FlyTheNest

Guardian’s coverage of Liberal Democrat General Election campaign accentuates the negative
http://www.libdemvoice.org/guardians-co ... 44730.html

Ian Dunt retweeted
Jessica Elgot ‏@jessicaelgot 8m8 minutes ago
The Telegraph appears to have removed reader comments from its HSBC story this morning. Here are the screen grabs http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/02 ... _hp_ref=uk" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; …

Health minister Dr Dan Poulter has said he is ‘leading by example’ by taking part in an eight-week fitness challenge designed to demonstrate that even people with busy lives can make time to exercise.

Dr Poulter’s challenge will be featured in Men’s Health magazine and hopefully show how changes to diet and exercise can improve both physical and mental health.

Matthew Holehouse told me at lunch at Quirinale that he had been accidentally included in a series of email exchanges between senior figures at Conservative Central Office who were speculating about which Labour sitting MPs were paedophiles and how they should deploy this ‘information’. Matthew seemed to think that this showed that CCHQ was run by a bunch of children and he said it was worse than Damian McBride.

https://medium.com/@tom_watson/the-reve ... f6275a5194

LabourList @LabourList · 6m 6 minutes ago
Will CCHQ and/or The Telegraph release paedophile claim emails Labour MP says he was told about over lunch? http://labli.st/1DCGgGT" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Speaking on BBC News just now, Iain Duncan Smith has accused the Labour leader Ed Miliband of avoiding tax.

Do you want to risk that with the chaos that comes from a Labour party who are completely at odds with each other and can’t seem to get their lines right, whether it’s on the health service or whether it’s on people who pay tax, let alone the man who runs the Labour party who seems to have managed to have avoided tax as well?

refitman wrote:IDS has accused Miliband of tax avoidance (from AS Blog):

Speaking on BBC News just now, Iain Duncan Smith has accused the Labour leader Ed Miliband of avoiding tax.

Do you want to risk that with the chaos that comes from a Labour party who are completely at odds with each other and can’t seem to get their lines right, whether it’s on the health service or whether it’s on people who pay tax, let alone the man who runs the Labour party who seems to have managed to have avoided tax as well?

ohsocynical wrote:On Tom Watsons page.

https://medium.com/@tom_watson/the-reve ... f6275a5194

ScarletGas wrote:Bore Da everyone.

Can I return to a subject raised by Rebeccariots2 last evening.This
related to an Independent article voicing their opinion that the BBC is
poor at news reporting and,in particular,commenting on their paper
reviews.

I used to be a regular viewer of both the Sky and BBC news reviews late
evening.Around a year ago I gave up on Sky after getting fed up with a
succession of LBC employees trotting out their bile on anything that
vaguely goes against a right wing narrative.

Frankly,up until around six months ago I enjoyed (for the most part) the
BBC version which seemed to give us a decent cross section of
political/societal views with the presenters (the execrable Gavin Grey
being an exception) doing a decent job of trying to tease out
alternative views.

More recently (I wonder why)?.....,it seems to me that the interviewees
are either from a political viewpoint of the right of centre or
columnists or editors of papers of a similar ilk.There are honourable
exceptions to this such as Rachel Shabib who try to fight against the
current narrative but in general we seem to get an establishment
viewpoint.

Last night,being in a masochistic mood,I watched both Sky and BBC to see
what they made of the Oborne revelations.

Sky had the fount of all wisdom Jonathan Maitland who tried to turn the
story into a diatribe against the Guardian tax affairs claiming that
this was the "elephant in the room" completely missing the point at
issue.

BBC had Anne Ashworth of the Times who voiced her opinion that we should
all be proud of our so called "free press" and seemed to be astonished
at the idea of proprietorial/commercial interference in newspaper
attitudes.Showing yet again that she inhabits a completely different
planet to me

My point here is that whilst the only viewpoints on these programmes are
from the journalist bubble itself (and a fairly narrow selection at
that) or from those talking heads who have more than sufficient
opportunity to get their viewpoint into the public domain then we will
not get a balanced and reasoned debate relating to the majority of the
population

Finally,and this is a personal issue for me.Whoever thinks inviting that
pompous clown Digby Jones on to a discussion programme and expects a
nuanced and sensible debate need to go away and submit themselves to serious
examination.

