Westministenders: BAH HUMBUG said Mr Rees-Mogg

[RedToothBrush]

"At this festive season of the year, Mr Scrooge Rees-Mogg, ... it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir."

"Are there no prisons hostels?"

"Plenty of prisons hostels..."

"And the Union workhouses foodbanks." demanded Scrooge Jacob. "Are they still in operation?"

"Both very busy, sir..."

"Those who are badly off must go there."

"Many can't go there; and many would rather die."

"If they would rather die," said Scrooge ^Rees-Mogg, "they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."

He continued "Besides I do not believe that anyone would die without them. I think Theresa is right, there are many complex reasons why nurses go to food banks. The real reason for the rise in numbers is that people know that they are there and Labour deliberately didn't tell them. To have charitable support given by people voluntarily to support their fellow citizens I think is rather uplifting and shows what a good, compassionate country we are"

------------------------

This thread is dedicated to Mrs8 and anyone else who is working to make life just a little better in the difficult circumstances that ALL politicians are currently doing their best to ignore (despite what they profess).

No Deal = even more poverty and destitution.

MERRY CHRISTMAS & HERES HOPING FOR A HAPPIER NEW YEAR
especially to those of you, who might be having a tough time or facing real uncertainity.

Just popping in to wish all the Westminstenders regulars and lurkers a very restful Christmas. I'm still hovering in the shadows, watching all the activity on the thread.

Anyone else done the latest (available 30 minutes ago) YouGov all about Brexit ?

Give them all something to think about ....

Link DG? Im looking to procrastinate and blame the gov for all my problems so will make an excellent responder

YouGov haven't sent me a poll for nearly a year.

Yougov tell me that my email has blocked them
it has not
I think they just do not like me any more ;-)

It was an invite-only YouGov poll. They tend to be taken most seriously by politicians as YouGov have built up a pretty good ABC1 on the respondents over time (I've been a member since they started way back when) rather than a bunch of random people who assume the world gives a shit what they think.

The poll I did had loads of questions about whether I thought things would get better/worse as a result of Brexit and - more intriguingly - if I expected the promises made by Leave to be undeliverable.

It also tried to winkle out voting intention, and where the blame for Brexit will fall.

I probably get over-fascinated by indirect clues, but the survey was clearly positioned from a "Brexit will be shit" POV.

I didn’t get Yougov surveys for maybe a year. They said it was a problem with my email/ISP provider. They say they’ve now solved it with the company and I do indeed seem to be receiving surveys again.

DGRosetti
I was on that list but seem to have lost it .... may need to bounce them into restarting my account :-)

I loved trying to work out who had paid for surveys

You have to be careful with YouGov. They do internal consistency checks on respondents, and will drop ones that aren't playing fair.

Or so they said when justifying their enormous fees in a sales push.

(They also offer consultancy on polls. I know this because I've noted some "strange" polls over the years which could not possibly deliver an accurate breakdown of the subject. When I queried it, I was told that it would have been what the commissioning party wanted.)

I loved trying to work out who had paid for surveys

Obviously it's confidential.

I've done a few surveys where there's no way to answer either accurately or honestly. So I'm very wary of YouGov polls being used as evidence of anything (especially after it pretty much caused a company I worked for to go bust).

I had examples when they were plugging themselves at a former employer (so I wasn't very popular). Hence the discussion and info I gleaned.

Also had chats with Future Foundation and GfK ... they used to feed into my work stack at times ...

I'd been using YouGov for about 15 years before I, 'mysteriously', got dropped.

Ongoing stats on which news stories were most noticed by the public
Brexit only became dominant in the last half of 2017

Will Clothier@willclo (polls researcher)

1. Brexit dwarfed all other news stories in the last part of the year (72% said it was their most noticed story in early Dec).

But it's easy to overestimate how many were tuned in before then:

Brexit did not command more than a third of public attention in any week until Sep

I'd been using YouGov for about 15 years before I, 'mysteriously', got dropped.

I'm living in fear of being dropped now

Whenever I do one of their frequent flyer surverys (which of these did you do yesterday ....) it rarely changes. And when they ask which TV channels I watched, it's never one of their suggestions.

(Last time I met a team from YouGov, I commented that they should really be treating YouTube as a TV channel - especially since it carries ads now ....)

I am trying to work out if I feel 'slighted' in that I have never been asked to do a yougov poll.
On balance, no, I couldn't care less.
I did the BBC 'quiz' about which my secret country would be. Apparently I should be Belgian.

I haven't had a survey in a few weeks. I suspect my "Highly unlikely to change my opinion" responses about Brexit and my opinion of the UK's incompetent political party leaders with the exception of Nicola might have something to do with it

I only get boring YouGov surveys about television programmes that I don't watch or products that I have no intention of buying.

I've tried the BBC quiz and apparently I would feel most at home in Japan! I'm not convinced - I fancy Denmark.

Can anyone add any thoughts on this?
My teenager is at boarding school the other end of the country - it's a full day's travel by train, and much longer by car.
This coming term ends shortly after Brexit day.
I'm worrying that 1) there could be a problem with her taking the train a couple of days after Brexit day (and I need to buy a ticket very soon, or the cost is astronomical). And there could be a problem her returning to school at the end of the Easter holidays. 2) There could be a problem with food etc in the boarding houses.
I've written to the school a couple of times, asking for their contingency plans, and they don't appear to have any contingency plans.
I'm wondering whether I should buy her a train ticket home for a couple of days before Brexit. Not sure what else I can do. And it's an important school year for her.
Any thoughts would be welcome!

Tonsilss
Unless your teenager is travelling into our out of the UK there should be no specific problem.
If there really were to be so much disruption that travelling within the UK is disrupted there will be more to worry about than this and it would be a general mess.

Into OR out of the UK that should say.

I saw that the leaked projection by the civil service about what no deal might be like (not the worst case scenario though) said that the country would run out of petrol very quickly. Doesn't that mean that public transport could be affected?
And if there are food shortages, I don't know how a boarding school that has done no stockpiling is going to feed all those children during the summer term.
It's a journey from one end of the UK to the other, including getting the underground through London.

Tonsills
Within the UK I foresee very few problems in the first few days
especially away from Kent
Boarding schools will have planned their food supplies well in advance
Fuel for trains will be fine no matter what
London Underground will be blissfully peaceful as the tourists will not have been able to land

Each country in the EU is supposed to have stockpiled 3 months worth of fuel oils in case of emergency. There is a 'trading' scheme whereby some adjacent countries would hold the physical stocks and when I heard about it some months back, the UK was repatriating it as much as possible.I can't remember if it was for UK mainland or NI.
If the government manage to get this so completely wrong, bearing mind this is totally self inflicted then the UK will just have to muddle through.

Within the UK I foresee very few problems in the first few days

That would be true if you think that a no deal Brexit can happen with the public remaining blissfully unaware.

In the real world, panic buying would start before March 29th, and you'd probably also see some reaction in the supply chain (distributors not wanting their lorries on the wrong side of the border on 29/3).

If a no deal Brexit was really going to happen (it isn't) I think you'd expect to see rationing before 29/3.

I've been hiding from Brexit since Christmas but now I'm hiding from DH's family who were spouting uninformed brexity bollocks earlier. ... gah