The banker loving, baby-eating Tory party thread (regenerated)

[Genie]

7 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

There's absolutely no reason to think that, and the evidence of the poll linked above (which was Ipsos, not YouGov) does not and cannot support it. 

It is possible which was the point, especially if the 2 points in time are close together. 

Because the data of this fairly basic poll doesn’t confirm where the vote shifts occurred you’ve dismissed that it can’t be a simple shift of 1 party to another. 

[Xann]

Quote

In the midst of a global energy crisis Europe is preparing to enter the winter with its lowest reserves of gas in at least 10 years. For the UK, which has some of the continent’s lowest gas storage capacity, the drawing in of colder months has left households even more vulnerable to the risk of shortages.

The UK’s stores hold enough gas to meet the demand of four to five winter days, or just 1% of Europe’s total available storage. The Netherlands has capacity more than nine times the UK’s, while Germany’s is 16 times the size...

... The Rough storage facility, owned by Centrica, the parent company of British Gas, provided 70% of the UK gas storage capacity for more than 30 years before it shut in 2017 following a government decision not to subsidise the costly maintenance and upgrades needed to keep the site going....

... It was a matter of months after the closure of the Rough site that the UK’s energy operator, National Grid, issued a formal warning that the country did not have enough gas to meet demand during the freezing “beast from the east” storm which battered the UK in March 2018.

The gas market surged by almost 75% within the day. The country did not run out of supplies but analysts estimated that the cost of gas overall on the day of National Grid’s warning had climbed eightfold from usual levels.

John Underhill, a professor at Herriott-Watt University in Edinburgh, warned this week that the UK’s gas market woes would only deepen through winter as cold, dark days drive demand for gas higher.

“The real challenge will lie on cold, dark, windless days of winter when demand for heat, light and energy are at their highest,” Underhill said. “Without addressing the need to replenish sources, have secure and reliable supplies and storage issues, the current crisis is simply a warning of what is to come over the winter and beyond.”

Though apparently even though there'd been cross party dismay about the closure of gas storage...

Quote

... according to the business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, any connection drawn between soaring prices and meagre storage levels is a “red herring”.

Grauniad

A few people are getting REALLY rich whilst swerving tax of course. It's what the witless voted for.

 

Joe Politics interviewed Ian Hislop a couple of days ago about his 35 year stint at Private Eye. It's quite an interesting watch.

This was a current issue he thought hadn't been scrutinised nearly enough.

[HanoiVillan]

Just now, Genie said:

It is possible which was the point, especially if the 2 points in time are close together. 

Because the data of this fairly basic poll doesn’t confirm where the vote shifts occurred you’ve dismissed that it can’t be a simple shift of 1 party to another. 

You're still thinking about this the wrong way. The poll doesn't show 'vote shifts'. It shows the change in aggregate voting intention after weighting between two snapshots, but this is not showing you that a 'shift' has occurred. 

[Genie]

10 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

You're still thinking about this the wrong way. The poll doesn't show 'vote shifts'. It shows the change in aggregate voting intention after weighting between two snapshots, but this is not showing you that a 'shift' has occurred. 

It also doesn’t show that it hasn’t, it could have. 

[blandy]

1 hour ago, Genie said:

It also doesn’t show that it hasn’t,

It's like different bowls of smarties. Dip your hand into one bowl on one day and you get so many red, blue, Green, yellow smarties in your sample

Dip your hand into a different bowl on a different day and you get different numbers of red, green , blue, yellow ones in your sample. This never shows that blue ones have turned red or green, just that the two samples from different bowls indicate different mixes of colours on different days 

[Genie]

16 minutes ago, blandy said:

It's like different bowls of smarties. Dip your hand into one bowl on one day and you get so many red, blue, Green, yellow smarties in your sample

Dip your hand into a different bowl on a different day and you get different numbers of red, green , blue, yellow ones in your sample. This never shows that blue ones have turned red or green, just that the two samples from different bowls indicate different mixes of colours on different days 

Those polls showing a decrease in 1 party and increase in another could be for a number of reasons. Such as it being a different group of people or it might also be the same/similar people who have changed their mind based on something specific (let’s say a barrage of bad press about corruption and sleaze for example) or a combination of many things.

The poll doesn’t tell us the details why 1 went up and another went down. So we can’t conclude that it is the same people deflecting to another party for a specific reason, or if it’s an entirely different group of people, so we have to keep an open mind. We can’t just dismiss a particular theory based on the presented poll data.

[HanoiVillan]

24 minutes ago, blandy said:

It's like different bowls of smarties. Dip your hand into one bowl on one day and you get so many red, blue, Green, yellow smarties in your sample

Dip your hand into a different bowl on a different day and you get different numbers of red, green , blue, yellow ones in your sample. This never shows that blue ones have turned red or green, just that the two samples from different bowls indicate different mixes of colours on different days 

Yes, this.

The only caveat I guess I would add is that you could reach a degree of difference between the two polls when it became essentially impossible for the two numbers not to largely overlap, ie if somehow you got a poll that was CON -29 LAB +31 then clearly there wouldn't be enough other voters for those two not to largely overlap. Obviously the Ipsos poll was nowhere near that. 

