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Month: October 2008

Your Sunday morning papers Lord Mandelson

Your Sunday morning papers Lord Mandelson

The Independent on Sunday..“..Peter Mandelson’s last act as European Trade Commissioner was to advocate new trade rules that will directly benefit the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska..Less than a month ago, in one of his final speeches before being recalled to the Cabinet and after he accepted hospitality on the Russian’s yacht, Lord Mandelson announced a new EU trade strategy giving multinational companies freer access to raw materials, including scrap aluminium and natural minerals used in the production of the metal..Mr…

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Who will get the blame in the GOP?

Who will get the blame in the GOP?

Which way for the Republican party after November? Tuesday last, I was invited to speak in a debate at Portcullis House by Liberal International on why a McCain presidency might not be such a bad thing after all (for Liberals). I threw four or five arguments into the mix (some persuasive, others less so), but one thought in particular has festered ever since: that if John McCain loses, the impact on the direction of the Republican Party could be significant….

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Could Mandy end up being the biggest loser?

Could Mandy end up being the biggest loser?

Why has he written to the Times today? One of the problems with having a “back story” like Peter Mandelson, fairly or unfairly, is that the default assumption is that you are up to no good. So what are we to make of the latest developments in “Yachtgate” where Mandy has written to the Times today to “explain” that his contacts with the Russian billionaire, Oleg Deripaska, went back two years further than previously publicly stated. So his first account…

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What do we think of the Keith Mothersson’s scenario?

What do we think of the Keith Mothersson’s scenario?

Could Obama really be robbed of victory in this way? [Keith Mothersson of the Campaign for Visible Ballots has been following the US election integrity movement since 2000. In this guest slot he gives his assessment of the current state of play.] Psephologists sometimes look too closely at opinion polls, naively assuming a predictable feed through into election results. The election in the US is a genuine no-holds-barred struggle which could easily go all the way the Supreme Court and/or…

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Which way should you be betting in the closing stages?

Which way should you be betting in the closing stages?

Could McCain-Palin pull something back in the final few days? The panel shows the latest spread prices on the US election from Sporting Index where there has been a further move away from John McCain in the past day. The other markets from IG Index and Spreadfair are a bit more favourable to McCain in their electoral college votes spread. A full range of betting exchange and convention bookie US Election prices is here. A big question now is what’s…

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Why are these Lib Dem ratings all over the place?

Why are these Lib Dem ratings all over the place?

What is it about polling the third party? Just look at the figures in the panel above showing the Lib Dem shares in the latest surveys from the six firms that carry out regular national voting intention opinion polls. All but Populus are from surveys that have been published in the past week. How can you possibly have a situation with such a range of shares from the six different pollsters? This is important because the broad trend in most…

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How can Gord/Mandy get these numbers down?

How can Gord/Mandy get these numbers down?

How can Cameron be stopped if the Tories are in the 40s? In the panel above are the Tory shares from the latest polls by the six firms that carry out monthly voting intention polls in Britain. There seem to be two clusters – ComRes/ICM/YouGov which have the party in the low 40s with Populus/MORI/BPIX recording shares in the mid-40s. These have varied from time to time but in spite of all that’s been happening Labour has found it all…

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