans-voters-tired-free-markets

    I don’t see good arguments for water, the electrical or gas grids or the railways to be in private ownership.

    It may be simplistic, or even just flat out wrong, but most people I know, and I have sympathy with this, is that we get shit service from the companies for ever more cost (and if that cost were entirely about investing in the future they would not be increasing profits), in which case even if the service is still shit when nationalised, at least it is under some kind of control.

    As I say, perhaps totally wrong to think that, but most people I know go that way.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited March 2018
    Sandpit said:

    brendan16 said:

    He successfully applied for a British passport in the 1970s but it was stolen in the 1990s. When he tried to reapply in 2006 the application was rejected because his surname is not on his birth certificate and officials could find no record of the earlier passport.

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/30/antiguan-who-has-lived-59-years-in-britain-told-he-is-in-uk-illegally

    Hmmmm....


    A case of keeping your passport and other records up to date when you get a second nationality.
    Something doesn't smell right to me...What are the chances that after having their passport stolen doesn't do anything about it for 15 years, has no proof of a previous application and the state just happens to have lost all record of you. A very unlucky man.
    The Guardian runs a lot of these stories, and in nearly every case there turns out to be a key detail missing that turns it on its head.

    Which is not to say the Home Office don’t mess up, they do, and hopefully they’re learned from their previous mistakes sending nasty letters in error.
    There is another odd detail of the timeline...in the report an official is quoted as stating about the guy,

    "who has “had no status since 2005”.

    Then just total coincidence he applies for a passport in 2006 claiming his passport was stolen 15 years prior but he has no proof and there is no record.
  • Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 60,933
    Utterly OT, but this parody edit of the Peterson/Newman interview is really rather good:
    https://twitter.com/LaloDagach/status/971448954427727872
  • AnneJGPAnneJGP Posts: 2,869
    kle4 said:

    RoyalBlue said:



    There are overwhelming majorities for renationalising utilities.

    https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/business/2017/oct/01/jeremy-corbyn-nationalisation-plans-voters-tired-free-markets

    I don’t see good arguments for water, the electrical or gas grids or the railways to be in private ownership.

    It may be simplistic, or even just flat out wrong, but most people I know, and I have sympathy with this, is that we get shit service from the companies for ever more cost (and if that cost were entirely about investing in the future they would not be increasing profits), in which case even if the service is still shit when nationalised, at least it is under some kind of control.

    As I say, perhaps totally wrong to think that, but most people I know go that way.
    If Mr Corbyn is able to form a government and puts these proposals into practice, I shall be very interested to see how renationalisation works out.

    The population nowadays is very much more demanding than it was back in the 70s & 80s. That is bound to have an impact on suppliers, even if they were intending to revert to putting the customer last.

    It would be an interesting experiment to see how even full-blown communism works out with a sophisticated and demanding population. For example, with the proliferation of social media channels, there is simply no chance of a government controlling the news channels.

    Good evening, everyone.

    @AlastairMeeks: many thanks for an interesting article on the previous thread.
  • edbedb Posts: 65

    Instead, it seems in your mind it is a case of rationalising renationalisation. You ask above for good arguments why they should be in private ownership, as if their natural realm is in public ownership.

    Not sure about ownership but most of these things are public goods that require national coordination, especially railways. For water supply, most aspects of rail, bt openreach, and many aspects of electrical + gas, the current state is that overly fragmented private firms are managing decline by cost cutting and shirking on their commitments to improve things while a toothless regulator looks the other way.
    I totally sympathise with the overly simplistic view that things can't get much worse.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 38,517
    kle4 said:

    RoyalBlue said:



    There are overwhelming majorities for renationalising utilities.

    https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/business/2017/oct/01/jeremy-corbyn-nationalisation-plans-voters-tired-free-markets

    I don’t see good arguments for water, the electrical or gas grids or the railways to be in private ownership.

    It may be simplistic, or even just flat out wrong, but most people I know, and I have sympathy with this, is that we get shit service from the companies for ever more cost (and if that cost were entirely about investing in the future they would not be increasing profits), in which case even if the service is still shit when nationalised, at least it is under some kind of control.

    As I say, perhaps totally wrong to think that, but most people I know go that way.
    Indeed.

    In the case of the railways, AIUI much of the increasing price is due to the requirement of government to put more of the fare burden on the passenger rather than the general taxpayer. This has been the policy of every government since Major, and has been fairly successful even if you consider the massive amounts spent on infrastructure enhancements required to cope with the increasing number of passengers (*)

    ISTR the Train Operating Companies only make 3-4% profit (though the figures are complex). That would be soaked up in one year's fare freeze. What I foresee a future government doing with the renationalised utilities is cheating: reducing fees by putting the money onto general taxation rather than the consumer. Which is good for short-term feel-good, but terrible for the economy in the medium and long-term.