[blandy]

4 minutes ago, Genie said:

Those polls showing a decrease in 1 party and increase in another could be for a number of reasons. Such as it being a different group of people

It is a different group of people. That's the point.

The pollsters such as YouGov, Gallup etc have a huge number of kind of registered people. They know their age, their voting history, their gender and so on.

When they do a particular poll they "weight" the balance of a sample of those people they contact, to reflect society as well as they can. Then they'll contact (say) around 1000 people from their register (of maybe 400,00 people) and ask them the question.

It isn't the same 1000 people being asked over and over again and some of them being shown to change their minds, for these polls.

There is however long term attitude polling which is sometimes done, where a group of people is asked questions repeatedly, but that's not what these voting polls do.

I think @HanoiVillanhas posted about this before in more detail than this post.

[Rds1983]

48 minutes ago, blandy said:

It's like different bowls of smarties. Dip your hand into one bowl on one day and you get so many red, blue, Green, yellow smarties in your sample

Dip your hand into a different bowl on a different day and you get different numbers of red, green , blue, yellow ones in your sample. This never shows that blue ones have turned red or green, just that the two samples from different bowls indicate different mixes of colours on different days 

Wait, you can get blue Smarties? 

[Genie]

Yeah, I didn’t mean different people literally as it wouldn’t be realistic for them to keep tracking down the same people each time.

I just meant for example if they did the poll in 1 town 1 day, then in another town another day. Or even a different part of the same town. You’ll get differences of course.

You still can’t say CON -4 and GREEN +4 is tories deflecting to green from the poll. You can’t say it isn’t either.

 

 

[Genie]

Just now, Rds1983 said:

Wait, you can get blue Smarties? 

They were banned weren’t they? Maybe I’m mis-remembering it from my childhood. I seem to recall they had a different type of food colouring that was sending kids hyper. Might have been an urban myth.

[Seat68]

1 minute ago, Genie said:

They were banned weren’t they? Maybe I’m mis-remembering it from my childhood. I seem to recall they had a different type of food colouring that was sending kids hyper. Might have been an urban myth.

It was Mitsubishis. Would keep them up all night. 

[Xann]

[HanoiVillan]

Iain Duncan Smith accused of ‘brazen conflict of interest’ over £25,000 job

'Iain Duncan Smith is facing questions over his £25,000-a-year second job advising a multimillion-pound hand sanitiser company after he chaired a government taskforce that recommended new rules benefiting the firm.

The MP and former Conservative party leader chaired the Task Force on Innovation, Growth, and Regulatory Reform, which reported back in May after he and two other MPs were asked by Boris Johnson to recommend ways of cutting supposed EU red-tape.

However, the fresh spotlight on moonlighting by MPs has now prompted questions about the taskforce’s recommendations that alcohol-free hand sanitisers should be formally recognised as suitable for use in the UK.

The report made no reference to Duncan Smith’s relationship with Byotrol, which provides the NHS with 92% of its non-alcohol sanitiser. It retains the former Tory leader as an adviser for £25,000 a year, according to his declaration in parliament’s register of members’ interests.

In a message to investors after the recommendations of Duncan Smith and his fellow former ministers George Freeman and Theresa Villiers, Byotrol welcomed how an “influential UK government-sponsored taskforce has recommended a regulatory ‘green light’ for alcohol-free hand sanitisers”. Its directors were also quoted in a report as saying that it delivered a “powerful boost” to the firm.

The taskforce said in its report: “Current guidelines in the UK on non-alcohol based hand sanitisers are unclear. As a result, there is confusion in industry and among consumers as to what products are safe and effective to use, and we may be unnecessarily limiting the range of sanitising products available.” It called on the government to review guidance “to place alcohol- and non-alcohol-based on a level playing field”.

Duncan Smith was a director of Byotrol between June 2009 and May 2010 and has previously declared share options.'

more at link: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/nov/09/iain-duncan-smith-accused-of-brazen-conflict-of-interest-over-25000-job?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

[ml1dch]

Paterson first, then Irritatable Duncan-Syndrome, Afriyie and Cox all getting spiked shortly after.

It's like karma woke up and quickly realised there were a lot of Brexity scumbags who needed some very overdue comeuppance. 

[HanoiVillan]

Just now, ml1dch said:

Paterson first, then Irritatable Duncan-Syndrome, Afriyie and Cox all getting spiked shortly after.

It's like karma woke up and quickly realised there were a lot of Brexity scumbags who needed some very overdue comeuppance. 

Yeah, this Geoffrey Cox story is fascinating:

I can't wait for the next gripping installment!

[ml1dch]

9 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

Yeah, this Geoffrey Cox story is fascinating:

I can't wait for the next gripping installment!

I've just been sent it

Sir Geoffrey: "Thank you for your time Mark, that'll be two and a half thousand pounds please"

[ml1dch]

Henry Zeffman doing the journalism that Laura Kuenssberg doesn't.

 

 

[desensitized43]

It's all backwards really. When I think about how any normal person would think in this situation - If I have a job that pays me ~80k and another job that pays me ~150k, I think I would know which was my "main" job and which was my "second" job. So basically we have a load of MP's who's primary job isn't being an MP. I don't think this is a situation we can tolerate.

Frankly, they're taking the **** piss out of their constituents and the country.

[Genie]