Last autumn, we were all arguing about Labour’s fiscal policy and to what extent it had pre-committed to sticking with Tory budget plans. This hinged on, among other things, whether they were going to exclude public sector capital investment from the numbers or include it. It looked for a while as if it was going…
Read More Just like the Tories.Hark at Liberal Democrat Steve Webb. Where once he suggested you might take your pension pot and buy a Lamborghini, now he is having to do the rounds of the media saying “When it’s gone, it’s gone”, as my mum says. But the interesting bit is this quote: The three government-backed “guidance” services that are…
Read More Liberal Democrat Steve Webb, you had a whole year.The Daily Hell seems to have recruited a visualisation designer from the Liberal Democrats, going by this little effort. Why are the bars in the first one of varying thickness? Why is time represented as flowing from right to left? In the second, why is a change of 10 percentage points represented as equal to…
Read More TriviaJournalists. Please, please, cut one phrase out of your vocabulary. It is “He will say”. Why? Well, try “Unseasonably Mild” Wintour’s latest. The first problem here is that something given out by a political party is being repeated uncritically. We get a complete paragraph-length Cameron soundbite, plus literally all the talking points, factoid by factoid…
Read More Sources close to Alex Harrowell will say “This is a lot of cock”Several different polls, by multiple pollsters using different methods, have now shown Ed Miliband’s personal ratings improving sharply after the various not-quite-a-debates. You doubt? Here’s Hopi Sen, presumably tweeting through gritted teeth: Since last poll @Ed_Miliband Lab voters rating went from 60.7 to 63.6, Among Con -50.4 to -42.8; LD -8.9 to +31 (!sample) UKIP…
Read More Being prime minister looks prime ministerial and nearly being prime minister…So, I was out on the #labourdoorstep. And I had an interesting insight. We live in Doorbell Britain, which is divided into two tribes, the Friedlands and the Knockers. The Friedlands have evidently spent a lot of money on the technology of being alerted to visitors at their front door. Sometimes the bell is slickly…
Read More I invent a tiresome electoral marketing conceptSo this chart happened. It looks like the Fistful of Euros model of the labour market has a serious problem, in that I can’t replicate JW Mason’s original results. The compositionally weighted ECI measure of earnings is more strongly correlated with the output gap, i.e. more cyclical, than the constant-weighted ECEC, at least for 2002-2014.…
Read More Science, dammit.So I done an economics over at the Fistful, swinging off a a data at JW Mason’s. Meanwhile, is there anyone in this list who isn’t an embarrassment? Some journo should obviously ring them all up and ask if they will confirm they are domiciled in the UK for tax purposes, but to be honest,…
Read More AFOE post, and that #businessletterSo I noticed Jahan Mahmood was on twitter. I had some stuff I wanted to know so I thought I’d ask him and find out. @yorksranter Of course, I parted with Afzal on the direction he wanted 2 pursue. I was always interestd in grassroots work & nothing else — Jahan Mahmood (@jahanmahmood) March 29,…
Read More A bit more #biryaniproject.In DEFRA’s Q1 2013 lobbying disclosure, I see that DEFRA PUSS Lord de Mauley (yes! really) had the following meeting: February: Private individual. To discuss the private keeping of primates. Who is it that’s lobbying government for the right to keep monkeys? Not just that, who is this nameless private citizen who gets access to…
Read More Demand your right to own a monkey