    (*) Due to the success of privatisation . ;)
  • oxfordsimonoxfordsimon Posts: 5,831
    AnneJGP said:

    kle4 said:

    RoyalBlue said:



    There are overwhelming majorities for renationalising utilities.

    https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/business/2017/oct/01/jeremy-corbyn-nationalisation-plans-voters-tired-free-markets

    I don’t see good arguments for water, the electrical or gas grids or the railways to be in private ownership.

    It may be simplistic, or even just flat out wrong, but most people I know, and I have sympathy with this, is that we get shit service from the companies for ever more cost (and if that cost were entirely about investing in the future they would not be increasing profits), in which case even if the service is still shit when nationalised, at least it is under some kind of control.

    As I say, perhaps totally wrong to think that, but most people I know go that way.
    If Mr Corbyn is able to form a government and puts these proposals into practice, I shall be very interested to see how renationalisation works out.

    The population nowadays is very much more demanding than it was back in the 70s & 80s. That is bound to have an impact on suppliers, even if they were intending to revert to putting the customer last.

    It would be an interesting experiment to see how even full-blown communism works out with a sophisticated and demanding population. For example, with the proliferation of social media channels, there is simply no chance of a government controlling the news channels.

    Good evening, everyone.

    @AlastairMeeks: many thanks for an interesting article on the previous thread.
    The problem with Labour's 'policy' regarding renationalisation is about how they claim it will happen at zero cost. The sums don't add up - and the whole thing is likely to be challenged through the courts.

    This will place those industries in a perilous position - damaging the customers of those industries. Namely - us, the public.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,771
    edited March 2018
    Sandpit said:

    DavidL said:

    Posted without comment from the ONS GDP revisals yesterday:

    "Construction output was estimated to have decreased by 0.1% in the fourth quarter of 2017, revised upwards from negative 0.7% in the second estimate of GDP.

    With the inclusion of VAT turnover data, there have been upward revisions to construction in Quarter 1, Quarter 2 and Quarter 3 2017. This has resulted in the negative growth reported for Quarter 3 2017 in the second estimate of GDP now showing positive growth of 0.4%.

    The annual growth in 2017 of 5.7% is revised upwards from the 5.1% growth reported in the second estimate of GDP and is stronger than the 3.9% growth seen in 2016. This strength reflects strong growth in construction output in late 2016 and the first quarter of 2017."

    I am very surprised, however, that the BoP changes did not bring growth for Q4 back up to 0.5. It seems that there were offsetting falls in business services. Disappointing, particularly when business investment is now estimated to have grown by 2.4% last year.

    At least the trade deficit fell in 2017 to its lowest as a percentage of GDP since 1998.

    https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/nationalaccounts/balanceofpayments/timeseries/d28l/pnbp

    Looking at those continuous heavy trade deficits of the 2000s it should have been obvious that something wasn't quite right with the UK economy.

    It wasn't that long before the 2000s that the trade data would be a major news item and bad figures worthy of political argument.
    ISTR stories in the ‘80s about British Airways getting a call from No 11 asking them to delay delivery of 747s by a month or two, because at $300m each they were having a serious effect on the trade figures - figures which you correctly point out used to lead the news on the day they were released. I have no idea why they stopped reporting them, it’s unlike the media in general to shy away from bad news for the government.
    The slight problem the UK has now compared to 20 or 30 years ago is that we have gone from a large net creditor to the world, where they owed us money, to a large net debtor. This is why the current account (as a percentage of GDP) in 2017 was still the fourth worst in the post-World War 2 period.

    Back in the 1980s, because we had flows into the UK from the assets we held abroad, we could run a 1-1.25% trade deficit, and still have a flat current account. Now, we need to run a 1% trade surplus to achieve the same effect. (It is worth noting that weakness in sterling does ameliorate this somewhat. If sterling goes down, then the value of dividends, rent, etc, from abroad increases.)
  • edbedb Posts: 65
    AnneJGP said:


    If Mr Corbyn is able to form a government and puts these proposals into practice, I shall be very interested to see how renationalisation works out.

    The population nowadays is very much more demanding than it was back in the 70s & 80s. That is bound to have an impact on suppliers, even if they were intending to revert to putting the customer last.

    It would be an interesting experiment to see how even full-blown communism works out with a sophisticated and demanding population. For example, with the proliferation of social media channels, there is simply no chance of a government controlling the news channels.

    Totally agree in a perverse way.
    I suspect the result would be closer to the modern council where a threadbare force of administrative drones outsources absolutely everything to serco and their ilk.
    Ultimately the set of people delivering these services on the front line is literally the same, it's mostly a question of incentives/motivation.
  • Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 60,933
    Good evening, Miss JGP.
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 39,748
    RobD said:

    brendan16 said:

    He successfully applied for a British passport in the 1970s but it was stolen in the 1990s. When he tried to reapply in 2006 the application was rejected because his surname is not on his birth certificate and officials could find no record of the earlier passport.

