[Britse politiek] #137: Gebroken beloftes

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Op woensdag 19 juni 2024 18:22 schreef Tijger_m het volgende:

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Als ik het goed weet is 55% van de voedselproducten in de schappen in Britse supermarkten van de EU afkomstig.

En ondertussen klagen de Britse boeren steen en been omdat ze de EU subsidies kwijt zijn en de beloofde vervanging daarvan door Britse subsidies er gewoon niet gekomen zijn en zijn de lamsvlees producenten woest over de deal met Australie waardoor zij uit de markt geprijsd worden.

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Op woensdag 19 juni 2024 19:26 schreef Tijger_m het volgende:

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Het varieert voor Reform van 5 zetels tot 0 zetels, de drie grootste polls die vandaag uitkwamen geven Labour een meerderheid (geen zetels maar meerderheid) van 162, 382 en 200 zetels.

Ik begin mij af te vragen of alle competente statistici met Brexit het land verlaten hebben.

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Op woensdag 19 juni 2024 19:26 schreef Tijger_m het volgende:

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Het varieert voor Reform van 5 zetels tot 0 zetels,

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Op woensdag 19 juni 2024 19:40 schreef Tijger_m het volgende:

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Ik heb werkelijk geen idee hoe je met een representatieve steekproef tot zulke extreme verschillen kan komen. Dan is het of incompetentie of bewuste beinvloeding.

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YouGov shares plunge after sales and profits warning

Shares in the polling company YouGov plunged by more than 40% on Thursday after the UK research and analytics company warned that sales and profits would be lower than expected this year.

The firm, which is best known for its political polling but generates most of its revenues from providing consumer data and analysis to businesses, said sales bookings had been lower than anticipated since it reported half-year figures in late March.

As a result, YouGov now expects revenues this year to be between £324m and £327m, while adjusted operating profit is expected to come in between £41m and £44m. This is below the estimates of analysts, who had been forecasting revenues of £341m and profits of £67m.

The shares plunged 43% to 470p, giving the company a market value of about £550m. Last year, it was worth more than £1bn.

The company, which has a panel of more than 27 million people globally who sign up to take its surveys, said demand was slow in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, in particular Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
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Gambling watchdog looks into second Tory candidate over alleged election bet

Rishi Sunak has become mired in a row over alleged betting on the general election date after it emerged that a second Conservative candidate and the party’s campaigns director were being looked into by the Gambling Commission.

The watchdog is examining bets allegedly placed by Laura Saunders, the Tory candidate in Bristol North West, and her husband, Tony Lee, who is now on leave of absence from his job at party headquarters.

It is not known when the alleged bets were placed or for how much money.

Labour called for the Tories to suspend Saunders from the party. The Labour leader, Keir Starmer, said: “This candidate should be suspended and it’s very telling that Rishi Sunak has not already done that. If it was one of my candidates, they’d be gone and their feet would not have touched the floor.”

The Liberal Democrats called for a Cabinet Office inquiry. The party’s leader, Ed Davey, said: “I think it’s quite awful. It needs a heavy hand from the top.”
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The cabinet minister Michael Gove said the situation “doesn’t look great” for the Conservatives but said the commission had to get on with its investigation, while the former party leader Iain Duncan Smith also criticised the party officials and candidates who were potentially involved.

A Tory spokesperson said the party had been contacted by the watchdog about “a small number of individuals” who had allegedly placed bets on a July election. A party insider said they were not aware of any more cases beyond those already in the public domain.
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During a leaders’ debate on BBC Question Time on Thursday evening, Sunak said he was “incredibly angry” to learn of the allegations, adding that if anyone is found guilty they should “face the full force of the law” and he would “make sure they are booted out of the Conservative party”.

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Tory candidate facing probe over election date betting allegations threatens to sue BBC 'over privacy rights'

Laura Saunders, the Conservative candidate being investigated by the Gambling Commission over election date betting allegations, has issued a statement saying she is cooperating with the inquiry. She also says she might sue the BBC over infringement of her privacy rights.

In a statement released on Saunders’ behalf, Nama Zarroug, a solicitor at Astraea Linskills, said:

As the Conservative party has already stated, investigations are ongoing.
Ms Saunders will be cooperating with the Gambling Commission and has nothing further to add.
It is inappropriate to conduct any investigation of this kind via the media, and doing so risks jeopardising the work of the Gambling Commission and the integrity of its investigation.
The publication of the BBC’s story is premature and is a clear infringement of Ms Saunders’ privacy rights. She is considering legal action against the BBC and any other publishers who infringe her privacy rights.

