Trin Tragula posted:

I've been bored and trying to avoid things, so I decided to go poke around at these magical new YouGov polls and projections that we're all relying on for a little hope, instead of the diabolical TNS ones that Theresa May is taking to bed with her at night. YouGov has also produced a very clever thingy which is currently attempting to give (sort of) bespoke constituency-by-constituency results rather than trying to extrapolate from a national uniform swing (a concept that's been steadily declining towards irrelevance since 2010).

What I was trying to do was figure out how they think Labour might get near the Times headline projection of a hung parliament. Since the referendum I've been absolutely fascinated by the potential effect of voters who went for UKIP in 2015 thinking "job done" and going back to an established party; there are a lot of constituencies out there, the pattern is repeated again and again, in which the incumbent MP has a reasonable-but-not-safe majority of somewhere between 2,000 and 5,000. The UKIP vote is higher than the majority (so if they all switched to the party who finished second in 2015, the seat would flip), and there's also somewhere between 1,500 and 4,000 (again, depending on the constituency) combined Lib Dem and Green voters who might just be tempted to vote tactically this time. I reckon these are the seats they're looking at; they're thinking that there's a reasonable chance of Labour taking enough of them off the Tories, and holding on when they hold a seat with those demographics, to swing it.

(n.b. this ignores the potential effect of increased youth turnout because I've seen enough elections to believe that when I see it and not before)

Here's an example of the sort of thing I'm talking about. Hastings & Rye is a Tory-held seat with a majority of 4,796 (9.4% of all votes cast). The UKIP vote last time was 6,786 (11%). The Lib Dems and Greens combine for about 3,500 votes. The current YouGov prediction* has the seat pissing all over national swing, with Labour winning on about 45%, the Tories on about 42%, and UKIP nowhere at about 5%. There's also a major comedy wild card here that they don't mention or attempt to quantify; this is Amber Rudd's seat. God knows what that's going to mean. The election is full of these seats: Ipswich, Reading East, Dudley North, Middlesbrough South & East Cleveland. They're going to be where the election is decided. Which way does the UKIP vote swing, are the kids going to turn out, and are there any local peculiarities?

*Even YouGov themselves don't really know because they can't poll most individual constituencies in enough detail, so are trying to guess based on cleverly extrapolating from people they are polling in other constituencies, and weighting them and unskewing them and . The headline numbers in H&R are a predicted 45-42 Labour victory, but you look at that for half a second and you quickly see that there's a gargantuan margin of error; the actual prediction is Labour on anywhere between 38% and 52%, and the Tories on anywhere between 36% and 47%. And the worst-case scenario of the Tories on 47% and Labour on 38% in the constituency lines up nicely inside the margin of error on that national TNS poll. They don't loving know what the seat breakdown's going to be! Nobody knows. But it's fun when the Times splashes their numbers on the front page as gospel...

(There's also a second interesting category; seats where UKIP finished in second place, or with more than 10,000 votes, or both. Penistone & Stocksbridge has a Labour majority of over 6,000. UKIP were third last time on 10,738. This constituency literally has the potential to turn into an ultra-safe Labour seat, or a safe Tory seat. Rotherham; 8,400 majority for Labour, 11,400 UKIP voters out there who boosted them into second last time.)

namesake posted:

*extremely neoliberal voice* Actually because the government collects most of its tax through VAT and income tax to really increase the tax intake you want it to be wide over the population rather than deep.

Radio 4 PM had someone from the Economist saying why free market liberals think May sucks which was pretty fun. I really do wonder now if Mays godawful performance will speed up the split between wet and dry Tories even as their lead narrows.

forkboy84 posted:

https://twitter.com/JmeBBK/status/870267107921076224

Top stuff.

Extreme0 posted:

So much for Hope from some people. Guess that the tories have won now.


If they only bombed the Sun offices I think I would of been fine with that.

the trump tutelage posted:

Not sure what you think concern trolling is, but it was an honest question.

jabby posted:

Is it me, or has the the word 'cowardly' really been pushed recently to describe these attacks? I remember May and Rudd using it in just about every statement, now Khan. I only noticed because Corbyn always seemed to avoid describing the attacker and focused instead on the response by emergency services/ordinary citizens.

It's a trivial thing, it just sticks out at me because it's not the word I would choose myself.

Baron Corbyn posted:

wait, why is the self-reported likelihood to turn out worse than the 2015 turn out model?

JOHNSON COCKSLAP posted:

ZeeBoi posted:

Happy that my hometown Burnley stayed Labour. Even if they did vote for Brexit, the cunts.

peanut- posted:

Every channel giving glowing eulogies of Nick Clegg, praising a great public servant.

I'm hope all the students leaving uni with £40k of debt are yelling at their TVs.

ShaneMacGowansTeeth posted:

They are, in that they are ringing around every hotel in the local area trying to find beds for those displaced, while close to 2000 properties in the borough remain empty

feedmegin posted:

Actually it's super common, you just gotta have a lot of

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/shortcuts/2013/dec/10/want-to-buy-citizenship-super-rich-malta-passports

Guavanaut posted:

Lots of boats are registered Panamanian for flag reasons. You don't want to be confused for a boat itt. Maybe try Paraguay.

