The PB Guide to Polling Methodologies
March 16th, 2009
When can you make valid historical poll comparisons?
Almost everyday, it seems, someone on a thread or a journalist will seek to make polling comparisons with the 1990s and each time it happens myself and others will try to explain which this is not as easy as it appears.
For there has been such a revolution in the UK polling industry since the aftermath of the 1992 general election that you have to be very careful when you point to things that happened in the past as an explanation of what is happening at the moment.
Just look at the opening polls of the 1997 general election campaign and compare them with the result. This was the era of real Labour over-stating and, as the numbers show, something was seriously wrong.
Since then Harris and Gallup have virtually left UK voting intention polling. MORI has changed drastically and only ICM from that era is still polling in the same way. All of this is why I constantly argue that the only valid comparisons can be back to the point that the pollster introduced its current methodology.
So to make it clear when historical polling changes have happened I have produced the above simple guide. It should be noted that the process of change has continued and two of the five main firms that will be carrying out surveys in the run up to the next UK general election have made big alterations in the past two years.
Valid comparisons with ICM are possible from the mid-1990s; with YouGov and Populus since their inception but for ComRes and Ipsos-MORI you cannot go back beyond March 2007 and June 2008 respectively.
The big problem in the old days was that it appeared impossible to find samples that were politically balanced. One of the elements that has since been identified is that for one reason or another many more public sector workers seem to take part in telephone polls compared to their numbers in the population at large. This group tends to have a very different political outlook from the rest of the electorate.
The best quick guide to historical ICM polls is this table showing Guardian surveys going right back until 1984.
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First!
Second again?
It won’t take long for someone to make the same comparison again.
Obviously Cameron is doomed at the next GE. In 1995, Labour was on 60% and the Conservatives were on 19%.
3./4. Was that wait long enough?
5-Yes! One minute! I never waited so long. I posted something for you in the last thread.
The -13 lead on polling day should be +13, Mike.
Interesting that the LibDem figures were very skew-whiff, as well..
Are these various methodologies accurate today? Are the Tories really only 10 points in front? Maybe I am biased because I have such a low opinion of Labour - but I’m of the opinion that polls still significantly understate the real likely level of the Conservative vote that would materialise if there were to be an election tomorrow.
7. except for ICM who seemed to do well…
re 7 & 9. Thanks Rod - I’ve amended the table.
This is one of the reasons why ICM continues to be my favourite pollster. The firm has the form
Good night everyone.
There are a couple of things that — rightly or wrongly — concern me about current polls.
First is that phone pollsters’ final digit randomisation does not work (ie does not produce a balanced sample) for reasons previously discussed so that polls must be heavily weighted, with headline results dependent on the weights and on changes to the weights.
Second is that Yougov’s great strength — its panel — may become a weakness if the online community starts to behave differently from the wider population. There have been signs, for instance, that online sales are holding up better than the high street. If this continues, is it a sign Yougov respondents are less affected by the recession than the electorate as a whole?
12 There have been signs, for instance, that online sales are holding up better than the high street.
Not sure I follow the logic here - isn’t this simply the continuation of a long-established trend whereby consumers are simply looking for the best deal. If anything, it could be argued that the less well-off are those who are prepared to make the more extensive search for value on the internet.
PfP @ 13 re internet shopping.
Perhaps, but for pollsters it matters not whether consumers are seeking value, or convenience, or both (and Mrs Thatcher might have argued that it is the better off who are more conscious of value: the poor are poor because they do not save, and all that).
The question is whether systematic differences are developing between online and offline communities that will affect their political behaviour.
14 OK John L, point taken.
I ought not to complain, cos I am just happy that anyone at all is commissioning Scottish voting intention polls - thank you Sunday Times Scotland - but I just wish we could get some polls from someone other than YouGov!!
I wonder what findings the ComRes methodology would come up with north of the border? Or (please, please, please) ICM, who have tons of experience as The Scotsman’s former pollster.
And I just cannot escape the niggling suspicion that the Sunday Times have commissioned a series of monthly YouGov surveys (a monthly series is far more useful/reliable than periodic ad-hoc polls), but are only publishing the ones that they can write a good headline with (ie. an anti-Scottish National Party headline). Just look at their erratic publishing dates (Sept 08, Oct 08, Jan 09, Mar 09) and the suspicion grows…
UK ‘to follow Scotland’s example’ over alcohol prices
http://news.scotsman.com/politics/UK-39to-follow-Scotland39s-example39.5073822.jp
I wonder about the number of poll respondents who are not eligible to vote because they are not on the electoral roll. There does look to be a hole at the middle of the process - I believe they are just asked to confirm they are. Do we know if these polls are ever cross-checked to see what proportion of the selected sample is indeed on the roll?
£30bn cost of paying off PFIs
“Because of bad decisions taken by the previous Labour/Liberal administration, this government and future generations are having to pay through the nose from the Scottish Parliament’s fixed budget,” the spokesman added. “The legacy of Labour PFI, and the threat of Westminster cuts to come, make the case for independence compelling.”
Mr Salmond last week hinted that PFI contracts could be brought within the scope of Freedom of Information laws following calls to extend the act by the information commissioner, Kevin Dunion, last year. “If contracts are put forward by public expense, then the public has the right to know the full financial implications of such contracts,” he told MSPs.
http://news.scotsman.com/politics/30bn-cost-of-paying-off.5073875.jp
Still wondering from the previous thread why Rod Crosby hates an “Oxfordian” accent? By this do you mean the country burr - or the braying Hooray Henry speak?
BOE warns….
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/recession/4996994/Britain-showing-signs-of-heading-towards-1930s-style-depression-says-Bank.html
17. … or not…
Brown blocks drink price rise
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article2320968.ece
A statutory minimum price would echo proposals issued this month by the Scottish government, which have met with strong resistance from retailers and the drinks industry.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0f337eb4-11b7-11de-87b1-0000779fd2ac.html
FSA to ban home ownership in London
Morrisons are selling 15 (440ml) cans of Fosters for £11, two packs (30 cans) at £16 are even cheaper - 53p per can, if you like Fosters.
I am buying for our Cricket Club Bar (ideal for Weddings, Barmitzvars, and business/training meetings at the junction of M6,M1 and A14). We will sell at £2.50 a can.
Thanks for the he,lpful overview, Mike. Could you leave it permanently up on a web page with a link on the right, so we can consult it as polls come up and remind ourselves of the quirks of each? What seems odd to me is how the hugely different techniques tend to produce results in much the same range. You’d think that IPSOS-Mori (with their 100% filter and clunky public sector adjustment) would vastly more pro-Tory results and especially poor LibDem results than YouGov (with no turnout filter at all). In fact, there’s just a few % in it.
FSA to ban home ownership, alex?
25. If the other pollsters excluding MORI indicate ‘just a few % points in it’, Labour squeaked home in 1997.
re 25. Nick - that’s a good idea which I will do.
I think Mike made the point yesterday. The Tories are doing better now than Labour did a the equivalent time pre 1997, once you have ruled out the ‘unatic fringe polling.
28.That should be *lunatic
29, quite. As I said a few threads and days ago, there was a chap who did polling for Blair on the Daily Politics last week making precisely the sort of claim Mike debunks here frequently (ie the Tories should by 73% ahead).
alex @ 24 FSA banning London homes: a radical interpretation of the text, perhaps?
More interesting is Vince Cable calling for a British version of the American Glass-Steagall Act (repealed in 1999) which separated American retail and investment banks.
18 I remember Anthony saying in during the mayoral that there were respondents indicating they were certain to vote only to tell the pollster at the end of the conversation that they were not registered.
They were clearly using the poll to express an opinion rather than a voting intent.
30 - David Laws was at it the other week, saying that there is no enthusiasm for the Conservatives because they aren’t at 60% in the polls.
Stuart Dickson @ 19. Alex Salmond is right that PFI is (or ought to be) a national scandal but it is not really clear how it helps or hinders the case for an independent Scotland.
Still, it will be interesting to see if the Scottish Parliament can shine more light on PFIs. The Conservatives have not shown much interest, perhaps because their mates in the City benefit, although Ken Clarke was an early critic back in the last Century, complaining (rightly as it turned out) that Labour was privatising the profit but nationalising the risk.
33, really?
He’s either a moron or has a subtle sense of humour.
Still, when your party’s lost 24 elections in a row I suppose you cling to what straws you can.
31 Keeping utility banks and casino banks completely disconnected would be a very good idea.
The utility banks could have an explicit government guarantee of support - but would therefore be very conservative, boring, not very profitable and with high capital adequacy ratios.
The casino banks could do WTF they want - but would be explictly uncovered in the event of collapse, not be allowed any retail customers and have severe regulation of wholesale deposits or borrowings (incl none allowed from utility banks) - so caveat emptor. An individual collapse would wipeout shareholders but create no systemic risk.
He was an investment banker.
to 33
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36. I’ve been thinking the same thing since reading about the Yank version - like a firewall.
36 - I don’t think you would be able to avoid contagion leakage in that way, and though it may not bring down retail banks the collapse of an investment bank under the model you suggest would still have devastating implications for the economy.
O/T…a scientist speaking on Radio 4 this morning stated that “the dust bowl” caused the Great Depression of the 1930’s. can anyone enlighten me please?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl
Mike, just a question.
Why have you chosen to illustrate the difference between the opinion polls and the real thing by contrasting the election result with polls that were conducted 4-6 weeks before the election? During the election campaign there will no doubt have been shifts in opinion.
Would it not make more sense to compare the final polls for each company with the election result? Or does that have the uncomfortable result of not supporting your thesis?
41 Implications for the economy yes you’re absolutely right (unless the shareholders / bondholders were foreign). For the banking system no. And that would be the whole point. The taxpayers would not be directly exposed.
45 - Maybe not, bubt exposure is exposure whether direct or indirect.
If the banking firewall is such a good idea why are the Yanks in the fix they’re in?
41 - Devastating, maybe. Terminal, no. That would be the point. We wouldn’t have runs on banks leading to panic amongst the general public/smaller savers.
The table was originally prepared to show how traditional pollsters (not ICM) were understating the Lib Dems.
During a campaign when the broadcasting rules increase the focus on the third party then the LD share always rises.
My point when I first did this was that ICM’s polling question focuses people more on what they would do in their own seats.
After I had written the Guide overnight I decided after it was published that maybe showing polling of yesteryear might reinforce the point. This particular graphic was quickly at hand so that rather than prepare a new one I used what I had in stock.
A full list of 1997 polls can be found here
http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/historical-polls/voting-intention-1992-1997
48 - I wouldn’t say that now is terminal, even the Great Depression wasn’t permanent.
Innocent Abroad @ 47 If the banking firewall is such a good idea why are the Yanks in the fix they’re in?
The Glass-Steagall Act was repealed.
46 I suppose a key issue would be which banks provided commercial credit. If utility then economic impact would be small, if casino then risk of current situation repeating alot higher.
34. John L - “… PFIs. The Conservatives have not shown much interest…”
Well quite!! It was the Tories that started this whole PPP/PFI idiocy after all.
This is what makes Scottish politics so fascinating in a UK-context: quite often the Scottish Government or Scottish Parliament highlights important issues that are highly uncomfortable for both Labour and the Tories in London.
Sometimes it suits the Tories to ignore certain failings of the Labour govt, cos if they highlighted them it reflects badly on them too.
I suppose this debate more or less comes down to the question ‘where do the Conservatives need to be in the polls now in order to win in 2009/10′?
To that end, comparisons with the mid-1990s need two major adjustments. One is of course the changes in polling methodology (except ICM); the other is the difference in where the winning lines are. Labour’s final lead of 13% gave them a majority of over 170. If the figures are reversed (ie Con 44.4, Lab 31.4, LD 17.2), then both Baxter and Wells predict a Tory majority of around 85-90. The Conservatives do need to be further ahead on polling day.