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Polls mask many ‘undecideds’ and fuel Labour worry about mobilising voters

Jessica Elgot
Deputy political editor

In three weeks’ time, Ed Davey could be standing at the dispatch box as the leader of the opposition, Rishi Sunak could be on a plane to California having lost his seat and three-quarters of the cabinet out on the job hunt while more than 500 Labour MPs take their seats. There are no leadership chances for the seatless James Cleverly, Penny Mordaunt or Priti Patel.

Are these predictions real, or as outlandish as they sound? Not all the polls are as apocalyptic for the Conservatives as the scenario above describes, but if Keir Starmer enters parliament with a majority of 150, it would now feel almost disappointing.

Inside Labour HQ, there is a policy not to discuss the polls at all and to make decisions based purely on the party’s own data and precision-targeted strategy.

But for Labour campaigners trying to mobilise voters, the polls are becoming positively unhelpful. It is the Tories who stand to gain the most from the argument that it is important to have a bulwark of Tory MPs as a counter to an unprecedented Labour majority, in order to motivate their disillusioned base and activists.

It is also a key argument for Starmer’s critics on the left. A Labour landslide is nailed on, they argue, so vote with your conscience for Greens or independents if you want to put pressure on the party about the climate crisis or war in Gaza.

And it is easy to see why that argument has some merit – the polls indicate that Starmer will be the most powerful prime minister in modern times with a majority double that of Tony Blair’s in 1997. But drill closer into the data and listen to ground reports from Labour MPs and activists and the picture is not quite the same. A dozen Labour candidates who the Guardian spoke to this week said that although Tory voters in their patches and elsewhere were hugely disillusioned and divided, they were encountering large numbers of undecided voters.

Even if Labour HQ believes the polls, the party lacks the capacity to work all of the potential targets. “Tory vote is collapsing to Reform in the long shot seats,” one MP said. “But many I don’t think are realistic. We aren’t re-directing resources.”

“It feels more volatile than ever with a lot of undecideds and uncertains,” said another MP.

“It’s positively unhelpful,” said another, drawing a comparison with the 2017 election, when people voted for Labour thinking the then leader, Jeremy Corbyn, wouldn’t win. “So many ‘undecided’ voters may land Tory as they think it won’t matter … I’ve been in a seat where the Tories are hiding in undecided responses too – so I expect things to narrow a lot.”

Some Labour candidates are so anxious about their own, safe seats they are annoyed at being harangued by Labour HQ to campaign elsewhere – and some of the Labour WhatsApp groups are near mutinous about the degree of control being placed on their movements. Ellie Reeves, the party’s deputy campaign coordinator, recently told them not to make more than 500 contacts in their own seats and that those with bigger majorities had to spend at least five days a week in battleground seats.

The most recent MRP polls – for Savanta and Ipsos – put between 100 and 150 seats on a knife-edge. The polls use a method taking about 10 times the usual number of survey respondents and extrapolate that data on to constituencies.

But very different methods are used by all the different pollsters now using this new method of MRP polling in order to drill down into the different constituencies. In the past, these polls have been very accurate – the YouGov MRP poll in 2017 was the only one to detect the Tories would lose their majority.

But the numbers of voters actually surveyed in each constituency is tiny and the methods used to determine how that will affect the national picture differ from pollster to pollster. All the predictions are for a Labour victory – but between all the pollsters, results vary by 134 seats.

Sometimes, the polls throw up bizarre results in certain seats where the local picture is complicated. In the past week alone, polls have predicted Nigel Farage failing to take Clacton – and also predicting he will win with the largest swing in history.

The clincher for the Conservatives is that – for all the wobbles about undecided voters – no one is detecting a swing back to Sunak. Campaigners say they are barely meeting anyone who says they are voting Conservative. Nothing Sunak has said during the election campaign – whether it is policy, attacks on Starmer or his performance in the debates – has moved the dial apart from negatively.

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Labour candidates penalised for not campaigning enough in battleground seats

Those standing in constituencies considered safe or unwinnable lose access to key party software if deemed not to be canvassing hard enough in other target areas

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Starmer says he would not let SNP government hold 2nd independence referendum

Keir Starmer is in Scotland today and he had some interesting comments on independence, in response to the SNP’s manifesto which was published earlier this week and which doubled down on their push for a second referendum.

Starmer said categorically he would refuse to participate in negotiations for another independence referendum even if the SNP won a majority of seats.

