NPR

Mahoney wrote: ↑Tue Jun 07, 2022 7:18 pm Javid said "we have a Blockbuster healthcare system in the age of Netflix" - i.e. it's out of date from a technical perspective. Which it probably is - certainly EU people I work with like to go home to get healthcare and find the NHS's lack of digital integration a bit stone age.

YouGov suppressed debate polling during 2017 election because it was too favourable to Corbyn, former employee claims
Chris Curtis, the pollster who is now head of political polling at Opinium but who used to work for YouGov, has published a thread on Twitter this morning claiming that YouGov suppressed some polling during the 2017 general election because it was too favourable to Labour.
The allegations are potentially very damaging to YouGov, which for years has been one of the most respected companies in UK polling. (It pioneered the use of online panels for polling, which is the technique now used by most of its competitors.) There have long been suspicions about it on the left, because it was founded by two Tories - Stephan Shakespeare, a former aide to Jeffrey Archer, and Nadhim Zahawi, now the education secretary - but the reputation of a polling company depends on the reliability of its polls and until now there has been no evidence of the company slanting polls to help the Conservatives.

fishfoodie wrote: ↑Tue Jun 07, 2022 10:39 pm It would cost more to recover the money, than would be recovered. Why do you think they've been closing courts, & defunding legal aid, the Police, etc ?

It would take twenty years to recover a fraction of the money the British taxpayer has lost; but that's what happens when you elect bandits.

SaintK wrote: ↑Wed Jun 08, 2022 11:10 am So Yougov, a polling company founded by Tory Minister Nadin Zahawi suppressed polling data that was favourable to Labour (under Corbyn) at the the 2017 election.
Well I never!!!

YouGov suppressed debate polling during 2017 election because it was too favourable to Corbyn, former employee claims
Chris Curtis, the pollster who is now head of political polling at Opinium but who used to work for YouGov, has published a thread on Twitter this morning claiming that YouGov suppressed some polling during the 2017 general election because it was too favourable to Labour.
The allegations are potentially very damaging to YouGov, which for years has been one of the most respected companies in UK polling. (It pioneered the use of online panels for polling, which is the technique now used by most of its competitors.) There have long been suspicions about it on the left, because it was founded by two Tories - Stephan Shakespeare, a former aide to Jeffrey Archer, and Nadhim Zahawi, now the education secretary - but the reputation of a polling company depends on the reliability of its polls and until now there has been no evidence of the company slanting polls to help the Conservatives.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1 ... 84.html

_Os_ wrote: ↑Wed Jun 08, 2022 3:03 pm Zahawi is dodgy, not that hard to find interesting stuff about him, three articles, three different stories. There was a time in the UK when any of these would've been a massive scandal, now it's just common place. It's totally believable that he "phoned a friend" and silenced some YouGov polling, because that's the exact MO in all these stories.

https://bylinetimes.com/2021/01/04/vacc ... l-company/
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/dark-m ... contracts/
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... chdog-says

Ovals wrote: ↑Wed Jun 08, 2022 3:09 pm

_Os_ wrote: ↑Wed Jun 08, 2022 3:03 pm Zahawi is dodgy, not that hard to find interesting stuff about him, three articles, three different stories. There was a time in the UK when any of these would've been a massive scandal, now it's just common place. It's totally believable that he "phoned a friend" and silenced some YouGov polling, because that's the exact MO in all these stories.

https://bylinetimes.com/2021/01/04/vacc ... l-company/
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/dark-m ... contracts/
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... chdog-says

The whole lot are just a real sleazy bunch - it's astonishing that they're still polling over 30% - I guess people are just becoming immune to their corruption, incompetence and lies.

_Os_ wrote: ↑Wed Jun 08, 2022 3:03 pm Zahawi is dodgy, not that hard to find interesting stuff about him, three articles, three different stories. There was a time in the UK when any of these would've been a massive scandal, now it's just common place. It's totally believable that he "phoned a friend" and silenced some YouGov polling, because that's the exact MO in all these stories.

https://bylinetimes.com/2021/01/04/vacc ... l-company/
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/dark-m ... contracts/
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... chdog-says

Paddington Bear wrote: ↑Thu Jun 09, 2022 1:31 pm 'Local MP is a NIMBY' is hardly a story

Paddington Bear wrote: ↑Thu Jun 09, 2022 1:31 pm 'Local MP is a NIMBY' is hardly a story

Hal Jordan wrote: ↑Thu Jun 09, 2022 2:12 pm

Paddington Bear wrote: ↑Thu Jun 09, 2022 1:31 pm 'Local MP is a NIMBY' is hardly a story

Neither is "Extracting fossil fuels to burn is a fucking environmental disaster", but it seems not to register with the cunts in charge.