Do they need to be further ahead mid-term to counter that effect (and if so, how do we measure it given the dodgyness of the polls in the 90s)? There has been discussion on here in the past about swingback. My own view is that the party behind in the polls almost always gets some swingback from the third year of the parliament onwards but that it’s often quite small. In this case, Labour should recover some ground from their mid-term lows (as in fact they already have).
One further point. It’s the gap between the parties that matters, not the absolute numbers. The Conservatives rarely polled below 30% under John Major in part because Others were much less a feature than they are now. To be reasonably sure of getting into Downing Street, the Conservatives will probably need to be above 40% on election day. Add in a bit of swingback and that ought to translate to a need for a share in the low- to mid-forties now - which is in fact where it is.
So as things stand, Cameron looks to be heading towards a small majority. To my mind though, the value in the markets remains with NOM. The election guides are somewhat misleading and really ought to predict a range of results with their ‘certainty’, rather like the BoE does with inflation and growth etc, instead of hard figures. A prediction for a Torylead of 10% might translate to a central projection of (say) 15 but the 75% certainty might range from -5 to +40 (I’m making these figures up for illustrative purposes, by the way). Add in ‘events’, especially the effect of spending massive amounts of money by the government and the Conservatives’ likely campaign which runs the risk of being protrayed as ‘More Tory Cuts’ by Labour and that might be enough to ensure a bigger swingback, taking the position back to Tory Minority.
51 Indeed. utility banks should be essentially unbreakable - and the price paid would be profits and poor savings rates. It was precisely the grafting of a casino onto a utility that has caused the current mess.
I guess the only problem with the “firewall” idea is that the “retail” banks would either have to also be prohibited from investing directly in the non-retail banks and also have the classes of investment they make restricted so that their capital base was relatively protected in the event of financial market volatility.
There’s no perfect solution but then it comes down to education of savers in certain areas not least of which is to understand that higher returns generally indicate higher risk as shown clearly by Northern Rock and the Icelandic institutions and so that they shouldn’t load up with all their savings in one bank. Understanding of the deposit protection limits would also be handy for most. If that had happened, the level of bank deposit related panic during last September and before could have been reduced but then most people don’t understand their finances enough and that carries through and also shows in their failure to fully understand the mess that Gordon has made of the country’s finances.
Better basic education in financial matters would be beneficial all round.
51
By the Clinton Administration I believe?
Just read the last thread. Wow! Fan.Tas.Tic.
56 - Agree, the level of basic financial literacy is awful. Personally I learnt the fundamentals of finance from my parents who refused to give me pocket-money unless I ‘earnt’ it from my chores. If I spent too much on sweets etc tough I had to wait until the next week and do my chores etc. It has stood me in good stead.
Thanks, Mike.
Looking at the polls taken just before the election they’re a bit closer (but still overestimate Labour, if not by the same amount)
Date Org Con Lab LD
30/4/97 ICM/Guard 33 43 18
30/4/97 Mori/Eve Std 29 47 19
29/4/97 Gallup/D Tel 31 51 13
25/4/97 NOP/S Times 29 47 16
1/5/97 Election 31 44 17
ICM is still uncannily accurate, but the others are also closer (while still overestimating Labour - partly by underestimating Others)
So I think the explanation of huge Labour poll leads can only partly be polling error, although of course it is possible that the polls of the time were inaccurate when polling away from elections, and somehow became more accurate when the forthcoming election concentrated voters’ minds.
But part of the explanation is surely that voters change their minds during election campaigns, the bastards. Which means the polls aren’t wrong, they’re just not very good at predicting the actual result from a reasonable time before. Which I accept is no good if you’re trying to bet on the result (although can presumably give you some value if you can find a different way of predicting the result better).
Even with the much vaunted “modern” polling methods, IIRC only YouGov called last year’s London Mayoral election correctly from a distance.
One additional benefit of the ‘firewall’ would be moral / societal. The spivs who made gazillions could do so because the upside was theirs but the downside was the taxpayers’. Remove that support and the shareholders / bondholders providing the capital at risk for their trades might actually put proper Boards and Risk Management and incentives in place.
14. Just as phone poll misses out people who don’t have landlines (mostly young people etc) online polling restricts to people who can afford a computer and internet. I’d suggest that it probably picks up proportionally fewer old people. Also that simply registering for Yougov polling suggests a certain interest in being polled (also an interest in politics meaning fewer floating voters and hence smaller shifts?) and causes self selection quandaries.
17 Stuart Dickson. Minimum price for alcohol won’t happen because it’s illegal under EU law
http://news.scotsman.com/latestnews/Whitehall-says-SNP39s-drink-price.5048939.jp
“If I spent too much on sweets ..”
Sweets are for future fat suckers, I’ll tell my kids.
You should rather gamble that money on yourself. And if you double it before 2 weeks (by betting on your soccer team winning the next friday-night-game for instance), I’ll double it myself.
Philip Johnson in the Telegraph has a whole column on Cameron & Conservative failure to achieve the leads Tony Blair & Labour achieved in mid 90’s. Just shows how inbuilt the impression that huge leads are reqired is in political commentators minds - or perhaps more revealingly how they search for reasons the Conservatives can’t win.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/philipjohnston/4996385/David-Cameron-needs-one-last-push.html
“In 1995, when John Major’s government was imploding, despite a rapidly recovering economy, Labour’s lead in the opinion polls was colossal. Between May 1993 and the beginning of 1997, Tory support measured by the Gallup poll for The Daily Telegraph never rose above 27 per cent. Labour’s was regularly ahead of the Tories by more than 30 per cent throughout this period. In December 1994, for instance, not long after Mr Blair took over as leader, Labour had 61 per cent support and the Conservatives 21.5 per cent.”
47. Worth noting at this juncture that the US has recently allowed pure investment banks to start taking deposits again, as a anti-crisis measures, to improve their liquidity…i.e. moving in the opposite direction to Glass-Steagall.
This is a bit of a red herring. What we see across the global banking world is that banks of all kinds have managed to rack up huge losses by reckless balance sheet expansion. What has happened over the last several years is a failure of regulation at a macro level, not the micro level. A failure to understand the risks building up in the system as a whole as a result primarily of overly loose monetary policy.
65, it’s probably helpful for the right though.
If they keep getting told how a 10-15 point lead isn’t enough it’ll support Cameron’s efforts to head off complacency and a possible rerun of 1992.
It may also have a helpful effect for Labour, promoting the idea that all is not lost and they could yet win.
67 - Very true!
Something quite mind-blowing if not earth shattering has occurred on my forum.
Three of the forum’s finest and all hard workers have priced up the options on the Premiership;such as ‘Winner’ ‘To be relegated’ etc.
On one team regarding one particular option they price up 6.6,17.2 and 27.5 !
I mention this because it makes the squabbles on here about the outcome of the next GE that much more understandable.
54 One of the things that strikes me as a bit of an observer on this site is how people try to build deterministic models based on how opinion varies throughout a Parliament.
Surely the problem of small sample size makes this impossible? If we say that “modern” politics have been since Ted Heath, there have only been 9 parliaments, not counting the short one in 1974. They have all been quite different in terms of who has been in power, for how long, and what events happened and when in the political cycle.
Also, people try to build these deterministic models in most cases without considering cause and effect, so without presenting any evidence for why public opinion changes in the way it does. It’s really not much better than “if the moon is in Uranus and we have snow in March then the Tories will get 43% in the subsequent General Election”. You might as well cut open a hamster and inspect its liver.
I know you’re all punters and therefore determined to build deterministic models (preferably one that is correct but strangely enough no-one else has thought of) but I just don’t think you have the evidence to be able to do so. Your sample size is too small and there are too many variables and statistical noise.
I think all you can do is look at the polls, look at the external environment, make an educated guess about what might change between now and June of the year 10, and what the Govt’s response to it might be & how successful. And if Spain invades Gib tomorrow, all bets are off.
8. The 2007 marginals poll that so frightened Broon showed the Tories well ahead in the marginals. That is, where people knew they could vote to destroy Labour, they wanted to do so.
Labour are going to get absolutely destroyed IMHO. I think the real picture for Labour is far worse than the rather good polls imply.
Utterly OT: quote cited by Dizzy:
“”There is no point acting FAST if you have a stroke round here when you’ll be dead before you get to the centrally based specialised trauma centre.” - NHS nurse in Greenwich”
Likewise for having fewer A&E centres.
24. ASDA are doing “Hollandia” lager at 4 x 440ml cans for 90p. Yes, that is all four for 90p, not 90p each. This is 29p a pint. That’s Broken Britain right there.
Mike, are we due MORI’s monthly political poll this week
Re : Mortgages
When I said that a cap on income multiples was needed (last year) I was told by some here that it was impossible etc….
Looks like I was right on the method proposed as well - classing bigger multiples as high risk. Which means they will exist, but be very expensive and limited in number.
Not sure Labour will implement this - sets in stone a massive further decline in prices. How much do the people buying a 1 bed flat 30 mind from central London actually earn? 25k?
Pretty good analysis by David Herdson at 54 of the current position, I think. The current poll leads are just enough to make the Tories confident that they’d have a small majority if they were replicated on polling day. How one feels about that depends on whether one expects the lead to grow or shrink by then, but the ‘foregone conclusion’ view often implied here is rash.
corp at 62: I’ve always thought it weird that YouGov gets remotely in the right ballpark, for the reasons you say. They depend heavily on having some panelists from the underrepresented groups and polling them more often, and you’d think they’d still be heavily dominated by whichever party is currently keenest on voting. But their record is pretty good, so hard to argue with it.
Interesting article on Quantitative Easing
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/411a80bc-118f-11de-87b1-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1
73 I’m more concerned that people are drinking p1ss than they’re drinking alcohol at 15p a unit.
Broken Britain is because a small minority drink to excess and then become a public nuisance, deal with those people.
In any case, most of the anecdotal evidence of problem drinking (town centre violence at chicking out time etc) is due to people drinking in pubs and clubs, which this measure would do nothing about as those places already sell liquor at way over 50p a unit.
73
You can cheap alcohol anywhere in the world, even Saudi. Where there is demand, there will be supply.
78. Quite right of course - but at least these measures show the government is ‘doing something’ or talking about doing something, or thinking about doing something, or…
66 You are right. Splitting retail and investment banks is a necessary but not sufficient condition for improved regulation. Better managed money supply is another, although how to keep the politicians away from that honeypot is more difficult while they still appoint the central bankers who manager the levers. The final one is to stop regulating banks just on an individual basis. Much of the problem has been allowing banks to insure or hedge risk with another financial institution and therefore require less capital to be held against their positions. While the individual bank has reduced risk, provided that the counterparty to the trades does not default (which is why AIG had to be bailed out because it was the largest counterparty to these trades) the risk in the system as a whole has not been reduced. It has just been shared amongst a larger number of participants none of whom now has either the incentive or the power to monitor and manage the risk.
Capital adequacy rules need to be reworked to restrict the reduction in capital required for insured and hedged risks, and for the level of reduction to be adjusted in relation to the level of risk in the total financial system.
75 How many singleton mortgages are taken out? Generally it seems to be at least a couple (whether married, living together, partners or friends) so mortgage can be up to 2.5 times joint income. Seems sensible to price mortgages by increased risk as multiples rise, and reduce costs as risk is lowered but concerned that FSA will be over-prescriptive in reaction to its laxity previously.
Over-regulation remains bad regulation despite the problems poor regulation allowed to develop.