Ian Dunt ‏@IanDunt 8m8 minutes ago
Tony Blair a major 'electoral liability' with voters http://www.politics.co.uk/blogs/2015/02 ... ith-voters" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; …

Tom McTague retweeted
Peter Dominiczak ‏@peterdominiczak 55s56 seconds ago
Esther McVey asked whether she wants to be PM: "If I had to give a yes or a no, I'd say yes."

tom_watson ‏@tom_watson 40s41 seconds ago
The Telegraph has now confirmed the emails exist. Now David Cameron can review them: …

rebeccariots2 wrote:

tom_watson ‏@tom_watson 40s41 seconds ago
The Telegraph has now confirmed the emails exist. Now David Cameron can review them: …

Blimey.

Tory's U-turn over vow to return donation: High command accused of interfering to stop an MP handing back money from businessman accused of tax avoidance
Tory MP Charlotte Leslie pledged to return £5,000 given by Hugh Sloane
Tribunal had ruled his investment firm had operated tax avoidance scheme
But just hours later she retracted the promise to return millionaire's money
Questions raised over whether she had been pressured into the U-turn
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... ssman.html

SMEs boycotting 'appalling' Capita government contract
Small businesses are boycotting a major Government contract that they claim gives too much power to outsourcing giant Capita, PoliticsHome has learned.
https://www.politicshome.com/economy-an ... t-contract

The £1.5bn four-year contract started in 2013 and allows Capita to control the recruitment of specialist contractors and interim managers working for government departments.

The company came under fire last week after the Independent reported claims that another Whitehall contract – the Civil Service Learning scheme – was squeezing out SMEs.

Small recruiters say they are also being squeezed out in a way that directly contradicts the Coalition’s commitment to open up government work to SMEs.

The contract, known as Contingent Labour One (CL1), was drawn up by Crown Commercial Services, the arm of the Cabinet Office charged with buying in billions of pounds worth of services for government.

But several leading recruiters are refusing to take part because they say the contract allows contractors they have signed up to be transferred to Capita without any compensation.

This is what happened in 2011 at the Department for Work and Pensions when all of the department’s IT contractors were transferred from SMEs to Capita, effectively expropriating the small firms' assets.

citizenJA wrote:Yanis Varoufakis
Current Finance Minister of Greece
January 2015 general election, elected to the Greek parliament, representing SYRIZA
Wednesday 18 February 2015

He writes:

In 2008, capitalism had its second global spasm. The financial crisis set off a chain reaction that pushed Europe into a downward spiral that continues to this day. Europe’s present situation is not merely a threat for workers, for the dispossessed, for the bankers, for social classes or, indeed, nations. No, Europe’s current posture poses a threat to civilisation as we know it.

If my prognosis is correct, and we are not facing just another cyclical slump soon to be overcome, the question that arises for radicals is this: should we welcome this crisis of European capitalism as an opportunity to replace it with a better system? Or should we be so worried about it as to embark upon a campaign for stabilising European capitalism?

To me, the answer is clear. Europe’s crisis is far less likely to give birth to a better alternative to capitalism than it is to unleash dangerously regressive forces that have the capacity to cause a humanitarian bloodbath, while extinguishing the hope for any progressive moves for generations to come.

For this view I have been accused, by well-meaning radical voices, of being “defeatist” and of trying to save an indefensible European socioeconomic system. This criticism, I confess, hurts. And it hurts because it contains more than a kernel of truth.

I share the view that this European Union is typified by a large democratic deficit that, in combination with the denial of the faulty architecture of its monetary union, has put Europe’s peoples on a path to permanent recession. And I also bow to the criticism that I have campaigned on an agenda founded on the assumption that the left was, and remains, squarely defeated. I confess I would much rather be promoting a radical agenda, the raison d’être of which is to replace European capitalism with a different system.

Yet my aim here is instead to offer a window into my view of a repugnant European capitalism whose implosion, despite its many ills, should be avoided at all costs. It is a confession intended to convince radicals that we have a contradictory mission: to arrest the freefall of European capitalism in order to buy the time we need to formulate its alternative.

http://www.theguardian.com/news/2015/fe ... ic-marxist" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Every non-Marxist economic theory that treats human and non-human productive inputs as interchangeable assumes that the dehumanisation of human labour is complete. But if it could ever be completed, the result would be the end of capitalism as a system capable of creating and distributing value. For a start, a society of dehumanised automata would resemble a mechanical watch full of cogs and springs, each with its own unique function, together producing a “good”: timekeeping. Yet if that society contained nothing but other automata, timekeeping would not be a “good”. It would certainly be an “output” but why a “good”? Without real humans to experience the clock’s function, there can be no such thing as “good” or “bad”.

rebeccariots2 wrote:

Tom McTague retweeted
Peter Dominiczak ‏@peterdominiczak 55s56 seconds ago
Esther McVey asked whether she wants to be PM: "If I had to give a yes or a no, I'd say yes."

