So Michael D IS running again!

Grab All Association

Fair play to SF and independents putting forward candidates. This senile (bound to be) old gonk troll wanted another 7 years aboard the gravy train.

Apparently he he wasn't happy with the state car he was provided with and demanded a better model of Mercedes Benz.

GarIT

Grab All Association wrote: »

Apparently he he wasn't happy with the state car he was provided with and demanded a better model of Mercedes Benz.

Apparently to who? The Gardaí decided the 12 year old presidential vehicle was unsafe for further use and replaced it. Even the sun says the president did not request a new vehicle.

dulpit

I see FF have now announced (was in the Sunday Times according to Gavan Reilly) that their councillors will be free to nominate somebody through the local council route if they wish. So we might have a few candidates now...

jmcc

GarIT wrote: »

No they aren't.

Odds are an expression of relative probabilities.

Regards...jmcc

jmcc

dulpit wrote: »

I see FF have now announced (was in the Sunday Times according to Gavan Reilly) that their councillors will be free to nominate somebody through the local council route if they wish. So we might have a few candidates now...

The Greens have allowed their TDs and councillors to nominate too. This is quite bad for FF and for Micheal Martin's position as leader. He's a bit too eager to to the FG line.

Regards...jmcc

batgoat

Praetorian wrote: »

Of course if he knew it, he was deliberately lying. If he was unsure he shouldn't have said it. Saying it did win him votes, including mine. Unfortunately for me it puts him into the bracket of "typical politician", say what ever you have to get in, make campaign promises you may not intend to keep.

I don't think he's a bad guy at all. He was an okay president. You can see he absolutely loves the position. I think he has been caught out on a lie and I think it was deliberate. Only he or possibly those close to him would know for sure. You or I cannot be absolutely sure, but I have my opinion and I am entitled to it.

I hope the country can come up with a couple of good candidates to give him a proper race. I expect many people thought he was going to win by default. Now at least, he may have to answer some questions and his answers will be quite telling.

I'm guessing due to age that he assumed he wouldn't have been physically or mentally fit for another term. However it's clear he is still fit for the role and likely has more to offer, imagine that influenced his decision more than the most boring lie ever.

Grab All Association wrote: »

Fair play to SF and independents putting forward candidates. This senile (bound to be) old gonk troll wanted another 7 years aboard the gravy train.

Apparently he he wasn't happy with the state car he was provided with and demanded a better model of Mercedes Benz.

Why is he bound to be senile? My father is the same age as him and in perfect health in terms of his brain. Honestly, that just read as incredibly nasty.

Grab All Association

GarIT wrote: »

Apparently to who? The Gardaí decided the 12 year old presidential vehicle was unsafe for further use and replaced it. Even the sun says the president did not request a new vehicle.

The issue of the President's transport has been the subject of some controversy in recent days following the publication of a report which suggested that while he had taken delivery of a brand new Mercedes, he had sent it back with a demand that it be replaced with a "superior model" worth some €40,000 more.

ancapailldorcha

Grab All Association wrote: »

Fair play to SF and independents putting forward candidates. This senile (bound to be) old gonk troll wanted another 7 years aboard the gravy train.

Apparently he he wasn't happy with the state car he was provided with and demanded a better model of Mercedes Benz.

Cut out the petty insults please.

CeilingFly

Grab All Association wrote: »

Fair play to SF and independents putting forward candidates. This senile (bound to be) old gonk troll wanted another 7 years aboard the gravy train.

My mother is 86 and still works two days a week and drives about, travels frequently to Europe and USA to visit friends and family and is full of life.

Some day you'll understand that age is not the barrier young people mistakingly think it is.

I'll vote for whom I think will represent the office of president best. Age won't come into it.

Beechwoodspark

Joan freeman was mentioned as someone who is planning a run for the park on RTÉ few mins ago.

And Gavin Duffy of dragons den is mentioned on one of the papers.

Squatter

I see that another low profile president has just decided to run again after previously saying that he'd serve only one term.


"US President Donald Trump says he intends to run for re-election in the 2020 election.

The Mail on Sunday newspaper reported on an interview the president gave to Piers Morgan during his British visit on Friday.

When asked if he was going to run again, Trump said: "Well I fully intend to. It seems like everybody wants me to," the newspaper said.

Trump said he did not see any Democrat who could beat him. "I don't see anybody. I know them all and I don't see anybody."


Mickey Dee and Donald Trump, two spoofers made from the same mould!

pixelburp

When did Trump ever say he would only serve one term? The man says a lot of garbage but I've never read a single brainfart along those lines.