Paddington Bear wrote: ↑Thu Jun 09, 2022 2:51 pm

Hal Jordan wrote: ↑Thu Jun 09, 2022 2:12 pm

Paddington Bear wrote: ↑Thu Jun 09, 2022 1:31 pm 'Local MP is a NIMBY' is hardly a story

Neither is "Extracting fossil fuels to burn is a fucking environmental disaster", but it seems not to register with the cunts in charge.

That's fine, but unless and until we have other reliable sources to meet all our needs we either extract our own or buy off others.

fishfoodie wrote: ↑Thu Jun 09, 2022 2:55 pm

Paddington Bear wrote: ↑Thu Jun 09, 2022 2:51 pm

Hal Jordan wrote: ↑Thu Jun 09, 2022 2:12 pm

Neither is "Extracting fossil fuels to burn is a fucking environmental disaster", but it seems not to register with the cunts in charge.

That's fine, but unless and until we have other reliable sources to meet all our needs we either extract our own or buy off others.

I thought you were going to be "building a Nuclear Power Plant every year, not every Ten Years !"

..... or was that promise just another load of bollox ?

Paddington Bear wrote: ↑Thu Jun 09, 2022 2:58 pm

fishfoodie wrote: ↑Thu Jun 09, 2022 2:55 pm

Paddington Bear wrote: ↑Thu Jun 09, 2022 2:51 pm

That's fine, but unless and until we have other reliable sources to meet all our needs we either extract our own or buy off others.

I thought you were going to be "building a Nuclear Power Plant every year, not every Ten Years !"

..... or was that promise just another load of bollox ?

Pretty irrelevant to my post - even if we were able to do this we would still need fossil fuels in the interim.

fishfoodie wrote: ↑Thu Jun 09, 2022 3:15 pm

Paddington Bear wrote: ↑Thu Jun 09, 2022 2:58 pm

fishfoodie wrote: ↑Thu Jun 09, 2022 2:55 pm

I thought you were going to be "building a Nuclear Power Plant every year, not every Ten Years !"

..... or was that promise just another load of bollox ?

Pretty irrelevant to my post - even if we were able to do this we would still need fossil fuels in the interim.

Well I doubt any fracking plant will be running by next week either ?

But the Tories will be breaking a shitload of Manifesto commitments one way or another; Banning Fracking, Net Zero, Not granting more Fossil Fuel exploration licenses.

This is first & foremost a Fuck You, to Hunt for daring to suggest that the Bumblecut should go.

Hal Jordan wrote: ↑Thu Jun 09, 2022 4:37 pm Welcome to non-Tory constituencies.

Naked corruption from the worst Government in my lifetime and a contender for worst Government ever.

Vote against him and we'll do everything we can to fuck you and your constituency.

Tichtheid wrote: ↑Thu Jun 09, 2022 7:14 pm

Vote against him and we'll do everything we can to fuck you and your constituency.

I wonder how far they would go with this, there comes a point at which even the huge majority they won starts to be threatened and especially if local funding is being cut.

The ones standing against the cabal around the cabinet table will get stronger imo

I’m not sure right now if this is good or bad, right now the goal must be to get them out of power

Paddington Bear wrote: ↑Thu Jun 09, 2022 2:58 pm

fishfoodie wrote: ↑Thu Jun 09, 2022 2:55 pm

Paddington Bear wrote: ↑Thu Jun 09, 2022 2:51 pm

That's fine, but unless and until we have other reliable sources to meet all our needs we either extract our own or buy off others.

I thought you were going to be "building a Nuclear Power Plant every year, not every Ten Years !"

..... or was that promise just another load of bollox ?

Pretty irrelevant to my post - even if we were able to do this we would still need fossil fuels in the interim.

Tichtheid wrote: ↑Thu Jun 09, 2022 7:14 pm

Vote against him and we'll do everything we can to fuck you and your constituency.

I wonder how far they would go with this, there comes a point at which even the huge majority they won starts to be threatened and especially if local funding is being cut.

The ones standing against the cabal around the cabinet table will get stronger imo

I’m not sure right now if this is good or bad, right now the goal must be to get them out of power

tabascoboy wrote: ↑Fri Jun 10, 2022 9:46 am

Lobby wrote: ↑Fri Jun 10, 2022 10:03 am

tabascoboy wrote: ↑Fri Jun 10, 2022 9:46 am

You'd think they might remember that one of the primary causes of the 2008 financial crash was the large number of 'sub-prime mortgages' in the US, and that promoting the development of financial instruments which encourage low income families who can least afford it to take on expensive mortgages rarely ends well.

