Is Brown set for an invisibility boost?
August 7th, 2009
Was this the secret of his popularity as chancellor?
With a bit of luck there might be a weekend poll and if there is it could help us to answer one of the questions that is often posed - does seeing Gordon Brown or not seeing him on our screens everyday have an impact on Labour’s opinion poll ratings?
For both he and David Cameron have been away for getting on for a fortnight so any new survey would have been taken in the context of neither party leader getting much attention from the broadcasting media. There also have not been any major new issues that could complicate things.
During Brown’s ten years as chancellor he had, outside budget and PBR times, a relatively low public profile and he maintained very positive personal ratings throughout. As Prime Minister things are inevitably different and hardly a working day goes by in non-holiday periods without him being involved in one story or another.
This has been magnified in the past two years by Brown taking a much bigger role than his predecessor in announcing key policy changes rather than leaving it to ministers.
Labour’s best YouGov rating of 2009 was the 34% it got in a survey that ended on January 8th following the Christmas and New Year holiday period. This was only equalled in a poll that took place in the immediate aftermath of the London G20 meeting.
So what will the mid-month polls show? I find it hard to guess but if there is an “invisibility factor” then that should, surely, affect Labour’s general election planning.
Mike Smithson
MessageSpace Advertising
Depends how much Harman’s publicity splurge has worked.
It says alot - does it not - that having their front man being invisible is a good thing for Labour!
He’s PM now unfortunately. The Macavity approach to life doesn’t work in No.10. He’ll have to be everywhere during a GE campaign. If Brown is still leading at the start of a GE campaign I’d expect Labour to drop a few % points duruing the course of it.
They chose this muppet, this malevolent, brooding, vindicative, arrogant, incompetent liar. Now they have to live with him. Bon Chance.
2. Patrick: The Macavity approach to life doesn’t work in No.10. He’ll have to be everywhere during a GE campaign.
If they try to hide him, the few occasions when he is out will see a huge prize for the one who can be the new Sharron Storer…
I do not like Brown and want to throw things at the TV whenever he is on but I cannot work out why. It is not his being a Scot for I quite like politicians such a John Reid and Alistair Darling. I never feel he is being totally level with the audience.
You get the feeling you are being tricked all the time that he is trying to pull a fast one on you. With Cameron you know that he is a smooth operator and that he is also trying to pull a fast one. But he makes me smile and if they were used car salesmen it would be him who got my business. The car in each case would be rubbish.
The thing about Brown’s lies is that they’re so obvious.
In a controversial statement, I’m going to say I think that everyone feeling good about the economy probably helped the ratings when he was chancellor (plus he was a good straight man to Blair, contrast worked in his favour) and now people blame him for the recession he’s not so popular.
3. And hope Prescott doesn’t punch someone (not that wasn’t justified last time).
4 Mike.
It’s because Brown is so very transparently a deeply unlikeable individual. He is a controlling monster. He tries to come across on telly as a normal human being - but he just isn’t. And the insincerity, the discomfort, the contempt, the rage - they all shine through. He ain’t the sort of person you could enjoy a pint with.
He’s one of those artificial ideologues that would only want to talk about neo-endogenous growth theory or tax credits. You’d tell him your granny just died and his first thought would be that the country would be paying less old age pensions. He’s a bloody empathy free freakazoid - that’s his problem.
Blair, Cameron, Thatcher and Mandelson are good examples of politicians who are also people. Brown is a fuc*ing robot. A commy, bad breath, bullying cybernaut (with a severe bug in his programming).
Nobody warms to him because he is just not a human being.
Surely a contradiction:
January - out of the picture, realtively high ratings
April G20 - wall to wall coverage, and ditto
In any case, I expect Labour to lose % points if Macavity is forced out to meet the press every day. My guess is he will blow up in front of the cameras at least once.
8-Mandelson are (sic) good examples of politicians who are also people.
Joke?
10 No not a joke actually. I find Mandy’s politics pretty horrible - and he’s a manipulating, scheming so and so. I’d never vote for him in a million years.
BUT…he can have a joke, he has his personal life ups and downs, he seems emotional, he listens when spoken to, he answers questions - he seems human to me. Un pleasant but human.
8/10/11.
It’s a good point, actually. How many politicans can you think of that the idea of the wife as “Female Colleague Number One” could have any traction at all?
I think the kindest thing you could say about Brown is that he’s an oddball and I can’t really think of a PM in my lifetime who was so media-unfriendly.
Brown’s problem may be the same as William Hague’s and Ming Campbell’s: that he is being advised by image consultants who get it badly wrong.
Off topic - Mike, a Suggestion for a different thread: Energy policy.
We don’t have one and the lights may go out. Really:
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14167834
It may not move polls now but when the lights do go out it will swamp all other political issues. Will Dave be able to sort out this mess along with all the other messes?
4. Mike Smithson August 7th, 2009 at 4:46 am
http://tinyurl.com/l8g6xq
One carful owner but it might be more like 30!
I posted this before, but I do hope there are subsidiary questions as to Hattie on manouevres. . No woman I have spoken to so far agrees with her.
The one thing that I think will happen is that others will fall further as there is nothing for them to be in the news about.
That said .. Summer polls.. iffy. people are on holiday.
Regardless of the man, his policies over the last 10 years have been totally socialist. The move to state control over people’s lives was not put to the electorate and neither was the increase in Govt spending to over 50% of GDP.
The fact he is has no personality and comes across so badly is just the cherry on the cake that should ensure the destruction of Labour.
4 - “I do not like thee, Doctor Fell,
The reason why I cannot tell;
But this I know, and know full well,
I do not like thee, Doctor Fell.”
Gordon Brown comes across terribly on television because you never feel that you get behind a very obvious mask. In the end, the fact that he is constantly wearing a mask is the only thing that you associate with him.
We are told that he is very keen on football. It would be extremely interesting to hear him talk for five minutes on that subject, to see his natural manner when he doesn’t have a guard up.
18 Maybe we deserve to go down. Maybe we are a stupid country. Every time it fails and leads to disaster - but voters keep coming back for more socialism. It’s like a cancer, a monster that can’t be slain.
We’re broke, the lights are going out, the armed forces are in ruins and despair, we’re nannied to death, we face years and years of austerity (that will create riots), we are more unequal than ever, we have the second worst crime in Europe, our education has been dumbed down to uselessness, we have ugly race issues from uncontrolled immigration, our history and constitution have been trashed, we have become a welfare benefits junkie society, rude, crass, immoral and lazy - and we voted these bastards in 3 times!
If we ever vote Labour in again then anyone who complains about anything can just STFU.
JohnL @ 14
Brown’s problem may be the same as William Hague’s and Ming Campbell’s: that he is being advised by image consultants who get it badly wrong.
I think you might be on to something. I am not sure that he would come across well in any circumstances, but I would not be surprised if image consultants are making him worse.
I attended a leadership training course, where we were given hints on how to look and act the part. Watching all the natural born Betas walking around the office trying to look like Alphas over the next few weeks was both funny and sad.
Politicians should never try to be someone else, just a better version of themselves. After all millions are watching, and its not like nobody will notice.
I am bewildered by apparently ambitious politicians like Brown, who only start to remake themselves after they bid to become leader. Surely with a little coaching over the space of a few years, images could be remade much more effectively.
19
Thanks Antifrank, you made me laugh……………..!!
22 - I often get told that. Occasionally it’s intentional.
I always get the feeling Brown would agree with Sartre that hell is other people. He seems to experience psychological distress when forced to deal with them and puts up a mask to hide it, behind which he constantly plots to undermine those who he feels are enemies. His inner mental landscape must be a very strange, bleak place.
Did anyone see this. Shocking isnt the word.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1204635/MARTIN-SIXSMITH-Can-government-sink-lower-lying-relatives-war-dead.html
Serf @ 21 re image
I am bewildered by apparently ambitious politicians like Brown, who only start to remake themselves after they bid to become leader.
David Davis might be Leader of the Opposition, and Hillary Clinton President if she had been as good at the start of her campaign as she was by the end. John McCain was poor too, and I doubt I was the only one to lay him after his Conservative Party conference speech.
RBS profits might boost Brown, or at least introduce some realism into debates about the public finances.
27. “RBS profits”
The story at the weekend was that they were going to announce £1 billion loss
27 Er…we spent 20 billion on RBS. Our stake in it was (yesterday) worth 21 billion. So a 1 billion notional gain.
Tell me again what the full scale of the national debt is (incl PFI and off balance sheet items)? The Speccie site has it at 671 billion. I hope that is real enough for you.
21/26 “start to remake themselves after they bid to become leader.”
Perhaps because the attributes needed to appeal to the citizen electorate are different from the attributes they needed to get to they where before deciding to go for the big prize. Gordon Brown, as Mike S reminds us, has rarely sought election, he rose through playing the internal Labour game, building a strong base in Scots Labour (and making enemies of opponents there like Reid & Robin Cook) and then in opposition and Government created a fortress from which to act built by taking and holding control of economic matters.
As Chancellor he cleansed the Treasury of civil servants who might weaken his control, surrounded himself with fiercely loyal acolytes, not opposed to dirty tricks, bullying and other hard politics to bolster their leader. The undoubted master in the Treasury, he used its powers to extend his grip across spending departments. With two set pieces a year, the PBR & Budget, he could spend the rest of the time out of public eye and unexamined, choosing when and what other appearances he would make, able to be deeply involved in the minutiae of policy.
A mixture of luck and judgement (he made some sensible decisions early in Government and prudence only lost here virtue slowly) there were no significant economic crises for him to deal with, fair weather growth.
IMHO all this went to bolster exactly those traits that let him down as PM. To be a successful PM he does need to remake himself but he’s 58 and it’s too late. When he tries we get YouTube gurning.
…whoops….
…the 671 billion excludes PFI, bank bailouts and public sector pension liabilities…
…so well over a trillion in the real world…
The point about RBS profits is that we no longer need to pretend that every bank asset is toxic or that all the guarantees will be taken up.
Just catching up with the overnight thread, and without wishing to reopen the debate, I am unclear about one aspect of the discussion between JohnLoony and RodCrosby about robert’s election model.
John starts with this
Either I have misunderstood what Proportional Swing is, or someone else has. Pr Swing does not mean that a rise from 20% to 25% makes each vote to be multiplied by 1.25. It does mean that a vote going down e.g. from 25% to 20% gets multiplied by 0.80, and the other V*0.20 gets transferred to whichever party goes up. In other words, the new method is the same as what Pr Swing has always been.
If I understand the new model correctly it uses data that was not available when proportional swing was last tried and abandoned, which leads me to believe that even if the numbers come out the same you can’t claim the method is the same if it uses different data.
John then supplies more detail
e.g. if the national vote goes from
A 50%
B 30%
C 20%
to
A 40%
B 45%
C 15%
then it means that you multiply the votes for A by 0.80, multiply the votes for C by 0.75, and transfer the spare votes (A*0.20 and C*0.25) to B.
This is where I am unclear. Proportional swing allocates the “spare” votes to other parties proportionally. The new model as I understand it allocates those votes based on where the poll respondents said they were going to go, which of course will be different in each constituency.
Have I got this right, and does that not make the 2 methods different?
32. The RBS figures have just been on BBC. Profit of £15 million. Whoopeee. Oh, and a write off of £7.5 billion…
12, just Brown. Harman has a Primary Male Inferior though, and Balls has Female Serf Number One.
21 A word for the poor image consultants tasked with making Brown more at ease with the public. He hates us all for not seeing his Churchillian greatness and thinks we are all “ungrateful ******* *****”. He’s gonna need plastic surgery to stop that sneering disdain appearing at the corner of the mouth. Or maybe just an awful lot of Botox. That should stop the crazy inappropriate grinning too.
And I think Brown has too many unresolved personal issues to ever appear at ease in public. Except around Ptown. He’s as happy as Larry on his holidays there, it seems.
Just a hypothetical. Imagine someone so utterly focussed on being a top politician - the top politician - that it becomes so all consuming, this person is prepared to lay aside pursuit of their natural sexuality because they take the calculated view it would be a negative to obtaining that career. And when that person then finally wheedles and connives and bullies their way to the top - they find they are really crap at it. They actually hate it. A lifetime mining the vein for the motherlode - but it’s been in pursuit of fool’s gold. With all that happiness spurned along the way, could you even pretend to be happy? Would you be comfortable in public after that realisation?
And imagine the further anguish of someone you work with - someone having made no secret of their sexuality - getting to the top with you. Gradually, stealthily, by being your advisor and knowing your pain, leaching that power away from you. And the party opposite - a party you were happy to despise because you had the comfort of it being full of the homophobic - is actually very relaxed and has the openly gay on their front bench too. That just has to be pouring salt in the open wound.
Brown’s invisibility won’t help him with the voters. But it might allow him time to think how life might be when he has withdrawn from the public gaze - and finally get some innner peace from that to allow him the strength to face his day of reckoning with the voters. Or to walk away from it beforehand.
32 Not every state owned bank asset is toxic. True. RBS made a profit. N.Rock and Lloyds made appalling losses and Lloyds particularly (via its HBOS subsidiary) still sits on a huge shitty mortgage loan book.
Taken together the state owned banks are loss making and are worth less than was paid for them. So you and I face a capital loss and an ongoing accounting loss. (To be honest I have not looked at the cashflow stats, these may be positive, but I suspect not).
I really hope one day things will have recovered to the point when neither of these statements is true. That is when Dave should look to sell the stakes back to the market and apply the cash directly against the national debt.
34 and also
“They were boosted by a £3.8bn profit from buying back the bank’s own debt when the banking crisis made it cheap.”
Silver lining - destroy the economy, BoE & other central banks cut interest rates, get Government guarantee, buy back debt cheaply. Very much a one-off trading gain.
I resisted posting this link yesterday as I thought it too trivial, however, it nicely illustrates the different personalities of the leaders of the Scottish and English governments:
http://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/Article.aspx/1340115?UserKey=
Can you really imagine GB doing something as human?
Salmond loves golf, bets on the gee-gees, and when the mood takes him is a wonderful raconteur and all-round jolly entertaining conversationalist.
I’m sure that Brown despises everything to do with golf, and is scared of those nasty big smelly horses. He looks like he hates cats and dogs too.
37. Green shoots! as reported by the dailymash
BRITAIN could soon return to borrowing money from institutional loan sharks so it can buy shiny things to distract it from its desolate, meaningless existence, economists said last night.
A range of statistics revealed the green shoots of a pointless recovery by the end of the year, which experts insisted was a virtual guarantee that no-one would learn anything at all.
The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors said house prices were on course to reach ‘arbitrary’ by December and could return to ‘absurd’ as early as next April.
Meanwhile the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply said the country’s vitally unimportant service sector was starting to pick up as more companies returned to bullshitting each other for £200 an hour.
33 Scott P - Yes, I think you have got that right.
If you look at the swings which occurred in the 2005 election, what is very striking is the huge variation. Thus, we do know that UNS is a very crude approximation, because the swing is not uniform at all.
That doesn’t of course mean that Robert’s approach is right, but it does lead me to conclude that further research is worthwhile. What we need to ascertain is whether the variations in swing are purely statistical (which is what UNS + perhaps Monte Carlo scenario analysis assumes), or whether they are correlated with the previous vote shares of the various parties (which is implicit in Robert’s approach).