The insistence on some sort of ideological purity is a bit unreasonable, and just seems like a flimsy excuse for a genic bash-the-politician rant. A politican is being dishonest, get the mob!

Drawing moral equivalence between Higgins changing his mind about having another shot, and (say) a broken promise in an actual manifesto, is daft. Nick Clegg famously nuked the Liberal Democrats for a blatant LIE about tuition fees, that''s a clear poltical lie.

It feels like holding Higgins up to an unreasonable standard just for the purposes of bashing him is unfair. We've all changed our mind - often about career decisions too. Yet Higgins does it and out come the pitchforks.

Capt'n Midnight

judeboy101 wrote: »

SF need a young, female, "clean candidate"(not from SF DNA). I can't for the life of me think who they can get.

Despite the SF insistance that under 25's could have their first vote the candidate would have to be an Irish Citizen over 35.

And apart from the youth most of boxes have been ticked by the previous two presidents.

They can't play the gay child of an immigrant card either because Leo.



Besides what % of under 25's would vote, and of that what % would vote against "miggeldy higens".

Especially after the picture of him on a bike
https://i.imgur.com/Wk7x2.jpg


It would be interesting to see who they could put up without it ending up an opinion pole on SF.

The carrot is the election expenses they could claim and the oxygen of publicity.

A candidate who is elected or who gets more than a quarter of the quota will qualify to have their expenses reimbursed by the state up to €200,000.

So SF would need to get 1/8th of the vote , or hope the others empty their coffers more. In NI the referendum and two general elections have hit the smaller parties hard.

Capt'n Midnight

L1011 wrote: »

That'd be a 5 year term. Would need a VP system to handle deaths or retirements

That would just lead to a VP from the same party, so no independents.

The original system in the US was to have the looser be the VP. Intead they have a system where Mike Pence is next in line and a lot of minorities would view that as worse than Trump.

Squatter

pixelburp wrote: »

When did Trump ever say he would only serve one term? The man says a lot of garbage but I've never read a single brainfart along those lines.

The insistence on some sort of ideological purity is a bit unreasonable, and just seems like a flimsy excuse for a genic bash-the-politician rant. A politican is being dishonest, get the mob!

Drawing moral equivalence between Higgins changing his mind about having another shot, and (say) a broken promise in an actual manifesto, is daft. Nick Clegg famously nuked the Liberal Democrats for a blatant LIE about tuition fees, that''s a clear poltical lie.

It feels like holding Higgins up to an unreasonable standard just for the purposes of bashing him is unfair. We've all changed our mind - often about career decisions too. Yet Higgins does it and out come the pitchforks.

Re. Trump and one term, I saw it in one of his tweets during the election campaign, or thought that I had. If I'm wrong, then I apologise sincerely to Trump for associating him with Higgins's doublespeak!

As for Higgins; well my cynicism about his integrity isn't based on his self-serving pledge to be a one-term president, rather it goes back to his voting in favour of the criminal Reynolds/Ahern tax amnesty back in 1993. His pay-back was TnaG. That was the day when I realised that for MDH, staying in power was far more important than sticking to one's principles.

pixelburp

Squatter wrote: »

Re. Trump and one term, I saw it in one of his tweets during the election campaign, or thought that I had. If I'm wrong, then I apologise sincerely to Trump for associating him with Higgins's doublespeak!

As for Higgins; well my cynicism about his integrity isn't based on his self-serving pledge to be a one-term president, rather it goes back to his voting in favour of the criminal Reynolds/Ahern tax amnesty back in 1993. His pay-back was TnaG. That was the day when I realised that for MDH, staying in power was far more important than sticking to one's principles.

Ok, so it is an excuse to bash a politician off some flimsy pretext of simply changing their mind about running for a second term. A decision that every single one of us here has done. We've all changed our mind about something - and I daresay many about pretty major life decisions too.

Absolutely fair enough if you have clear past behaviour that colours your opinion of Higgins - that's perfectly valid reason to distrust any politician - but lead with that, not some snark about Trump and weaponising a simple career decision as proof - PROOF! - that Higgins is a bad egg.

This all feels like low hanging fruit against the more demonstrable, comparable actions of the actual government - not the occupier of a ceremonial role who has generally done about as good a job as a non-executive role can be.

Squatter

pixelburp wrote: »

Ok, so it is an excuse to bash a politician off some flimsy pretext of simply changing their mind about running for a second term. A decision that every single one of us here has done. We've all changed our mind about something - and I daresay many about pretty major life decisions too.