62/76 YouGov do pay for doing polls - not sure about voting intention ones but they certainly do for the commercial ones. It’s only 50p a pop, but if you do enough they will send you a cheque for £50. So maybe that’s enough to encourage enough people from the lowest income groups to sign up. Don’t forget that you can now buy a computer for less than a TV and there’s some good broadband deals going; the unemployed will think it’s worth maintaining their internet connection as it is necessary in the search for employment for most people.
82 Quite a lot I imagine, these days people expect to get their own place with their first permanent job. It is after all generally cheaper than renting, and an investment to boot. It may well be less in London where prices are higher.
81. ‘The final one is to stop regulating banks just on an individual basis’
Yes Robert, exactly. Leafing through some old stuff of mine recently I came across a piece by Gordon Pepper written twenty years ago which made all the same points.
And nor were those insights entirely new - the myopia and complaceny of our policymakers over the last decade or so is quite remarkable.
[83] Phil, do you know anyone who’s had a cheque from YouGov? There’s a persistent rumour going round that when you get near enough you suddenly stop being invited to participate
86
Govt spent £780K on flowers to brighten their offices
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/4998039/Government-departments-ran-up-780000-flower-bill.html
78 - I think the theory is that they’re already tanked up on cheap supermarket booze before they get to the pubs, so by putting up the price of supermarket drinks the yobbery will just have a cup of tea and a fairy-cake before they go out.
88. There’s always Dad’s meths in the garden shed.
Iirc the definition of binge drinking is 5 drinks in one day. Which is culturally very low, whereas most people imagine the term to mean much more.
16, Stuart , agree, when you look at the headlines yesterday , they were very selective on how they portrayed the results, you could just as easy have had them pro SNP, given their support for Holyrood is up mid term and 2 to 1 majority wanting a referendum, think the way the questions were put were iffy.
80. I wish they’d bloody well stop doing something. One thing we aren’t short of in this country is the government doing something.
If they would switch from doing something all the time to doing the right thing occasionally we’d all be a lot better off.
16. Would they really pay for (what I assume is) expensive polling to only use some of it?
There are dangers to over imbibing, particularly if you have a political career in mind.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article5910254.ece
Makes the mind boggle.
92 spot on.
The “broken Britain” narrative falls apart when you look at where the increase in alcohol consumption has actually come from.
Over the last 25 years its entirely explained by the consumption of wine in the home.
And consumption fell amongst men aged 16-44 between 1998 and 2005.
The Daily Mail view is as always, wrong.
92. Indeed but don’t hold your breath.
A comment pre-edit facility
A lot of people have requested that such a facility should be made available so that comments can be checked prior to publication.
We think that we have found a suitable software “plug-in” and are hoping to give it a try. The big worry is if it puts any extra burden on the server because very few sites have the comment traffic that we do.
87 - No savings to be made without cutting front line services? As the Churchil dog says, who could easily be mistaken for our Great Leader,
“oh no no no no no no”
63. It has been proven previously that it is not against EU law, however what a laugh it will be when the UK government get hauled in by the EU to explain and they cannot stop the Scottish government implementing it if they want to.
Each UK job ‘chased by 10 people’
There is now an average of 10 jobseekers for every vacancy advertised in the UK, the TUC has warned.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7945426.stm
Wonder how much longer we are going to hear government ministers telling us there are 500-600-700,000 jobs available?
Phil C at 70 has it spot-on: “I think all you can do is look at the polls, look at the external environment, make an educated guess about what might change between now and June of the year 10, and what the Govt’s response to it might be & how successful. And if Spain invades Gib tomorrow, all bets are off.”
The big factor is turnout. It bears repeating again and again that Blair’s 1997 triumph was not caused by massive popularity of Labour, still less of Labour+LibDems, but by Conservative voters staying at home (or in some cases voting for the Referendum Party):
1992 Total Vote, on turnout of 77.4%:
Lab 11.6m, LibDem 6m, Con 14.1m
1997 Total Vote, on turnout 71.4%:
Lab 13.5m, LibDem 5.2m, Con 9.6m
That being the case, any methodology which doesn’t take into account the likelihood of actually voting is highly suspect. The question is, how should we assess that? I’d be interested to know whether Ipsos-Mori have direct evidence to support their method of counting only those who say they are 100% certain to vote.
42 ‘O/T…a scientist speaking on Radio 4 this morning stated that “the dust bowl” caused the Great Depression of the 1930’s. can anyone enlighten me please?’
I heard that too - struck me as being a slightly disingenuous comment.
98, good news. Have to say whilst I think it’d be useful it’s not essential so if the traffic’s too high and it won’t work then it won’t be too bad.
No exciting F1 news, although Vettel and Kubica’s odds have drifted upwards somewhat. Hamilton’s have lengthened to 4/1 though I wouldn’t take that bet (having stupidly gone for one at 3.8…). McLaren still looks a bit too pants and with a number of competitive teams (Ferrari, BMW, Brawn, Renault, maybe Red Bull) they won’t be getting points cheaply.
83. I think it will take you about 10 years to get to £50 on YouGov, I know in last year or more mine has registerd about £5, so the unemployed will not be rushing to YouGov to make money.
runnymede & RobertD re banking regulation.
The real problem is not that any one bank makes bad trades and goes bust — that’s markets for you — nor even the enormous leverage, so much as all the institutions using the same, flawed measures of risk and price.
There is an article in Wired about the equation in question: Recipe for Disaster: The Formula That Killed Wall Street
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/17-03/wp_quant
The same sort of reliance on over-simplified equations was what brought down LTCB a decade or so ago.
105… no, but it might give them an incentive to sign up and do a few polls. When they realise how long it will take to get paid they will fall by the wayside, but then others will sign up.
It is just me, or it is very surprising that no other media organisation is carrying the Vaz story (other than Daily Rant). The claims the paper makes are fairly damning, interfering in a case by using your position as the head of a select committee to effectively claim racial discrimination to stop a trial and doing so without talking to any other member of the committee.
If this is allowed to go, surely this is a very worrying development, if individual MP’s can try to get trials of associates halted using their high profile position and fairly spurious claims.
96
“The Daily Mail view is always wrong”
Pot and Kettle Tim, you are always proved wrong.
105. Au contraire. I’m halfway to my second £50 cheque after not much more than year.
Not an income, agreed, but an occasional meal out for just for a few moments spent answering its surveys once or so a week.
110
Geoff, You are luckier than I. Do you get the intention to vote stuff frequently,(or mostly the brand index stuff) as I rarely do, having marked myself down as a conservative from the start.
103 There is a case for the Dust Bowl being a cause of the prolonging and deepening the depression - USA was slower than UK & other economies in recovering. Might say that it was the Dust Bowl that turned it into the “Great” Depression as the images of the itinerant poor seeking employment or bedding down in shanty towns under bridges is what folk memory remembers - dusty towns, poorly fed & dressed children, men begging for jobs.
106. John - one sentence in that tells the real story -
“Everyone was pinning their hopes on house prices continuing to rise,”
This wasn’t a failure of super-esoteric modelling, but of very basic risk management. People wanted to believe the world had changed and that you really could get endless excess returns without risk - the models provided a convenient cover for that belief.
It’s a pattern that has been seen over and over again ever since financial markets came into existence.
I don’t like the “must earn £50 before payment” type schemes. Back in the day, I remember the advertising bar schemes (when everybody was still on dial-up) and they were notorious for employing the same kind of idea that the casual surfer would never reach the pay out figure (but obviously would have to view all the advert banners).
Would it not make YouGov look better if they had a policy where you automatically got your money at £50, but from say £15/20 onwards you could get a payout but the user had to request it.
114. I think it’d make their bottom line look worse.
111. MTF. Voting intention stuff, only occasionally. No more than I’d expect to keep the ST and DT surveys properly balanced. I’m also down as a Telegraph, Spectator reading Conservative pensioner with some self-employment on the side.
Mostly Brand Index and other surveys - a lot of which contain some political questions which, presumably, add political context for their clients as supplementaries to the DT/ST polls.
Would be interesting to know how the political stuff in these compares but, I guess, only clients will ever know.
111 I probably would have got to 50 quid from YouGov by now but I now ignore the invitations to complete the tedious Brand Index questions. Kellner you need to offer more than 50p to make me consent to thinking about adverts.
103. I heard that too. El Nino caused the Dust Bowl, he said and led to the Great Depression and “eventually to World War II”.
Now I wouldn’t call that ‘disingenuous’, more ‘completely stupid’.
116 - I couldnt possibly sit through a full BrandIndex survey ever. Can they be getting anything sensible out of those surveys at all? Surely people are reduced to clicking the nearest possible button just to get through the mind-numbing boredom of it as quickly as possible?
111
I’ve only once had a voting intention question in over a year. I also told them I was a tory from the start. So if anyone is thinking of joining the yougov panel, you might be advised to tell them you’re a floating voter.
117
I’m sick of those brand surveys. They’re tedious and I’ve never heard of most of them.
re 86 I’ve had two cheques thus far and half way to the third.
118 Now I wouldn’t call that ‘disingenuous’, more ‘completely stupid’.
OK, I was trying to be polite - the scientist was a lying g*t. The Depression kicked off in 1929, the Dust Bowl from 1930 onwards. It certainly didn’t help thing in the US, but wasn’t responsible for the initial financial chaos.
117 Yes the Brand Index questions are tedious, especially as I’m not really much of a brand conscious person, and when I am I often prefer the slightly quirky ones that don’t get on the survey(eg King of Shaves rather than Gillette). The only bits I like are the booze questions where I mark up all the decent real ale brands they give you and mark down all the p1ss lager.
I am hoping if I do a few I will start getting voting intention questions.
I am on a couple of TNS panels which are quite good - I get £5 a month for submitting my petrol purchases and £1 a week for scanning in the barcodes on my supermarket shopping. Both take much less time than a YouGov survey, especially as I only do 5-6,000 miles a year (so fill up less than once a week) and live on my own, so the supermarket shopping is relatively low volume. You also get some extra points as long term incentives (eg for submitting a whole quarter’s bar codes) or for the occasional survey. You can take your earnings as soon as you have £10 (in store vouchers), personally I save them up so my current PC printer was provided by TNS and I currently have about £200 in points which I might put towards garden furniture. Given that I have continued doing it despite the fact I don’t actually need the money, I think shows that it is a fairly well thought out and well managed scheme.
122. Scientists rarely have a clue about matters economic.
124 - Neither do economists.
Oh and I should have said that I hardly ever do the BrandIndex ones as well. They’re unbelievably tedious and most of the brands I’ve never heard of. I can’t believe that they’re reliable because the few that I do, I’m resorting to ticking at random by the end of them.
I am not sure that the change in Mike’s list of polls can be put down to an election campaign. The Tories’ poll numbers are well within any margin of error. The LibDem ones are slightly out and that might be the result of a campaign effect as the movement is relatively small in term of actual vote share.
But the Labour ones (excluding ICM) are miles out and no campaign I can recall made a difference of between 10 and 14% of the votes cast. Even if you assume the LibDems took votes from Labour during the campaign - and that seems questionable- and assume this was 4% then the Labour party who were perceived as so popular lost between 6 and 10% of the votes cast in the campaign.
These are rough calculations but still it doesn’t seem likely, does it, that Labour declined dramatically in popularity during the campaign?
94 “the stockings and teddy set….”
Sounds like another exclusive Oxford dining club!
PFI is a Tory invention and as such Tories should be careful about criticising it. So Clarke’s alleged comments should be treated with caution since he is a former Chancellor who used PFI.
Salmond? I would not trust him to show me across the road.
Labour were loud in ill informed criticism in opposition but latched onto it PDQ in office. You may want to argue it is being overused but you need to have some well informed knowledge to do it properly. PFI critics are usually pretty ill informed.
