Oh the dangers of being a pundit…!
Saturday, February 28th, 2009
Continuation thread
Continuation thread
Archive for February, 2009
Oh the dangers of being a pundit…!
Saturday, February 28th, 2009
Can Civil Liberties have an impact?
Saturday, February 28th, 2009
Today, I will be joining around 1,000 participants nationwide at the Convention on Modern Liberty - a conference of speakers and activists from across the political spectrum who share a concern about the direction with respect to our basic rights and liberties.
Although not an automatic adherent, I acknowledge that we now live in a society that is becoming ever more scary from this particular perspective, and am interested to see what some of the great thinkers of the age have to say on the issue. If memory serves, then there is one CCTV camera for every 14 people in the UK. We have seen the proposal of hitherto-unthinkabe legislation (42 days and the ID card database), and it is estimated that 8% of the population is already on the DNA database, independent of whether they have ever beeb found guilty of an office.
Beyond the Damian Green affair, we have seen modifications (or attempts at modifying) a whole host of fundamental liberties, including trial by jury (for complex legal trials) and double jeopardy. The biscuit,however, should go to Jacqui Smith for allowing (upon her order) the police to search the home of any employee who works for a company that has signed a non-disclosure agreement for the ID cards programme. Overturning the needs for a search warrant on the back of an NDA is just breathtaking government.
Civil Liberties is one of those issues that will rarely if ever garner electoral support for its political movements. Haltemprice & Howden still stands out as a largely anomalous campaign. It is staggering that in 30 years of asking, the issue still doesn’t register on the Ipsos MORI issue tracker, and is unlikely to if it remains in its current format. The Mori options, generated by respondants, are almost entirely ‘tax and spend’ priorities, rather than significant concerns, and I think the poll gets treated as such. Getting more abstract principles to break through as principal concerns is very difficult.
If the comparison can even be made, I remain skeptical that an issue such as Civil Liberties could hold its own agains the major issues in a ‘tax and spend’ priorities, but that is largely a function of the questioning. I wonder if their importance to the Briitish public could be seriously underestimated, and whether there are seats in the South East especially where this could make all the difference. This is a limitation of the strength of modern polling - measuring the breadth and depth of public support for an agenda that has been largely hidden will be a most difficult task, but if able to track and improve those results, then the Convention on Modern Liberty will have exceeded our heavy expectations.
So, will Civil Liberties be a tangible issue at the next election? It could be, but that will take some co-ordinated effort. These good people have their work cut out - but I wish them the very best.
Morus
Today, I will be joining around 1,000 participants nationwide at the Convention on Modern Liberty - a conference of speakers and activists from across the political spectrum who share a concern about the direction with respect to our basic rights and liberties.
Although not an automatic adherent, I acknowledge that we now live in a society that is becoming ever more scary from this particular perspective, and am interested to see what some of the great thinkers of the age have to say on the issue. If memory serves, then there is one CCTV camera for every 14 people in the UK. We have seen the proposal of hitherto-unthinkabe legislation (42 days and the ID card database), and it is estimated that 8% of the population is already on the DNA database, independent of whether they have ever beeb found guilty of an office.
Beyond the Damian Green affair, we have seen modifications (or attempts at modifying) a whole host of fundamental liberties, including trial by jury (for complex legal trials) and double jeopardy. The biscuit,however, should go to Jacqui Smith for allowing (upon her order) the police to search the home of any employee who works for a company that has signed a non-disclosure agreement for the ID cards programme. Overturning the needs for a search warrant on the back of an NDA is just breathtaking government.
Civil Liberties is one of those issues that will rarely if ever garner electoral support for its political movements. Haltemprice & Howden still stands out as a largely anomalous campaign. It is staggering that in 30 years of asking, the issue still doesn’t register on the Ipsos MORI issue tracker, and is unlikely to if it remains in its current format. The Mori options, generated by respondants, are almost entirely ‘tax and spend’ priorities, rather than significant concerns, and I think the poll gets treated as such. Getting more abstract principles to break through as principal concerns is very difficult.
If the comparison can even be made, I remain skeptical that an issue such as Civil Liberties could hold its own agains the major issues in a ‘tax and spend’ priorities, but that is largely a function of the questioning. I wonder if their importance to the Briitish public could be seriously underestimated, and whether there are seats in the South East especially where this could make all the difference. This is a limitation of the strength of modern polling - measuring the breadth and depth of public support for an agenda that has been largely hidden will be a most difficult task, but if able to track and improve those results, then the Convention on Modern Liberty will have exceeded our heavy expectations.