Absolutely fair enough if you have clear past behaviour that colours your opinion of Higgins - that's perfectly valid reason to distrust any politician - but lead with that, not some snark about Trump and weaponising a simple career decision as proof - PROOF! - that Higgins is a bad egg.

This all feels like low hanging fruit against the more demonstrable, comparable actions of the actual government - not the occupier of a ceremonial role who has generally done about as good a job as a non-executive role can be.

I suppose it all depends on whether or not one is happy to accept deceit from any Irish Constitutional office holder.

Because no matter how much you may equivocate about how nice he and his missus are is to small children, neighbouring monarchs and cats, the fact remains that many of us believe that he lied to us.

You are happy to forgive him, and that's your right, however I (and, it appears, quite a few others) aren't quite as tolerant of such an act.

And there I'll leave it because there's nothing else to be said.

eagle eye

flatty wrote:

And option 3, just to spell it out to you, is that he stands by his word, and doesn't seek a second term.

Did you ever change your mind in your life?

Hotblack Desiato

jmcc wrote: »

Actually they are.

Nope. Odds reflect the weight of money wagered on each outcome, as well as the probability of each outcome (and that's assuming the market is rational, people often bet based on nationalism or other emotions.) And a profit margin too, of course...

Hotblack Desiato

Beechwoodspark wrote: »

Joan freeman was mentioned as someone who is planning a run for the park on RTfew mins ago.

Yeah with the Iona Institute's popularity at an all-time high, what could possibly go wrong :rolleyes:

And Gavin Duffy of dragons den is mentioned on one of the papers.

Jesus wept. The presidency is not a gig for z-list celebs, gospel singers, or no-mark senators fond of the sound of their own voice.

realdanbreen

GarIT wrote: »

No they aren't. Probabilities must always equal to 1 when all mutually exclusive outcomes are added together. Odds are an analysis of a situation by the bookies to decide what rate would be favourable enough to make people play but unfavourable enough to make the bookies money + a loading factor to hedge against a bets winning or losing so the bookie isn't taking a large risk. If odds were probabilities every bookies would have the same odds.

FFS! All I had said was that the polls showed Hillary winning and were wrong and the polls showed Brexit being defeated and was wrong:rolleyes:

jmcc

realdanbreen wrote: »

FFS! All I had said was that the polls showed Hillary winning and were wrong and the polls showed Brexit being defeated and was wrong:rolleyes:

Wonderful seeing all this expertise about odds and Probability. The polls with Brexit had serious flaws in that the samples were not quite representative of the electorate. The polls in the US 2016 election had issues with response rates and led to complete f*ckwittery like Huffington Post's claim that HRC had a 98.2% chance of winning. With the Irish GE in 2016, the clueless weighting of voters on their likelihood to vote (only voters with an 80% or greater likeihood to vote were considered "voters") caused serious problems for one polling company.

The polls for this election are going to run into a serious problem with sampling the younger voter demographic if they rely on telephone polling rather than face to face polling. Fixed line phones are more likely to be owned by older voters. Younger voters are more likely to have only mobile phones.

Regards...jmcc

pixelburp

Squatter wrote: »

I suppose it all depends on whether or not one is happy to accept deceit from any Irish Constitutional office holder.

Because no matter how much you may equivocate about how nice he and his missus are is to small children, neighbouring monarchs and cats, the fact remains that many of us believe that he lied to us.

You are happy to forgive him, and that's your right, however I (and, it appears, quite a few others) aren't quite as tolerant of such an act.

And there I'll leave it because there's nothing else to be said.

It's not a question of being "happy to accept deceit", it's that I don't classify Higgins' decision AS deceit, a lie or any kind of disgraceful duplicity. Nor is it about whether he's a nice guy or not - I never made that argument - simply that it's a bit hyperbolic to hold politicians to some emotional standard that you wouldn't hold anyone else by.

It's not like politicians don't break promises on a regular basis, but drawing moral equivalence between a change-of-mind over a personal decision, and a demonstrative or deliberate reversal of a manifesto policy, is a little disingenuous.

The only reason the 'one term' thing came up at all was because of Higgins' age - that's literally it. Were Higgins 10 years younger this wouldn't even be a talking point, yet being the only 'non gimmick' candidate (bar Gay Mitchell, but who honestly cared about him) there was probably some intent to come up with a prickly question, all in the interest of balance. Seemed like a reasonable approach for any ageing individual to hedge ones bets.