(I am a right wing Tory BTW)
If you built something by conventional tendering you would have to pay 15% or so on top for professional fees, there would be invariably claims for variations and extensions of time on top and in the case of the NHS at lest you would have to pay some 6% annually on top back to the govt for what is called ‘capital charges’.
PFI covers maintenance to an agreed standard (this can include things like linear accelerators and replacement of same) and the building are handed over after 30 years in A1 condition in return for an annual fee which as far as the Trust is concerned is pretty much covered by the capital charges fee which you do not get in a PFI scheme.
So - you do not like PFI? Well you go ahead and conventionally tender for a 200million hospital. See how long it takes and work out the cost of the tendering process alone. Work out if the prices you are getting are value for money.
And then try and get that money out of the govt - bidding against all the others who also want their £200 million NOW.
And then deliver it on time and under cost. And then find the money to keep it cleaned, maintained, lit, heated and updated.
Then come back with your ’savings’.
I was involved in researching the possibilities of PFI pre-1997 for one organisation but the complexity put a stop to it. To meet the then government guidelines was a real hurdle.
But as it was just a short episode a long time ago and details have fled. My lasting impression though was that the whole concept was going nowhere fast….. until Gordon Brown took it up as a whizzo way to keep the costs off the national balance sheet.
127 The “before” figures are often out by over 10 points, whereas for the polls taken just before the election 7 is the max. If 3 is the margin of error (maybe it was higher then?) they are starting to look significant to me.
Someone would probably have to do some sort of regression analysis to do it properly, you would have to model closeness to the result against closeness to the election.
To me it seems likely there was some over-representation of the Labour vote, but also some change over the course of the campaign. Maybe a lot of anti-Tory voters realised they didn’t like Tony and voted for someone else? (Or voted tactically, which is Mike’s point about the phrasing of the ICM question).
I was one of those people who would have told a pollster I was a Tory, was undecided how to vote, and in the end voted Lib Dem. Not sure what I would have done in a constituency where Labour were the closest party to the Tories, although I acknowledge the inconsistency in being prepared to vote LibDem to kick the Tories out, but not being prepared to vote for the party that I know is going to take their place.
Anyhow, how can you make a judgment about how many votes a party may lose during an election campaign? The only way we have is opinion polls, and we don’t know if they’re accurate either.
129 - As understand there are several main problems with the PFI agreements signed by the government.
1) They fee strucuture and extra T&C’s they have signed up to in many cases have made what was potentially a good idea in particular circumstances weigh heavily in the contractors favour. Also PFI has been used for projects that it was never originally intended for and really shouldn’t be used.
2) The oversight and conditions with regards to the quality of works has been terrible. As a result shiny building yes, use of poor quality materials and workmanship, definitely, thus lifespan of the building, not much more than the PFI contract.
3) Allowing a stupid amount of the sub-sub-sub-sub contract culture, meaning that you get these stupid situations where changing a light bulb requiring 3-4 companies to be contacted, request being processed and authorised, before the work is actually achieved.
I remember a classic explanation in a disptaches investigation where a school wanted a new doorway built and they drew a diagram of all the people who had to be consulted to get the work done and how many extra % was added at each step just to employ the some guy the school probably would haved used anyway to knock a hole in the wall.
105. It takes me about 3 years to get to £50 on YouGov, but many surveys are lottery-type, meaning no reward.
The only ones I get sent that pay are BrandIndex ones, but these take ages to fill in and are very boring. I barely have an opinion of Superdrug, Pierre Cardin or Kodak to begin with so it’s a bit futile filling surveys about whether my opinion’s gone up, down or stayed the same.
Cool Britannia is finally being buried…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/music-news/4999496/Labour-to-scrap-Cool-Britannia-policy-for-musicians.html
96. tim? -
“When you post figures that show the majority of immigrants over the last ten years come from outside the EU, then I’ll admit I’m wrong.
by tim March 15th, 2009 at 10:19 pm”
“Total non-British immigration to the UK 1998-2007: 4,175,000
Non-British EU immigration to the UK 1998-2007: 1,035,000
Source: http://www.statistics.gov.uk/STATBASE/Product.asp?vlnk=15053
by Socrates March 15th, 2009 at 10:29 pm”
tim?
Mike,
As someone who has long taken on board the points you have often made re- changes to polling methodologies since the mid-1990s, I remain intrigued by some related issues!
1. Why did the old methods often prove pretty accurate? I am referring here to the predictions made in 1959 , 1964, 1979 - and in 1987 MORI was almost spot on with a 12% Tory lead forecast.
2.The 1983 election went very much against the Golden Rule in that the final polls significantly exaggerated the Tory lead. In both 1997 and 2001 we know that the Labour lead projected was too big. Those 3 elections - plus,perhaps, the 1966 election - lead me to ask whether there is not the possibility that when one party is streets ahead in the polls some of its supporters fail to turn out on the basis of the result being a foregone conclusion?At the same time, others might, without enthusiasm,decide at the last minute to support the losing party to prevent too big a majority!
Phil C @ 60: It’s worth remembering that MORI used to change their methodology during election campaigns. These days they always prompt by party name, but before (IIRC) 2003 they didn’t used to, except after close of nominations before a general election, when they would start prompting using party and candidate name.
Comparing figures for this period, it’s also worth noting that Gallup changed their method in late 1996, switching from face-to-face quota sampled polls to RDD phone polls and doing a re-allocation of don’t knows. So actually, you can’t even compare Gallup polls from 1997 with mid terms ones from a year before
110. Geoff, I assume they don’t like me then as I always fill in surveys as they appear.
Phil C if the voters moved from Labour during the campaign where did they go?
It seems possible that some moved to the LibDems after telling pollsters the were supporting Labour as for some LibDems there is not all that much difference. Some may have moved to vote tactically as you suggest but that seems mostly to have benefited the LibDems. Also the LibDems may have been the beneficiaries of previous Tory voters who said they would vote Labour but at the last minute couldn’t go through with it.
But those are small numbers relative to the total so where did the large number of others go? It is not likely they moved away wholesale from Labour to the Tories as the Tories polling numbers are relatively steady but low throughout the period. If any did do so it must have been very few.
So I agree that some of this must be down to not accurately establishing the likelihood to vote which confirms a polling methodology problem. It does not confirm there were ’shy’ Tories voting Tory. But they may have voted Labour or LibDem and been shy about that. However that doesn’t explain this change in the Labour vote compared to the polls.
If it was a change during the campaign I can’t see where the bulk of these voters decamped to. nor why they should so suddenly change their mind during a very successful Labour election campaign.
Another point about PFI not being used for what it was originally designed. Again, as I understand, PFI as stated was used to get large capital projects off the ground, with little risk to the tax payer i.e new school, hospital, etc.
However, as I reported last night, the government have also been busy selling off building new and old like the treasury office, home office, etc. Now the government have taken the money for that, shoved it in the public purse, but then PFI’ed the rent / maintenance i.e off the balance sheet.
This has been used for existing building, yes they may have needed some work, but really it is being used as a psuedo privatisation scheme for government buildings while at the same time hiding the future costs of having those same buildings away from the public figures.
To add insult to injury, one of the main companies involved in this an off-shore tax avoider!
94/128 Here are the photos http://tinyurl.com/cuupzn
So Cool Britannia produced
“James Morrison, a singer-songwriter who was nominated for Best Male Artist at last month’s Brit Awards. Also given support were the indie band the Zutons, the Welsh singer Jem, and the jazz saxophonist-rapper Soweto Kinch.”
The Beatles and The Stones, move over. And how much did we taxpayers spend before it was canned, I wonder?
139 - I’m not an expert, but could some of it be different expectations of turnout..
137 Thanks Anthony, was just going to ask if my recollection that Mori changed their methodology one campaign was underway was correct.
Do wonder if shifts in campaign are changes in intention or changes in certainty to vote. The closer the vote comes the more, presumably, a potential voter becomes a likely or unlikely voter. There is also the statistic that I think Sir Bob mentioned that 10% of voters aren’t certain who they will vote for until actually in the polling station - they seem to break overall in line with polls but that’s a big enough figure to really change things in last day if something in the news or on TV changes sentiment (1970?).
142 - Yeah I think we can do without the products of this experiment…
James B that is my guess, in the enthusiasm for New Labour especially as an ouster of the Tories, people were saying they would vote Labour but never registered to vote or never turned out. Or simply thought it was the right thing to say - and that was a factor in daily discourse. It was so not done to be a Tory.
Current polls’ raw numbers often have high Labour scores which are significantly reduced after the likelihood to vote equation is applied. Key Labour strongholds have very low GE turnout figures. So it fits a pattern.
129. “PFI is a Tory invention and as such Tories should be careful about criticising it.”
It’s that kind of thinking that gets parties into trouble. Whether or not a policy deserves criticism, praise or a combination is wholly independent of who thought of it and who implemented it. Just because a certain side brought in the policy doesn’t mean it’s any better or worse and we should be brave enough to say so.
138 I’m not sure I understand your point. A few to the Tories, more to the LDs, and a small number to Others. And maybe some Labour supporters didn’t vote, maybe in the end they couldn’t stomach Blair’s NuLab. Although I’m not quite sure how turnout changes would show up in the figures as they are all percentages and I think add up to 100.
If the figures show (eg) 27-58-10-5 and then the result is 31-44-17-7 then the votes have obviously all “gone” somewhere, either through changes in voter intention or through reallocation of votes that were misallocated due to polling error.
How do you know it was a successful Labour campaign? The Tories were toast, Labour were always going to win. Actually it looks to me like a succesful LD campaign, a slightly less successful Tory campaign, and a Labour one that did just enough to hang on to some of their soft support. But as they went backwards in the polls, you could actually say they were relatively unsuccessful.
135 - Thank you.
I was wrong.
142, 145, I don’t disagree but we should remember that without taxpayers’ cash these acts might’ve been successful anyway.
It could be worse. The government scheme to give poor young people cash to go to the theatre is quite dire. I can’t afford to spend 4 fortnight long holidays in Dubai a year. I eagerly await assistance from the Treasury.
Justin @ 136.
Class voting. Voting is still correlated to social class to some extent, but go back a few decades and the correlation was even stronger - getting a sample that correctly reflected the class make up of Britain got you a long way to an accurate result.
There are plety of elections that weren’t to hot then anyway. 1979 was indeed good, F1974 was good and 1983 wasn’t actually too bad - the final polls underestimated Labour but across the campaign polls pretty much straddled the eventual Conservative lead. 1970 though was a disaster, and polls throughout the 1966 and O1974 campaign overestimated the Labour lead.
145 The new Flexible New Deal is remarkably like Thatcher’s Enterprise Allowance scheme. That might not have given us the Zutons etc but did give us Rick Astley and Tracey Emin amongst others - plus ca change.
150 - Why Dubai?
149 Tim the Confessor, would you like to admit you were wrong on anything else, whilst you are in the mood? Go on, get it off your chest. You’ll feel better for it
Phic C My perception is that it was a successful Labour campaign, but a perception which seems to be common amongst those who experienced it from either side.
The LibDem campaign hardly registered as their theme was anti-Tory and the Labour party were doing that anyway.
But whether you think it was a successful campaign or not the result was a landslide, so how in a landslide does the winning party manage to mislay so many votes?
My belief is they didn’t, rather that the pollsters overstated Labour then and continued to do so for the next two elections, but not by quite as much.
152 Only when you’ve been Zuton-rolled will I accept there’s some equivalence!
(Although the thought of Thatcher sponsoring Emin’s Bed must leave a few Bufton-Tufton’s apoplectic!)
98. Good news. Thanks Mike.
151 Thanks Anthony.
I believe the polls of the final week in 83 were some way off giving the Tories leads of 20% plus.
re 129 trevorsden there have been numerous studies which have show that when you strip out all the government’s dodgy accounting fiddles that the project could have been procured more cheaply the conventional way than the PFI way.