The only saving grace is that it is such a stupid idea that no one on benefits is likely to take on a mortgage

Insane_Homer wrote: ↑Fri Jun 10, 2022 11:56 am

_Os_ wrote: ↑Fri Jun 10, 2022 12:16 pm Johnson is talking about 98% mortgages for people on benefits, if it actually happens that sounds like a subprime crisis down the road to me. But it's almost certainly more Potemkin garbage to make it sound like the Tories have a plan that extends beyond their own self enrichment, and isn't going anywhere.

The problem with the UK housing market is on the supply side. There's not enough houses in the right areas, which mostly means towns/cities in the south of England, which mostly means London or commutable to London. The Tories seem obsessed with creating more and more demand to solve a supply issue. More demand for about the same amount of supply, means house prices must go up and will remain unaffordable for those who cannot afford a house now, it also pushes up rents, and eventually housing benefit too. A crisis is coming where people use all their housing benefit to partially pay their rent and in addition to that use non-housing benefit components of universal credit to pay the rest of the rent, then cannot afford to eat so use food banks, these people will be pushed deeper into poverty if rents continue rising and housing benefit continues to be less than the rent (it's not an employment issue, they're usually already working).

It all seems to be about creating the illusion of wealth for home owning middle classes, when not much is really changing for them they still own just the one house that if sold is exchanged for another house. Something very similar happened in Hong Kong (a place the Tories are very keen on), people at the bottom of that society literally live in small cages the size of a bed, stacked on top of each other.

To fix all this means massive amounts of house building, so large it would have to be government led. This would be deeply unpopular with home owners in the south of England (the value of their house would stop going up every single year, and they would be surrounded by more houses) who are the base of Tory support. To keep their house value increasing they're much happier having their children live with them longer than they should, helping their adult children buy any house at all, and getting grandchildren much later than would've been the case if at all. The point of their life seems to be that the value of their house keeps increasing.

Insane_Homer wrote: ↑Fri Jun 10, 2022 10:17 am A little 'oops' from Rishy "Tories are gud with money" chancellor that just happened to hand £11 billion more to the banks.

Paddington Bear wrote: ↑Fri Jun 10, 2022 12:24 pm On this, in Little Chalfont (of NIMBY by election fame) 380 homes have just been rejected on the site of a disused golf course. The development would have had direct access to a main road and walking distance from a tube station, as well as building a new primary school. Not a chance of course.

_Os_ wrote: ↑Fri Jun 10, 2022 2:05 pm

Paddington Bear wrote: ↑Fri Jun 10, 2022 12:24 pm On this, in Little Chalfont (of NIMBY by election fame) 380 homes have just been rejected on the site of a disused golf course. The development would have had direct access to a main road and walking distance from a tube station, as well as building a new primary school. Not a chance of course.

The amount of waste in not building near a tube station is staggering.

Many factors feed into this issue but one of the biggest is the UK media (particularly the political media as this should be their job), they do an appalling job at explaining the macro. There's ultra detailed coverage of micro details in UK political coverage (the status of Johnson and who is making a leadership bid against him, change the names and this is the ongoing coverage), but very few join up the serious issues into a larger picture for a mass audience. People just don't understand how a failure to build houses is connected to everything else, and how it impacts everyone negatively.

I can't see anything changing so I wonder where it ends up? Hong Kong seems like the destination and a lot about that place is dystopian: lots of empty land the HK government refuses to build on, crazy property prices, the people living in cages, high immigration (from the PRC) and emigration (to Western countries), the death of their manufacturing sector that was once globally competitive (because the HK government refused to subsidise/incentivise the necessary investment), an entirely services economy (not great for the less intelligent), higher cost of living than comparable east Asian cities (because of the high degree of monopolisation in their retail and health care sectors).

Google says the average house price is £1m in HK, the UK is heading in that direction. It seems like an impossible to shift cultural issue.

A round-up of a typically marvellous #TheWeekInTory

1. Loving crowds of flag-waving patriots loudly booed Boris Johnson, the one-man game of shag, marry, avoid who is still – amazingly – our PM
2. Priti Patel, the Shetland Pony of the Apocalypse, told Tory MPs not to attempt to sack Johnson because of the Jubilee

3. They obliged, and instead attempted to sack him less than 24 hours later
4. Jacob Rees-Mogg, the harrowing result of a Dalek having hate sex with a pendulum, had previously said 33% of Tory MPs with no confidence in Theresa May was “a disaster”

5. A total of 41 percent of Tory MPs have no confidence in Johnson, which JRM said was a "great success"
6. Ministers have their jobs because of the PM, so are supposed to back him. If you assume they all did, that means 75% of Tory backbenchers didn’t back him