Full disclosure: I'm not even that enthused about Higgins running again, I actually DO think he's a little to old for the role - but clearly Higgins feels his age isn't as large a barrier as perhaps he estimated back in 2011. He's probably feeling healthier and heartier than he feared. If a decent candidate runs against him, Higgins mightn't get my vote - but I don't draw parallels between a change of mind and rank duplicity.

oscarBravo

jmcc wrote: »

The polls in the US 2016 election had issues with response rates and led to complete f*ckwittery like Huffington Post's claim that HRC had a 98.2% chance of winning.

Let's take even that outlier of a prediction. Was it wrong?

Before I roll a pair of dice, I can confidently predict that there's a 97.2% chance that the outcome won't be "snake eyes". If I subsequently roll two ones, does that make my prediction wrong? Note that I didn't claim that I won't roll a two, and Huffpo didn't claim that Trump couldn't possibly win.

Like I said, people who say "the polls were wrong" are generally using it as a shorthand way of saying "I don't understand how statistics works", and that way lies "we have had enough of experts".

Hotblack Desiato

pixelburp wrote: »

Were Higgins 10 years younger this wouldn't even be a talking point, yet being the only 'non gimmick' candidate (bar Gay Mitchell, but who honestly cared about him)

Ah come on, David Norris was a far more credible candidate than Gay "Dublin Olympics" "Irish Sea Tunnel" Mitchell.

blanch152

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

Ah come on, David Norris was a far more credible candidate than Gay "Dublin Olympics" "Irish Sea Tunnel" Mitchell.

Is that the same Norris who was unable to work as a lecturer on disability grounds and was claiming a disability pension while at the same time was fully fit and able to lecture us all from his privileged position as a Senator?

jmcc

oscarBravo wrote: »

Let's take even that outlier of a prediction. Was it wrong?

Yes. It was based on poor analysis of polls. It even drove Nate Silver to call it out on Twitter using profanity to explain the abject cluelessness. I'm sure you've heard of Nate Silver and 538.

Like I said, people who say "the polls were wrong" are generally using it as a shorthand way of saying "I don't understand how statistics works", and that way lies "we have had enough of experts".

I do understand how polls work and I also understand their limitations. You obviously don't. One of the biggest problems with opinion polls is response rate. This means that rather than listing a non-response, the pollsters have to poll more than the number in the sample to get their sample. Thus a "sample" of 1,000 voters may not be a sample of 1,000 voters but rather a subset of a sample of more than 1,000 voters where some voters did not wish to respond to the pollster. Some pollsters record that percentage but ir rarely makes into to the polls that are published in the newspapers and TV. And that's just the response rate issue.

The telephone polling method is a transplant from the US and despite modifications, it is highly problematic in an Irish situation due to the differences in how area codes work in the US model and how they work in the Irish model. Irish telephone area codes can span county borders.

Now if you want to read the comments of real experts then read this:
https://www.aapor.org/Education-Resources/Reports/An-Evaluation-of-2016-Election-Polls-in-the-U-S.aspx

Right there in section 1.2.3 it specifically deals with nonresponse bias and the problems with underestimating Trump support.

The last thing that any pollster wants is to end up like the Literary Digest poll.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Literary_Digest#Presidential_poll

And here's the HuffPo's apology:
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/pollster-forecast-donald-trump-wrong_us_5823e1e5e4b0e80b02ceca15

Regards...jmcc

oscarBravo

jmcc wrote: »

Yes. It was based on poor analysis of polls.

Right, but my point, which you seem determined to miss, is that being a flawed poll, doesn't make it wrong, at least not in the sense that many people are so fond of accusing polls of being wrong.

I'll reiterate the important part of my post, which you omitted when you quoted me: if I predict that there's a 97.2% chance that I won't roll a two, and then I roll a two, was my prediction wrong?

jmcc

oscarBravo wrote: »

Right, but my point, which you seem determined to miss, is that being a flawed poll, doesn't make it wrong, at least not in the sense that many people are so fond of accusing polls of being wrong.

It wasn't a poll. It was a model based on the data from a number of polls. It is all there in the HuffPo apology.

Regards...jmcc

oscarBravo

jmcc wrote: »

It wasn't a poll. It was a model based on the data from a number of polls. It is all there in the HuffPo apology.

Oy vey.

Are you aware of what my point is, and are disagreeing with it?

Are you aware of what my point is, but are determined to make this a conversation about the HuffPo not-a-poll instead?

If I start the whole conversation again but this time talk about 538's prediction that Hillary Clinton had a 71.4% chance of winning, will you discuss the actual point I'm trying to make?

Let's try that. Were 538 wrong?