155 I’m not really in a position to argue about how successful the ‘97 campaign was for Labour, as I have never been politically active, don’t have politically active friends, and in 1997 there weren’t web forums to talk b0ll0cks on. And I can’t really remember what I thought about it at the time.
But I think the evidence is they managed to mislay some votes during the election. Of course, part of this might be down to shy Tory syndrome, but a quick look at the evidence shows the overstatement seems to have got smaller during the campaign. Maybe when I am not supposed to be doing the decorating I will play with a spreadsheet.
James B I do agree about economists. They are full of advice as to how to get us out of this hole we are in but how come they were not writing to Blair in an open letter to warn that Brown was on the road to perdition.
364 economists did this to Mrs T and they were demonstrated to be totally mistaken within a few years. But on Nulabour banking regulation, borrowing in the good years and PFI not even a post card to the FT.
So economists out for a duck twice on two crises.
And the Governor of the Bank of England was on the batting team for both abysmal performances.
150: Dubai seems to be the in-place at the moment. My boss is off there next week.
161 - My experience is that economists are only really good at telling everyone what policy should have been adopted in the previous crisis.
54 - I’ve just re-read David Herdson’s interesting post at 54. His conclusion is very different from mine, and I think the reason is in his last sentence:
“Add in ‘events’, especially the effect of spending massive amounts of money by the government and the Conservatives’ likely campaign which runs the risk of being protrayed as ‘More Tory Cuts’ by Labour and that might be enough to ensure a bigger swingback, taking the position back to Tory Minority.”
My view is that ‘events’ will more probably act against the government, not in their favour.
There are two classes of event we need to consider; those we can reasonably foresee - most notably, disastrous economic factors, especially unemployment; and those which pop up out of the blue.
It seems to me that the former are virtually bound to cause Labour to lose support.
As for the latter, obviously they could go either way. For example, a scandal involving a senior politician can suddenly appear out of nowhere. But in general, bad things are more likely to hit the governing party. For example, a sudden policing disaster, or a data protection failure leading to serious problems for lots of people, or a financial scandal in a quango, or a sudden strike, etc etc. Such events are more likely to be blamed on the government rather than the opposition, for obvious reasons.
155 Actually, checking Wiki, the LibDems scored 1% less than at the previous election but increased their seats significantly. Not sure if this means they were riding on the anti-Tory bandwaggon or successfully concentrating their resources locally. Probably a bit of both.
Polls are just playthings, toys for anoraks. Elections are what matter. Let’s have one and find out what’s really important to people.
Polls are just playthings, toys for anoraks. Elections are what matter. Let’s have one and find out what’s really important to people.
161. Many of those 364 economists would not accept that they were wrong in 1981. People often forget how far the pound fell against the dollar over the period 1980-85 ie from $2.50 to almost parity!
Had that not happened the recession would have been even motre severe than it already was.
69 URW - My guesses are that this either relates to Liverpool winning the Premiership or perhaps alternatively to Bolton being relegated.
Interestingly, despite the huge discrepancy in the odds suggested by the team on your forum, there are very few relegation-threatened teams who fit between the top or bottom of the range you quote.
149. lol. Well done that man. Wasn’t so hard, after all, was it?
To avoid future similar embarrassments, as a general rule of thumb, try and remember that you are nearly always wrong in everything you say about anything ever.
162, 153, because it’s fashionable and very expensive.
And it highlights how pathetic and unjustifiable a waste of taxpayers’ money it is for the government to pay for people to go the theatre. I can’t afford a lot of stuff, but I don’t expect the state to bail me out unless food and shelter are beyond my means.
164 I’m with Richard Nabavi as regards events. The British electorate know that the economy is being trashed by this Government and will be ready to take their medicine just as they were in 1979, especially one year hence, by which time the situation will be far, far worse than it is now.
Cameron needs to be honest about just how bad the situation is - and he will be respected as a result.
Justin they may not admit they were wrong, but do they ever.
171 - Personally I can’t think of somewhere I’d less like to go than the Middle East.
170 - I wanted to congratulate you getting your first “fact” right in the last five months.
Epipens are good for anaphylaxis.
James B Dubai is quite a pleasant place. Golf and shopping, relaxed.
Not to be confused with Saudi or Kuwait or, heaven forefend, Iraq.
I recommend Oman too, fascinating and safe place. Yemen is very interesting, but you need a small army as a bodyguard outside the capital (either one).
There is a very interesting questionaire on Iain Dale’s site
For the record I scored 202
http://www.iaindale.blogspot.com/
176 - I wouldn’t handle the heat, no matter how pleasant it is.
177 - I scored 138… I feel like a Nazi.
177 - That makes you a dangerous subversive in Howard Flights old seat.
178
It’s not too bad in Oman along the coast.
It is intersting tho Tim, Did you score 350?
182 - I scored 289.
177. Hah. I scored exactly the same: 202 - bang in the middle. Does that mean UK conservatives are centrists in American terms?
Sounds about right.
However, some of the questions were too obscurely American to make sense in Britain, and some were a little leading, I felt - nudging you into a progressive position.
Interesting, though.
I got 219!!!!
This makes me a ‘progressive’, tho I’ve never seen a definition of what progressive means.
252 and Strongly Progressive
David Cameron will be pleased I’m in his party!
185 - I think a slightly right wing Tory would come down as a progressive on this if they don’t take religion seriously.
179. I scored 138 too. But since I know I’m a moderate (doesn’t everyone?) I figure their definitions of L/R must be skewed.
I scored 198 - were I not socially liberal I get the feeling I would have been like 100 or something!
1 scored 147. Not convinced though. The word conservative to me means crusty colonels reading the Telegraph. Where does someone who’s an economic right-winger and a social liberal fit in?
I score 326 - extremely progressive. Anyone beat that?
Interesting that several of the questions are on topics that in the UK would not be regarded as left/right issues.
185 That’s why Cameron talks of progressive Conservatism - think a lot of UK conservatives would score 200 or so. Well that’s my excuse for scoring 219 as well.
Serious differences must come in the social/religious area, where UK doesn’t have same issues on gay and abortion rights or place of organised religion.
285
It means you’re not a reactionary (201)
184 I feel better now, I got 204 which is average for an American man and much the same as arch-Libertarian SeanT.
The problem is that if you are on the right economically you are not necessarily socially conservative, and this is conflating the two - which possibly makes sense in the US. But I scored zero on the “homosexuality is wrong” question and very high on “there’s too much religion in US politics” question, between them they have shifted me 20 points towards being a “progressive”.
Surprised there were no questions on gun ownership.
187. The questionnaire excludes important British issues - foxhunting, Europe, immigration, multiculturalism, etc - on which many UK rightwingers would be more firmly conservative.
I expect I’d have scored about 150 in a British version.
Jeez, Cameron out the traps with again with a message of difficult times ahead, then I nearly fell of my seat as he started firing shots at the BBC. Freeze on license fee, talks of responsibility of the BBC to this and that, warning shots fired, lefties at the BBC are really going to be gunning even more now.
Sounds like an end of Mr Nicey Nicey suck up to the lefties Dave.
190 absolutely - I would define myself as tub thumpingly right wing economically and very progressive socially.
195
British version. The way the country has been turned into a socialist state, I’d probably score 120
195 - Yes I think some of the questions were very US-centric I think I was docked Conservative points for some of my answers.
195/198 I’m sure the religious questions skewed my score - 112!
I could imagine Cameron and Blair getting roughly the same score - Blair more socially conservative?
187
Good point, I don’t take religion seriously at all.
200 - Are you Opus Dei?
I got 224, I appear to be one of those elusive red Tories. I’m really letting the side down.
Councilhousetory - I think “progressive” is a phrase used by folks on the left to mean “someone who agrees with me”.
197 “I would define myself as tub thumpingly right wing economically and very progressive socially”
I don’t think you are alone it that! Quite possibly will become a very good short-hand for Cameronism. Which, given the current state of the economy, leaves the LibDems in a bit of a bind. Anyone for unrestricted immigration? Anybody?
203 Not up to this point… Maybe I should go and check out their website…
I scored 180.
196 The BBC is exposed as ITV, Channels 4 & 5 suffer from advertising falls and the bloated BBC rather stands out.
BBC still sends multiple news teams and reporters out as ITV makes arrangements to share facilities to keep their regional news rooms going. BBC advertises in cinemas as other businesses review costs. A bit of belt tightening wouldn’t go amiss.
Conservative leader David Cameron has called for the BBC licence fee to be frozen for one year.
He said it was up to the corporation and other public bodies to “set an example” by keeping costs in check during the economic downturn.
183. I scored 288. Brother?
195 Yes I’d come out quite conservative on all those, probably also gun ownership (although probably not on a US-style gun ownership question as they tend to assume that if you don’t agree with the statement “everone should be able to own an M16″ you are some sort of pinko)
205 Quite - I think thats why I enjoy his leadership so much - he doesn’t have Howards fairly obvious social conservative views.
209, in a later speech, Mr Cameron added ‘get used to it, bitches’
Go Cammo!
199 Yes, 5 or 6 questions are so US specific these probably limit the accuracy of Brits’ Scores to +/- 20 points in relation to their final tallies. Americans produce these questionnaires all the time and Iain Dale, who just loves lists and league tables of all kinds must be in his element with this particular one.
Wow, this is high risk stuff from Cameron. He is just admitted cuts coming if we get a Tory government, and actually few caveats about not NHS, not education etc (maybe he will do). The media are hopping about about the BBC freeze, Toenails said “a cut price question from a soon to be cut price orgranisation”… Unbelievable amount of the questions seem to be about BBC freeze.
Dave must be getting a lot of positive feedback about promising cuts etc, or gone completely nutty. We all know what the election is going to be now. Labour - Tory Cuts, Tories - Yes, cuts, need them.
257 WTF? Am I Harriet Harman?
208 - ITV is crap, so we need to reduce BBC funding.
Well done Dave.
209 - That will get them thinking!!
Cameron better hope people this “trust me I’m honest, unlike that nutty Gordo” rings with the electorate, otherwise he is off down a path of shooting himself in the foot big time.
I am not so sure that huge sways of the electorate can necessarily realise the huge public service waste that can be cut vs cuts of everything, including front line services.
Gordo et co are going to go on the Tories relentlessly at this, I can see the posters now about Tories cutting schools, hospitals, etc
217 But ITV is crap for a lot less public money than the BBC!
BBC cut Dave off, shock horror!
A lot of people resent the license fee and would be very pro the license fee being frozen.Jonathon Ross at £18 million??, plenty of savings to be had/
217 - Cameron didn’t say that and you know it.
He said the arms race in terms of media spending, resulted in the BBC getting lots more money on the basis that ITV and Sky were going to be awash with cash and the BBC wouldn’t be able to compete. Now that clearly isn’t the case.
215 Orcale - The election is going to be about ‘The public sector is not sharing the pain. Private employees and self-employed are losing their jobs and their pensions; the public sector under Labour is doing nothing to relieve the burden. That is not sustainable.’
215 - I think Cameron is banking on people realising that the government just can’t go on spending and borrowing so much. Whether or not they actually do realise this is, as you say, where the risk lies. But, frankly, even if people don’t see it for themselves; they need someone to hit that hard truth home for them.
I got 185. I thought I’d be more “progressive” than that, but I’m half asleep so maybe I clicked a few 10s when I meant 0 and vice versa.
Anybody notice another New Labour plod on the BBC backing to the hilt the scheme allowing the public to know about sex offenders in their area. He was talking about it in glowing terms as a massive success.
Number of applications in his area, 11. When asked how does he know, he says 1 application is a success!
