Labour voters are switching straight to Tory as second preference and Tory straight to Labour in Scottish local government by-elections held under the STV system. These are not opinion polls, they are real elections.
I was shown results and transfer sheets yesterday in the margin of the SNP vetting assessment of potential candidates which I was attending. Unfortunately I did not have a chance to copy down the figures, but the pattern was clear.
For those unfamiliar with single transferable vote, you mark the ballot paper 1,2,3 in the order you prefer the candidates. What is now becoming clear is that Labour voters tend to put the Tories at 2, and Tories put Labour as 2. I have been arguing for years that there are no significant policy differences between Labour and Tory – it is a fake choice. I will never forget at the count in Clackmannan the Labour and Tory councillors and their wives all celebrating together, all looking well-heeled and arrogant and entitled, impossible to tell apart.
That the few remaining Labour voters put the Tories as second preference, instead of the Greens, SNP or Liberal Democrat, shows that the core Labour support base is largely Blairite. Which explains why the ultra-Blairite Jim Murphy, scion of the far right Henry Jackson Society, is set to become Labour Party leader in Scotland. It is also interesting that Tory voters are happy to give second preferences to Labour, recognising that Ed Balls, Yvette Cooper, Tess Jowell and Harriet Harman – every one a millionaire – are doughty protectors of the rich and the established order.
I haven’t been able to find a website that records local byelection results including the transfers – some results are listed on politicalbetting.com but only give the final result after all transfers. If anyone can find the data online I would be grateful. I should love to see an analysis from James Kelly on this one.
Nevermind
It’s only Panto.The election is only Panto too. Day in day out money is stolen and weaker people are forced into homelessness.
I can’t look at kids TV any more because they are forced to look at permanent Panto. They want our babies to think that Panto is the only reality. The baby is sitting in front of 5 foot TV screen – bonding with the cast of Coronation Street, just as Habbabkuk has bonded with the ZBC.
Craig and his fans are not addressing the issues I raise but resort to repeated irrelevant insults. From Stalinist to my mental health to this weird spurned jilted thing. Now Sofia, a mature man impersonating a young girl over a period of years, finds homosexuality a suitable jibe. Really Sofia? Are you too busy clapping a man complicit in the death of hundreds of thousands to hear anything else? Even Iain Orr, the most reasonable amongst us, is damned for not jumping on the bandwagon.
The mindless left sicken me as much as any neoliberal right winger.
Thanks Silvio for opening the curtain here on ‘Gladio B’ interesting in itself as a continuation of ‘the great game’ yet clearly giving us further insight or awareness of covert operations, false flag attacks, and other acknowledged instruments of terror in the strategy of tension.
As a connected afterthought and detailed by Field McConnell of AbelDanger.net I present this document that describes how a commercial aircraft can be hijacked from it’s human pilots and controlled automatically to a destination by an ‘Uninterruptable Autopilot’.
From experience this technology was on the drawing board and in development during the late 80’s and crucially;
was used to control at least one of the aircraft that flew into the World Trade Center Towers in September 2001. A small number of highly intelligent R&D, test engineers/pilots AND OTHER peeps associated with this Boeing/Honeywell and others project are now sadly deceased. (PBUT)
http://www.corbettreport.com/cache/BUAP_May-2014_Folder3.pdf
Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth. [Buddha]
thank you for you valuable contribution Phil, maybe you should apply to Arsechant too.
When I hear nothing from Owen Jones and Seumas Milne over Nafeez Ahmeds firing, then I know that the lefts flagship paper pulp, adorned with a Poolitzer prize size turd, needs putting in a small black/brown doggy bag.
The left is incompetent and facile at hiding their vested interest issues, their false trumpeting is almost as loud as you.
Front page lead in the print edition – buried in the Money section online. Wonder why?
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/dec/09/revealed-wealth-gap-oecd-report
Essentially:
The west’s leading economic thinktank on Tuesday dismissed the concept of trickle-down economics as it found that the UK economy would have been more than 20% bigger had the gap between rich and poor not widened since the 1980s.
Publishing its first clear evidence of the strong link between inequality and growth, the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development proposed higher taxes on the rich and policies aimed at improving the lot of the bottom 40% of the population, identified by Ed Miliband as the “squeezed middle”.