No words.

pk1 wrote:

rebeccariots2 wrote:

tom_watson ‏@tom_watson 40s41 seconds ago
The Telegraph has now confirmed the emails exist. Now David Cameron can review them: …

Blimey.

O

M

G

rebeccariots2 wrote:

Tory's U-turn over vow to return donation: High command accused of interfering to stop an MP handing back money from businessman accused of tax avoidance
Tory MP Charlotte Leslie pledged to return £5,000 given by Hugh Sloane
Tribunal had ruled his investment firm had operated tax avoidance scheme
But just hours later she retracted the promise to return millionaire's money
Questions raised over whether she had been pressured into the U-turn
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... ssman.html

rebeccariots2 wrote:We did PF. We did. Good day / night and morrow to you. We really don't mind.

General Election preview: Sheffield Hallam
http://www.allthatsleft.co.uk/2015/02/g ... ld-hallam/

Despite two democratic defeats, the Tories are STILL privatising our forests
http://voxpoliticalonline.com/

Exclusive: Michael Dugher promises "public control" of railways under Labour
Shadow transport secretary toughens party's stance, vowing that "the public sector will be running sections of our rail network". http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/20 ... der-labour

To date, Labour has pledged to allow the public sector to compete with private companies for rail franchises as they expire. But Dugher suggests that the bidding process itself could be abandoned. "Privatisation was a disaster for the railways. I’m adamant about putting the whole franchising system, as it stands today, in the bin," he tells me. He adds: "The public sector will be running sections of our rail network as soon as we can do that".

rebeccariots2 wrote:

General Election preview: Sheffield Hallam
http://www.allthatsleft.co.uk/2015/02/g ... ld-hallam/

Interesting analysis of all the recent polls - and local election results - and other factors such as boundary changes, ward variations. The outcome predictions is however not the one most of us, including the author, would like.

Finally, Dugher, renowned among Labour MPs for his singing abilities (“my party piece is probably ‘Come Fly With Me’”), offers his top karaoke tip: “You should always go to karaoke with Ed Balls because he doesn’t lack enthusiasm, it’s fair to say. You’ll always come across as a pretty decent singer if you go on just after Ed Balls. He’ll be a great Chancellor of Exchequer, he’s an enthusiastic karaoke performer but he’s not a great singer.”

rebeccariots2 wrote:

Finally, Dugher, renowned among Labour MPs for his singing abilities (“my party piece is probably ‘Come Fly With Me’”), offers his top karaoke tip: “You should always go to karaoke with Ed Balls because he doesn’t lack enthusiasm, it’s fair to say. You’ll always come across as a pretty decent singer if you go on just after Ed Balls. He’ll be a great Chancellor of Exchequer, he’s an enthusiastic karaoke performer but he’s not a great singer.”

Always entertaining.

StephenDolan wrote:I'm always interested to see the newspaper weightings.

Newspaper Type unW Weighted
Express / Mail 249 220
Sun / Star 210 311
Mirror / Record 124 136
Guardian
/ Independent 148 68
FT / Times
/ Telegraph 96 124
Other Paper 200 178
No Paper 521 511

gilsey wrote:Following on from scarletgas' comment on BBC News, just wanted to comment about Newsnight. I've taken to recording it and watching after mr gilsey's gone to bed, usually fast forward through the reporters segments and watch the interviews if they're interesting.

Last night:
Bishop of Manchester
Tim Montgomerie and Giles Fraser in the studio, Evan didn't have to do much
Paul Krugman on Greece
recorded interview with Richard Dawkins.

Some good stuff there, but some execrable snippets in between.

AnatolyKasparov wrote:Well, the reasoning behind it is fairly simple - Sun/Star readers were under-represented compared to the GB voting population in the original sample, and Graun/Indy ones overstated. So the weightings are designed to correct that - on the face of it, fair enough.

There are problems, though - as a polling rule of thumb, the smaller a sample the less reliable it is; so quite often what is a skewed group of respondents in any case gets magnified (there is no doubt this has helped the Tories in some past YouGov surveys where Sun/Star readers are concerned)

And then there is the question of whether newspaper readership should be a major factor in selecting poll respondents anyway - given their sales drop almost by the week

ScarletGas wrote:

gilsey wrote:Following on from scarletgas' comment on BBC News, just wanted to comment about Newsnight. I've taken to recording it and watching after mr gilsey's gone to bed, usually fast forward through the reporters segments and watch the interviews if they're interesting.