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/30/antiguan-who-has-lived-59-years-in-britain-told-he-is-in-uk-illegally

    Hmmmm....


    A case of keeping your passport and other records up to date when you get a second nationality.
    Something doesn't smell right to me...What are the chances that after having their passport stolen doesn't do anything about it for 15 years, has no proof of a previous application and the state just happens to have lost all record of you. A very unlucky man.
    But sometimes things do happen. I find it hard to believe he’s making it up, especially as he has owns a home and has an extended family in the UK.
    Careful, your PB Tory status can be withdrawn at any time.
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,765
    Cyclefree said:

    Sandpit said:

    Jeremy Corbyn has said Labour must "do better" as a row continues over how the party deals with hostility to Jews.

    In a Passover message, he said it was easy to denounce anti-Semitism abroad but sometimes harder to see it closer to home.

    It came as Jewish Labour peer Lord Winston said Mr Corbyn had "encouraged and endorsed" anti-Semites.

    Speaking to the BBC, a Labour Party spokeswoman said the letter was not being ignored but that suspending Christine Shawcroft would not be a personal decision for Jeremy Corbyn as there were formal processes for such matters.

    http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-43597132

    He is still failing to get the right tone. It is not about Labour doing better. It is about Corbyn accepting some personal responsibility for the tonal shift in Labour politics that has allowed this situation to develop.

    Most people accept that the Labour movement is not stuffed with anti-semites - but they also see that Corbyn's actions/inactions in this area are setting a tone which has allowed it to become more openly expressed.

    Unless and until Corbyn accepts that he has some personal responsibility for this, it won't go away.
    How many statements is that he’s made now, and he’s still getting the tone wrong - because he just doesn’t understand the problem and doesn’t get why there’s a fuss being made.
    Corbyn is part of the problem. When Lord Levy says that Corbyn is “a good man” and that he “encourages and supports anti-semites” there is a dissonance there which is painful to see. Good men don’t encourage and support anti-semites. Corbyn can never be part of the solution, unless he fundamentally changes his world view. And what are the chances of that?
    I see Corbyn has now lost the support of Tony Greenstein, who castigated him for failing to stand up to the "Zionists."
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 38,517
    edb said:

    Instead, it seems in your mind it is a case of rationalising renationalisation. You ask above for good arguments why they should be in private ownership, as if their natural realm is in public ownership.

    Not sure about ownership but most of these things are public goods that require national coordination, especially railways. For water supply, most aspects of rail, bt openreach, and many aspects of electrical + gas, the current state is that overly fragmented private firms are managing decline by cost cutting and shirking on their commitments to improve things while a toothless regulator looks the other way.
    I totally sympathise with the overly simplistic view that things can't get much worse.
    "I totally sympathise with the overly simplistic view that things can't get much worse."

    Wow. If you want a clue, look at a country that Corbyn has waxed lyrical about in the past (although for some strange reason not so much in the last couple of years).

    Venezuela.

    Things can get much, much worse.
  • another_richardanother_richard Posts: 24,967
    rcs1000 said:

    Sandpit said:


    At least the trade deficit fell in 2017 to its lowest as a percentage of GDP since 1998.

    https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/nationalaccounts/balanceofpayments/timeseries/d28l/pnbp

    Looking at those continuous heavy trade deficits of the 2000s it should have been obvious that something wasn't quite right with the UK economy.

    It wasn't that long before the 2000s that the trade data would be a major news item and bad figures worthy of political argument.

    ISTR stories in the ‘80s about British Airways getting a call from No 11 asking them to delay delivery of 747s by a month or two, because at $300m each they were having a serious effect on the trade figures - figures which you correctly point out used to lead the news on the day they were released. I have no idea why they stopped reporting them, it’s unlike the media in general to shy away from bad news for the government.
    The slight problem the UK has now compared to 20 or 30 years ago is that we have gone from a large net creditor to the world, where they owed us money, to a large net debtor. This is why the current account (as a percentage of GDP) in 2017 was still the fourth worst in the post-World War 2 period.

    Back in the 1980s, because we had flows into the UK from the assets we held abroad, we could run a 1-1.25% trade deficit, and still have a flat current account. Now, we need to run a 1% trade surplus to achieve the same effect. (It is worth noting that weakness in sterling does ameliorate this somewhat. If sterling goes down, then the value of dividends, rent, etc, from abroad increases.)
    The thought occurred that even if trade, tourism and investment income all balanced out to zero wouldn't the UK still have a balance of payments deficit of over 1% because of government overseas aid spending alone.
  • AndyJSAndyJS Posts: 29,395
    Mehdi Hasan in the New Statesman:

    "The sorry truth is that the virus of anti-Semitism has infected the British Muslim community

    It's a shameful fact that Muslims are not only the victims of racial and religious prejudice but purveyors of it, too."


    https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2013/03/sorry-truth-virus-anti-semitism-has-infected-british-muslim-community
This discussion has been closed.