217 More “in a recession we can’t afford to p1ss money up against the wall on a luxury like TV”.
At least ITV is free to the viewer, which makes it quite good VFM in my opinion, even if I don’t actually watch it.
Maybe the idea is to whip the BBC into a leaner and more efficient state where it could be at least part-privatised?
As a start, CNN and Sky produce news channels on a commercial basis, I don’t see why the BBC can’t.
228 - ITV is like Farm Foods pies.
Cheap and ostensibly good VFM.
But full of testicles and eyelids
I wonder if Cammo is going for the jugular? Exposing the splits between Darling ‘enough is enough’ and Brown ’spend spend spend, money we don’t have’
ITV may be free but as they seem incapable of attracting adverts perhaps because Phil C “even if I don’t actually watch it” is not alone, either they will soon go out of business or ….nope cant think of an alternative.
224/225 - I don’t disagree, I just think Cameron is playing very risk game. So many people depend on the public sector now, and as shown with the polls a number of public sector workers backing the Tories is starting to become sizeable.
With this strategy he better hopes a) that he gets enough time to explain his plan (whenever it is released and b) they believe him.
I guess his plan is that if he is going to win, he only wants to win if he thinks he can be in charge for more than one term. I assume he feels it is the absolute minimum to get his agenda implemented, By being “honest” about stuff, I suppose he is hoping to get through the “nasty” stuff asap and get through a re-election to make the “nicer” changes when the economy is recovering.
195 I scored 143, although it’s aimed at an American, not British, audience.
229 But testicles and eyelids are quite nutritious. So I’m not sure that’s a good analogy.
231 Your point is? If TV companies can’t make money they should go bust. If they did, I’m sure someone else will be along.
232 - I think he is trying the same trick as Thatcher. She managed to split the Trade Union Members from their leadership and mop up votes, I think Cameron may be trying the same to split ordinary public servants from the public sector fatcats.
Not surprised he’s firing some warning shots at the BBC. Its an open goal for the Tories really. The BBC have set themselves up for whats coming, hook, line and sinker.
230. He will know, of course, that Labour is being advised by the Treasury to tighten the current fiscal plans in the budget.
230 I think Dave is simply expressing what most people are thinking - State spending is totally out of control.
Score of 235..whatever that means.
The problem I have with the BBC position, is one prominent view is it can only be “neutral” due to not taking advertising money.
However, this is just garbage, as BBC worldwide is a big money making operation for the BBC and actually they couldn’t survive without it. It is to such an extent that you visit the BBC website from abroad, you get adverts, view it from within the UK, no adverts.
Now the question is, if they can’t remain impartial with adverts, how do they justify this kind of thing? Just because we in the UK can’t see an advert for a worldwide company, does that mean that the UK BBC will remain just as impartial towards its view of the operation of that multi-national?
237, 238
totally agree and think it is his preferred course of action, timing is key here though for me - he is trying to split Brown and Darling permanently
I like the BBC. I even like its news coverage, although Sky is giving it a serious run for its money. But it should focus on public sector stuff. I think the famed ‘BBC bias’ is institutional rather than deliberate; and although it exists, I don’t think it’s as deep as many think. By reforming the institution it may also be possible to reform this bias, to the extent it exists.
My proposals: Privatize BBC3, Radio 1, Radio 2. Merge BBC2 and BBC4. Sell Eastenders, Strictly Come Dancing, Top Gear… Fire Jonathan Ross. Sport coverage should focus on amateur sports which don’t otherwise get covered. Open a dedicated joint Open University/BBC channel - maybe more than one. More money for documentaries, and investigative journalism. Extended local TV news coverage, including more interviews with councillors, etc.
Confession Time: I have bought Sean’s book - The last one on the shelves of WHS Rugby - Bought the booker prize winner and got Tom Knox half price!!!
241. Yes, there’s a good deal going on behind the scenes here.
234 - BBC £12 per month.
Sky subscription £40 per month.
The BBC is very very good VFM
240 Wherever its money comes from implies a conflict of interest.
Maybe now we have so much more choice of TV, there is an argument for relaxing the politically neutral requirement. Channel 4 still has an apparent liberal bias but is so much more interesting because its political balance requirement is less exacting.
Surely BBC should only show programmes that I want to watch. They should, of course, also change their schedules as my tastes change.
240 The BBC know perfectly well that the organisation will eventually be split up. This is not a party-political thing or related to news ‘bias’, it’s a simple reflection of the way changes in technology have invalidated the old licence-fee model. So they are trying to grab as much market share in the new media now, while they can. That is why their competitors are so unhappy with the way the BBC is able to use licence-fee money to develop their markets.
242 - Privatize that lot in the current advertising climate
Why?
245 - Surely Sky subscription is there charge plus the Licence fee, so even if you only watch non-BBC channels you can only watch them if you pay your toll.
242 - Somebody needs to get hold of Panorama! That program is fast becoming a joke, like QT, obsessed with having “celebs” hosts leading the “investigation”.
The other week it was Theo Paphitis wandering around doing anecdotal stuff with small business holders. Now there is no doubt Mr Dragon’s Den is a successful business man, but what experience does he have in detailed investigative reporting, asking for FOI from the government etc. It showed, when they wanted a comment from Mandy, they sent somebody else. The whole program had bu##er all in depth stuff anaylse about the reality of the situation out there for small and medium businesses.
245.
BBC = No test cricket, no Premier League, No 24, No Lost.
Sky does not cost that much with cable.
Apart from the wildlife programmes the BBC is mostly bilge.
Also is the Beeb entirely self funding ?
245 But Sky’s subscription is REALLY £52 to watch, with £12 going to the BBC, whether you watch BBC or not.
Would you think it fair to have to pay the road fund licence, even if you only rode a bike? And be hauled up before the Beak if you didn’t pay it?
251 is it still ‘hosted’ by Jeremy ‘ass’ Vine?
‘Hi, I am Jeremy Vine, I am off to spend my fee for doing this while you watch someone else’s investigation’
Sack Vine and save a lot of wasted money for a start.
164/172 - Richard/Peter. I do think it’s a very fine call as to which way events might the polls. Excluding one-offs, which you rightly say are more likely to affect the government (though not by as much when there are ‘big’ issues in play such as a recession), I can see it going first one way and then the other. When the election is held will be critical.
I’ve come to the view that an October election may well be Labour’s best bet. The government spending combined with the quantitative easing is likely to give a temporary and (at the time) relatively painless boost to the economy over the Summer - the pain will come later. There is the possibility that sterling will crash, upsetting a lot of holiday-makers, but with other economies borrowing bucket-loads as well - though not printing money yet - the risk is lower than it otherwise would be. By the Autumn, it may feel as if the worst is over, whether it acutally is or not. In fact, it may well be a little hillock in a deep valley - but that might still be all that’s needed.
The Conservatives have rightly made the case that the government is borrowing far too much and that spending needs to be controlled, but that’s based on assumptions that Brown doesn’t accept (even if they’re right, as I think they are). Labour will campaign on Tory Cuts to schools and hospitals and with the Conservative messages, that might just hit home.
However, the deficit can’t be sustained at its present level indefinately and a retrenchment in spending has to come (as is indeed planned with the VAT rise due, though it will need much more than that). An election in April / May 2010 will bring many more variables into play in the interim and if Brown does go that long, I agree - he’ll very probably lose to an outright Tory majority. Events may well have had time to justify Cameron’s case by then.
243. Last Tom Knox on the shelves, eh? That’s what I like to hear!
Hope you enjoy. Ta for buying it.
Personally I think that we should simply move over to an entirely PPV system for TV.
245 - That isn’t like for like comparison and again you know! Sky £40, how many channels? And what are you really paying for? The high price subscription on Sky is to pay not for the news and Sky 1 light entertainment stuff, it is for the high price items like Sports e.g. the Footy (which the BBC couldn’t even afford one of the cut price packages), new Movies (again you get a 4-5 year movie on the BBC, a 6 month old one of Sky), etc, etc, etc.
Also, BBC, how much is of the cost to us currently subsided by their BBC Worldwide operations?
@249 (tim)
I didn’t say “in the current environment” - although, I would do it soon after the next election.
As for why, it’s because I think that the BBC should be publicly funded for the same reasons that museums and art galleries are publicly funded. Not because they are necessarily popular, but because they provide tremendous cultural value.
I can’t see a “public service” case for keeping Jonathan Ross on the BBC. With so much fragmentation, new channels, and net video, the crossover argument is weaker than ever.
252 - We’ll have to disagree.
The BBC Radio is worth the licence fee.
And CBBC plus Cbeebies an antidote to the shite peddled for kids on Sky and ITV.
254 - Yes, and agree what a complete waste of money. All he says is “This week on panorama”, “next week on….”. I would love to know how much he is getting for that gig, £100 is too much, I would do it for less!
177.
I scored 234 - I’m a progressive, Dave would be pleased.
260. You can’t get Peppa Pig on CBBC - its on Nickleodeon..
253. I’d happily junk BBC1 and just have BBC2 and BBC4. That would save a huge amount I’m sure and I would miss almost nothing that I value.
245 Virgin will give you 100 TV channels plus free weekend phone calls for £10 a month if you have a virgin phone line. And £12 a month is not good value of you don’t want to watch it. 90p a day for the Times is good value, but no one forces me to take it.
20. Both really. But the one with the burr sounds really backward.
265. Imagine if New Labour made everyone pay a newspaper licence in order to pay for The Guardian. Yikes.
I am yet to hear a convincing argument against why having adverts on say BBC News would wreck it’s so called “impartiality”. Is Sky News or ITV News any less impartial?
What would make a broadcaster not impartial is if there isn’t any legislation (or it isn’t enforced) for impartiality test with regards to their news output. Nobody wants a Fox News in the UK, but it doesn’t have to be like that. Besides nobody takes Fox News seriously anyway. The BBC could easily be made to operate like ITV and C4, with strict rules saying your output of news coverage must be balanced.
What really makes state broadcasters in many cases “biased” is interference from politicians, oh like sticking a true Labour man (Lyons) in charge of the oversight of the balance!
I say anyone with a subscription to Sky or Virgin has already made enough of a commitment to broadcasting - and does not need to pay the TV Licence as well. If that means that Sky and Virgin have to block BBC TV output as a result, fair enough. Give people a choice…
258:Not to mention the genius device which is Sky+
263 - Peppa Pig would be on CBeebies, not CBBC.
Although the latter episodes lack the scipts that allowed Peppa to soar in series one and two.
177. Thanks for the link. Just did the test on americanprogress. Scored 284.
267 - We do in a roundabout way, with all those non-job public sector adverts that prop up the Guardian. Without all that state funded advertising revenue the Guardian would be in massive do do.
266 Backward? Are you calling Pam Ayres’ accent “backward”? (OK, she’s West Berkshire, but it’s near as dammit!)
273 - Probably why they aren’t being quite so nasty now with the threat of their milch cow being slaughtered.
275 - Squeaky sounds pretty nasty when he talks about it. His plan seems to be that advertising public sector jobs in newspapers would be cut. Instead their would be the creation of a public sector jobs website, and all new jobs would be hosted their.
I noticed Cameron said it today, albeit in slightly coded language. He said that public sector advertising, why are we doing so much of it? It is something that can be cut back.
Polling news
Ipsos-MORI completed its March survey over the weekend and the results should be out tomorrow.
277 - Can’t wait for that!
268. “The BBC could easily be made to operate like … C4, with strict rules saying your output of news coverage must be balanced”
Because that obviously works *so* well!
If the Beeb is such good value for money - and by and large, I’d say it is - there shouldn’t be a problem making it a subscription service, come the digital changeover?
270 - “Not to mention the genius device which is Sky+”
Ironically,the device that is killing advertising on commercial TV as people record and fast forward, skipping the ads.