‘Majority now rests on result of crucial election’
Taoiseach Brian Cowen will be left leading a minority government if Fianna Fail or the Greens fail to win the crucial by-election in the Tanaiste’s constituency in Donegal South West.
With the Government’s slim majority practically wiped out by Jimmy Devins’ and Eamon Scanlon’s decision to resign the party whip, the Donegal by-election has suddenly emerged as one of the most crucial tests facing Brian Cowen.
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/majority-now-rests–on-result-of-crucial-election-1853902.html
Has anyone seen any odds for Donegal South West? Nothing on Paddy Power this morning.
42 Any chance this may lead the Irish Govt. to fall - and if so, any impact on the October timing for Lisbon Take 2?
42 Stuart - PP do have one related market which looks interesting:
Green Mutiny
Will the Green Party be gone before the year is out?
Must withdraw from Government before 31st Dec 2009 for ‘yes’ bets to stand.
No 1.72
Yes 2.0
I don’t claim to know much about Irish politics, but at first sight No looks quite attractive.
Anyone have any comments?
Looking at the result of the last election, it would be astounding if FF didn’t win the Donegal SW by-election:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donegal_South_West_(D%C3%A1il_%C3%89ireann_constituency)
Many people are dislikeable - but that is where it stops. Brown is reviled becasue he is also patently incompetent at his job, and that incompetence is making each one of us a little bit poorer every day that he stays in office.
Absence may remove some of the vitriolic hatred of the man, but it will not make the heart grow fonder. As soon as he returns to our screens it will remind people that he has to go.
JohnL @ 26
David Davis might be Leader of the Opposition
He was another politician I was thinking of as I wrote that. A serial leadership challenger, with a number of strong points, he has nevertheless been let down by an inability to project the right image, and to give a speech (unbelievable for a politician).
Brown won’t be totally invisible though. Some cameramen are going to accidentally bump into him doing voluntary work in a secret location.
RBS - this is from their statement:
Impairments, however, rose sharply to £7,521 million, compared with £1,479 million in the first half of 2008. Over 70% of the impairment costs arose in the Non-Core division, but the Group also experienced a significant rise in credit costs in all core divisions, reflecting the continuing deterioration in economic conditions. Approximately 70% of the impairments and write-downs incurred in the first half are attributable to assets covered by the Asset Protection Scheme, subject to any changes to the Scheme, where some important issues remain open.
That’s great. Just great.
- “… if there is an “invisibility factor” then that should, surely, affect Labour’s general election planning.”
There is one phenomenon above all others that ought to be flexing the minds of Labour’s general election planners: the ‘Brown Epiphany‘. For it is a comin’…
Stuart, would you care to enlighten the reader as to what you think the ‘Brown Epiphany’ might be please?
simon9999 asked last night why I was posting this link:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/aug/06/railway-london-birmingham-heathrow-conservatives
His jokey inference was that I only usually post about the SNP. That is not true, although clearly I am far more interested in Scottish politics than, for example, English politics.
However, that particular news item caught my attention, as it shows that industry is beginning to make strategic investment decisions based on the assumption that DC will be PM within the next 9 months. That is TREMENDOUSLY important for all of us interested in Scottish politics. Scotland is about to meet one of its periodic dates with destiny, and the impending Tory victory at Westminster is a vital, pre-requisite, catalyst.
People should be careful regarding the reisgnation of two TDs from Fianna Fail. There are strong reasons to believe that they’ll vote with the party on the vast majority of issues.
52. Or should I say resigning from the party whip in the Dail.
50. EdP
We discussed this a few months back.
In brief, the ‘Brown Epiphany’ is that moment when an individual voter wakes up to the daunting, profound horror of Gordon Brown’s true nature.
The epiphany has already occurred for many people, obviously. However, it is my contention (and eg. Yellow Submarine and others concurred with me on this point) that most people will not experience the ‘Brown Epiphany’ until the final 3-4 week campaign leading up to GE polling day. Only then will the excrement really hit the Labour strategists’ fan. Far too late for them to do anything about it of course, but it’ll be tremendous fun watching the train crash occurring in slow-motion on our TV screens every night for a month. Book your front-row seats now!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epiphanous
54, surely box seats would be better as there’s less chance of getting spattered with fan-propelled excrement?
Re: RBS
http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2009/08/07/65921/rbs-and-her-majestys-aps/
OT - any posters in Leeds area give us a weather update?
52/53 - I just want a scandal to happen involving Brian Cowen. Because the media would dub it “CowenGate”
I’ll get my coat
The Brown Epiphany. My take:
Despite the endless deservedly negative press about Brown, most people are not really into politics and have not yet fully clocked Brown for what he is or what he has done to our country. During the GE is the only time many people give politics a moment’s thought and the only time Brown will have to reappear from the bunker for a while. This is when millions will see Brown as he is for the first time. The poll impact will be stark.
56 - Looks dry, which is good, because I’ve got my tickets for the match. Rumours going round the city (as I’m sharing the same hotel as the Sky boys) is that Freddie is out of the match
56 Light rain overnight now looks to be set fair for the day.
By the way, if any readers out there have not yet experienced their own personal epiphanous Brown Moment, then please read this biography:
Bower, Tom (2003). Gordon Brown. London: HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-00-717540-6.
… and your enlightenment will soon be upon you.
Amen.
56, cloudy but dry at the moment.
61 - Now why don’t Channel 4 make a one off drama based on that book?
52. Yokel - “There are strong reasons to believe that they’ll vote with the party on the vast majority of issues.”
Indeed? That’s not what Jimmy Devins TD is saying:
‘You can’t count on my vote, Devins warns FF’
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/you-cant-count-on-my-vote-devins-warns-ff-1853914.html
54 Stuart, I was hoping for news of a Damascene conversion by the great monocular imbecile, along the lines of a confession that he’s been wrong all along.
I agree with you on the strategists nightmare; the wall to wall TV coverage of an increasingly belligerent and argumentative Brown, gurning, grimacing and gnashing his teeth at anyone who dares question his judgment during an election campaign, must be worth 5 points off Labour.
58. Patrick - “… most people are not really into politics…”
BULSEYE!!
That is at the very heart of the ‘Brown Epiphany’.
What PBers (and lurkers) must remember is: most normal voters do not give a flying f about politics or politicians between elections. They only really pay attention in the weeks leading up to GEs.
PBers are highly unusual; and in my experience PBers give far far far too much weight to events that the vast majority of normal voters neither know nor care about.
66. … and there was me slagging off Mike and Yellow Sub for their appalling spelling…
As we had moved on to cricket may I make a suggestion. Why can’t we put Stuart Broad in a number-three?
Batting at number-eight means he gets a good look-in at the new ball. With his bowling under scrutiny could we relive him of the pressure of a batting-bowler, drop Ravi, and bring in Sidebottom to cover the eight-spot?
By the way, after twice mistaking Saturday for Sunday this year (how embarassing), I was delighted to see Mike mistaking Thursday for Friday.
Even the divine can falter.
68
They should pick Ramprakash IMHO irrespective of his age. He got 274 the other day.
70 - But in Testys Ramprakash is a bigger bottler than Gordon Brown and elections
65 There is a chance, however small, that Brown might simply implode during a GE campaign. By ‘implode’ I mean say or do something that is just awful, then deny or backtrack and one thing leads to another with Brown finally having some kind of ‘moment’.
Maybe he’ll decide almost literally at the last moment his health is not up to it. Maybe he’ll freeze on TV. Maybe his famous temper will boil over and he’ll throw a tnatrum. Maybe he’ll have a nervous breakdowm of sorts and start saying things that the party need immediately to refute. The possible scenarios are legion.
Whatever happens the GE campaign will be compelling viewing for us politics anoraks and everyone else too.
71 Bowling attacks arent what they used to be. I feel sure Ramps could cope with the australian attack.
72 - I think the scenario that keeps on going through my mind is that Brown has his Sharon Storer moment and turns into his John Prescott moment and punches the person.
66 Stuart
You are absolutely right. My wife is (unfortunately) a left leaning virtually apolitical person and gets quite irritated when I rant and rave about the obscenity that is the present government.
My mates in the pub think it’s a bit strange that I lay all the country’s woes at the feet of Labour as they don’t seem to connect what they’ve done with what’s happening. I just hope that the scales will fall off peoples eyes during the GE campaign - this, I think, will be down to the Tory and Lib Dem strategy and if they let Labour get away with it I’ll never forgive them, even if Dave gets in!
63. NB
Funnily enough the demand for one-off dramas based on the life of an idiotic, overgrown student politician, whose only real job was as an Open University tutor, is surprisingly limited.
Liquorice-flavoured milk would be a bigger seller.
73 - Yeah, this is the poorest Australian bowling attack in my lifetime.
76 - Surely his holidays in Cape Cod would make for riveting viewing material….. Actually on second thoughts.
75 She probably gets her news via the BBC.
Slightly O/T
Don’t try this at home…!
http://www.todaysbigthing.com/2009/08/05
79 Patrick
No it’s even worse - The Grauniad
27 “RBS profits might boost Brown”???
Hello?? They must have tried REALLY HARD tocome up with a paltry just positive £15 million. Pure sophistry, smoke and mirrors, creative accounting of the highest quality!
The number of note is £7bn write-offs on bad loans. Awful awful awful. They have lent money to anyone with a pulse for years, and many cannot pay it back. In short, they have failed as bankers in the most fundamental way. WE are all bailing them out.
If I gave your company hundreds of millions, billions even, you could probably produce a piece of paper with some numbers on which said “profit”
Do me a favour
79 Mike, How about a Beeb thread? They will spin for their lives up until election day. It won’t be balanced. What impact should we expect on the results? How should Dave play this? (I’d let someone else ramp up a campaign of complaints but keep at arms length from party hacks).
82 - I’ve thought to keep the BBC in check upto the election is to tell them, if they dont behave, the BBC trust will be getting a few new members after the election.
2 random names that come to mind, Lord Tebbit and James Murdoch.
‘Top policeman calls for three Scottish forces’
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/top-policeman-calls-for-three-scottish-forces-1.821926#
http://www.theherald.co.uk/features/editorial/display.var.2524261.0.Blueprint_for_police.php
36 MM -thinking about your hypothetical. Have no idea if it bears any relationship to reality but there is another.
A keen Scots politician, well versed in the internal politics of Labour wants to get to the summit of power. Recognising his defects as a campaigner after his failure against Ancram, he waits till a safe seat comes up then once in Parliament hitches his wagon to the rising group in Scots Labour, centred around John Smith. When Smith becomes Leader the politician gets the plumb job of Shadow Chancellor. All going according to plan.
Problem was that Labour had another rising star, one that strategist like Peter Mandelson saw had the charisma & character that aligned with a reformist agenda could save the Labour Party from a 5th election defeat. Mandelson judged that success followed Blair, and so did many others. Our man can’t beat that current, its obvious that standing alone he would come a poor fourth (thought of being beaten by Prescott was perhaps the key decision point). So his career plan depended on hitching his wagon to the new star, hugging him close and becoming vital to his success. How that must have rankled. His office, his position was due to a rival not his own qualities.
He decided that next time there would be no new star to compete, he knew Blair’s weaknesses and as friendship turned to rivalry used that knowledge.
‘Campbell pipes up in praise of devolution and Homecoming’
He ran Tony Blair’s press operation with a rod of iron, remains a self-confessed “tribal Labour man” and although he is famous for playing the bagpipes is usually seen as a Hammer of the Nats.
But Alistair Campbell has admitted that even with Scotland under SNP First Minister Alex Salmond devolution is working, and he praised the Year of Homecoming.
Mr Campbell, in an interview with the Scottish Government’s internal website for civil servants, is proud of his Scottish connections and full of praise for Homecoming.
http://www.theherald.co.uk/politics/news/display.var.2524295.0.Campbell_pipes_up_in_praise_of_devolution_and_Homecoming.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_of_Homecoming
I think he could well benefit from being out of the limelight. But this will count against him in a general election campaign. Remember we’ll see Brown, Cameron and Clegg on TV pretty much every night for a month or so.
Evidence suggests that when Cameron is in the news, Tory poll ratings nudge up. The picture is not so clear cut for Brown, but I’d suggest the contention behind the thread is right. I am not sure about Clegg’s publicity and Lib Dem poll ratings.
To me, that would suggest if you’re betting, take a couple of percent OFF Labour’s position at the start of the campaign and add a couple to the Conservatives. That, of course, ignores any other “events” that could crop up.
I am not sure about Clegg’s publicity and Lib Dem poll ratings.
Lib Dems do tend to rise during general elections. The extra coverage helps.
Quite a few lefties end up becoming righties. Simon Heffer, Andrew Sullivan, etc. They have their own epiphany about the nature of and end results of socialism. They learnt to think rather than to feel.
Most people aren’t into politics. Most people don’t think about the effect that policies have. Shit, most lefty politicians don’t either. They see rising crime and dream up ASBOs whilst delivering other policies that keep the poor stuck in a cycle of dependency. They slash credit terms and wonder how that creates a bubble. They piss cash up the wall on public sector pay without reform and can’t understand why results don’t improve. They do what is ‘right’ without thinking of the real world impact of their policies. This is generally a failing of those who have no managerial experience.
The BBC is a disgrace in my view because they pump uncritical lefty worldviews into people’s heads. The apolitical masses absorb and emote accordingly.
I work in the energy industry. I cannot begin to describe how frustrating it is to talk about energy with teenagers. All they see is greenery and a ‘perfect world’ end state. Any considerations of cost, profit, peak loading, engineering issues, timelines, energy politics, all the real world stuff that actually drives what you can do just passes them by.
I really hope there is a Brown epiphany. The UK needs to fuc*ing well wake up. And not just on party politics.
Gordon Brown obviously slept through his daddy’s sermons as a child.
The house built on sand collapses when the sea rushes in.
For 8 of his 10 years as Chancellor Brown proved that not only did he nothing about economics but that like Canute’s advisors he wasn’t fit to run a marathon let alone an economy.
Any business with no overdraft limit looks like a success. That is how he ran UK plc and worse still encouraged us, its shareholders to be equally feckless which sadly millions have proved to be.
Suddenly when the tide turns and the sea rushes in, in Brown’s case, a tidal wave of bad debt, his house of smiley faced economics comes crashing down.
Unfortunately for us, proving he knows nothing about economics, instead of cutting his losses and moving on to the firm ground to start again, he has just borrowed billions of tons of sand from the neighbouring beaches to build a seawall of sand round his house of sand.
The tide has come in and it is washing away his seawall of sand.
No wonder he is not popular. Shareholders in UK plc, especially the feckless ones, have suddenly wakened up to the fact that G Brown not only cannot run an economy or a marathon, he isn’t skilled enough to run a school tuck shop.
If there is an invisibility factor, how will this affect Labour’s election planning? They have the following options:
1) Get a more appealing leader
2) Show more of other Cabinet members during the election campaign
3) Run a campaign that shows the Prime Minister but doesn’t show him talking (ie lots of staged visits to adoring children, petting dewy-eyed animals, looking grave among doctors, that sort of thing).
Any other ideas how Labour could capitalise on the invisibility factor?