7. An-arch Johnson loyalist leaped to his defence, telling journalists “Off the record, he is fucked”
8. Johnson turned up on TV wild-eyed, agitated and constantly sniffing, to babble incomprehensibly about his amazing accomplishments

9. There’s a fine line between madness and genius, and it looked like Johnson had just snorted that line
10. A govt whip said Tory MPs should now “shut the fuck up”

11. Nadine Dorries didn’t shut the fuck up

12. Instead Dorries, forever trapped at Lambrini o-clock, “defended” the govt’s record by publicly admitting it had made shit preparations for Covid for 6 years
13. Feral gonad Nadhim Zahawi described his own govt as “a circular firing squad”

14. Johnson, chastened and humbled by his Partygate shame, reassured his disgruntled MPs by telling them he’d “do it all again”
15. To “get on with his job”, he headed to Blackpool to do a bewildering speech

16. He said the UK has the worst economy in the G7 cos “we came out of the pandemic first, so had a faster recovery”

17. So – deep breath – we’re doing badly because we are doing so well. Huh?
18. His solution to the cost of living crisis, is telling everyone to earn less, and cut nurse pay by £1,600 in real-terms

19. Hospitals are now opening on-site foodbanks, not for patients, but for nursing staff who already can’t afford to feed themselves on their wages
20. Having scored brilliantly on his first two solutions, he moved onto housing

21. He began by saying we need 300k more homes

22. Then he said building more homes isn’t the answer

23. Then he said it was Labour’s fault for not building enough homes
24. Then he said he built more homes than Labour when he was mayor

25. 63% of the homes built in London when he was mayor were started by Labour

26.Then he repeated that building more homes isn’t the answer

27.So he promised to build 300k new homes
28. And then he said he wouldn’t meet his manifesto promise on housing, which guarantees – yep – 300k new homes

29. Clearly feeling he’d settled that matter, he then spent a few minutes of his speech bewailing the lack of olive and banana plantations in Blackpool. No joke.
30. Confident he had regained the trust of us all, he moved onto fixing mortgages.

31. He announced that to help renters save for a deposit, he would sell their rented homes, so there would be fewer of them, which will make rents cost more, making it harder to save. Brilliant.
32. But he had a lovely idea, which is to force banks to accept people’s benefits as a mortgage, meaning people who are currently unable to eat on collapsing benefits will soon be able to buy a that doesn't exist, if they simply stop eating even more
33. Johnson called this a “housing revolution”

34. Shelter called it “baffling, unworkable and dangerous”

35.Michael Gove, a beached mudskipper dressed in boy clothes, called it a “marvellous scheme”

36.The New Economics Foundation called it “totally detached from reality”
37. Chris Philp, drawing the short straw and having to defend this gibberish, explained on TV that selling houses currently available to rent would not reduce the number of houses available to rent because...

38. The end of the previous sentence has not yet been discovered
39. Economic news! Brexit has cost us £31bn in a year, making everybody 5% poorer

40. To help out, Rishi Sunak, whose primary skill appears to be taking off his jacket, ignored warnings about insuring against interest rate rises, which this week cost us £11bn
41. And the govt is burning £4bn of substandard PPE that it had ordered at above-market value from its pals

42. So that’s £46bn wasted since Monday, the equivalent to £3,600 per hour for 1458 years, or £1 per second, every single second since the Romans withdrew from Britain
43. Let's get the screaming out of the way, and move onto minor incidents of the week

44. Top priority for the govt: refusing to sign up to standardised USB ports, meaning Apple’s “lightning connector” will work everywhere on earth except here. Yay we are saved!
45. After a Tory MP had to quit his seat for watching porn TWICE in the chamber of the House of Commons, the govt announced it would not reveal details of it’s other MP’s on-site masturbation habits for “national security reasons”
46. A former 12-time Tory candidate was imprisoned for sending racist death threats to David Lammy

47. The cost of the Grenfell Tower inquiry reached £150m, compared to the £293k of “savings” which caused the fire in the first place
48. “I’m not interested in social mobility”, said Katharine Birbalsingh, who is the govt’s social mobility tsar

49. She then said Boris Johnson “isn’t a good role model”, proving a broken cock is right twice a day. Sorry, did I say cock? I meant cock.
50. Priti Patel claimed the UN refugee council backed the Rwanda deportation plan

51. The UN refugee council said her plan breached the law, and it’s being contested in court

52. The Home Office claims Ukrainian asylum seekers and children excluded from the Rwanda plan
55. But the govt admitted the “vast majority” of peers would block the bill, rendering it pointless

56. Daily Express said Brexit would not be done for decades, will cost £1.4 trillion, and Jacob Rees-Mogg’s ideas for it are “impossible”

57.Commence howling now