Trickle-down economics was a central policy for Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, with the Conservatives in the UK and the Republicans in the US confident that all groups would benefit from policies designed to weaken trade unions and encourage wealth creation.
The OECD said that the richest 10% of the population now earned 9.5 times the income of the poorest 10%, up from seven times in the 1980s. However, the result had been slower, not faster, growth.
It concluded that “income inequality has a sizeable and statistically negative impact on growth, and that redistributive policies achieving greater equality in disposable income has (sic) no adverse growth consequences”.
That’s the OECD, Cameron and chums. Remember them? A force for good? Ring a bell? Let me remind you:
http://www.oecd.org/unitedkingdom/oecdaforceforgood-statementbydavidcameronprimeministeroftheunitedkingdom.htm
What clearer evidence do we need that you are up to no, er, good?
On the contrary, Nevermind.
http://members5.boardhost.com/medialens/msg/1417969442.html
Though the wider Guardian apparatus probably deserves your censure.
Ben – re
the well-deserved and hopefully painfuldeeply distressing ends of an encouraging number of bankers, I bet you didn’t know how profitable bumping them off could be to their employers.http://wallstreetonparade.com/2014/04/suspicious-deaths-of-bankers-are-now-classified-as-%E2%80%9Ctrade-secrets%E2%80%9D-by-federal-regulator/
Money makes der vorld go round…
Lets wait until we see Owen Jones or Seumas Milne’s side of the story in print. I don’t expect it to be much as they both like to keep their jobs.
Phil.
My post was panto too! No offence was intended.
I returned after a couple of days, glanced through the thread and noticed references to some Dad’s droppings and your posts.
I want to thank you too for constantly getting us to look at the issues that are often otherwise ignored. I too would love to hear Craig debate these issues with you rather than returning your cross questions with insults or patronising evasion.
And personally I’m too tired of seeing homosexuality being used all over the place as another reason to hate and ill-treat people. That’s why I don’t think I’ve ever made a joke about it here.
The thing that frightens me the most is the ability of power to make narratives that drive us to either support or turn a blind eye to the, now biosphere threatening, persuit of power by tiny elites and their armed minions.
I think we can do better but have to deal first with stranglehold of ailing narratives on our thoughts.
Under the decaying canopy of our debt-based consumerist culture all sorts of green shoots are stirring, like this… http://www.globalpeace.org/issue/identity
..
Baal.8 21am
Great video!
Seems like we’ll all be extras in on of those shows before too long unless we stop sleepwalking.
Got to go.
Oops!
And personally I’m too tired of seeing homosexuality being used all over the place as another reason to hate and ill-treat people. That’s why I don’t think I’ve ever made a joke about it here.
I can see I wrong today!
Not hate speach intended. 🙂
Remember this?
It’s 100 years since the First World War. Reporters then were rewarded and knighted for their silence and collusion. At the height of the slaughter, British prime minister David Lloyd George confided in C.P. Scott, editor of the Manchester Guardian: “If people really knew [the truth] the war would be stopped tomorrow, but of course they don’t know and can’t know.”
John Pilger drew together the information by the power of intention.
http://stopwar.org.uk/news/john-pilger-how-the-media-promotes-the-lies-leading-us-to-catastrophic-war
Oops
“EU said Ankara drifting away from bloc on foreign policy”
“EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said on Monday that Turkey, an EU membership candidate, had signed up to less than a third of the bloc’s recent foreign policy positions, compared to some 80 percent in the past.”
Turkey says:
“If there is a country here which should be doing the reproaching it is Turkey. It both makes important contributions and is kept out of the decision mechanisms.”
Sounds rather like Putin’s complaint about his Western partners.
http://www.trust.org/item/20141209122829-jspuk/
Funny the way this comes out now, not on the back of the ISIS disagreements which have been ongoing for a while now, but just after the signing of the Turkey/Russia pipeline deal and the scrapping of South Stream.
Then there was Hollande’s stopover to meet Putin at a Moscow airport, just a few days ago.
Things not going to plan, or what.
OTOH, Saker points up some troubling domestic problems for Putin:
“The biggest threat for Russia and for Putin”
http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/the-biggest-threat-for-russia-and-for.html
Here we go Again, Another Mavi Marmara Style whitewash to be expected, ( Eventually )
Israel’s destruction of multi-storey buildings during Gaza conflict were war crimes – new report
Amnesty International Middle East and North Africa Director Philip Luther said:
“All the evidence we have shows this large-scale destruction was carried out deliberately and with no military justification.