90 typo. not only dud he know nothing about economics!!
92 I give up, bl00dy keyboard
91 BJ4BW - Blow Jobs for British Workers. That would keep Brown out of the headlines.
93 - Can’t do that. Trust vacancies are advertised and the process subject to scrutiny from the independent Commissioner for Public Appointments.
95 - Sorry reference was to 83, not 93.
On thread - Brown’s ‘popularity’ as Chancellor was entirely due to the benign economic conditions that then prevailed, and most of all to the boom in house prices.
All else is fluff - his media exposure or the lack of it was irrelevant.
I see that comments praising LauraK in comparison to toenails have been purged from his blog. The beeboids must be getting very twitchy with her. She will need to be careful not to overstep the mark into truly independent journalism or she will be out.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/nickrobinson/2009/08/brakes_put_on.html#comments
Labour needs to turn to the women. After all the men cannot be trusted.
Sarah can do the introductions. Harriet can do the damage, oops meant give the speech.
I have never understood the nonsense about Sarah Brown. She went on to the platform at Labour’s party conference and said or did what? give a fabulous speech? Tell us about her genuinely excellent charity work? No she said please welcome my husband and leader of the Labour Party.
It shows how bad things have got when a woman asking people to welcome her husband on to the stage gets rave reviews.
Meanwhile come on Hattie. I am nursing that lovely little 16/1 I have had on you since last summer.
98, good old Pravda.
Flintoff out.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/cricket/england/8186730.stm
99
Hattie is playing the long game now I think.
94 - Patrick, please dont mention the words Blowjobs and Gordon Brown in the same sentence, it’s made me quite ill.
101 - Bollocks
81: Indeed, I’m an accountant, and a profit of £15m is effectively ‘lets fix things so we don’t say we made a loss’. Especially in banking, where you just make up the level of bad debts which are based on so many estimations etc.
101/103 - I meant, Bollocks that he is out, not that your story is a load of bollocks.
95 - Thanks for that, another one of my ideas foiled
Did I hear correctly? As shown on Sky News did Hilary say this…?
No knows better then - er - the President the challenges facing Somalia and his people.
No doubt Gabble will be posting a few more similar faux-pas comments.
89 Patrick - that rings so true on the energy front - it reminds me of Crawley - Nuclear Free Zone.
On the Brown likeability front - he’s a complete turn-off. Ever since he became CE there was something I just didn’t like but was prepared to put up with as I hardly saw him.
Then the stealth taxes started with gusto and I thought - okay - it’s for the wider benefit, I’ll stick with it as I’m doing alright.
Then he started knifing Tony big time and I began to dislike him more and more. When I see or hear him as PM, I want to turn him off - I find his endless cliches, tractor stats, lies and complete lack of empathy really repellent.
If he were to appear on the TV/radio every day then it’d magnify my feelings exponentially.
He’s just so insincere and self-serving - anyone who could have wankers like Watson, Simon and McBride on his team defies my imagination. Oh and let’s not forget Draper and Ainsworth.
107. Agreed - the filth that Brown surrounds himself with tells you much about the man.
99
Ah! yes, turning to women and particularly leader’s wives.
From the Spectator.
Back in September 1996, the Tories sent Norma Major onto the campaign trail. John Major said that his wife had been his “secret weapon for the past 26 years” and declared “Norma has been accompanying me on tours like this for a very long time. But she now proposes to do that a good deal more in the future. I am delighted she is here. She is a very great asset to me first and then to the Conservative Party as a whole.”
The thinking was that, while the country might be bored of the Tory party and the Prime Minister, they would listen to his appealingly normal wife. The party did receive a couple of good days press from the move. But in truth, the decision to major on Norma was a demonstration just how desperate and badly out of ideas the party was. No one was going to vote for a tired and discredited government just because the Prime Minister’s wife seemed quite nice.
Bloody disgusting I call it.
109 - But Coldstone you little scamp, did John Major and his party try to spread smears about the wives of promiment Labour politicians at the same time as they were promoting Norma Major?
109. Yes I can see why you must be disgusted, with Labour increasingly emulating the disastrous tactics of the dying days of the last Tory government…
39 “Can you really imagine GB doing something as human?”
I don’t find these attacks on Brown as inhuman very believable. Brown isn’t photogenic and he isn’t lucky (Blair is at least as responsible as Brown for the present disasters).
But, at a personal level, Brown does seem to inspire loyalty in friends, which strongly suggests that he has redeeming personal qualities if you get to know him.
An example would be the 1m donation from usually publicity-shy JK Rowling — which I gather was largely inspired by her personal friendship with the Browns.
Brown should be dissed on the grounds of competence, not on the grounds of bloke-ishness.
110, Brown’s family aren’t props; they’re valued colleagues.
110
No they were to busy sh***ing around.
Heard Edwina slagging off HH whilst driving back through torrential rain. Lets be honest with Edwina ’slagging’ is the right term.
Patrick
I also work in energy, and I am constantly dismayed by the lack of knowledge that is displayed in the media. Its partly due to the fact that the facts are not sexy, and partly due to the obsession with climate change. When one goal, environment, workers rights, equality etc, is elevated to a level where it trumps all others, then you end up with a mess. The link below illustrates this nicely.
http://www.economist.com/world/britain/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14177328
Politics is supposed to be about balancing priorities, not a religious crusade.
I’m afraid it’s double whammy for Labour at the GE. They have a pretty much perfect record of failure across all departments - but with an illegal war and bankrupting the nation leading the pack. And to sell this corrosive mix they front up with a character who would look more at home in Lord of the Rings.
It’s going to like Grimer Wormtongue trying to get your vote on the basis that he just picked your pocket and you never noticed the time before! Bring it on.
112. Gwynfa: Brown does seem to inspire loyalty in friends
Loyalty or fear?
The holiday periods seem to herald a closing of the gap between Labour and the Conservatives. Is that because voters become more forgiving or because there are more public sector workers available for the surveys etc?
Either way, we may have to wait until late October to see polls that are more reliable.
I’d rather Major s**gged Currie than hazardously please himself with a segment of citrus fruit, if you know what I mean.
119
Errr like Milligan ‘yer mean.
Forty-five year old Milligan was found dead in Hammersmith, London.[1] The discovery of his corpse in what was presumed to be a state of auto-erotic asphyxiation (commonly refered to as an ‘asphyixy-wank’), combined with self-bondage and cross-dressing, led to a greater public awareness of auto-erotic asphyxiation and self-bondage and their risks. A bizarre detail of his death, which was the subject of much comment and speculation at the time, was that he was found to have had an orange segment in his mouth at the time of his death. Strong tasting substances such as oranges have been used to disguise the bitter taste of narcotics like amyl nitrite, although no traces of the substance were found.[citation needed]
At the time of his death he was engaged to Julie Kirkbride, now Conservative MP for Bromsgrove.
coldstone(billy) posted “The thinking was that, while the country might be bored of the Tory party and the Prime Minister, they would listen to his appealingly normal wife. The party did receive a couple of good days press from the move. But in truth, the decision to major on Norma was a demonstration just how desperate and badly out of ideas the party was. No one was going to vote for a tired and discredited government just because the Prime Minister’s wife seemed quite nice.”
Coldstone(billy) disastrous tactics from a tired and discredited Government followed by an election massacre. See the thread running through this? It’s history repeating itself as it often does.
112 Gwynfa. If there is a human being hiding inside then he has never, ever been allowed out in public. Given that this is Brown’s KEY non-policy failing I wonder why that can be? The inside of that’s man’s head is a dark, strange, unknowable world.
One for the ID card fans.
UK national ID card cloned in 12 minutes
http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2009/08/06/237215/uk-national-id-card-cloned-in-12-minutes.htm
Five Live: Matt Prior injured in warmup - Paul Collingwood has taken over the gloves. Prior being treated by the physio - unknown if he’ll play.
112 Sorry I disagree - we elect a government and by inference its leader on the basis of the whole package - technical competence, feeling that they get-it, their ability to forge alliances that will do the country good, have personal credibility when faced with difficult and unpopular decisions.
a) Gordon has - as Easterross pointed out - run up a massive overdraft so has bought votes all over the shop without reforming the system so we’ve still got all the costs and an enormous overhang
b) Gordon certainly doesn’t seem to get-it with statements like 0% rise, 10p tax, 60% more helicopters,, Gurkhas, wriggling out of saying sorry until the pressure was enormous over Smeargate.
c) I can’t think of anyone who has been won over by him - the G20 was all PR puffery to mask the mess that no one wanted to be fingered for
d) and on the personal credibility front ‘I was brought up to always tell the truth’, ‘we didn’t hold an election because we thought we’d win and setting out my vision was more important’, ‘no more boom and bust’ and on and on.
Oh and he didn’t even vote in person as he was ‘too busy’ but could find 2hrs to answer planted questions from Labour activists in East Ham - and praise their great campaigning zeal despite the fact that London didn’t have local elections - a true man of courage.
I, the cloned ReBrandedHorse, think ID cards are great!!!
113 - Sorry, how could I forget that. I’m sorry Gordon for smearing your family
212
Time and events eventually bring all governments down, (this and the next one) can’t wait to be Madame deFarge, bring out them knitting needles.
126 - Really? I’m just going to check to see if the world has ended
126. RBH: I, the cloned ReBrandedHorse, think ID cards are great!!!
You are a terrorist - shoot on sight!
Morris Dancer. Can your space gun ‘boost’ Brown until he’s invisible? That’s where my thinking on our Gordon leads to.
CricInfo reports: Tim Ambrose is playing at Edgbaston this morning - will he be flown in?
Can he be named in the XI and a sub used until he arrives?
128, coldstone(billy) Had you down as a lot of things but cross dresser wasn’t one of them.
123 - are we suprised? 12 minutes first time only.
132 - If england are in the field, then yes, though they wont be able to field a substitute until he arrives.
if they are batting wont be a problem, unless we have a mid 90’s collapse. and he’s not there by the fall of the 9th wicket.
Anyone remember that ‘Invisible Man’ TV series in the 70s, with David Macallum?
I wish Brown would accidentally wander into the path of an invisibility beam while he was visiting an MOD laboratory, or something…
Great move by the Bank yesterday with the connivance of Darling, the Pound continues its dive this morning. Steady as she goes to the bottom.
Anyone deluded by silly accountancy tricks and false dawns in housing and manufacturing are in for a big surprise. So don’t go down to the woods today without a defibrillator.
133. Actually that doesn’t seem so outlandish,,,
133
Is that someone who likes to, ‘Eat drink and be Mary?’
Just had this comment removed from Nick R’s blog.
“………I see lots of comments have been deleted for being in violation of the house rules. Can someone confirm for me if praise of Laura K and criticism of Nick R are in violation of the house rules, as that appears to be the common thread running through the censoring?….”
Struggling to see a problem with the comment myself, but it appears to have upset the censors over there.
125 Brown has failings as a politician.
My only point is that he must be able to project warmth and humanity at a personal level, or he would not be able to inspire loyalty in a friend like JK Rowling.
Many people with the wealth and success of JK Rowling behave very badly — but on the occasions I have heard JK R interviewed, she has always come across as very sane and well-balanced.
“So don’t go down to the woods today without a defibrillator.”
I wonder if you tried using a defibrilator on a grisly bear, would it be like a taser?
Where’s Steve Irwin when you need him?!
Thinking about it, Gordon Brown has only got two faults
1) Everything he says
2) Everything he does
apart from that he’s brilliant.
141 …yeah but all we ever get to see is the gimp on the outside…
36
The poor image consultants?
I assume they have been on emergency remedial work since Oct. 07.
Non of it has worked. Brown hasn’t changed. The more people find out about him, the less they like him.
And I, for one, would not like to sit with a pint, and listen to him pontificate about football. I could’nt be convinced that he was not talking about football out of an insincere man-of-the-people blokishness - like Blair, but more ‘geeky’.
Brown is an iconoclast. Look up the personal characteristics of such people.
Well, he has definitely smashed the system, but what he tried to put in its place has proved to be far worse.
CricInfo: Prior’s back spasm owes to playing a game of football during warm-ups. I have no words. Tim Ambrose has been put on standby, England have asked to delay the toss for another 10 minutes and, in general, there is total and utter chaos out there.
FFS!
131, the space cannon would be capable of rendering Brown invisible, yes. Either by firing him beyond the limit of human vision, or vaporising him.
The solar death ray would also be able to melt him, and the trebuchet on the south coast would launch him into the sea.
146 - Thanks London Statto, you are keeping most of the members informed, we aint got a clue whats going on here at the ground.
140
You are questioning the decisions of the moderators/censors - these are the people behind the curtain and you’re not supposed to talk about them.
148. Habib.
PB rules again!
TMS interviewing 4th umpire now.
150 - PB does rule, i think i can see Matt Prior out there doing some exercises.
4th umpire: Substitute fielder for WK not yet at the ground would be allowed in these exceptional circumstances.
From the guardian
Apparently England wanted Bruce French, Prior’s wicketkeeping coach, to take the gloves until another keeper arrived. French is 49 years old. He was also involved in the four-keepers farce of 1986. I feel 49 years old after the last half-hour. This is extraordinary.
Prior putting batting gloves on. Collingwood practising with the WK gloves.
Haddin may be back for Aus despite the broken finger. Clark will play.
Chaos rules!
146
I’d weep for the stupidity of it.
But I’m not prepared to waste the adrenalin.
Alec Stewart’s at the ground for BBC radio!
42 / 45 - It wouldnt be astounding at all if FF lost the Donegal SW by-election, they couldnt win a raffle right now. But while technically correct their survival doesnt really depend on winning the by-election. They have a whole platoon of TDs that have resigned the whip for appearances sake but will still prop them up. It depends on whether the Greens stay in government or not.
44 - Which is why I think ‘no’ is good value here. Green TDs cant pull out of government as they will almost all lose their seats such is the government’s unpopularity. The Green grassroots members may force the issue but I dont see an occassion for them to do that in the timescales invovled so I reckon no is pretty good value.
We may not see much of Brown during the election but I bet we will see something from his kids. He makes great play that he doesn’t use his kids as props. Of course saying that he is using them as props but that’s par for the course. I fondly remember his Guardian interview in June given in No10 when he spoke of how he doesn’t use his kids, then amazingly they ran in to play with him and this was dutifully reported.
Doesn’t use his kids as props, my arse. That is all they are, a sop to Sarah and to make him look human.
If he cared about his kids he wouldn’t think about devoting 1 week of his precious holiday to charity work. Given he can’t have much time for them the rest of the year that is a week more of their childhood he’ll miss. If it was me, I’d spend every second of holiday with them.
prior to play
TMS: Prior will play.
Harmison for Flintoff is the only change for England.
Athers has just had a good look at the pitch. It’s dry, firm and already cracking. Looks a result pitch to my amateur eyes.
Oh and Habib you’re one lucky sod, should get a good days play. Hopefully the weather is good when I’m at the oval in two weeks.
England Bat.
England have won the toss and will bat.
*sigh* What a morning…
On thread, answering Mike’s question, yes I think out of sight Gordon, with people relaxed and on holiday, will see an improvement in Labour fortunes. He’ll re-appear in a highly managed environment, surrounded by loyalists, triumph again at Conference get a bouncette and then it’ll go downhill.
