There was a discussion last night on Twitter about the fact that we seem to be seeing so few polls at the moment and this is felt more because so much been happening and those who follow the numbers want to get a sense of whether things are having an impact.
Comments
Where does Labour find these people?
With local elections on May 3rd we should get a few more this month too
(To steal from Dorothy Parker, nee Rothschild)
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2018/04/sadiq-khan-is-a-lousy-london-mayor-why-hasnt-anyone-noticed/
https://twitter.com/PaulKilby87/status/981436276737019905?s=19
https://twitter.com/hemantmehta/status/848984468484313089
As a former SNP MP observes
https://twitter.com/MrJohnNicolson/status/982166689436413952
Nathan Poe wrote:
Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is utterly impossible to parody a Creationist in such a way that someone won't mistake for the genuine article.
When the Leader of the Opposition appears to have strange eyesight problems when it comes to anti-Semitism and is happier snuggling up to the bloody paws of Russian bears than believing the authorities of his own country, it's no surprise some of his followers have views that border on deranged.
"The only good poll is a deed poll" - as someone once said.
I could change my name to Septimus Stodge and promote myself as a Dickensian character.
On topic, we're going to have a fairly large poll to digest in four weeks time so I don't quite see the need to have a lot of polls now. In any case, those who want to will rubbish the local election results as being irrelevant and not indicative and in any case most people seem to think we're four years away from a GE so is it worth getting worried about ?
Nominations will be out on Monday so we can see who is running where.
Just imagine the extra website traffic I could generate on my threads if I did some clickbait headlines and trolling.
https://twitter.com/Mendelpol/status/982179499327479808
The notion of individuals trawling through Twitter to pick up any nuance of inconsistency in someone's tweets seems ludicrous but I suppose it's today's version of political dirty tricks.
Is consistency the only virtue, to hold the same view unchanging for years ? Is this why people admire JRM because he's held the same opinion since 1832 ?
I don't know - I've changed my mind and contradicted myself many times. Does that make me a bad person ? Perhaps.
I've been thinking about death a lot recently. It's not healthy but it's the one thing that unites Conservatives, Liberals, Socialists, Nationalists, Anarchists, Greens, Marxists et al.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/43661258
Those expecting Jeremy Corbyn to comport himself at the next general election with all the dignity, competence, and elan of a man who has just accidentally inserted his penis and scrotum into a hornets’ nest might be surprised at just how well Corbyn does at the next general election, in the past year nobody has become rich by underestimating Jeremy Corbyn.
http://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2016/08/30/in-praise-of-jeremy-corbyn/
Then a few weeks later I wrote
During PMQs, Jeremy Corbyn often displays the anguish of a man with a bumblebee trapped under his foreskin,
http://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2016/09/07/if-corbyn-wants-to-win-the-confidence-of-labour-mps-he-needs-to-improve-his-performance-in-the-commons/
Then someone said I had an unhealthy obsession with Corbyn's todger, so I stopped.
(Can we take the Diane Abbott jokes as read and move straight on, please?)
https://www.motorsportweek.com/news/id/17572
As for consistency, the Emerson and Whitman quotes spring to mind.
https://twitter.com/Mendelpol/status/982183843183538176
Apparently the motion said this:
"when people see inequality, ecological disaster and war alongside the accumulation of unprecedented wealth, in the private hands of a few, it is reasonable that they seek out explanations".
I have to say Bristol Labour don't come out of this looking well.
But then in my experience they're a bunch of useless, stuck up, rude, arrogant and supremely stupid Tristrams who are unfit to run a village post office anyway.
I'd quite forgotten.
I imagine this is pretty much a continuation of that, as with most things in Labour it is seen through the factions. Though I imagine a lot changed their votes because of what it was about. If it had been a different issue which wasn't at risk of being interpreted as a vote for anti-semitism it would have gone the other way.
It's incredibly poor news management.
Don't you think - leaving aside Corbyn's own role and views, whatever they are, for the moment - that it looks bad for the party when a Labour MP is being barracked, threatened with deselection and allegedly is threatening to resign, because she attended a demonstration against racism?
I have to say, whatever the ins and outs of the overall affair, if she does resign or otherwise vacates her seat I think that will be a disaster for Labour.
The idea of them managing things like, oh, say the economy or foreign policy, well... A cold sweat ensues....
Only one fully practicing Jew has ever led a major political party and that is Michael Howard. Samuel was a part-practicing Jew. Miliband was an atheist and Disraeli was officially at least an Anglican.
I suppose that's the nuance between hypocrisy and opportunism.
I've never got on with the notion of the "wisdom of the crowd" and I've always considered a majority is simply the largest number of people wrong about any given subject at any given time.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/bahrain-announces-huge-shale-oil-discovery-off-its-coast-2018-04-05
Also the idea behind the demonstration wasn't just anti racism, otherwise it wouldn't have been such a political event, as obviously we all agree racism is bad. The idea was anti racism and Corbyn is a problem (or at least part of a problem), which bit do you think the Corbyn supporters might have had a problem with?
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/apr/04/jeremy-corbyn-jewish-leaders-antisemitism-talks-labour
Note in the Board of Deputies letter: "Ultimately the most important thing going forward will be action and not words." This is code for: they want a scalp - probably Livingstone permanently expelled from the party. This is not over.
Looking at the last polls, the likes of ICM and ComRes gave the Conservatives double figure leads while the final lead was just 2.5%. The problem seemed to be the Labour vote sharw which ended at 41% - not the 33-35% predicted by pollsters.
Ironically if most of the pollsters had used their 2015 methodologies in June 2017 they'd have got the election spot on or thereabouts.
I’ve said it over and over. We won’t run out of the stuff for generations. There will reach a point where the cost to extract and sell is greater than the alternatives. But nowhere near it yet. Let’s get drilling in Lancashire.
Sorry wasn't intentional skipping of the question. The problem is I don't accept the premise, if she gets deselected, she likely would have been deselected regardless of the protest. Also I don't accept the idea the protest was just anti racism, clearly part of it was to do with Corbyn and his leadership of the Labour party. Edit: Obviously with the idea being a link between racism and Corbyn's leadership in some way.
If she got deselected (or any of the other things) purely for going on this protest that would be wrong even if the protest wasn't just anti racism but obviously even more so if it was.
@Ishmael_Z
If you could point to where I said that?
"about as much as Russia’s entire oil reserve"!
It does significantly change the strategic dynamics of the region (and possibly the global oil market).
https://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2018/04/googles-one-time-chief-technology-advocate-on-making-facebook-likable/557378/
So, how might FB fix itself? What might government regulators seek? What could make FaceBook likeable? It is very simple. There are just two choices:
a. FB stays in its send-your-PII-to-their-customers business, and then must be regulated and the customers validated precisely as AXCIOM and EXPERIAN in the credit world or doctors and hospitals in the HIPPA healthcare world; or,
b. FB joins Google and ALL OTHER WEB ADVERTISERS in keeping PII private, never letting it out, and anonymously connecting advertisers with its users for their mutual benefit.
I don't get a vote, but I like (b) and see that as the right path for civil society. There is no way that choice (a) is not a loathsome and destructive force in all things—in my personal opinion it seems that making people's pillow-talk into a marketing weapon is indeed a form of evil.
This is why I never use Facebook…
I’m still predicting that for every seat they win in London in the locals, Labour are going to lose two seats elsewhere in the country.
Bottom line, our choice is between multilateralism and unilateral conformity. We rejected the first in the referendum and.so are stuck with the second. I wouldn't rule going back to multilateralism as it gives us more of what we want. It depends on how painful we find the conformity. Breaking the conformity would lead to a crisis.