274. You struggle to find too many accents like that in most of Oxfordshire now, certainly among people younger than 60-odd.
279 - I see you dissected my quote, not appreciated.
I said Sky, C4 and ITV. I was also very clear that this only works if and only if strict oversight of the impartiality and balance. I can’t say that the oversight of the BBC is impartial, you can? As I said Lyons, he isn’t a Labour man, oh no no no no no.
Whether BBC is good value or not, who believes it isn’t capable of producing the same output for 10% less?
There’s a recession, |ITV isn’t commissioning as much so indepenent producers are eager for business, “stars” don’t have the bargaining power without the competition for their services so programmes should be cheaper. News teams could be amalgamated, better use made of rehearsal spaces, studios.
280 - Yes, but it won’t in the near future.
There are numerous other ways that companies can get their advertising into the shows. It is just that the traditional advert breaks, which are becoming too numerous and too long (look at US TV), are the in the causing this behaviour. TV and advertiser just need to start thinking a bit more creatively.
Also, look for instance how a lot of streaming video works on the internet. You can’t avoid the advert, as you have to watch it before the video loads (I am sure there ways around it, but as long as it isn’t too long people on the whole aren’t going to avoid it).
282. Yes, I know I skipped a bit in the quote but the point of that was to emphasise that the output of C4 News is far from impartial; in fact I’d say it’s a good deal worse than BBC (although as no-one watches it, that’s of less consequence than the Beeb’s bias). The system doesn’t work at the moment to keep C4 on track, so there’s no reason to assume it would for the BBC. That said, I agree that the current regulation doesn’t work adequately for the BBC either.
283 - Keep the licence fee where it is and expand the BBC into areas that ITV is evacuating, regional ITV is being abandoned,kids tv and documentaries, similarly.
177. I was 258 , so I am not as right wing as I thought.
I scored 220 on the politiquiz. Which puts me slap in the centre ground of American public opinion, which is as I expected.
Anyone want to guess how I answered Q38 about homosexuality being unnatural and whether it should be ‘tolerated’ in polite society?
215.Makes the Labour ad in that Politics slot on C4 all the more interesting doesn’t it? My tuppence worth, Labour appealing to core vote while Cameron is going all out for the centre ground vote on sensible public spending cuts. And what a master stroke in political positioning by going after the BBC licence fee in this way.
288: It does show how more socially liberal at least we are in this country (at least I think we are). Whilst you get some nutters, or more eldery, the idea that homosexuality is ‘unnatural’ is hardly floated by anyone of note.
281 True. Have a friend just turned fifty from Wallingford who does sound remarkably like Pam Ayres, but otherwise it is mostly the good old boys having a chin-wag outside the Post Office. Too many London commuter incomers, I guess.
I rather mourn the passing of these regional accents. Nottingham and Derby are barely 15 miles apart, but they are quite different accents to the trained ear.
Which I guess makes me centre-right by British standards, which is also what was wanted.
Can anyone tell me what the supposedly neutral, apolitical unelected leader of the EU Commission is doing - criticizing the British Tories for quitting the EPP?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/mar/16/david-cameron-epp-barroso
What the F is that about? Would he criticise Labour if they decided to set up a more Federalist socialist group? I think we all know the answer.
GRRRR.
286 - Oh goody more Liberal Lefty creep! Why give even more power to a somebody in a monopoly position. Media output should be about choice and balance, not the BBC using its unique position to take over everything!
I scored 271.4 ! That’s almost off the scale of Progressive American-ness. I am amazed at myself - and slightly worried……
288. I gave that a 0. And I don’t presonally benefit from it.
Telegraph blog has this story - case of interesting subject but why did BBC have to spend so much and why did it choose to become a hacker?
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/milo_yiannopoulos/blog/2009/03/16/why_is_our_licence_fee_being_used_to_sponsor_the_bbcs_hackers
too much cash, too little cost control.
293 Go get him, Gnasher!
291 …. and very different football teams!
It would be nice if some kindly person could collate a table of everyone’s scores on this questionaire. Then next time you are in a debate with a fellow contributor to the site, you could have a quick check to see if you are further left or right than they are.
I’m not volunteering by the way. As it stands, everyone else is still well to the right of me anyway!
@293:
High ranking members of the EU are just waking up to the realisation that in just over a year, one of the big four EU countries is going to elect and openly and proudly Eurohostile government for the first time.
That’s gotta be causing them some sleepless nights, as they figure out how to contain, undermine and ignore Dave.
288 did you say ‘get ‘em Mawwwww’ and dribble down your cowboy shirt?
Sandy, I have put mine in my signature.
299
291. Even in the west country proper distinctive speech is slowly fading - generally one finds a very watered-down version of it among the young, often just a light accent and a handful of idiomatic peculiarities. And I agree, it is unfortunate.
293 - Is Cameron to be believed this time.Perhaps the Latvian Rural Deliverance party has given him the come on.
302 Whilst playing a banjo (easier with six fingers on each hand!)
290/296 the Observer poll into social attitudes found 25% in UK would have marked that 10, but then the US “progressives” would have been confused because many of the same people would have supported universal state health care, unions, government intervention and on other side been against immigration.
260. They have too much money if they are wasting it on crap like Ross. They should not be allowed to have annual increases and just do what they want. Money should be curtailed and they should have to prove value and we should see the salaries and expenses etc that we pay for.
293, big-nosed unelected unaccountable eurofederalist gobshite. I hope he falls in the Thames and gets pelted with horse dung.
60. Another example of why averaging, even simple averaging, is the correct thing to do.
If you had averaged the four polls for each party.
Only 1 pollster in 4 would have got closer to the Tory share than the average did.
Only 1 pollster in 4 would have got closer to the Labour share than the average did.
No pollster would have closer to the LibDem share than the average did.
And since, in advance, you would have no way of knowing which was the one who beat the average (they were from different pollsters anyhow), selecting the average would be the only rational thing to do.
Likewise for the lead. Only one pollster of the four beat the average, but then only narrowly.
ICMs 10 point lead was almost as far off the average’s 16.5 point lead from the actual 13 point lead…
In fact, if you had applied the average 16.5 point lead to the swingometers of the time you would have, albeit fortuitously, arrived at pretty much the final result in terms of the Labour majority. [164 versus 178]
177 — I scored 195, only!
300. Good idea. I think I’m somewhere near the top of the table, beneath you and tim. However it does rather ruin the ‘tory bias’ moaning on the site if most people here are apparently ‘progressives’.
297 - I have to say I did wonder when I saw what was an interesting program, how much has this cost and we the license fee payer has just paid out to what are criminals!
I have no idea why they couldn’t have achieved the same by contacting say one/two/three major universities and done the same experiment there. Cost to us virtually nothing, and I’m sure a large university would be interested in knowing this stuff for their own security and as an academic point of view.
I am also fairly sure the big online security companies can run this stuff themselves. I would assume they have racks of 1000’s of PC doing things on the internet all the time, to discover new viruses, attacks, fixes, etc.
306 yes, and giggling in the undergrowth as Burt Reynolds paddles by
Here’s an interesting development in European politics…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7942338.stm
Wonder if it will create a precedent closer to home?
312 - I think the position of religion in this country probably skews it, and whether you see the Iraq War as progressive or conservative.(or both in SeanTs case)
Khatami has withdrawn from the Iranian presidential race. Probably bad news for Obama (and the rest of us!)
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/17/world/middleeast/17iran.html?ref=world
309 - Yeah he is probably too overweight for use in the earth-to-space artillery.
313: Squeal boy!! squeal like a pig!!
312: This is of course ‘progressive’ by US standards.
PS what is ‘progressive’ anyway. Still no idea.
I seem to have got two comments stuck awaiting moderation; I think it’s because I picked up on Sandy’s hint and put my Progressive Score in my signature - obviously, The System doesn’t like us to change signatures with the same e-mail address, so I have taken it out again.
311. They gave me 183.5 for some strange reason…
311. I scored 179. The religious stuff skews it for a UK audience.
288. What quiz?
318?
Re 315. This is because it was my understanding that Khatami had better links within reformist elements of the theocracy than Mousavi - although I could well be wrong on this.
319 swingback from 220 at mid term
293 I have seen a theory on some blog or other (Jailhouse Lawyer I think) that it’s because it will weaken the size of the centre-right/Christian Democrat grouping which is what Barroso’s from. BUT in his press conference DC said something like “we will continue to work with EPP-ED on issues that we agree with them on, but integration has gone quite far enough, indeed too far”.
‘Tis all on ConHome if you can bear to go there.
For Yellow Submarine - DC said he opposed the minimum alcohol price idea. They want to put the tax up on “strong beer, alcopops and cider that has never seen an apple”.
So they’re clearly going for the West Country Lib Dem ciderhead vote then, having devised a cunning plan that will apparently tax the f### out of Diamond White but leave Naish Brothers Farmyard Scrumpy untouched. I’d love to see how that one’s going to work!
235.”232 - I think he is trying the same trick as Thatcher. She managed to split the Trade Union Members from their leadership and mop up votes, I think Cameron may be trying the same to split ordinary public servants from the public sector fatcats.”
James, that is just what I was thinking. I don’t think this is a high risk strategy at all, in fact, the timing of this so soon after the *wipe the policy slate clean* will show yet again, the hand of George Osborne being two/three steps ahead of the game. Expect to see public opinion start to come into line with this view as the debt and taxation numbers really start to bite as we all find ourselves with less disposable income. Too much was made of the Cameron apology last week, and not enough on the underlying point about having to totally rewrite economic policy in light of this recession.
This is the big GE campaign push, and its going to be a real Conservative vs Labour fight on the economy. I suspect that this strategy has been in the planning for at least 6 months, and that Clarke, Lawson and Lamont etc have been involved at some level too.
There will be a lot of blue sea between the two main parties by the time of the GE, its going to be a real choice.
I scored 74 on Iain Dales questionnaire. Does this mean I am the least progressive pb.com person to have taken the test? I actually think it makes me the most progressive person. It probably makes me the most Conservative. Does that mean left = progressive, right = not progressive?
I am proud but confused.
326 - Indeed, I am really up for it too.. Can’t wait for the actual election campaign it’s going to be a cracker!!
re 175 EpiPens please. I’ve just had to correct a document which rendered it incorrectly as epipen throughout.
286 The last thing the BBC should be allowed to do is expand into anything, its akin to a giant amoeba sucking up everything in its path and stifling competition. The BBC always says it hasn’t got enough money, and it has always had too much of our dosh. Let the BBC take advertising and let it succeed or fail based on its output.
321 — This one. MTF pointed it to our attention @ 177.
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2009/03/progressive_quiz.html/
I’m curious to know how much S&S will score…
Shall we bet on it? I guess about 222…
326 Yes I think it’s the start of pre-election positioning, at the least. I think the Tories are moving into a position to be able to fight an election from June onwards, if necessary.
329 Surely that’s easy. “Find and replace”.
The Quiz
The test asks sometimes silly question : such as “is it unpatriotic to criticize the Gov. in times of war?”. I guess that if you say “no, it is not” — as I did,– then it counts as a progressive response. Caricatural.
I don’t know any serious Conservative that would answer yes to it! Rush Limbaugh wouldn’t, for instance, I’m pretty sure.
This is a test conceived by Liberals (or Progressives) who think naively that Conservatives think like a Ann Coulter after a month of sex-starving.
333 - Lol
And my wife hasn’t been to Oxford Street yet.
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23662478-details/Capital%27s+high+streets+buck+recession+with+an+increase+in+sales/article.do
328.James, watch this - C4 Political Slot
The irony is that Labour have already given the Conservatives a spotlight on the stage to make the case for public spending cuts in light of this recession. Only this time, their claims and their own figures are going to come under a hell of a lot more scrutiny too. Brown and Darling have been announcing headline grabbing schemes aimed at helping specific groups during this recession for six months now, but the implementation has still to happen. And unlike the period when Brown was Chancellor, this budget will not be able to rely on smoke and mirrors to mask any nasty surprises on stealth taxation, or and some pretty awful debt figures.