147 MD can we please try all of the above just to be sure. After all poison and shooting didnt work with Rasputin.
Coldstone, John Major and the former Health Minister were overfriendly prior to him serving in the cabinet and years before he was PM. As usual get your facts right when you smear.
I happen to think Sarah Brown is a huge asset to her husband even if for a PR guru she has lousy dress sense (like Jacquiboots she always wears clothes two sizes too small and skirts too short which only emphasise her fat thighs just as Cherie Blair did). Sarah Brown is clearly a highly likeable woman and I suspect that there is a part of Gordon Brown which is likeable. I am sure he is a very caring father. However I cannot match up the man who was clearly distressed at the death of his own daughter and at the death of Ivan Cameron who then defends a scumbag like McBride.
Remember Brown did not get rid of McBride as he and Darling like to say. McBride eventually resigned having clung on by his fingernails for days.
I also seem to remember that when John Major lost office in 1997 I was worth £250,000 more than I am worth today and that was with the value of my house being roughly half of what it is today.
Worth returning to this…
27. “RBS profits might boost Brown”
Hmmm.
You may have heard on the BBC that RBS made £15 million. If only.
The loss for shareholders (yes, us the taxpayers) was £1 billion for the six months. There was a collosal £7.5 billion of write offs. The operating loss was £3.35 billion.
http://www.johnredwoodsdiary.com/2009/08/07/rbs-loses-a-packet/
RBS warns there will be no ‘miracle cure’ as it tumbles to £1bn loss
Royal Bank of Scotland, the part-nationalised lender, has posted a £1bn loss for the first six months of the year and warned that it will be some time before the bank and the economy get back on track.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/5987648/RBS-warns-there-will-be-no-miracle-cure-as-it-tumbles-to-1bn-loss.html
158 And not to mention of course the ‘very very early or very very late Daddy’s Day card
Lyndon LaRouche, of whom I have never previously heard, I believe to be a nutter.
http://dizzythinks.net/2009/08/bizarre-political-campaign-of-day.html
England: AJ Strauss (cap), JM Anderson, IR Bell, RS Bopara, SCJ Broad, PD Collingwood, AN Cook, SJ Harmison, G Onions, MJ Prior (wk), GP Swann
Australia: RT Ponting (cap), MJ Clarke, SR Clark, BJ Haddin (wk), BW Hilfenhaus, MEK Hussey, MG Johnson, SM Katich, MJ North, PM Siddle, SR Watson
163 - The Oval is my favourite venue.
Brown helicoptered in to Scarborough with Blair at the last stop on the 2005 election campaign trail. They shared an uneasy icecream. Made all the local and regional press, Brown wearing that Childcatcher’s grin he does so well. 36 hours later the sitting Labour MP Lawrie Quinn lost the seat by 1200 votes to be replaced by a Conservative.
The crowd has just song at the Aussies the full version
“God Save YOUR Queen”
They werent happy
O/T
Highest number of insolvencies in second quarter of 2009, since records began.
It ain’t working Mr Brown is it ?
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_3431010.html?menu=
I see Millipede has suddenly decided open primaries would be a good idea for Labour ‘along the US Democrat or Greek Socialist lines’… uhhh… a few days after the Tories held one.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8188896.stm
This is obviously another one of his tedious leadership positionings. Realised Hattie was getting a head start. Yawn.
Strauss is a lucky boy
171
And I’ll in the OCS stand baby!!! On a purely selfish point, I’m hoping this is over by Monday as I’m of to Amsterdam tuesday.
Strauss gets a life first ball. That was absolutely plum.
174, Labour would be mad to pick Milipede. He may not have the men-hating insanity of Harman or the odious arseheadishness of Balls, but he’s got no spine whatsoever.
176 - I spent all 5 days at the Oval in 2005. 3rd greatest sporting memory of my life.
178, top 2?
Not really into sport, but beating the Aussies to win the rugby world cup in 2003 was pretty good.
Compare and contrast the headlines:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8188942.stm
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/aeb960ee-8317-11de-a24e-00144feabdc0.html?ftcamp=rss
England beating Germany 5-1 in Munich is my all time. I was in a pub in the north of Germany at the time.
“The holiday periods seem to herald a closing of the gap between Labour and the Conservatives.”
Really?
The big leads that the Tories got last year appeared in the summer - it was the autumn that tightened things.
The previous summer saw BROWN BOUNCE I, but the summer before that saw a slight improvement (if no real change, depends how you squint) in the Tory position which narrowed after the conference season.
(STOLEN FROM UKPOLLING REPORT: http://s44.photobucket.com/albums/f32/Worcester1999/?action=view¤t=PoLOLLOLingHistory.jpg)
Now, my hunch would be that, basically, with little right-to-reply, trends basically continue over the summer. There’s little analysis and comment so what’s happening merely continues to happen. There’s certainly no evidence that there’s any guaranteed closing of the gap.
179 - My top 3 are
3) Regaining the ashes in 2005 at the Oval
2) England beating the Aussies in Australia to win the World Cup in 2003
1) Liverpool beating AC Milan in Istanbul to win the Champions League in 2005 (the best 3grand I ever spent going out there to see it)
3 british soldiers killed -
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8189419.stm
More sad news.
187, hehe I watched that Liverpool game by chance. Was funny watched Dudek[sp] wiggling in a distracting fashion.
189 - From the stands I thought he was having an epileptic fit.
190, worked a treat though. Hehe, now I think of it, it reminds me slightly of Tommy Haas playing Federer at Wimbledon. He ran up to the net and tried to distract him by waving his arms about (funnier than it sounds), fortunately Federer made the shot anyway.
shizer
OT
This is a very good article re false economic optimism !
People aren’t as stupid as the government, banks and media think. The height of the banking crisis may be over, However the public know we are now still in recession and heavilly in debt.
One of the real reasons I love Ken Clarke is that he generally speak as he see’s, without the spin that other politicians usually put on things.
At the start of the banking crisis he appeared on newsnight. While other ecomists, politicians and so called financial experts were attempting to predict the length of this financial crisis Ken said to Paxman “Look Knowbody knows how long this banking crisis and recession is going to last, what is going to happen next and what the outcome will be”
In other words shut up you load of twits and stop talking nonsense.
How true those words of Clarke are - The public simply do not trust any of these so called finacial experts anymore with their mutterings of green shoots, its best if they just shut up and learn how to really do their jobs properly before they inflict more damage!
191 - I’ll see if I can find that clip on youtube.
You know you’re addicted to Pb.com when you’re at the cricket and you cant help but browse PB.com every 5mins
Merde
193.
Whoops forgot to attach the article at 193
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article6742020.ece
So how good a catch was that to dismiss Strauss?
197
Very.
Bollocks - Bopara, you muppet
199, I’m not into cricket, but shouldn’t he have been replaced before now? I heard on the commentary every Englishman (at the time) averaged over 20 runs, but bottom of the list was Bopara.
Its not a cricket commentary site guys ! Sky or BBC do that
200
Bopara in the team: the triumph of optimism over experience.
200 - He’s a player of great promise, had a poor start when he first got into the team, got several ducks, came back earlier on this season, scored a lot of runs against a poor West Indies side, but has been found out by the Aussies. Drop him
Aussies batting before lunch?
201 - The threads on pb.com are very esoteric.
201
Yeah but I don’t believe the BBC anymore and I’m too cheap to pay for Sky.
If Gordon were a cricketer - who would he be?
Urgh, Boycott naked…
[reaches for mind bleach]
207 - Graeme Hick. A flat track bully, found out when he got to the highst level
I can’t believe the Beeb are saying that RBS made a profit of £15m ‘turning around’ the record losses of last year.
Makes it sound like the books are now balanced not a speck of creative accounting for another period.
And what about Tony?
211 - Allan Lamb, flashy batsman, some memorable knocks against the best, but when you look back it, overall his career didn’t amount to much.
Personal insolvency at new record
The number of people being declared insolvent has hit a new record in England and Wales.
There were 33,073 personal insolvencies in the second quarter of 2009, said the government’s Insolvency Service.
That was a 9% rise on the first three months of the year, and 27% more than in the same period last year.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8189053.stm
Best cricket I saw was at Trent Bridge a few years ago - England vs S Africa - we had a really good run and then somehow lost the plot after tea and well…
Goff spent the entire afternoon lurking by the stand signing autographs and making rude jokes about player’s wives…
207
Watching Tavare bat induced feelings of suicidal despair, but I can’t think of any cricketer I hate enough to liken to Brown
211/212 - Actually Tony Blair was Robin Smith. Really great batsman at the start of his career with an amazing average majority. But his career was fatally damaged by spin.
If Gordon were England footie manager - I’d have him down as Steve McClaren, Tony would be Bobby Robson.
I’m struggling for a Sven comparison? Lembit?!
Sven - Tim Yeo
What are the BBC wittering about £15 million profit!!! They made a profit before paying tax and dividends, erhh, right, you might as well say well they made a profit before they paid the staff, the leccy bill, the cleaner, etc!!! You have to include the tax man and the creditors, that is how friggin business works!
“David Miliband calls for Labour to select candidates with primaries”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6742614.ece
212. That strikes me as somewhat unfair. Look at his record in the 1984 series against the West Indies, a series in which the rest of the England team performed abysmally. He was the only batsman who had the guts to stand up to the (ferocious) WI bowling attack.
I can’t see the similarity to Brown at all.
In terms of throwing away winning positions and sulking perhaps Kim Hughes c1981…
217, unfair on Sven. I really quite dislike Lembit. Hs Apprentice performance was dire. If he hadn’t been on a team with a sulky, emotional arsehead who has not done anything improper to warrant a six-month suspension (so we can safely assume he never called someone a gollywog off-air) Lembit would’ve been the worst person there by miles.
217 - Actually Peter Bone looks like Sven
http://www.wellingboroughconservatives.org/member_of_parliament/index.html
Gordon Brown = Tony Greig
“I intend to make [the West Indies] grovel”, was the cricketing equivalent of “no more boom and bust” in terms of Things Not To Have Said.
And the sneaky run-out of Kallicharran in Trinidad in ‘74 is just the sort of clever tactic Gordon would employ - until forced to back down when the pavillion is surrounded!
“Steve Richards: Neither of these two will lead Labour
In their different ways, Mandelson and Harman have experienced all the oscillations of politics”
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/steve-richards/steve-richards-neither-of-these-two-will-lead-labour-1768385.html
Will more taxpayer money be required for RBS (and as is suggested for NR) I wonder?
“RBS also said it had written off £7.5bn of assets such as bad debts…..RBS did not say that would be the peak of the write-offs, with RBS chief executive Stephen Hester saying in a statement that they are “set to stay high for a while”.”
Is that Tim Yeo the same Tim Yeo of Anglesey who fiddled his BT share application[s] ?
221 - Runnymede I was compaing Allan Lamb to Tony Blair, I compared Graeme Hick to Gordon Brown.
I love the Tony Blair = Robin Smith analogy!
228. sorry!
But actually I think that is unfair is well. Wouldn’t someone like Ramprakash be a better comparison with Blair?
More breaking news - HMG have failed to deport the doctor involved in the terror plot - well that’s all right then.
231 - FFS!
227 - Dont think so, The Tim Yeo I was thinking about is the Tory MP who in the mid 90’s at the height of back to basics admitting having fathered a few love children.
230 - Ramprakash never proved he could succeed at the highest level. Whereas Lamb did, and so did Blair.
227 - That ‘Tim’ was in fact Keith Best!
229 - Thank you Oracle, I’m quite proud of that analogy.
231, what the hell?
235 Lucky I’ve never done an ID parade in that case!!!
CRICINFO.COM FOR COMMENTARY GUYS!!
I see my comment describing my gut feeling that the £15M “profit” at RBS proevd to be reaosnably corrc then.
BBC today is spinning for Gordon as never before. The Breakfast news woman was beside herself with this “good news” from RBS, as was the comedy Aussie business man they got in to replace fat Declan
jeez
This should be fun. Celtic drawn to play Arsenal in the champions league qualifiers
234. Hmm OK but how can you succeed at the highest level and yet your ‘career not amount to much’? If the latter means a person has no concrete achievements to his name, I would suggest Lamb doesn’t fit in to that category, and nor in fact does Blair (much as it pains me to say it).
Perhaps we should be looking for someone who had a long run in the team, occasional moments of success but was essentially mediocre.
Derek Pringle?
241 - Derek Pringle nearly won us the world cup in 1992, if Steve Bucknor had given out Javed Miandad early on.
241 - But I’ve changed my mind, Tony Blair = Robin Smith, see my post at 216
The £15 million profit for RBS is laughable anyway, it stinks of creative accounting to come up with a profit figure (before excluding the tax man, creditors, etc). For starters, in the time it has taken me to write this post, RBS P/L will have varied by many times more than that kind of figure.
227. That wasn’t Tim Yeo, It was Keith Arthur Best (or was that Aurther Keith Best, Best Keith Aruthur etc). Tim Yeo got his Seccy up the duff.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8189296.stm
I feel the guy’s pain, but kudos to the girl…
“This is where I am unclear. Proportional swing allocates the “spare” votes to other parties proportionally. The new model as I understand it allocates those votes based on where the poll respondents said they were going to go, which of course will be different in each constituency.
Have I got this right, and does that not make the 2 methods different?”
Yes you are right, and they deliberately ignored my raising of the same point because they have no answer beyond the usual reactionary guff. Conspiracy theorists aren’t worth debating with, they just need to be reminded that they are out on a limb every now and again.
Gwynfa’s comment at 115 is a useful corrective to some of the long-range psychoanalysis on the thread. Brown is not good at modern media and that’s a serious difficulty for him, but he’s generally seen by non-political people who meet him as nice - in fact that most common comment I’ve had from constituents who’ve met him is that they were surprised how nice he is (presumably because their image was shaped by his media image). A local journalist who I happen to know is a UKIP supporter was bowled over.
It’s not especially relevant politically since he’s not going to meet the entire electorate personally, but it’s a mistake to think that people whose policies and public persona you dislike are necessarily unpleasant. If you don’t know someone you really can’t judge (and conversely some people whose public image is wonderful are privately seen by those who know them as appalling).
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8189296.stm
I feel the guy’s pain, but kudos to the woman…
Another comparison between Tony Blair and Robin Smith, neither were Englishmen although they claimed to be so for work reasons
*
*Wait for my favourite poster on these matters to come out the woodwork screaming about Tony not being Scottish!
239 - “BBC today is spinning for Gordon as never before.”
How is it possible to have such a messed up world view? Yes people, the BBC IS out to get you!
242. He had a couple of other moments as well, but overall he was rubbish. I like the analogy.
247 - You can judge a character by their actions, one word, Smeargate, end of story in my book.
248 - I wonder what the woman would have done to me if I had use my legendary chat up line of
“Would you like to see something swell?”
A bit more Tory campaigning - on exam standards…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMWzsD1UGbc
247. Decent people don’t surround themselves with low life scum, Nick.
O/T
Alistair Cook is long overdue a large score against the Aussies and my money is on him to be top scorer for England in their first innings.