Looks like I can get some of those Caribbean ones plus a house there for less than a house in the UK. A lot of those are already UK Overseas Territories, so do I even need to or can you just waltz up with your existing citizenship?

Deptfordx posted:

D-notices as depicted in popular fiction are complete bollocks.

Firstly, they're called DSMA-Notices now. Defence and Security Media Advice Note. But their basic functioning is unchanged.

But the clue is in their name. Defence and Advice.

They're only supposed to be issued on matters directly involved, or judged prejudicial to the Defence and Security of the Realm.

You can't issue one to coverup any old thing your Goverment may consider embarassing.

In fact you can't use them in a coverup at all because of the Advice part.

They are entirely voluntary. There is no legal penalty for breaking one.

They are in fact a official way to say to for example Tabloid editor 'x', you've got your hands on information which you're not supposed to have and will cause this genuine harm.

If the Editor disagrees, he can publish anyway.

Generally, when used reasonably the media will comply, but they certainly have been ignored before, and if anyone was dumb enough to try and use them in a non-defence matter like the terrible fire then the media would run with the story and denounce the stupid bastard who tried it.

goddamnedtwisto posted:

I mentioned it in my post but look at the Zircon and Spycatcher cases. The Government had to resort to injunctions (in the latter case forgetting to get one in Scotland, lol) which were still universally broken, and the Streisand Effect made them far, far bigger stories than they would ever have been without that sort of intervention. In both cases there was a much murkier public interest defence than there is here, too - it's doubtful any judge in the country would even grant such an injunction. In the Katherine Gun case, where there was a really clear public interest, HMG not only didn't even bother with an injunction they abandoned the prosecution after a day when it became abundantly clear the judge was about to well and truly piss on the Official Secrets Act's chips and they didn't want a clear public-interest defence precedent set.

There's just no legal or judicial mechanism by which they could block publication of the final death toll. They may be able to use pressure and precedent to stop the press speculating on the final toll but if they are that's really not working very well, is it?

goddamnedtwisto posted:

Oh yeah, definitely, but you don't need a DEEP STATE for that, just watch the opening of In The Loop where Malcolm Tucker is telling the unnamed Fleet Street editor about all the dirt he has on him to suppress a story. They also throw in promises of juicier stories (or denial of access to said stories).

In a way it's far worse than any official censor standing over an editor with a gun to his head because it makes the press much more self-censoring. The outburst of negative coverage of May and positive coverage of Corbyn is a pretty clear example that the Press no longer fear the Tory machine - see also the way the Press turned on Brown as soon as he took power and Blair's machine were no longer running interference.

Serene Dragon posted:

There are 1399 empty houses in Kensington according to the news. We have loving homeless people in this country and a single loving borough in London has nearly 1400 empty loving homes.

gently caress this country.

jabby posted:

Quite a few journalists who've been at the scene during or after the fire have looked extremely rattled. Every one I've seen reporting from the protests today have looked nervous in a way I don't remember seeing from reporters in this country today.

EvilHawk posted:

Seems pretty obvious what they're doing is spreading people as far apart as possible. They're not releasing the real numbers of missing/dead/survivors, so nobody knows how many people are still there. Moving people away so that it's harder to get a full total, organise protests etc., particularly with a predominantly working class/immigrant population who are less likely to cause trouble.

GlyphGryph posted:

I still dont understand how Rudd "won". when the other person had more votes and why she was allowed to keep demanding recounts until the moe fell in her favour or why they then stopped the recounts

Didnt they have to recount like seven times before they got it "right" and found her to be the winner?

spectralent posted:

fortunately the collective head-trauma the country seemed to have suffered from the brexit vote seems to be wearing off. Hopefully at some point in the next few months people are going to start seeing some sense in poll-swinging amounts.


How the gently caress is brighton such an expensive place to live

Lobster God posted:

https://twitter.com/annajleach/status/876758653386338304/photo/1

MikeCrotch posted:

Just cutting carbs down to 150g or so a day should be a pretty big calorie reduction, you don't need to go full keto unless you have a medical reason for it

sassassin posted:

No one who doesn't lift weights has an acceptable physique.

Skinty McEdger posted:

Nick Davies two books about the evils of modern journalism Flat Earth News (which goes in depth about the Mail and the Stephen Lawrence case) and Hack Attack (which focuses on the Murdoch papers and phone hacking) are well worth a read. Flat earth news predicts a bunch of pessimistic trends for journalism that he hopes to be proven wrong about, while Hack Attacks message is things are worse than I had thought they would be.

Darth Walrus posted:

So what's the difference between the leader of a council and its CEO?

Darth Walrus posted:

Ah, that makes sense. So the council makes the policy, and the CEO makes it happen.

Pissflaps posted:

The people asked don't seem overly impressed with either option.

Coohoolin posted:

Where is the Edstone?