The numbers are a mess now…
re Dale. I scored 278
330. I believe (so please correct me if I am wrong) that the term progressive is used by the American left because “liberal” is seen by some as a dirty word, and as for “socialist”, don’t even go there! Am I a progressive? On some issues I would say probably yes; on others, probably no. Is wanting to see former bankers pelted with rotten fruit in the middle of the Bigg Market a progressive policy or not?
“There will no longer will be “enemy combatants” at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the Obama administration said Friday… Having abandoned a favored Bush administration term in the war on terrorism, however, the new administration has claimed roughly the same power to hold Guantanamo’s detainees indefinitely — even those who never held a gun or went near a battlefield.”
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-guantanamo-enemy-combatan-2009mar14,0,4719816.story
Many of you here have been enraged over war criminal Bush’s violations of the Geneva Convention through a policy of allowing unlawful detentions at Guantanamo. What say you now about war criminal Obama’s policy of asserting the same power over Guantanamo detainees?
343. So very, very predictable…
re 335 yes it would be if they had been consistently wrong. Some of the policies that get presented to us are of the most appalling illiteracy.
260/271 - Peppa Pig is on Milkshake (C5).
342 Sandy “Is wanting to see former bankers pelted with rotten fruit in the middle of the Bigg Market a progressive policy or not?”
No, I don’t think so. It sounds more like ‘back-to-basics’.
It’s those green shoots I tell you.
The pound advanced on Monday after a continued rally in financial stocks boosted the currency.
Given the high exposure of the UK economy to the banking sector, sterling has displayed a strong correlation with the fortunes of the sector during the recent crisis.
“In this respect, the recent improvements in equities should continue, especially with a rebound in financial stocks,” said Hans Redeker at BNP Paribas. “Hence, we expect the pound to outperform.”
He said a survey showing asking prices for UK houses had unexpectedly risen last month was also supporting sterling.
“Although this rise in asking prices is being driven by misplaced optimism, it could add to sterling support in the near-term,” said Mr Redeker.
The pound rose 1.8 per cent to a one-week high of $1.4202 against the dollar, climbed 0.8 per cent to £0.9160 against the euro and gained 1.7 per cent to Y139.58 against the yen.
Weathers bloody loverlee too.
Afternoon all,
Timely thread from Mike. I was bemused to say the least at Johnston’s scaremongering in the Telegraph , which Mike’s thread coincidentally debunk’s by undermining Johnston’s core argument.
Good to hear Cameron’s proposal to freeze the TV licence and amusing to hear Nick Robinsons initial response. Well no doubt the BBC will ramp up it’s anti-Conservative activities now but I suspect with little effect. Perhaps they should start cutting back their profligacy (like advertising in Cinemas).
So Barroso’s whining is he? Oh dear, what a shame, never mind.
Finally, did the test and was informed I was very Conservative - scored 149. I can only assume it was written by those with a very specific view of things as I am nothing of the sort except perhaps in economic terms.
343 — “The new administration has claimed roughly the same power to hold Guantanamo’s detainees indefinitely”
Proof that Bob Gates is doing a fine job.
And, more importantly, it’s a relieving proof that President Obama understands well that we are in a permanent Global Civil War, where the fighters of both sides don’t necessarily wear recognizable insignia and uniforms, fight for a national army, give a damn about the ONUS and Geneva, and are susceptible to common-sense, Cold War-style terror equilibrium in the balance of forces.
The actual Global War implies that Executive Power of a sovereignty shall actually, sometimes, acts swiftly and outside the frame of the Law.
347, no it’s progressive. It’s recycling unwanted food waste in conjunction with promoting community sentencing.
Of course, the real progressives are ones like me, utilising renewable energy to power solar death rays.
Tim Ireland at http://www.bloggerheads.com has a piece about the Scottish Tories education spokesperson helping the Scottish Daily Express run a front page attacking the survivors of the Dunblane massacre.
[325] - They want to put the tax up on “strong beer, alcopops and cider that has never seen an apple”.
Why?
No-one seems to have a clear idea how what they propose is going to translate into the result they want to see. Mostly what they want to achieve appears to be to “deal with the electorate’s concern”, rather than anything more meaningful like “reduce alcohol-related A&E admissions on a Saturday night” or “reduce average alcohol consumption to benefit public health”.
More meaningful objectives suggest more meaningful action - though whether you are prepared to take that action remains to be seen. The funniest thing I heard about all this was the chap on the radio who said that the current situation was “intolerable”. Well, no, it obviously is tolerable, because we’ve been tolerating it for a long time now.
Most people would rather tolerate the status quo than to see the large increases in drinks prices, or draconian police action [blood alcohol limits for being allowed out in public?], that would be necessary to change behaviour - so they end up supporting increases in duty on the alcohol that they don’t drink, because they want to feel like they want something to be done, without actuallly being inconvenienced themselves.
To that end, I support increases in duty on cider [can't stand the stuff], lager [can't believe I ever drunk the stuff], whisky [tastes like pureed ash] and white wine [I drink red]. You may as well throw in vodka, because I was in A&E last saturday night and it was a nearly empty bottle of cheap vodka that I saw one of the nurses throwing away [anecdotal evidence for the win].
350- Obama’s campaign rhetoric on Guantanamo, and his specific promise to close the camp within one year, were always implausible bones thrown to his far-left activist base (as runnymede suggests). An article I recently posted here illustrating the many released Guantanamo detainees who have since become prominent leaders in terrorist organizations only made Obama’s promises that much more unrealistic. Now he tweaks Bush administration terminology (again to please the peaceniks) while maintaining the same policy (wow, these detainees really are dangerous after all! who knew?). There must be some pacifist true believers who are feeling pretty disillusioned these days!
FDR on Executive Power
I assume unhesitatingly the leadership of this great army of our people dedicated to a disciplined attack upon our common problems.…I am prepared under my constitutional duty to recommend the measures that a stricken Nation in the midst of a stricken world may require.…But in the event that the Congress shall fail to take [the necessary measures] and in the event that the national emergency is still critical, I shall not evade the clear course of duty that will then confront me. I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis—broad Executive power to wage war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.
FDR in 1933, assuming extraordinary, EXCEPTIONAL powers to fight the Great Depression…
342 What are they then? Geneva Convention very clear on Prisoners of War, Enemy Combatants and Civilians. Unless Obama has decided that they were members of the armed forces of an enemy power, so are POWs, then if they are not Enemy Combatants they must be civilians and subject to the protections the Geneva Conventions offer to civilians.
355- It is typical for executive powers to grow in our system during a time of national crisis. That said, basically FDR’s entire twelve years as president were a “crisis” of one form or another, and his presidency is the closest we’ve ever come to a dictatorship. Whether considering his steamrolling of the Supreme Court or his unilateral decision to lock up Americans of Japanese ancestry, we’ve never seen the likes of it before or since.
coldstone @ 340 - at 2:33 - it is always unwise to quote financial statistics during trading. They’re always wrong.
S&S : “There must be some pacifist true believers who are feeling pretty disillusioned these days!”
To reconcile his Administration with the lefties of lala-land, Obama can recast himself as a mix between FDR (for the actualization of the virtual New Deal II) and Lincoln, since the later also did not hesitate to suspend temporally — if indefinitely — actual articles of the Constitution in order to protect the country and its people from evil:
“Whether strictly legal or not,” [Lincoln] declared, the measures he had adopted had been taken “under what appeared to be a popular demand and a public necessity” in the certainty that Congress would ratify them. They were based on the conviction that even fundamental law could be violated if the very existence of the union and the juridical order were at stake (”Are all the laws but one to go unexecuted, and the Government itself go to pieces lest that one be violated?”
Giorgio Agamben,
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/009254.html
354 S&S - Why were those ‘Guantanamo detainees who have since become prominent leaders in terrorist organizations’ released rather than held as prisoners of war under the Geneva Convention? It seems to me that Bush got it wrong both ways - illegally trashing decades-old legal protections, AND releasing those individuals who actually did pose a threat.
I don’t know whether Obama realistically could do much better, starting from here. But the US should never have got itself into that position in the first place.
I can’t help wondering what the US position would have been in the 1980s if Britain had kidnapped and held without trial US citizens who were thought to be giving support to the IRA. Not very positive, I would imagine - but the comparison is a pretty exact one.
New thread: “Should this kill off the Labour “swingback” fantasy?
‘his presidency is the closest we’ve ever come to a dictatorship’
Some folks from the South might (have) disagree(d) of course…
357 — Indeed. It is why the ideas of Hayek, and all those “neoliberals” were — and still are — such a precious critics of the government — aiming to neutralise effectively the potential abuse of the Executive power by an “ambitious” President.
Democracies can easily turn into virtual Dictatorships in the name of a permanent emergency. FDR proved it well indeed.
359- Although this is a bit of inside politics from a U.S. perspective, I will be very interested to see if the ACLU relentlessly attacks the Obama administration the way it attacked Bush over Guantanamo detentions (among other things). For those not acquainted with the organization, it is essentially a grouping of secular (particularly anti-Christian) leftist lawyers who have militated against all manner of Bush administration actions, not least of all Guantanamo.
Stupid post on Iain Dale complaining Barroso should mind his own business about the Conservatives leaving the EPP.
Given Barroso is a leading member of the EPP and his party is within the political family that is the EPP it surely makes it his business when someone leaves it.
359 Philippe Magnan
Please correct me if I am wrong, but weren’t military tribunals also the chosen method of prosecution of those involved in the conspiracy to assassinate Lincoln?
re test, 111. I think I pressed the wrong button once to make myself more progressive, and I think religion should go go hang…(except when it’s useful to bring it up to rile lefties).
A bit disappointed Albion Til I die beat me…
54. A good post from David there. If you won’t listen to me, listen to him!
70. No-one is going to great lengths to create deterministic models. What I and others are doing is trying to capture the volatility of the electorate and the change in the system, and calculate probabilities for various outcomes. Anything is possible, but some things will always be more likely than others.
You speak of a small number of samples for elections, but you ignore the fact that each one is itself a “sample” of about 25 million people.
Elections are fought over the middle ground, and it is extremely unlikely that in a two-party system either party will obtain more than 60% of the two-party vote. Interestingly, this appears to hold for the US as well as the UK, and for a number of other countries, over a large number of elections. So the “possible” range of outcomes is reduced by about 80% before we begin any analysis.
It is a stark fact that to win an overall majority, the Tories need to win about 57% of the two-party vote - the highest hurdle (except for marginally 2005) that any opposition party has ever faced.
And to get there they need to exceed the swing obtained in fifteen of the last sixteen elections…
Of course the Tories might do it, but reasonable analysis will take these factors into account, and try to estimate a probability, based on past performance, adjusted if necessary for increased volatility.
That is all I do, and all I’ve ever done.
Turnout: in reply to the post asking for evidence that voters are mainly 10/10s, one of the other institutes found that this wasn’t the case - quite a few 10/10s didn’t, quite a lot of others did, all the way down to 0/10 (perhaps it depends on whether you happen to pass your polling station). They concluded IIRC that weighting with the claimed probability (e.g. if you’re 5/10 sure, you count 50% of a vote) was as close as they could get. That’s kind of like ICM/Populus/Comres, but I think they give up on anyone under 5/10, don’t they?
In 1997, I think the Tories did manage some swingback - people thought we were pretty cool, but they had qualms about giving us a ridiculous majority.
336. A lot of similar tests suffer from this problem, like the otherwise interesting Political Compass.