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Veterans minister Johnny Mercer accuses Labour opponent of exaggerating his military record

Johnny Mercer, the veterans minister, and his Labour opponent in Plymouth Moor View, Fred Thomas, are engaged in a bitter row over whether Thomas has misrepresented his military service. Both men are former soldiers.

Last night, after the two men appeared together at an election hustings, Mercer said that Thomas had lied when he said that he had served in combat. He said that when Thomas was asked to give details of his combat experience, he was not able to do so.

In response, Labour challenged Mercer to apologise. Thomas said that he had served his country for seven years, including on overseas operations, but that he was unable to discuss much of what he did.

And Labour presented journalists with a copy of his certificate of valediction, signed by the commanding officer of the Special Forces Support Group, confirming that Thomas had gained “considerable operational experience”, including overseas, serving with Commando Force unit and other specalist partner organisations.
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Op dinsdag 18 juni 2024 23:21 schreef George_of_the_Jungle het volgende:

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I denk niet dat het om de super-rich gaat, maar meer om upper-middle class. Hoe rijker je bent, hoe meer mogelijkheden je hebt om belasting te ontwijken. Het zijn vooral mensen met een inkomen van 100-150k die nog wel flink belasting betalen, maar nog niet heel veel mogelijkheden hebben dat te ontwijken (of dat het ontwijken nog niet heel veel voordeel oplevert). Maar als die 10-20 jaar geleden hun eerste huis kochten, dan worden die nu wel tot de miljonairs-klasse gerekend. Ook zitten die vaak al niet ver van hun pensioen af. Als je dan verschil in prijs van een huis in VK met Zuid-Europa (of Caribbean ofzo) bekijkt, en leefkosten, dan kun je al snel buiten het VK leven, zonder te werken, en zonder veel in te leveren op je levensstandaard.

De echt superrijken, die kunnen eigenlijk overal wel leven, en dat doen ze ook, huizen in meerdere landen, enzo. En dan wordt het ook minder duidelijk waar je belasting moet betalen, want dan worden er bedrijven opgezet in meerdere landen, waar je inkomen (veelal winst uit bedrijven), naar toe wordt gepompt.

En dat er meer miljonairs vertrekken, wilt niet zeggen dat er niet alsnog meer miljonairs zijn in het VK, er komen ook nog steeds meer miljonairs bij door inkomen (zeker onder bankiers), winst, en toename waarde investeringen en bijv bezit huizen.

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UK's richest family convicted of exploiting staff at Swiss villa.

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Op zaterdag 22 juni 2024 07:59 schreef Hyperdude het volgende:

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https://www.voanews.com/a(...)-villa-/7665996.html

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Op zaterdag 22 juni 2024 13:12 schreef George_of_the_Jungle het volgende:

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Waar wonen ze nu eigenlijk?

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Op zaterdag 22 juni 2024 15:01 schreef Hyperdude het volgende:

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Overal en nergens. En nergens tax betalen.

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Nigel Farage has said the EU and Nato “provoked” Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by expanding eastwards. Farage said he disliked Russian president Vladimir Putin personally but “admired him as a political operator” because of the extent of his control over Russia. He added: “We provoked this war. Of course it’s his fault, he’s used what we’ve done as an excuse”. The Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats have long accused Farage of being an apologist for the Russian president.

Farage told Robinson “Do you know what I am? I’m a fighter, I’m a warrior, I’m a campaigner”. The Reform UK leader said “I stand up against big institutions when they behave badly, whether they’re banks or out of touch bureaucracies based in Brussels, and very often, I win.”

Farage accepted that a claim he made saying the UK had moved from being the “world’s seventh-biggest exporter to the world’s fourth-biggest exporter” after Brexit referred only to services. Asked why exports in goods had not similarly benefited, Farage blamed net zero policies, saying they had “de-industrialised Britain”.

Discussing migration, Farage repeatedly said that people arriving in the UK could bring their mothers with them, which is not the case. On net zero, asked if he still believed King Charles was “an eco-loony”, Farage replied: “He wasn’t the king then, and I can’t speak ill of the monarch obviously.”

Asking about Reform’s own fiscal plans, set out this week in the party’s manifesto, Robinson seemed unconvinced by Farage’s explanations as to how the party would cut public spending enough to make mass tax cuts. Farage repeatedly pushed the idea that moving the income tax threshold to £20,000 would take the lowest paid out of the tax system and get more people off benefits and into work.