So, will Civil Liberties be a tangible issue at the next election? It could be, but that will take some co-ordinated effort. These good people have their work cut out - but I wish them the very best.
Morus
Who’ll win the Brown-Goodwin pension stand-off?
Friday, February 27th, 2009
Take the 6/1 that Fred’s pension will be cut
I’ve just put £100 on at 6/1 with William Hill that the former RBS boss, Sir Fred Goodwin will accept a cut in his much publicised pension entitlement. The bet is that he will either do so voluntarily or be forced to do so by the end of the year.
There’s so much political pressure on Brown that the chances of Goodwin being unable to brazen it out must be better than the 6/1. For as long as this remains unresolved it’s a major irritant to the government and a reminder that they cocked it up in the first place.
Goodwin clearly is a tough cookie - you don’t to the top unless you are - but at the end of the day Brown cannot allow the stand-off to continue. The fact that the PM has been prepared to go so public is a measure of the resolve from Number 10.
I think that this is a great bet. It’s not available online - you have to phone and refer to the William Hill press release that went out this afternoon.
Best of luck.
Take the 6/1 that Fred’s pension will be cut
I’ve just put £100 on at 6/1 with William Hill that the former RBS boss, Sir Fred Goodwin will accept a cut in his much publicised pension entitlement. The bet is that he will either do so voluntarily or be forced to do so by the end of the year.
There’s so much political pressure on Brown that the chances of Goodwin being unable to brazen it out must be better than the 6/1. For as long as this remains unresolved it’s a major irritant to the government and a reminder that they cocked it up in the first place.
Goodwin clearly is a tough cookie - you don’t to the top unless you are - but at the end of the day Brown cannot allow the stand-off to continue. The fact that the PM has been prepared to go so public is a measure of the resolve from Number 10.
I think that this is a great bet. It’s not available online - you have to phone and refer to the William Hill press release that went out this afternoon.
Best of luck.
Is this Nick Clegg’s dilemma?
Friday, February 27th, 2009
Is anything other than equidistance wrong for the LDs?
If other polls follow YouGov and we get near to hung parliament territory again there will be more focus on what other parties, notably the SNP and the Lib Dems, would do. Here the views of party supporters might be important.
The best regular guide of how Lib Dem voters view things comes in the monthly Telegraph poll with the detailed splits on their forced choice “Brown or Cameron” question. This has been asked in the same form for years and it’s interesting to look at trends and how supporters of other than the big two see the situation.
In the table above we see the outcome this month - Lib Dems supporters are split totally on what they would like to see with 41% saying a “Cameron-led Tory Government” and 41% saying a “Brown-led Labour” one.
To show how far things have moved on and to put the findings into context in February 2006, while Cameron was enjoying his media honeymoon, the YouGov split on this question amongst Lib Dems was LAB-Brown 52%: CON-Cameron 22%. That’s a huge improvement and indicates, perhaps, the success that Cameron has had making his party more attractive to the centre ground.
Nick Clegg and the rest of the Lib Dem leadership simply have no alternative - with their voters so split they cannot err on one side or the other.
I used to think that the party’s activist base was much more Labour-inclined than party supporters. Now I’m not so sure and I detect little enthusiasm for propping up Labour.
Is anything other than equidistance wrong for the LDs?
If other polls follow YouGov and we get near to hung parliament territory again there will be more focus on what other parties, notably the SNP and the Lib Dems, would do. Here the views of party supporters might be important.
The best regular guide of how Lib Dem voters view things comes in the monthly Telegraph poll with the detailed splits on their forced choice “Brown or Cameron” question. This has been asked in the same form for years and it’s interesting to look at trends and how supporters of other than the big two see the situation.
In the table above we see the outcome this month - Lib Dems supporters are split totally on what they would like to see with 41% saying a “Cameron-led Tory Government” and 41% saying a “Brown-led Labour” one.
To show how far things have moved on and to put the findings into context in February 2006, while Cameron was enjoying his media honeymoon, the YouGov split on this question amongst Lib Dems was LAB-Brown 52%: CON-Cameron 22%. That’s a huge improvement and indicates, perhaps, the success that Cameron has had making his party more attractive to the centre ground.
Nick Clegg and the rest of the Lib Dem leadership simply have no alternative - with their voters so split they cannot err on one side or the other.
I used to think that the party’s activist base was much more Labour-inclined than party supporters. Now I’m not so sure and I detect little enthusiasm for propping up Labour.