Westminstenders: "They are ahead in the polls"

[RedToothBrush]

The nominations are in!

A reminder about polling...

... And its significance in this election.

In 2017 YouGov got it right. They did two types of poll. One was a general poll which was done on regional polling. Early versions of this during the campaign discounted the don't knows. Later ones guesstimated how the don't knows would vote. This polling turned out to be close to the result but not exact.

The other poll you Gov did was on a constituency level. It was right before the election and it proved to be the most accurate of all, until we saw John Curtice's exit poll (which was spot on).

This time around YouGov have just switched to a constituency version of their polling because its much more complex this time with various pacts in action. They will be promoting respondents on the basis of who is standing in their constituency.

I'm not aware of other pollsters and their methodology but YouGov is interesting because of how close they were to the result last time.

This time around we are also seeing the active use of polling to lead voters, rather than necessarily reflect it. The Lib Dems and Remain have done a lot in what they see as key marginals to aid their credibility as realistic challengers. It's a more sophisticated version of their infamous, 'Only the LDs can beat X here' barcharts of shame. But it's unlikely they will be the only ones to try and use the technique. They probably will just be a little more transparent about it.

John Curtice has gone on record as saying there are only two realistic outcomes for the election: A Tory Majority or a Hung Parliament.

For the Tories to win they need a significant lead in the polls. To be sure probably 10% lead because of the regionality and constituency anomalies. Anything less than 6 or 7 percentage ahead and it tips to a hung parliament. YouGov currently have them on 13pt lead... BUT that's without fully accounting for the 1/5 of voters who are currently undecided. Last time around those who decided at the last moment tipped heavily in favour of Labour rather than the Conservatives.

Who stays at home, or who spoils a ballot could have particular significance this time around as disenchanted voters are made up of a higher number of voters who do usually vote than usual and a broken tribalism. Thus making it more difficult to predict than ever before.

So be a bit wary of polls and what they show - and what they don't show...

I used to regularly do day trips to London from Glasgow by plane. Wouldn't dream of doing it by train.

Red eye flight down (between 6 and 7am depending on who I was flying with), into the centre of London by 8.30 (the Starbucks near the Tate Modern, opposite the Globe, was my early morning "office" ), usually home by 8.

I'm fortunate in that I'm only 15 minutes from the airport at that time in the morning.

I commute to work, 35 min by car.
Using public transport I would have to travel the day before and back the next day. Or just live at work.

And you don’t even live here smacks a little bit of a Little England mindset, and that’s me being polite.

3dogs2cats Clavinova is frequently being attacked for having opinions on British politics and Brexit because she lives in Australia.
I hope you’ll come to her defence next time someone criticises her for that.

Apologies.
Apparently she doesn’t live in Australia but nonetheless she was thought to live there and was criticised having opinions on British politics.

No that was a plopper who lived in Australia iirc. Clav is the cut & paster.

Re. car hire vs. train:

DS works for a car share company in Berlin. You hire the car by the hour to get to meetings, take your gran out or whatever - only a few Euros per hour, then someone else uses the same car after you.

It works fine in Berlin, reasonably well in Paris, but there are a lot of problems with the UK operation (where poor DS works). Constant complaints of cars being left filthy (it's not car hire, where cars get cleaned after use, but a share where you're expected to leave the car as you find it). The maintenance staff are overstretched, as they're supposed to fix mechanical problems, not clear out fast food cartons or open windows to let the smell of dope smoke out.

What I mean is that car sharing sounds fine (in larger conurbations), but people have to treat these things with respect and think about who's using it next.

sorry to piss on anyones parade, but I'm struggling to see what exactly HS2 brings to the party. At the moment, if I want to get to London to see my folks, from Birmingham I can drive it door-to-door in 80 minutes.

80 mins! I want to be able to get to Birmingham in half and hour.

Compared to France and Italy our only bit of TGV is London to the coast. It’s piss poor. It’s extraordinary that the British built railways across India but they can’t organise high speed rail link to Edinburgh.

HS2 would cost the most horrific amount of money and cause a terrible amount of damage in a small island with diminishing green belts. But I can’t see any way round it.

And if this country had invested Brexit costs in HS2 we’d be half way there.

There was someone - a mansplainer, who did live in Australia. He gave up in the end.

Clavinova's speciality is cutting and pasting to try to disprove something - e.g. if someone reports that a firm has had to make 100 people redundant, citing Brexit as a factor, she will come along with a cut and paste to tell us how three jobs have been created somewhere.