“Both the facts on the ground and statements made by Israeli military spokespeople at the time indicate that the attacks were a collective punishment against the people of Gaza and were designed to destroy their already precarious livelihoods.
“Even if the Israeli authorities had good reason to believe that a part of a building was being used for military purposes, they had an obligation to choose means and methods of attack that would minimise harm to civilians and their property.”
http://www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releases/israels-destruction-multi-storey-buildings-during-gaza-conflict-were-war-crimes-new
Baal.8 21am
Like the the video.
Gotta go…. High Tides N Big winds, Storm Chasin Time 🙂
Ba’al;
“Street mega banks likely hold over $680 billion face amount of life insurance on their workers, payable to the banks, ”
Their mortgage insurance is a bit shy of the mark. They need about $700 Trillion to balance their bad loans.
Brian; Going down to the sea in ships?
Neither the Europeans (Blair’s pal, Mogherini is also a dabbler in the MidEast) nor the Israelis (Mavi Marmara) have really picked up on the Turkish ethos. While I don’t like what’s happening re. desecularisation of the country – Kemal had the right idea there and only the conservatives east of Kayseri had a serious problem with the depoliticisation of religion – I’ve some sympathy with Turkish aspirations in the area. Which are not those of the EU and never have been.
‘They need to print about $700 Trillion to balance their bad loans.’
FIFY.
I have a feeling a that will be the price of a loaf of bread (intrinsic value). Printing more only works when markets believe it has value.
Printing more only works when markets believe it has value.
I’ll remind you, Sir, that The Markets believed junk bonds had value. And will certainly do so again.
Certainly ‘oops’ Herbie thank-you. Yes be it ‘softly softly catchee monkey’ Vladimir Putin is just building the right momentum to overthrow the traitors while also riding the herd on terrorism and hitting on Ramzan Kadyrov to work with his secret police to nose out Western thugs saddled with ‘contracts’ to cause chaos in Russian cities.
Mary
8 Dec, 2014 – 4:07 pm
……………………………
Mary I knew Jonathan Freedland was Jewish but I didn’t know he was a Jewish Zionist.
Freedland is a leading liberal Zionist in the UK; he wrote in 2012 that he only uses the word Zionism infrequently.
He explained:
“That is because the word has become so misunderstood, so freighted with excess baggage, that it has become all but impossible to deploy it without extensive explanation and qualification. Most of the time, it is best avoided. Part of the trouble is that a single variant – right-wing Zionism – has come to stand for the whole.”
So clearly an Israel supporter.
” And will certainly do so again.”
Dotcoms, derivatives et al have a termination date. I’m not as pessimistic.
He is that, Doug. But something of a centrist. He gets flak from both sides. That said, his partisanship for ‘Israel, right or wrong’ ought to disqualify him from controlling the CiF debate on Israel/Palestine.
Poootin @ 88% favorable. The West has consolidated his power by pushing Russophobia. Russians see better as citizens. I wonder why?
Senate Torture Report due this morning (US)
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/12/torture-report-dick-cheney-110306.html#.VIcNOigcWFI
Nations complicit will be redacted.
When I think about this report, why do I get the image of a cat sketchily concealing its faeces in my flowerbed?
Ba’al; I hope Craig feels the topic will merit it’s own thread.
I REALLY look forward to a scarecrow for the trolls.
Complicit nations – comprehensive but maybe not comlete list:
The full 54 countries that aided in post-9/11 renditions: Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Canada, Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Djibouti, Egypt, Ethiopia, Finland, Gambia, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Iceland, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, Libya, Lithuania, Macedonia, Malawi, Malaysia, Mauritania, Morocco, Pakistan, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Syria, Thailand, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, Uzbekistan, Yemen, and Zimbabwe. The Open Society Foundation doesn’t rule out additional ones being involved that it has yet to discover.
Source: February 06, 2013 “Wired”
Was there a troll, Ben? I must have filtered its valuable contribution out.
I forgot you can’t see. When we discussed Israel, they headed for the foothills.
ACLU advocates ‘blanket amnesty’? WTF?
http://opiniojuris.org/2014/12/09/aclu-endorses-blanket-amnesty-torture/