7/2 England to win the game is a steal IMHO
“90.Quite a few lefties end up becoming righties. Simon Heffer, Andrew Sullivan, etc”
Big difference between those two, Heffer is a madman who has gone so far right that he lacks credibility. Sullivan (as suggested by his book on conservatism) has used experience to put together what is, to me, an admiraby pragmatic reality based set of views that shun any form of extremism. The right need more Sullivans and no Heffers.
254 - I example questions would be laughable, if they weren’t true!
Bollocks - Bell end out
Sherminator gone
Looks like we’ll be going to the Oval 1 all
US mortgage finance firm Fannie Mae has asked the Treasury for another $10.7bn, (£6.4bn) as it announced a loss for the second three months of 2009.
It is the third time that Fannie Mae has requested government aid in recent months. It received $15.2bn in March.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8188847.stm
247 Nick P - Since you’re here, you might be interested in one small further point regarding Smithson Jnr’s article of yesterday. I checked on his graph of:
(2005 Lib Dem Vote Share) vs (90% 2005 LD + 15% 2005 Lab)
with the entire data set of 620-odd UK seats which were nominally the same in 2001 and 2005 (i.e ignoring boundary changes).
The correlation does indeed look very good at first sight. HOWEVER - this is a red herring, because the correlation looks almost as good if you just chart 2005 LD vote share against 2001 LD vote share, which is hardly a surprise.
This doesn’t necessarily invalidate anything else he says, of course; what we really need to figure out is how best to estimate in advance variations in swing. To my mind the jury is still out on that one.
261 - Question is will Freddie be fit? I have my doubts!
261 - Sorry to be unpatriotic, but the timing of that wicket could not have been better for me.
263 correction: I meant graph of:
(2005 Lib Dem Vote Share) vs (90% 2001 LD + 15% 2001 Lab)
264 - The test match wont be starting for another 2 weeks. I have a feeling because it’ll be Freddie’s last match, and a chance to win the ashes, he’ll be fit.
“The boss of Royal Bank of Scotland today admitted he is on course for a £6.4million bonus for turning around the 70 per cent state-owned group after it edged back into the black.
Chief executive Stephen Hester will receive the payout on top of his already huge pay packet of £1.2million once the share price climbs back up to 70p.”
I thought Gordo was going to be tough on massive bonuses and tough on the causes of massive bonuses?
Jimmy’s madien test ton should set us up nicely here!
Ably supported by Lanky Harmison with a quick 50 and Cheese ‘N with a dour 30 or so.
The tail will wag at Headingly in the spirit of Graham Dilley
They were saying on TMS a few minutes ago that he’s pretty much fit already, and it was the selectors’ decision not to play him. I’ll eat my hat if he doesn’t play at the Oval.
269 - Dont forget the double hundreds by Broad and Swann
269. Did Dilley ever make a decent score again after that 1981 innings? I seem to recall him becoming something of a rabbit later in his career.
270 - He didn’t look very fit in the nets yesterday!
271 and Mutt Prior with a dogged middle order blatathon
272 he was something of a rabbit yes - averaging just under 14, he did get 2 test fifties to his name.
Rain Dance anyone?
Cookie has decided to get these in singles….
Nick Palmer so a UKIP journalist meets Brown and think he is nice.
Two thoughts come to minI. Is the UKIPer nice and does nice recognise nice.
Is the testimony on one random person after one brief meeting enough to outweigh his colleagues who thought, rightly, he would be a ‘fuccking awful PM’, or compared him to Mrs Rochester being let out of the attic, or stating bluntly that he was ‘psychologically flawed’?
Don’t think so. Campbell, Hutton and Field hold the aces in that pack.
Colley gone….
I’m going home - Colly out
Re Dilley,it is worth recalling that in the early stages of his epic partnership with one IT Botham at Headingley in 1981,Graham Dilley ,at least early on,scored even faster than Botham!
Hope nobody has got Day 5 tickets for this one!
277.
Well on his way to his 50 and I’m afraid I just don’t rate the Aussies batting line up at all.
England now 4/1 to win the game,Xmas has come early
270- is that one for Mike’s register of bets?
The Colly wobbles are gonna get us!
Ponting wants the bowlers facing before lunch
We will do well to get 150 here
282
Or day 4 even.
my typing has gone to the dugs taday.
OT [if that's possible] - must read autobiogs of the future must surely include http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Di_Stefano
His client list is jaw-dropping.
Can someone find the idiot who set off the fire alarm in the England team’s hotel and shoot them please?
285 Lets hope the wicket is a batsman’s graveyard once our seam bowlers are facing the Aussie batsmen!
I have tickets for all 5 days. I’ll probably be selling them shortly if anyone is interested.
284
Hat-eating isn’t legally enforcable…
Dodgy back Prior is in! Only a few hours since he was in massive pain, with back spasms. I would guess that having decided to bat, they were hoping Prior wouldn’t be needed for much of the day.
I suppose Gordon Brown wished the England cricketers “good luck” !!!
Did Gordon wish them well? Sunny spells forecast for rest of today and weekend - dammit.
4. Mike Smithson - the Bugatti Veyron of political blogging!
90 Patrick. Great post full of insight, wisdom, and real life experience. Thank you.
290: Ah wishful thinking…they say hope is the last thing to die.
294 You’ve given me an idea for a post-election occupation for Gordon Brown-at Test matches in England,he can be the stumps
298 - That is certainly the thesis put forward in Vathek:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vathek
FFS
Prior has obviously set himself a challenge here: how many runs can I score of the edge of my bat?
302 Mutt is giving Johnson the full Mongrel
Loving it - 50 in streaky edges will do nicely right now
Cook gone
Big Girls Blouse Broad in before lunch!
In seriousness, has Brown wished them luck?
OH FFS - Come on Broady bat like your daddy
306 - It’s the only explanation
306 He wished them luck before Lords.
307 his Daddy was a prima donna as well.
Still, we’ll take what he can offer
309, maybe the Curse decided to provoke some optimism, to harshen the later crushing defeat?
4 - Mr Smithson, there is no comparison between Brown and Cameron. Politicians are always cagey about giving hostages to fortune. Its a pity but thats the sad political game. Cameron is no different in this.
But Brown is a barefaced liar.
I bet England are chuffed they didn’t bother playing Trott now.
Being a Scot, wouldn’t Gordon Brown’s automatic reaction be to support whoever is playing England.
Come you big Jessie, act like a proper Scotsman.
”
308.306 - It’s the only explanation
”
They were woken up in the middle of the night apparently with a fore alarm. Not an excuse but it doesn’t help and will have just angered them.
Johnson bowls the widest ball in history
Utterly useless pleb
104. 94 - Patrick, please dont mention the words Blowjobs and Gordon Brown in the same sentence, it’s made me quite ill.
You should get yourself down to Brighton’s popular club night: “Going Down On Gordon Brown”
316 - Nah, Harmy’s on the last Ashes tour was the widest ever. I think third slip took that ball.
263, there are standard statistical tests for the significance of correlations. I don’t have the data, but it should be straightforward to determine the significance level at which the Lib 05 vote is correlated with the Lab 01 vote.
That Extra’s fellow seems to be our 3rd best scorer…well done him.
311 Gordon Brown is in North Queensferry and he said he intended to watch / catch up on the sport, specifically mentioning the Ashes series - maybe secure in Harriet’s handling of the reins of Government he has decided to watch this match live on his taxpayer funded TV ?
Don’t think we can blame him for this - its fates conspiring so it all goes to the final match as a decider.
104. #94 - Patrick, please dont mention the words Blowjobs and Gordon Brown in the same sentence, it’s made me quite ill.
If you like that, you’ll love this…
Brightons popular club night: “Going Down on Gordon Brown”
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Brighton/Going-Down-on-Gordon-Brown/54546938814
Err. ‘fire alarm’ not ‘fore’.
317 thats true. Still, Johnson is a pleb.
He’s giving everyone eyeballs today - the Aussies might as well have me giving people eyeballs for all the fear Johnson inspires these days!
(I say that and Broad nearly wears one, lol)
oooh did you catch that on the stump cam???! hahahahaha
316 - No, there was a Kiwi quick bowler (and boy he was rapid) about 10 years ago, came on a tour of England, and that was a good ball for him! Will have to go and look up the name, but I distinctly remember a wide ball down the leg side that was so wide it didn’t even hit the cut strip!
322 Haddin just wandeered past Broad and told him to ‘mind your f*cking elbow’
Stump Mic is king
323 was it Chris Cairns? He went through a phase of totally muffing it up
246. Utter rubbish. The net effect of Robert’s multitudinous matrix calculations is the SAME PROPORTIONAL LOSS IN EVERY CONSTITUENCY, as I revealed last night.
Viz…
http://www.titanictown.plus.com/VIPA-LibDem.jpg
http://www.titanictown.plus.com/VIPA-Labour.jpg
[the only reason they don't lie on a perfect straight line is that I am comparing his FORECAST with the R&T notionals, whereas he bases his forecast on Anthony Wells' data, which only goes to show how excellent were AW's notionals, btw.]
And that, surely, is the end of the VIPA….
323 (cont) Found him, Heath Davis, apparently he gave up the game to be a male model!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heath_Davis
247. Hitler and Stalin were charming in person. Ladies, in particular, who met them thought them very “nice”.
It means nothing about the man. Still less how “pleasant” he is as a leader.
(And, for all that, we still get stories about how he isn’t very nice in person when p*ssed off and armed with a Nokia, don’t we?)
God damnit. 6 down.
“Er…we spent 20 billion on RBS. Our stake in it was (yesterday) worth 21 billion. So a 1 billion notional gain.”
Is the 21 billion the total value or the value of the govts 70% stake.
RBS shares TODAY have fallen 12.5% at the time of writing.
“Approximately 70pc of the impairments and write-downs incurred in the first half - £5.25bn - are attributable to assets covered by the Asset Protection Scheme, the state-backed “toxic” debt insurance scheme,” (Telegraph)
So £5.25 billion being picked up by the taxpayer and you say we are ahead??
Perhaps someone with a real brain can explao=in this to the pair of us.
Right I’m going to drown my sorrows.
Heath Davis,
“He was selected for the tour of England in 1994. It was well known that he had problems overstepping and with his accuracy, much of this being due to faulty technique at delivery with his head falling away badly. He was required for one Test on that tour, sent his first delivery for 4 wides”
328 Same applies to Dave, plenty of stories of how unpleasant he is.
326 - Do you really think people listen to someone who promoted the Obama birth certificate farrago and has appalling extremist views on a number of issues?
How much are you betting against Robert on this? I would expect at least a three figure sum. If you are not prepared to do that then depart in humiliation.
326. No-one agrees with, or believes, you Rod.
You have to ask yourself: WHY?
Let the games begin…
Woah. The anti-Harman brigade have come out in force today, supplying quotes to the Sun which draw comparisons between her and the Taleban. Here’s the key passage:
“Many Labour figures agree she would be a disaster for the party’s fortunes.
One senior figure told The Sun: ‘If Harriet becomes leader it would be the end of the Labour Party. A number of us believe we have to take steps to stop it happening.
Harriet is only concerned with number one. She is a fundamentalist, she’s like the Taliban when it comes to driving through her own agenda.’”
Now, we’re no great fans of Harman here are Coffee House. But it’s still pretty surprising to see a Taleban comparison made by people who are nominally on the same side as her. It also highlights the problem that Harman has created for Brown: her grandstanding and positioning this week were bad enough in themselves, but they could also have kickstarted a round of backbiting and counter-operations to last all summer.
http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/5249653/labour-contra-harriet.thtml
Thanks for coming England.
1-1
Well, the cricket sounds appalling. Personally I blame the Australians.
Aussies batting before lunch?
by Marquee Mark August 7th, 2009 at 11:37 am
Not so far off…
333
Jonathan, I feel suream sure you can invent some.
Lets take stock here
England need to beg, borrow or steal their way to 175 or so (Prior with a 70 odd and support from Swann and Anderson)
Bowl the Aussies out for under 250 and the game is afoot.
As of this moment they need to be bowling the Aussies out by lunch tomorrow, if we can get to tea, we need to dismiss the Aussies by tea tomorrow.
feel sure you can
263. You’ve been had. Those numbers were entirely made up - invented out of thin air!
What VIPA actually forecasts for the LibDems is shown here.
http://www.titanictown.plus.com/VIPA-LibDem.jpg
Is it worth wasting any more time on it?
“335.326. No-one agrees with, or believes, you Rod.
You have to ask yourself: WHY?”
Not quite true, he is, at least, backed up by a self styled ‘loony’.
333. No. You just want to believe he’s unpleasant because you are a staunch Labour supporter and BECAUSE HE IS A TORY.
It’s your biggest problem Jonathan - you are so hyper-partisan and emotional you can’t see clearly beyond the end of your own nose when it comes to objectivity. Although, I grant you, Roger and Gabble are worse.
I never thought Blair unpleasant - even though I detested what he was doing - so why can’t you be objective too?
There are no Nokia stories about Cameron.
….as I revealed last night
by RodCrosby August 7th, 2009 at 1:00 pm
You really do rate yourself, don’t you?
Robert has tried to innovate and use broad data unlike you who think that by elections will tell you the result of a future general election in specifics rather than generalities.
And then there is your ridiculous ’swing back’ for which there is no real evidence except in your pompous and self satisfied mind.
Anyone who denies the Holocaust as you do cannot have a full and undamaged logic set.
I wouldn’t usually bother to comment on your nonsense these days, it is just that I am bored in the sun.
….as I revealed last night
by RodCrosby August 7th, 2009 at 1:00 pm
You really do rate yourself, don’t you?
Robert has tried to innovate and use broad data unlike you who think that by elections will tell you the result of a future general election in specifics rather than generalities.
And then there is your ridiculous ’swing back’ for which there is no real evidence except in your pompous and self satisfied mind.
Anyone who denies the Holocau$t as you do cannot have a full and undamaged logic set.
I wouldn’t usually bother to comment on your nonsense these days, it is just that I am bored in the sun.
An issue which is becoming increasingly toxic for brown is Afghanistan.
3 paratroopers blown up and killed in a lightly armoured ‘jackal’ with another seriously injured (which sadly means loss of limbs and a battle to get compensation).
Incompetence in Afghanistan on both military and political fronts is harming brown. A key issue on which it is his duty to get a grip and he clearly is all at sea and quite frankly comes across as uninterested.
The fact that the vehicle as already been officially identified as a jackal shows the MoD is under real pressure. SKY report it was on a ‘regular’ patrol and so its clear there was opportunity for a planned ambush. The jackal is totally the wrong vehicle for use in regular patrols where it could be ambushed.
On topic.
I have never met Gordon brown or Tony Blair or any PM. Our local MP and A few ex Cabinet Ministers speaking at seminars is as far as I get.
So I judge by what people say and do.
People who cannot be bothered over personal habits and appearance - when in PUBLIC office - are,I think , weird. And especially politicians who need public approval for success.
People who LIE are a total turn off - especially when the lies are obvious and insult my intelligence.
And people who cannot give a straight answer to a simple question are totally untrustworthy.
On the basis of the above, whilst Gordon Brown may very well be a nice man in private , in public he fails totally.
So his absence from TV whilst on holiday can only do Labour good.