Cendrillon seems to think we all love Jeremy Corbyn, which is true for maybe 5% of regular posters on the thread.

Where Labour is lucky is how young the majority of new members are, they have a more natural engagement with SM and so a Labour tweet/video goes viral in a matter of hours

I disagree that it's luck Just. Or maybe you were being disingenuous ironically?

U.K. trains really are rubbish for the most part and they need money spending on them. I'm agnostic on whether HS2 is a good way to spend money because I don't know anything about it, but in principle a high speed rail line between a country's two largest cities seems quite a basic requirement. There are direct TGV links from Paris to Marseille, Lyon, Bordeaux and Lille as well as to the tunnel. From London there is a high speed link only to the channel tunnel!

Well @Dapplegrey, I’m certainly not happy with people operating out of sweatshops in Russia to disrupt our elections, by infiltrating social media, so I can’t guarantee to always pull people up on that argument, but Clavinova can cut and paste to her hearts content. I’m going to scroll on by.

Lots of people don’t understand millions and billions

I work in finance and talk in £m and £bn most days, but even that doesn't mean I've always got a "feel" for these amounts. I think it would make sense to divide by the number of people in the UK (around 66m) or number of voters (around 46m eligible on a quick Google):

£10m = 15p per person
£1bn = £15 per person, or £22 per voter
£1tn = £21,700 per voter.

I agree DadDadDad - I think you can only get a feel for very large amounts of money by putting them in context (often a personal context based on your own experience).

But you do that because you work in finance, I do it because I work in resource economics. Most people don't do this because they don't usually need to. It makes it very easy to lie to people by promising what sounds like a large amount of money when in reality it's enough to build a few miles of railtrack.

Fuck it.
I'm putting the christmas tunes on 🎵🎶

Need to read back, but just dropping in to say thank you for recommendations for 'Travellers of the Third Reich'. Not an easy read, I'm only up to 1934 and am already terrified.

From London there is a high speed link only to the channel tunnel!

Snap.

And it’s not just the long distances it has revolutionised, it makes getting around so much easier. 20 mins Avignon -> Aix, (1 hour driving) 10 mins Aix -> Marseille, (40 mins drive) etc.

The reinstatement of the Borders Railway in 2015 cost £350 million for just 30 miles and involved cost-cutting by making most of it single-track and non-electric.

It's already demonstrated even more economic benefits than were predicted - and the main criticism is that it wasn't ambitious enough.

U.K. trains really are rubbish for the most part and they need money spending on them. I'm agnostic on whether HS2 is a good way to spend money because I don't know anything about it, but in principle a high speed rail line between a country's two largest cities seems quite a basic requirement.

I agree. But that's not what HS2 is, is it ? Shaving 10-20 minutes off the journey (Birmingham to London) is hardly earth shattering. And since I see there are talks of stations "outside Birmingham", by the time you've arsed around changing trains etc etc, you will have squandered any time savings you might have made.

Meanwhile where is the Midlands Euro terminal we were promised when the Channel Tunnel was first dug ? Again, it's easier to fly from Brum to Paris than take the trains (note the plural).

All of which has to be weighed against the initial question of getting to fucking train in the first place. Given the non-underground nature of non-London cities and the cost and availability of suitable parking for people wishing to let the train take the strain.

Scotland was promised direct links via the Eurotunnel when the business case was made for it to be "national" infrastructure and therefore outwith the Barnett formula (just as HS2 is )

For long enough, there was a Eurostar waiting room set up unused in Glasgow Central. And there was a business park built just off the M8 for the freight that was supposed to be able to go directly.

Tanith you forgot the spoiler alert! You've ruined the surprise for when I get the leaflet

Sorry, sovielverloren! It is a big A3 sized double-sided poster of nothing much, so there's plenty to choke over

He's claimed that a survey he organised shows 45% of us want to get on and leave the EU without a deal. No details about who took part, or when it was held.
DH is already going into orbit about that one...!
I can't find any record of this survey, and I don't recall being asked.

However, I did find this article about Undershaw, Conan-Doyle's former house, very interesting:
www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/jeremy-hunt-u-turned-sherlock-16403603

It would halve the time from London to Manchester and make commuting daily feasible.

That would make a huuuge difference.

Those are useful examples D^3. I’ll use them!
People seem to understand better if I use a gigabyte/megabyte analogy. (Yes I know not the same but if it helps it helps.)

Sorry *D3 forgot to bold

Oh bugger. Never mind.

I thought Clav lived in the Home Counties somewhere.