56
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2024
56 points (98.3% liked)
UK Politics
3145 readers
18 users here now
General Discussion for politics in the UK.
Please don't post to both !uk_politics@feddit.uk and !unitedkingdom@feddit.uk .
Pick the most appropriate, and put it there.
Posts should be related to UK-centric politics, and should be either a link to a reputable news source for news, or a text post on this community.
Opinion pieces are also allowed, provided they are not misleading/misrepresented/drivel, and have proper sources.
If you think "reputable news source" needs some definition, by all means start a meta thread. (These things should be publicly discussed)
Posts should be manually submitted, not by bot. Link titles should not be editorialised.
Disappointing comments will generally be left to fester in ratio, outright horrible comments will be removed.
Message the mods if you feel something really should be removed, or if a user seems to have a pattern of awful comments.
!ukpolitics@lemm.ee appears to have vanished! We can still see cached content from this link, but goodbye I guess! :'(
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
See, I don't care about this at all. There's no suggestion he was going to deliberately throw the election. He didn't have any inside information. He's allowed to place bets!
It seems to me a given that you shouldn't be able to place bets on outcomes you can directly influence. This is not so different from e.g. a boxer betting on himself to lose.
This
Also.... Just give £8000 to charity ffs
Think of it as a safety net, if you lose the election you lose your job.... But the winnings of that bet would then help you out.
If you win, you keep your reasonable lucrative job, no problem.
A very good illustration of why all types of insurance are just gambling.
That's a fair point.
I think to most people if you can afford a "flutter" of eight grand you can afford not to be an MP.
If you were single and earning an MPs salary it could be a bit of a no brainer - could you get a other equally or better paying job within a few months? Considering you have been a politician for the last 5 years not an SME in whatever field?
If you had a family on that salary, unsure. If you agreed it with your other half as a planned move, maybe?
There is no indication that any of the politicians who bet against themselves intended to throw the election. Politics is not sport.
The possibility of throwing is what makes it a bad look.
Right, but they weren't doing that. There's no evidence they were and no motive for them to do so. The comparison with athletes is not apt. A pro footballer who bets on himself and manipulates the outcome is still a pro-footballer afterwards. A politician who bets on themselves and deliberately loses is not a politician afterwards. It does not make sense to do it.
I can think of 8000 motives
That's about one tenth of the annual MP's salary. So, he has a far greater financial motive to remain an MP than he does to lose and collect the bet.
Well except for the fact that the salary option is:
If they would be able to get even a slightly worse salaried job instead of being an MP, then the financial motive is - in contrast to your claim - actually in favour of him losing
yes because "remaining an elected mp for the tories" and "not doing that" represent equal propositions in terms of effort, time and resources
The motive is money, especially if you're pretty sure you're going to lose.
He didn't throw the '05 election, even when he bet against himself.
so to check, you're fine with a football player betting against themselves, so long as they then happen to win?
Sweet summer child..
The idea that anyone would put in all the work to get selected as a candidate, then decide it was a smart move to place a bet against themselves and throw the election to make a quick buck is ridiculous. There's no way you could make enough money from the bet to make it worthwhile.
There's actually a term for it
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dummy_candidate
Or this - see the UK section
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_candidate
"All the work to be a candidate"...
It requires huge amounts of work to be a candidate. I know people who've run for parliament. One of them had previously run as a total no-hoper on multiple occasions, in order to prove he knew how to campaign well enough to get selected for a seat where he had a chance. He was so burned out by the selection process that having won the selection, he actually turned down the nomination, then quit politics altogether. The idea that he'd have deliberatey thrown any of those elections is ridiculous.
So we're just ignoring this part then?
They're not local election candidates.
This isn't some no-name who's scraped their way in after years of effort; he's been the candidate since 2005.
Placing a bet against himself is absolutely the kind of thing that could jeopardize both his candidacy going forward, and his election chances. So "he wouldn't do all that just to throw it away" is nonsense.
The man has literally given himself financial incentive not to win and you don't see how that kind of conflict of interests is an issue? Are you real?
Even if his only incentives were financial, he will make more money by winning than by losing, because an MP's salary and expenses are pretty good. So, even taking into account the innumeracy of your average MP, he does not have a financial incentive to lose.
assuming he wins, which isn't a guarantee for any tory at this point
"he's hedged his bets" isn't the justification you think it is