But then H Harman speaks.. And the absence of one disliked person is replaced by another who frankly speaks in a way which just grates. The message may be 100% correct: the delivery is carp.
SO yes a bounce perhaps.
But Gordon Brown? Best locked up in an office.
333 Really? Can you point me to some?
335. You can speak for the scratch-card classes. I’ll speak for those who can do sums…
343. Is it worth wasting any more time on it?
No. Because, as always, you haven’t convinced a soul.
WHY IS THIS ROD?
(Clue: same reason you haven’t convinced anyone the holocaust didn’t happen)
If Gordon Brown was a cricketer who should he be?
Id like him to be the ball
Shurely shome mistake…
http://conservativehome.blogs.com/thetorydiary/2009/08/david-willetts-idenitifies-the-constituencies-where-labour-is-playing-politics-with-education.html
349 - I’ve seen a few on Labourlist, and if its been on Labour list it must be true.
347, just a day after that Ridgeback story (vehicles kept in Dubai for moths on end) too.
335. You can speak for the $cratch-card classes. I’ll speak for those who can do sums….
350 - I’d like him to be the bails, the bails that were burnt to create the ashes.
PS - ‘Defence of the Realm’ say there are indications of common sense in respect of the new aircraft carriers and more importantly the aircraft that will fly from them.
http://defenceoftherealm.blogspot.com/2009/08/good-news-and-bad.html
If we are to use a conventional approach we could save even more money by buying F14s
354 - Scratch card classes? WTF?
341.
Cometh the hour,cometh the man !
Underestimate the prowess of Onions with both bat and ball at your peril.
Could be MOM contender
Must say I am disappointed in the England performance. Oh, I bet on Australia to win, but I traded out too early because I couldn’t believe just how spectacularly awful England were going to be. Darn it.
354 Rod - that really does say an awful lot about your views. I can do sums too and would prefer to rely on Robert’s model than yours TBH.
Most of the stories I have read about Cameron that describe him in a less than favourable light, have being during his time at Carlton (most famously Jeff Randall), and seem to centre around him being too big for his boots and an arrogant so and so.
However, many articles have said since being settled down, married, kids, he is a changed man on that front. The reality, from a far, who knows.
However, found it interesting, watching the last couple of times Jeff Randall has interviewed him. Randall doesn’t seem anywhere near as hostile towards Cameron as you would expect from somebody who has written some fairly scathing remarks in the past, compare and contrast with his interviews with Brown and you could tell he wanted to punch him in the face! Randall, seemed maybe unconvinced by some of the policy, but hostile towards Cameron on a personal level, if he still is, he certainly doesn’t show it.
340 No need to invent anything. Plenty in the public domain. A good one is Ian King ex business editor of the Sun recalled Cameron before he was leader as a “poisonous, slippery individual”.
I won’t embarrass them here, but at pb.com party even one esteemed Tory pb.com poster, described Cameron when they met him as untrustworthy.
There is enough out there to have doubts about Dave.
357 - A drunk shouting at passers by in the street; keep that image in mind because the internet affords them the cover they wouldn’t otherwise get.
354: What a snob you are….
355: can we burn balls as well?
345. To be fair Cammo is rumoured to have a temper and there is the ruthless streak which I should think is a required quality in an effective leader but that’s not the same as being unpleasant. He passes the “would you have a beer with him/is he a normal human being?” test where Brown does not.
Rodcrosby you don’t do sums either, you fiddle about with figures, churn out some dire and dismal data speak and then come to a conclusion you wanted in the first place: the Tories not winning here.
The Slides the BBC got of the Graham report have been published. Its a complete mess…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/nickrobinson/2009/08/gray_report_sli.html
356: Buy F14s! They are not in service any more. You mean F18s surely?
361 Thanks for that - well when I was 20 something I was shockingly ambitious, political-gameplayer extraordinaire and generally up-myself.
And then one day I grew up. Guess it happens to almost everyone
370 SO you grew up - and then pu$$ies were the most important thing in your life.
Me, I was the other way round…
368: shocking..just shocking
If you’re so good at doing sums Rod, why cant you get the right total over the Ho1ocaust?
368 I’ve never seen a suicide note in PowerPoint before - Christ Almighty.
361 Indeed the only time he ventured out into the “real world” beyond the confines of CCHQ he got a pasting. No-one changes that much, not even Dave.
371
144. No it just proves JK Rowling either has a slate missing , is desperate for a friend, or wants a gong.
360. If you really could “do sums” you could easily verify my calculations.
Let us know when you’ve completed the task…
374 - I don’t know, large numbers of government ministers used to be Marxists and Trotskists e.g Blunkett and Darling two classic examples. Do you think they have changed?
Regards Carlton, he got a pasting? To be fair, I think the company as a whole got a pasting! It is like saying random trader at RBS got a pasting and is useless, because the bank has gone down the tubes!
343. Is it worth wasting any more time on it?
No. Because, as always, you haven’t convinced a soul.
WHY IS THIS ROD?
(Clue: same reason you haven’t convinced anyone the holocau$t didn’t happen)
375 - Jonathan do you have constipation problems?
377. You really think there will be a hung parliament next year? The polls back that up do they?
355. P-ss off Rod.
I’m a fully-qualified Chartered Engineer. Maths is my business.
And most people on here are highly-educated professionals perfectly able to fathom both statistics and numbers. They just don’t agree with you - because you are full of it.
You are not superior. You are a tw*t. And a Nazi-supporting tw*t at that.
So go figure and grow up.
Comment worth repeating from TMS:
“Once again I am left bamboozled and wide-eyed by the ability of the English Cricket Team to stride valiantly towards the ‘beast of victory’ before drawing the ’sword of ineptitude’ and striking cleanly for the monsters beating heart! All hail Sir Collapse-a-lot.”
Ahmed Zeidan in the TMS inbox
379. I take it I haven’t also convinced you that you don’t have a “soul”….
Oracle the question I have was which one was too big for their boots. It could well have been Randall who might then have thought a lot of himself. I do wonder if the attempt at pressure simply bounced off Cameron and upset the great journalist. We shall never know.
I am comforted that Cameron has a ruthless streak and a temper when it is useful. PMs need that as does any really senior manager. And he does seem to have the knack of being annoyed when it helps but not otherwise. And not with the junior staff either.
So unlike the one man campaign for increased Nokia profits.
384 - The worst thing about English cricket is that I could cope if we consistently sh1te i could cope with that. It’s the flickers that greatness that really wind me up
363. Having doubts about him and believing him untrustworthy is one thing.
Saying he is unpleasant and not a nice person quite another.
I had my doubts about Blair and considered him untrustworthy. However, I did not think him an unpleasant person.
Brown succeeds at both.
Half today’s contributions seem to be related to an obscure Yorkshire paint drying contest. Is the Eggshell’n'emulsion.com noticeboard down today?
386. I know I said this before but:
Football….must have football…
390 - Sunil, I thought you’d prefer to have trains and tubes.
326. RodCrosby August 7th, 2009 at 1:00 pm
Could you label the axes on the graphs? What are they actually showing?
388, typical softy southerner post.
When I were a lad we used to dream of watching paint dry. Watercolour, emulsion, even acrylic, would’ve been like utopia to us.
386.
“Cameron has a ruthless streak”
With enough sponsorship, DC’s display of naked ambition on the move might make a useful substitute for the funds of foreigner Ashcroft - and wake up thousands of sleepy Englishmen sitting around a field in Leeds.
386.
“Cameron has a ruthless streak”
With enough sponsorship, DC’s display of naked ambition on the move might make a useful substitute for the funds of foreigner Ashcroft - and wake up thousands of sleepy Englishmen sitting around a field in Leeds.
393/394 - Well done, you’ve managed to spell Cameron’s name right. Clearly my warning has had an effect on you.
Wage slave “gag” was so poor, he had to post it twice!
389
Patience, patience.
The mental chewing gum returneth this evening.
388.
He’s extremely, almost pathologically pleasant.
Remember, if most people were able to identify a successful con man then he would no longer be a succesful con man.
369 - I said F14s thinking they were in storage and we could just roll them out, but after your comment I read now they are being shredded. My point is there is no likely opponent that could not be handled by F14s in the short term - whilst we think about the longer term
F18s would fit the bill following the same principle. As indeed would F15s for the RAF.
391. Sorry, the X-axis is the party vote share in a cconstituency in 2005 [R&T notionals.] The Y-axis is the forecast change in the vote, according to Smithson Jnr…
Beautiful nonsense. To think of the effort that went into it…
“US jobless rate falls unexpectedly to 9.4% in July” as per BBC ticker.
Add to this the better than expected GDP in the US and Brown now has a real problem.
If this started in the US then why is the UK not also following suit? Brown’s pathetically weak attempts at stimulus as opposed to that in the US will come to haunt him.
Habib Butt. Robin Smith = Tony Blair is absolutely brilliant.
399. But that’s not what we’re debating.
Jonathan made a very specific statement: that he is “unpleasant”
Where is the evidence for this?
392
Aye, gazing in awe at distemper on’t shed were highlight of’t week.
If you really could “do sums” you could easily verify my calculations.
Let us know when you’ve completed the task…
by RodCrosby August 7th, 2009 at 1:31 pm
I can do sums probably as well as anyone here, although most of mine has been money and marketing.
But your premise is flawed at first presentation as you use data that is not directly applicable to the result you are attempting to ascertain.
So basically I won’t waste my time on logical nonsense.
Rod, for arguments sake, lets say the opinion polls remain as they are, and Cameron is elected with the sort of majority next year that Robert Smithson is projecting will you
1) Apologise to him
2) Stop posting on here?
398.
“The mental chewing gum returneth this evening.”
and, after the match, the mentals squewring bum apparently
Chris Tavare…
(shudder)
406. Don’t get your hopes up…
Fortunately I was too young to ever see Chris Tavare bat, was he as bad as people said he was?
Who / what has set Rod off this morning? I managed to get an earful last night for simply asking if he was willing to release his model for peer review!
393.
t’master ad ye whitewashing coal ‘appen?
‘Twill happen again if/when Chamemereon job creation schemes try to deal with £5 million unemployed.
410 “Chris Tap-away” as he was affectionatey known.
I’m sure I once watched him in a 17 day Test. He batted every day. Made 5 not out…
411 - Oracle, apparently Mr Smithson Jnr has set him off, because his modelling doesnt show the hung parliament that is inevitable
412 “£5 million unemployed”? Bloody Lottery-winning Chavs…
413 - Wow batting 17days and not giving your wicket away, that’s impressive, I hope the current england batsmen are reading this,
410 Tavare was a classy batsman. Just a bit slow. Him and Bill Athey = zzzzzzzzzz
412 - Why should the state be creating jobs for unemployed millionaires?
411. You didn’t get an earful. You got what you asked for!
Prior desperate to nick one!
416 Check it in Wisden. He single-handedly created a new way for a fellow batsmen to be out.
“Died - Boredom”
419 - You initial reaction was hostile and at times bizarre e.g Asking me to withdraw my comments, when I hadn’t made any!
Just reading that sad story about more army deaths. Don’t you think it’s time we stopped calling Jackals ‘armoured vehicles’, since they’re clearly not?
390. Yeah but there’s not much left to photograph within the M25, except for a few miniature railways(!). However I did discover http://fightingfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page within the last few days, so I’m dusting off my albeit limited FF collection to see if any articles there are correct or complete!
406.
i) Not necessarily. There is a possibility (infinitessimal) that the Tories could win big for reasons unconnected with Robert’s model, e.g. a Labour split.
ii) Whether I post here or not depends on my humour at the time, not the relative “rightness” or “wrongness” of my or anyone elses forecasts.
Rod Crosby - just over a year ago a common theme from you was that the Tories had never bettered the uniform national swing. You repeated it and repeated it in comment after comment.
Well how come that they did just that in 2005?
The UNS projection was for a Labour majority 28 seats bigger than was actually achieved.
421 35 in six and a half hours at Madras…. mmmmmmm Madras
421 - Love it
Ruddy hell England are a shower today.
Glad I’m back at work with the radio on to be honest rather than watching this.
Stuart Clark really is quite good
426. Rod has an excuse for that one, viz. the marginals were unusually distributed. In other words UNS didn’t apply in that case…:)
423 “Shopping trollies”, perhaps?
There is going to be a reckoning for the way this Govt. has f*cked up military procurement and placement - resulting in the needless deaths of our troops.
411. Rod You really think there will be a hung parliament next year? The polls back that up do they?
425: Lol….you amuse me. I’d glad you even deemed a ‘infinitessimal’ probably of something not fitting with your worldview. How generous of you.
422. You must have been half-asleep then, or you are now…
Your tone was accusatory and peremptory, but I’d forgotten about it. Why bring it up again?
403 I think you’re off on a semantic diversion again. Remember the “unmitigated success” debacle the other day. No point going there, again. Tedious in the extreme.
Personally, I believe Dave getting the label “poisonous” suggests Dave he might just be unpleasant.
I first got the impression about Dave might not be thoroughly pleasant chap when Armando Iannucci reported that Dave’s nickname at Carlton was “Satan”. Satan at least implies unpleasant, don’t you agree.
The “normal Dave” thing is clearly a constructed image anyway. Dave is a very good machine politician, straight into CCHQ out of uni. He has excellent PR that has played down this fact. But if elected he will be the first spad-pm. The final victory of the professional political class.
433: Swingback baby! don’t forget the swingback…after all we’re still ‘midterm’.
427 That will be it. In that innings, he took the world record for retaining strike - by taking a single off the last ball of 76 consecutive overs…
438 …. the five preceding balls having all been dots.
436. So Jonathan all you have managed to do today is repeat for the umpteenth time a handful of aged anecdotes, some of which are of dubious provenance.
Is this really the best you can do?
435 - No it wasn’t, I specifically said it was a genuine question, will you release the model, I am a newbie to political / election modeling and am interested. I have never made any accusatory and peremptory comments about your modeling ability, as I said last night, due to being in no position to do so!
436 - Really Jonathan, a nickname of Satan is a bad thing?
One of my two nicknames is Satan, not because I’m an evil person, just because of the job I do. (I’m a solicitor who works for a bank, and of the cases I’ve worked is the bank charges case)
My other nickname is Titanic, but i wont tell you why I’m called that.
Jonathan one Sun hack calling Cameron ‘poisonous’ does not a character reference make.
Journalist
Sun
Didn’t get his own way?
Swann gone. Thats 7 wickets, all playing at balls that should have been left alone (possibly Bell aside)
436
I’ll buy you some Kleenex Jonathan, I think you are about to cry.
re 436. I’m sure that up close Cameron is a nasty piece of work and certainly he made very few friends, and quite a lot of enemies, when he was at Carlton TV. I’ve heard from city figures who dealt with him doing his investor relations role at the time and they have been very negative.
But in the big scheme of things that does not matter. It’s how the wider public perceive him and that seems very positive.
426. I’ll be charitable, Mike, and call your intervention “false-memory syndrome.” The facts is, I was the first person who pointed out here that the Tories did indeed slightly outperform UNS in 2005, as they had also done in 1987 and Oct 1974.