Farage defended the Liz Truss mini-budget, which at the time he called “the best Conservative budget since the 1980s”. He told the BBC interveiwer “There were a lot of things here that were pro-growth and pro-business. Some of the thinking was right, the delivery was wrong, the timing was appalling.”

The Reform leader said it was important to protect the NHS being free at the point of delivery, but failed to explain how a GP appointment is free in the French-style system he is proposing, when in France there is a ¤25 fee for an appointment. “It gets refunded” he said, while also saying it could be forfeit if the apporintment was missed.

Asked if Reform attracted people with vile views because of his own views, Farage called this “cobblers, absolute cobblers”, quoting Martin Luther King and saying he believed in meritocracy. Asked why he once praised Enoch Powell and criticised Rishi Sunak by saying he “doesn’t understand our culture”, Farage said this simply referred to the prime minister being “too upper-class”.

Reform has blamed a vetting company it employed for failing to check what candidates had said. But Farage appeared to play down the seriousness of many of the comments, saying: “We’ve also had an awful lot of candidates being stitched up in the most extraordinary way with quotes being taken out of context.”

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Er duiken steeds meer namen op van medewerkers van de Conservatieve Partij die geld zouden hebben ingezet op de verkiezingsdatum. De Britse goktoezichthouder doet inmiddels ook onderzoek naar Nick Mason, chef data bij de partij, meldt The Sunday Times.

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Op zondag 23 juni 2024 17:07 schreef Tijger_m het volgende:

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Ja, blijdschap alom over het resultaat in het VK vandaag de dag. Oh...wacht...

https://www.theguardian.c(...)t-years-after-brexit

Het enige voorbeeld voor een positief resultaat, geen invoerrechten voor Australie voor een wijnimporteur word volledig teniet gedaan door Britse tarieven. In de EU betaalde hij 9p meer dan na Brexit en na Brexit betaald hij 44p per fles meer door verhoging van Britse tarieven.

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Op dinsdag 25 juni 2024 00:21 schreef Tijger_m het volgende:
In Nederland volstrekt verboden om een documentaire op deze wijze te maken maar wel een indringend document:
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Lees de rest van het artikel als je een sterke maag hebt.

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The UK is grappling with significant workforce challenges in both the nursing and social care sectors in its National Health Service (NHS), with both sectors relying heavily on migrant workers.

As of June 2023, 18.7% of NHS staff reported a non-British nationality and 25% of care workers were born outside of the UK, according to the Office for National Statistics.

The Guardian daily newspaper now reported that almost 9,000 foreign nurses were leaving the UK annually, exacerbating the NHS's existing understaffing crisis. The largest increase of departures was among overseas-trained nurses with three years or fewer on the UK register.

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The number of UK-registered nurses moving to other countries doubled in just one year between 2021/22 and 2022/23, according to official numbers. The majority of departing nurses are heading to other English-speaking countries like the US, New Zealand, or Australia, where pay scales are substantially higher.

According to OECD data, a nurse in the UK earns on average £36,500 a year (¤43,070). While the median annual wage for the equivalent role in New Zealand is $57,000 (¤53,100), in Australia $71,000 (¤66,463) and in the US $84,900 (¤79,060).

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Op dinsdag 18 juni 2024 21:42 schreef Lichtloper het volgende:

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Interessante ontwikkeling wel, overal groeit het aantal miljonairs, maar vanuit het UK vluchten ze het land uit…

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Op dinsdag 25 juni 2024 13:27 schreef beantherio het volgende:

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Treurig. Bekeken vanuit de context van de zorg konden de Britten zich Brexit al helemaal niet veroorloven. 20% van de NHS-medewerkers komt blijkbaar van buiten GB en het is tegenwoordig niet meer zo makkelijk om mensen uit de EU aan te trekken. Voor Nederland is dat misschien nog niet eens zo erg: minder concurrentie als het gaat om het aantrekken van ervaren personeel in de zorg.

https://www.theguardian.c(...)tionals-figures-show
https://www.infomigrants.(...)r-pay-and-conditions
https://www.independent.c(...)ap-nhs-b2453075.html
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Op dinsdag 25 juni 2024 17:17 schreef Litpho het volgende:
De lijst met “dingen waar de Spectator en ik het over oneens zijn” is weer iets langer geworden:
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Op woensdag 26 juni 2024 01:03 schreef crystal_meth het volgende:

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Stond daar eerder niet "Ann Widdecombe" ipv "de Spectator"?