Last night:
Bishop of Manchester
Tim Montgomerie and Giles Fraser in the studio, Evan didn't have to do much
Paul Krugman on Greece
recorded interview with Richard Dawkins.

Some good stuff there, but some execrable snippets in between.

Did you see the Steve Hewlett snippet on Oborne?

Thought again concentrated narrowly on the effect on the Telegraph rather than the more fundamental issue.This may be diversionary tactics at play.

What,however can you expect when expect when media man is talking with media man.

Enjoyed the Krugman interview especially when asked about Osborne policies and not giving Evan Davis the answer he required

Should people living in expensive homes pay mansion tax? YES or NO?

StephenDolan wrote:

AnatolyKasparov wrote:Well, the reasoning behind it is fairly simple - Sun/Star readers were under-represented compared to the GB voting population in the original sample, and Graun/Indy ones overstated. So the weightings are designed to correct that - on the face of it, fair enough.

There are problems, though - as a polling rule of thumb, the smaller a sample the less reliable it is; so quite often what is a skewed group of respondents in any case gets magnified (there is no doubt this has helped the Tories in some past YouGov surveys where Sun/Star readers are concerned)

And then there is the question of whether newspaper readership should be a major factor in selecting poll respondents anyway - given their sales drop almost by the week

When these paper sponsored polls take place for YouGov, do they typically have any input into the methodology regarding weightings, format of questions etc or is it for YouGov to decide?

AnatolyKasparov wrote:

StephenDolan wrote:

AnatolyKasparov wrote:Well, the reasoning behind it is fairly simple - Sun/Star readers were under-represented compared to the GB voting population in the original sample, and Graun/Indy ones overstated. So the weightings are designed to correct that - on the face of it, fair enough.

There are problems, though - as a polling rule of thumb, the smaller a sample the less reliable it is; so quite often what is a skewed group of respondents in any case gets magnified (there is no doubt this has helped the Tories in some past YouGov surveys where Sun/Star readers are concerned)

And then there is the question of whether newspaper readership should be a major factor in selecting poll respondents anyway - given their sales drop almost by the week

When these paper sponsored polls take place for YouGov, do they typically have any input into the methodology regarding weightings, format of questions etc or is it for YouGov to decide?

I have no idea, tbh - you could always go over to UKPR and ask Anthony Wells that

ScarletGas wrote:Did you see the Steve Hewlett snippet on Oborne?

Thought again concentrated narrowly on the effect on the Telegraph rather than the more fundamental issue.This may be diversionary tactics at play.

What,however can you expect when expect when media man is talking with media man.

Enjoyed the Krugman interview especially when asked about Osborne policies and not giving Evan Davis the answer he required

Robert Hutton retweeted
Louisa Loveluck ‏@leloveluck 1h1 hour ago
Exactly the sort of dirty trick nice girls like me always fall for. ON MY GUARD.

gilsey wrote:

ScarletGas wrote:Did you see the Steve Hewlett snippet on Oborne?

Thought again concentrated narrowly on the effect on the Telegraph rather than the more fundamental issue.This may be diversionary tactics at play.

What,however can you expect when expect when media man is talking with media man.

Enjoyed the Krugman interview especially when asked about Osborne policies and not giving Evan Davis the answer he required

You may be doing Evan a disservice there, I suspect he did get the answer he expected.

Agree about Hewlett.

AnatolyKasparov wrote:No mention of Bristol W, then - now considered by some informed observers to have overtaken Norwich S as their best prospect of a second Green seat.

That omission doesn't make me so confident about the rest of their "analysis".

AnatolyKasparov wrote:Well, the reasoning behind it is fairly simple - Sun/Star readers were under-represented compared to the GB voting population in the original sample, and Graun/Indy ones overstated. So the weightings are designed to correct that - on the face of it, fair enough.

There are problems, though - as a polling rule of thumb, the smaller a sample the less reliable it is; so quite often what is a skewed group of respondents in any case gets magnified (there is no doubt this has helped the Tories in some past YouGov surveys where Sun/Star readers are concerned)

And then there is the question of whether newspaper readership should be a major factor in selecting poll respondents anyway - given their sales drop almost by the week