Now, when you you’ve verified the truth of that, you will find I explained the reasons why too…
406. Habib Butt August 7th, 2009 at 1:46 pm
I would say that the outcome of the election will not validate one or other model. A model that was logically flawed could predict the result through luck, and one that was sound could be betrayed by noisy and sparse data. But, of course, they are tools to give an approximate prediction, not crystal balls.
I don’t really understand the heat generated by this topic. Of course, people see prediction as a political weapon in it’s own right (that’s what “Winning Here” is after all) but this is pretty abstruse stuff. It’s not
Afternoon chaps and I am sad to see Rod betraying a strong element of snobbery with his comment about lottery participants.
Frankly I am really disappointed I cannot get Robert’s model to work as I would love to “play” with it. Equally Rod if you havea working model, why not post a link so we can download it and try it out.
I am still waiting for a properly explanation of the LibDem incumbency feature which seems so important Rod in your predictions. As I have regularly pointed out, the last time we saw the LibDems facing a Tory party in the ascendancy was 1983 and going into that election the Liberal party had a baker’s dozen of MPs plus a dozen or so Labour defectors and 1 Tory defector calling themselves the SDP. IF the LibDems hold on to the modern equivalent of more than 50% of the Tory seats they have won since 1983 then I am prepared to accept the incumbency theory you and Mr Senior bang on about all the time.
In 9 months from today we can reflect on which model more accurately predicted the election result, yours or Roberts. If Robert prevails I hope you are man enough to admit his was better.
Robert Smithson’s approach:
Estimate through nationwide opinion polling how the 2005 voters for each party (including non-voters) are intending to vote next time. Apply this to the 2005 votes in each seat, to estimate the result next time.
Rod Crosby’s approach:
Take the results of a handful of by-elections, representing 2% of the country, most of which took place a number of years before the general election. Compare them with the results of half a dozen or so similar handfuls of by-elections, mostly several decades ago, and the results of the subsequent general elections, with different leaders, different parties, and vastly different national priorities. Attempt to forecast the next GE result.
I know which method I prefer.
447 - I’m sure after the next election you’ll be explaining the reasons why the Tories outperformed UNS in that election also.
425 “i) Not necessarily. There is a possibility (infinitessimal) that the Tories could win big for reasons unconnected with Robert’s model, e.g. a Labour split.”
Ah, I see - the Tories will only make big gains if it’s SDP Mk 2…
Am I missing something here? Is the FPTP system so biased against them ever winning that for betting purposes, discussing how bad Labour are performing is virtually pointless?
*falls off edge of flat Earth*
451. Indeed - but the ‘model’ will still work.
Alternatively Rod might claim that the 2010 general election never actually happened.
425. Glorious. So presumably Rod will post (gloat) if his humour permits it i.e. if it is indeed a hung parliament - but should swingback fail to produce the much criticised prediction, Rod’s humour will no doubt be a little blacker and so he won’t bother.
I need a big scythe. I am attacked by straw men on all sides…
449. In 1979, the Liberals should have lost Berwick, Ely, Isle of Wight and Truro according to the national swing - they held them.
I agree, we won’t know about ‘incumbency’ until after the election.
“Of course, people see prediction as a political weapon in it’s own right”
That’s the bit that annoys people on here, when people do that it screws up any attempts to bet according to reality.
Mandelson is ‘running the country’ – from Corfu
As Harriet Harman begins her holiday, the still-holidaymaking Lord Mandelson is the man in charge
…
But, as Laura Kuenssberg points out on the BBC blog, he’s not in the country. He’s still on holiday himself – in Corfu.
That’s right: Lord Mandelson is “running the country” from Corfu. Perhaps he’s even set up HQ by the swimming pool or at the Taverna Agni?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2009/aug/07/peter-mandelson-corfu
455 - Working class plebs use scythes, Gentlemen use shotguns.
446 Thanks Mike. You’re absolutely right! It doesn’t matter re. the election outcome. The public have bought the nice guy line. But it will impact the quality and character of any Cameron government. That should be worth thinking about to anyone interested in politics.
It is also much more interesting/fresh than the well worn and frankly boring attacks on Brown and is a welcome distraction from the cricket (
) or Rod’s well hung model.
Harmy gone, bring on the Jimmy!
461 - The fightback begins here. The play so far has been to lull the aussies into a false sense of security.
456. But two of those Liberal seats were subsequently lost at later elections in the 80s even though there wasn’t a further significant national swing.
So what that tells you is that incumbency advantage may be only a temporary block to seat losses. My suspicion is that the Lib Dems will continue to lose seats to the Tories for the next 2-3 elections, rather than there being one ‘big bang’ next year.
The BBC news - its newsreader and reporter - are just talking utter bollocks about the ‘Jackal’ saying is is ’sophisticated’ and has armour protection. It may have protection against gunfire (a bit) but it is essentially an open vehicle and is totally unprotected against IEDs.
They imply it was part of some special forces operation but reports say it was on a ‘regular patrol’. If this is true it was a disaster waiting to happen.
Following ‘wotsits claw’ we now have to hold on to the territory gained. Have we enough troops? Are we properly equipped? Does anybody think the govt have a clue ?
Back to Westminster - and we can see how utterly desperate the left are with their Cameron name calling. How many Nokias has Cameron thrown at people, how many telephonists has he told to F-off?
446 I’d not be at all surprised if Cameron was a steel nuts job - to coin a phrase “I didn’t get to where I am today…”
However, I’m prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt as a good candidate for PM, now if I were looking for a date - that’d be a different matter
427.
“Well how come that they did just that in 2005?”
In a tight election, 28 seats can be won or lost by factors as trivial as polling day organisation, morale and activity. Obviously the bigger the ‘notional’ majority on the night before polling day the harder it would be to invoke these kinds of factors which will rarely make a difference of more than 8 or 900 to a Party’s final vote. This factor is often cited for the number of seats the Lib Dems chalk up out of their ‘winnables’ by a few hundred instead of winning half and losing half. Is it a genuine issue or just folklore? I would imagine you should be able to make some judgement about this effect by looking tightly at the shape of the marginal results distribution graph. If the party coming from behind ends up with proportionately fewer ‘losses by under a thousand’ compared with the previous election, compared to both bigger losses and narrow gains then they would be doing something right where it matters.
456. You forgot Inverness too…
Jimmy gone too
460 - The reason the attacks continue on Gordo, is he keeps doing things which frankly make him look like a nasty piece of work.
Where as the stories about Cameron, as Mike own opinions, seem to come almost all to come from his Carlton days. We get little indication of repulsive character traits today, via the media or his actions in public. You may be right, and he hasn’t changed, underneath he is still the same, but the reason it isn’t a story is more than the public have bought his “nice guy” image, is that he manages to keep that up consistently for week after week, month after month.
465.
“How many Nokias has Cameron thrown at people, how many telephonists has he told to F-off?”
…and how many Tory tw@s has he tweaked?
After 12 years of Labour - New and otherwise - most people have made their minds up about Gordon Brown and the rest of the Labour ‘team’: in general terms, they don’t like them, don’t like their policies, don’t like where the country is going, want ‘change’, and would like the chance to express their view at the earliest possible opportunity. They hate Labour and absolutely loathe Brown.
It is possible - but unlikely - that after 12 years anything would happen or come to light which would change most people’s opinion.
“New nokias please!” needs no explanation - everyone knows to whom it refers.
The press narrative now is such that if Gordon Brown went swimming near his constituency and, as a son of the manse, showed he was able to walk on water, in the papers next day, over a picture of Gordon achieving this feat, the headline would read “Gordon can’t swim!” and everyone would add his aquatic shortcomings to the list of reasons to vote him out.
All out
459.
“That’s right: Lord Mandelson is “running the country” from Corfu.”
When, we wonder, will the drip GideO be dropping in?
In ANOTHER report the BBC are AGAIN implying that it is impossibe to protect against IEDs. But it is. MRAPs like Mastiff and Husky like the US equivalents like the readily available RG-31 DO offer protection. Disgracefully it is an Army talking head (voice) in this case giving the platitudes do a gullible BBC skirt.
The Jackal is not mine protected in any way - it is an off the track roaming vehicle. It is a sitting duck re IEDs.
Jonathan, clearly you have the advantage over me as I have not yet had the pleasure of meeting David Cameron, now merely being a Tory supporter rather than a party official. However I have met Gordon Brown once, during the lead up to the 1983 election when he was first elected. He was incredibly rude and made it clear by his actions that I was not an important enough person for him to waste precious time speaking to.
I have had the pleasure of co-hosting 4 former Tory PMs and meeting a 5th.
Harold MacMillan: very charming but a bit doddery by the time I met him
Sir Alec Douglas-Home: utterly charming, one of my political heroes. The ultimate one-nation Tory
Sir Ted Heath: loathed him as a PM, arguably the worst since the war (toss up with Eden)but he was kind enough to come to a public meeting to support Bernard Jenkin, his wife Anne and me held in my old school, in 1987. He was also utterly charming and very interested in our campaigns in no-hope seats in the east end of Glasgow.
Lady Thatcher: met her most frequently and she was always amazing though slightly intimidating. She never forgot a face. I might ad that spending an evening at the bar with Sir Dennis was brilliant fun. He brought the “Dear Bill” character to life and indeed was happy to play it up.
John Major: my favourite who also never forgot a face. Each time I met him he asked me how my mother and grandmother were ( both having met him).
I might add that in the interests of political balance, having met many of the Callaghan cabinet members and some Wilson ones, I found all of them absolutely charming and enjoyed their company. I was very “fond” of Roy Jenkins who was my parents MP for 5 years and visited our house several times for tea. Shirely Williams was hard work because she is a “nice” version of Harriet Harman (clever, excellent speaker but not extreme in her views)and challenged the thoughts during a discussion. David Steel is a total charmer as is of course Charles Kennedy but Sir Ming Campbell while very pleasant is a dreadful snob.
Sir Tam Dalyell has to be my favourite living Scottish Labour personality whom I find very interesting to chat to and Donald Dewar was simply a star though somewhat cerebral. John Smith spoke too quickly but clearly Tony Blair (whom I have not met) is far more like Smith in the people handling department than G Brown!
On the subject of Brown’s volunteering as part of his holiday - why?
Doesn’t he want to spend time what precious little time he has with his kids/wife?
It’s such a pity that ‘being seen to do good works in free time’ PR spin is seen as essential to rehabilitating his personal brand.
The stupid thing is that if Tony had done this - a big majority of people would have said ‘Ah, what a nice thing to do’.
Gordon = can’t win here.
total collapse in the cricket
476 - Also, he may well have plenty of time for volunteering in a few months time!
464.
“two of those Liberal seats were subsequently lost at later elections in the 80s”
Not by the incumbent? - hence no incumbent effect. It would appear the incumbent effect IS transferrable to a quite considerable extent if the work is done by the new candidate in time. Some candidates, however, are lazy with predictable results.
Onions caught off the arm guard - Siddle gets a freebie five for from Asad Rauf ‘oh yeah, I’ll give that’
456 Alan that is precisely why I described you as my favourite Scottish LibDem PBer last week. You advance a logical argument I can admire whether I agree or not. Now dont blush or throw up!! I am not your only non SLD admirer from PB Scotland
re 475. In 1989 my son Robert, him of the VIPA predictor, attended a Euro election meeting at which Shirley Willams was the main speaker.
Robert, then only 15, managed to out argue the great Shirl on EU issues and, very rudely, she cut him dead. She went down in my estimation from that moment.
From cricinfo:
“Possibly the best feedback email we have received for some time. Gordon Brown writes. “I think hard-working families up and down the country will be proud and will recognise how the England cricketers have fought through the difficult morning session and emerged into the far brighter afternoon session their hard work so richly deserves. After all, England lost seven wickets this morning, and predictions suggest they cannot possibly lose more than three this afternoon, so recovery is obviously just around the corner.” Outstanding. Thanks, Gorders.”
Alan, if interested I would be glad to chat off list on the Scottish scene as I do with other PBers from Scotland who are from other parties. My email is msf10@hotmail.com
476.
“John Major: my favourite who also never forgot a face. Each time I met him he asked me how my mother and grandmother were ”
An incredibly useful skill in a politician. Unfortunately it has very little indeed to do with any sincere interests which may or may not be there in association. It’s just the way some people’s brains are wired up - and some MPs actively practice techniques to perfect this ability. It pays out in spades.
Investment genius parrot tops human professional investors in contest:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/5988799/Parrot-beats-investors-in-South-Korean-stock-market-contest.html
I hope the big banks take a lesson from this and fire all their high-priced traders, replacing them with similarly investment-savvy parrots who can be paid in birdseed. Since they can pass some of the savings on to the investors, it’s win win!
OK, balloon trousers on, its Harmy Time!
On the subject of MP encounters - my worst was John Moore, he spent the entire time talking about the sore ball of his foot from playing too much squash.
Jeremy Corbin seems like a good but rather too earnest type for me - only met him the once.
The most entertaining was Geoffrey Robinson - he treats everyone with the same ‘can I rely on your vote’ manner which is very disconcerting!
450. I take it you understand “2% of the country” is a larger number than 1000 in an opinion poll. Btw, what is the margin of error on real votes in real ballot boxes?
483.
Shirly Williams is a product of the Shirly Williams industry. It’s a bit like the Charles Kennedy industry only the product is less lubricated.
481. I look forward to your posts, too, Easterross. Pity there’s no Scottish Labour pb.com poster we could gang up on!
479. Clement Freud, who was the incumbent in 1979, lost in 1987.
487, Australia to be all out for 7! Con gain Ashes!
489:2% don’t mean jack if its not representitive.
493 - Too late, the Aussies are already 8 without loss
492 A great excuse to replay this excellent joke
479 - Ely/NE Cambs was lost by the incumbent (Freud). Isle of Wight was lost on retirement.
489.
“John Moore, he spent the entire time talking about the sore ball of his foot from playing too much squash.”
Perhaps that’s why Maggie T passed him over in the succession for another JM whose particular approach to obtaining sore balls in squash feats was legendaray?
496 - Plato, I’m shocked by that joke. My innocent eyes.
489 “I take it you understand “2% of the country” is a larger number than 1000 in an opinion poll.”
Doesn’t matter.
The 2% in by-elections will be haphazard and random. Exactly why they are not a representative x-section.
Whereas, opinion poll sampling is defined by the attempt (no matter how muddled)to find a representative x-section.
Rod really knows how to make friend and influence people on PB.com doesn’t he! At this rate, he is going to make the likes of Timbot and Gabble more likely to win PB.com poster of the year award!
493.
Yes, thank you for that. I think you will find he lost interest in the MPing business some time before that and only went through the motions (in an non-Oatenesque manner) to try and hold on when his arm was twisted out of loyalty.
Rod clearly makes some valid points. But his manner of making them is enough to put most of us off. It’s not a case of Rod V Robert though. Both approaches have the ability to inform and make us think of things we may otherwise have overlooked or make us think of things in a different way. Both approaches will obviously be based on assumptions and involve biases. These are not necessarily flaws: there is no other way of building a model. It’s a shame Rod cant make some constructive comments that might be taken on board in refining VIPA rather than just sniping and declaring the whole exercise invalid (which it clearly isnt).
475 Labour Leaders. Met Gordon Brown as chancellor/shadow on a number of occasions. A bit of a nerd. A party man. But very warm. And a very good handshake. Met Blair as PM behind scenes. Less warm, but thoughtful. Very clever. Clearly had “it”. Smith straight as a die, still a crying shame. Kinnock, fun. Personal favorite Dennis Healey, brilliant, charming, clever, tough - what a missed opportunity. Foot, very old. Would loved to have met Wilson.
As for Tories. Met most of them except herself and pantsman. Heath was surprising interesting, but a little frosty. Still shocked from meeting Jeffrey Archer in the 90s before the shit hit the fan. The fact he got so close to power is distrubing.
Would love to have met SuperMac in his prime. Of current crop, would like to meet Boris (just for a laugh) or Osborne (I would like to suss him out - I find him interesting).
494. So by-elections are not representative? How does that work then?
The Grim Reaper is biased and votes Labour?
500: Exactly. No Byelctions in the south of england (not counting Henley or London). No Byelections in Wales (not counting Blaenu Gwent).
Ergo predictions based on byelections are flawed.
501 - I expect at this rate, he’ll be making Morris Dancer’s list.
re 485. There was the wonderful Willie Whitelaw moment from a man who would always ask people he met for the first time how they were. On one famous occasion the respondent said “dreadful” because her mother had just died - to which Whitelaw gave his standard response - “Splendid“.
504 - So we should vote for Gordo, because “he has a very good handshake”!
508 Mike, you must have met them all. You were your favorites?
The fightback begins, Harmy knocks one out.
504 Jonathan - Somehow, I have a suspicion that you and Osborne might not quite be kindred souls…
Telling the crowd not to boo at Ricky Ponting worked then.
Harmy Time!!!
The ball is going all over the place - the 4 wide Harmy byes flew off the pitch and seamed
Some people on here need to grow up and stop being so rude to each other ….. I don’t need to mention any names just get a grip !
Am I being on old fashioned cricketing snob and finding this booing of Ricky Ponting, distasteful, it’s just not cricket.
Osama bin Laden would get a warmer greeting than Punter.
Jonathan, have you ever revealed what you do for a living, or your connection to the Labour Party? You appear to be fairly well connected if by the sounds of it you have hobnobbed it with all the Labour and Tory hierarchy.
506.
” by-elections are not representative?”
Of course they are not. They are swayed by all sorts of random factors which affect differential turnout of parties’ supporters by different amounts in different situation. I have not met a single serious politician who has ever taken anything at all other than ‘deep background’ from a single by-election, despite the nonsense most of them talk on TV on election nights.
Punter looks terrified, lol
I’m still lost Rod - why are by-elections [which have a peculiar habit of having very specific local issues and therefore less likely to be matched by the GE national effect] a better predictor of the future, than those swapping parties based on the last GE and using current polling results?
475- I’ve met DC at party events, just for a few moments. He seems like a nice enough chap. When he left an event early before we arrived one of our councillors wrote him a stinking letter. At the next north west dinner he sought her out and apologised profusely. He doesn’t come across as being pompous, I felt free to make a joke at his expense.
I did the vote of thanks to Phillip Davies at a dinner, his speech was brilliant and he came across really well in conversation, he actually seemed to be listening to what people said. I spoke briefly with William Hague and again he struck me as actually being interested in what people were saying. I have spoken with enough MP’s to know that this is unusual.
I knew Den Dover quite well at one point and he seemed like a really good guy and a hard working MEP. I can’t comment as to what else he might have been doing.
Come on Jimmy, inswing here, no pie outside off stump like the first 2 balls
512.
“Harmy knocks one out.”
One of her ’sisters’? Has the post-GordO battle begun?
Anderson doesn’t like Shame Watson
518.
“ever taken anything at all other than ‘deep background’ from a single by-election.”
That’s all I do too…
The last time there was a byelection in anywhere near the South West of England was Romsey in 2000. (And Romsey, being in Hampshie is not even considered SW).
489
By that logic, if we surveyed the entire population of Bootle (c. 78,000) we’d have a more accurate picture of national voting intention than a normal opinion poll (c. 1000), because it’s a “larger number”.
Numpty.
Aussies struggling with the swing now
485 Wage Slave I know what you mean but in Major’s case it was genuine. He first met my mother shortly after my father died.
I also happened to chat to Norma about Dame Joan Sutherland whose biography Norma wrote. She spoke warmly about her meetings with Dame Joan. A year later I happened to be playing host for the day to Dame Joan and her husband Richard Boyning and asked Dame Joan about Norma Major. Her face broke into a warm smile as she proceeded to tell me what a charming and lovely person Lady Norma Major is and what an interesting and charming man Sir John is. Dame Joan is not known for mincing her words, in that she is a true Aussie.
491 Alan do you think any Scottish Labour wally could cope with you, Stuart and me?!!!
England batting again by tea?
531 - more likely Aus 200/1 by tea
More expense fiddling, head teacher this time,
Head claimed Caribbean expenses
A former head teacher who put a Caribbean holiday on expenses has been struck off after being found guilty of unacceptable conduct.
Susan Duncan denied making false expenses claims towards a trip to Jamaica with another teacher from The Meadows School, Oldbury, West Midlands.
She claimed more than £3,000 for the Jamaica trip, saying it was to carry out risk assessments for a school trip.
The panel also found her guilty of falsely claiming £306 for a trip to swim with dolphins during an earlier visit to Antigua.
She was cleared of making false expenses claims for shopping between November 2004 and June 2006.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/west_midlands/8188049.stm
re 510. I’ve never met Brown or Cameron.
The one that really scared me was Maggie Thatcher in 1999 at one of the Jeffrey Archer’s famous garden parties near Cambridge. I knew Mary through her work with Cambridge University where I was then working.
As soon as I arrived Mary said I must introduce you to the Baroness and I was taken to the great lady and found myself having to make conversation for what seemed like an hour. As I was anxiously looking around for somebody to relieve me she actually said “there was no need for a second ballot”. That still hurt.
I had first me her about fifteen years earlier at a lunch and I found her very sexy. At the time she was at the height of her power and she was amazing with people.
506 Slackbladder. No by-elections in the South or Wales ??
IIRC over the last 20 years :
Vale of Glamorgan .. Neath .. Islywn .. Ceridigion .. Monmouth.
Romsey .. Eastbourne .. Beckenham .. Newbury .. Christchurch .. Dagenham .. Ipswich.
527. You’ll have to try better. I’ve always said that one by-election should never be used to forecast anything.
If you polled 10 constituencies, not just Bootle, you would have a very accurate indicator of the result, which is of course exactly what the BBC do as the results come in on election night….
535: anything over 5years or so is meaningless in predicting the next election.
534 “…and I found her very sexy”
New thread!!!!
534 Mike S. Ah …. Power and sex Mike !!
534 - Mind bleach!!!!!
508 Mike he was like that all his life. My grandfather and his brothers played golf with Willie in his youth at home in Nairn. When Willie came on the TV grandad always told me some tale or other about Willie in Nairn. Willie would say splendid to everyone and about everything when on Nairn High St.
Incidentally what is it about Penrith (wonderful town) and the Borders that they replace a lad from Nairn with a lad from Avoch just 5 miles away across the Moray Firth as their MP. Maybe I should get adopted for Penrith as I live about 10 miles from Nairn across the Moray Firth and know the incumbent and his family and knew his predecessor too.
505 : “So by-elections are not representative?”
Yup.
Here’s a little light relief between the wait for the new thread by Robert Smithson called “Rod Crosby Ate My Polling Hampster” and England knocking over the Aussies before tea :
Which two members of the British royal family were killed in WWI and WWII and how were they related ??
No Wiki cheating in the back row !!
534. Mike Smithson August 7th, 2009 at 2:58 pm
NURSE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Onions is making me cry.
543- wasn’t a royal killed on a flight to Iceland or somewhere like that? In WW2
This is fcking horrendous (Headingley)
It was Francois Mitterand who said that Margaret Thatcher had the eyes of Caligula and the lips of Marilyn Monroe. Evidently our host agrees.
Pathehic from England - Harmison and Onions in 2 overs have played Ponting back into form.
Onions is a line and length bowler - why is he trying to bounce out the world’s top batsman?
Ridiculous
Duke of Kent was killed in WWII and his sister-in-law’s brother was killed in WWI
Get Swann and Collingwood on and bowl line and length until the so called front line learn.
What are you talking about? Even I think she looked OK back in the 80s. Now, not so hot LOL!
Jack W, do the Queen Mothers brothers count?
Duke of Kent killed in plane crash (shot down?) — on way to Gibralter ?
WW1 - no idea
550 though alternatively you might mean the Duke of Kent’s uncle Emperor Nicholas of Russia as the one killed in WW1.
I was referring to the Hon. Fergus Bowes-Lyon in WW1
536: “If you polled 10 constituencies, not just Bootle, you would have a very accurate indicator of the result”
Really?
Let’s see:
Ashfield
Bootle
Barking
Bishop Auckland
Blackley & Broughton
Blythe Valley
Bradford East
Bradford South
Brent North
and for good measure:
Huntingdon
Now suppose in any parliament they were the only by-elections.
Better predictor than well-run opinion polls? Unlikely.
550
Was he on the Hampshire along with Kitchener when it hit a mine?
552 - Sunil, we need to have a chat.
550 Easterross. 50% pass. Duke of Kent correct. Queen Mum’s brother not part of the royal family.
Dukes sister in laws brother is not Royal !
DoK was indeed heading for Iceland
RC:
“If you polled 10 constituencies, not just Bootle, you would have a very accurate indicator of the result”
OK, so take Bootle, St Helens, Bolsover, Knowsley, Tyneside, Hull….
558. Habib, please stick to the dockside hookers - only kidding!
556: Also if you take the 14 byelections since the last GE (counting Glas NE), 5 have been in Scotland. Hardly representitive of the country.
562 - Sunil, I’ve never used a dockside hooker, yet
562: Well probably comparing most dockside hookers to maggie in her prime…its a tough call…
559 Tsar Nicholas was a member of the British Royal Family though as was his wife.
557 Bono. Nope.
Even me, a ToryBoy, who’s motto, is every hole is a goal, has to draw the line at Mrs T. Mike are you mad?
568 = Whose motto is “Every hole is a goal”
557
Looked on the Hampshire website.
No royals listed.
569 Tiger Woods
566 Easterross. In strict terms yes. However I was looking for British in the normal sense and also whilst on active service.
Apols for the confusion.
571 - No I’m not tiger woods.
GeoffH@556, I’m guessing the scenario you describe would exaggerate the swing to Labour. Voters would want to show that they weren’t intimidated by the Alphabet Political Nerd Serial Killer.
I met Brown very briefly in No. 10 this year, one of my schoolpals is a police officer guarding No.10. Brown is even more miserable in the flesh. He was waving his finger at someone when we approached. He stopped briefly grunted an hello then continued his abuse in a quieter tone. However I can imagine a split personality and he may have a really nice side to him when he is alone with Sarah and family !
534- I’m picturing Mike’s encounter with the Baroness as the famous scene from The Graduate… “Are you trying to seduce me, Mrs. Thatcher?”
FFS.
Down Memory Lane of PMs We Have Met….continued
I met John Major when he was a health minister and I did find him rather sexy. He is more attractive in real life than his grey “Spitting Image” persona. He was quite flirtatious and amusing and rather touchy feely.
I also heard Harold Wilson speak to a group of local government lawyers about 18 months after he stepped down from being PM. I didn’t detect any signs of Alzheimers, but he was very lack lustre - the only time he came to life was when he issued a statement telling the US ambassador to the UN, Andrew Young, to mind his own business over Northern Ireland. The rest of the time Wilson droned on and looked bored.
Whats up Sean?
Come on PBers …. this really is a piece of cake !!
Maurice of Battenburg, you mean?
437. No Jonathan. It is a standard tactic of yours. Initiating an argument on one point and then subtly trying to suggest you *actually* meant something else.
You did with my point about the unmitigated success of rail privatisation. You are doing it here again now.
“I first got the impression about Dave might not be thoroughly pleasant chap when Armando Iannucci reported that Dave’s nickname at Carlton was “Satan”. Satan at least implies unpleasant, don’t you agree.”
Wow. So now we discover that there is no evidence Dave is unpleasant, only that he had a nickname at Carlton - as many company directors do - and therefore it’s your personal opinion is that he is.
Well whoopee-f*cking-doo. What a surprise that is.
You project your dislike of the Tories as a political force onto any human being who happens to represent them.
That’s clearly what’s happening here and it’s as transparent as your “evidence” that Cameron is what your prejudices would like him to be.
581 runnymede. Well done.
HH Prince Maurice of Bettenberg was the youngest grandson of Queen Victoria and was killed in the first months of the war. He was a first cousin once removed of the Duke of Kent, whose father George V was also a grandson of Queen Victoria.
New thread
562.
You step off the ferry and nervously walk along the mist-shrouded dock. Nobody else seems to be about. It is cold, and a light drizzle falls, though light enough not to be of annoyance. Suddenly, you see a figure in the mist ahead and you stop in your tracks. As it looms out of the gloom, you see that it is a reasonably attractive woman in a raincoat. She has spotted you and continues to approach. When she reaches you, she asks you, “Looking for a good time, chuck? 50 quid for an hour.” OMG! It appears that she is a bona fide dockside hooker! What will you do?
If you will pay her price, turn to paragraph 69.
If you decide not to, then you must mutter some feeble excuse and continue on your way (turn to paragraph 123).
If, instead, you want to ask her if she knows the whereabouts of that
cadbounderreprobate Habib Butt, turn to paragraph 256.“Brown’s volunteering as part of his holiday” — is he washing peoples feet?
Prince Maurice of Battenberg :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_maurice_of_battenberg
What’s wrong?
How about: The cricket, the weather, the cricket, my arthritic knee, Gordon Brown, the price I just paid for a flat the size of a gerbil’s thimble, the economy, the government, the interminable period that must elapse between now and my next arrival in Bangkok, the cricket, the rain, the departure of Christian Ronaldo to Real Madrid, the drizzle, the slowness of this train to Cornwall, the stupid yawning American couple sitting opposite me with their obviously failing marriage (just split up you dweebs), the lack of wifi, the boringness of modern novels, Harriet Harman, and the existence of the word “toastie”.
That’s what’s wrong. But I thought I’d save you all some hassle and just say FFS.
Did I mention the cricket?
447. But working for the boss of Carlton - Michael Green - may have made him unpopular by “default”. Green was known for his blunt and buccaneering style. Cameron would have had to work to his rules, or resign. That’s what it’s like when you work for someone. You work to their rules and their culture.
Who working on behalf of Alan Sugar would have been popular?
Sure, Cameron might have done unpopular things and might have had to do it Greens way but, then, Cameron has moved on a lot since then. He’s a more mature and balanced man.
It is widely acknowledged that the birth of his disabled son was a life changing experience for him. He was a late convert to the modernising cause but by 2004/2005 was convinced of the need to change the Tory party.
We’ve even seen how his demeanour has changed since the 2005 Tory leadership election, when he was much more prone to losing his temper, and how much more in control he is now.
I must say, having read his biography, I was particularly impressed by the way he dealt with bullies picking on younger pupils at Eton.
I was left with the impression that Cameron was a decent reasonable guy - but with tough resolve.
483. A proud Dad