1). For the form guide in this two-horse race, please see:
a). THE PRESENT (SHAN OAKES, GREEN):
http://shanoakes.blogspot.com
http://shanoakes.typepad.com
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=33635377720
b).. THE PAST (DAVID DAVIS):
http://www.daviddavisforfreedom.com
2). Mainstream bookmakers such as Paddy Power are not currently putting prices on the Haltemprice and Howden by-election on their website.
Yesterday, however, I emailed [email protected] to ask them what price they would offer for the Green Party to win, and I was given the price of 14-1.
Therefore step one is to email Paddy Power at [email protected] , or call them on
UK – 08000 565 275
Ireland – 1800 238 888
International – +353 1 4040120,
or pop into one of their shops, and ask them to offer you price on Green Party to win.
You can of course also try other mainstream bookmakers.
Paddy Power Politics Website:
http://www.paddypower.com/bet?action=go_disp_cat&-disp_cat_id=31
3). If you have been quoted a price, and you wish to (POSSIBLY) make a million pounds (to be used for ethical purposes), divide ?1,000,000 by the price quoted, and lay a bet of that amount. For example, at 14-1, you need to place ?71,428.57. If you do not have such a large amount of money, and are unwilling to risk such a large amount, you can of course bet a smaller amount, depending on the minimum bet rules of the bookmakers you visit. For example, ?10 at 14-1 might make you ?140 back, should Shan Oakes (Green) get elected on 10th July 2008, which looks increasingly likely. Of course, you can maximise your winnings by creating syndicates where you pool your resources with friends, family, and other activists.
4). If you cannot get a price from the mainstream bookmakers, you may be able to put on smaller bets at Betfair. Betfair uses a system whereby you bet against others who bet in the opposite direction, so there are tight limits on how much you can bet based on the liquidity in the opposite direction. Post-credit crunch, liquidity is at a bit of a premium, so you may only be able to put on tiny amounts. However, as an example, ?2 at 40-1 might reap you ?78 (after Betfair have removed their commission) or ?11 at 15-1 might reap back ?154.00.
Betfair’-s matched bets are constantly in flux, so it is worth monitoring it if you wish to use it.
Betfair Politics Zone:
http://politicszone.betfair.com/zone
Betfair Haltemprice and Howden:
http://www.betfair.com/Index.do?mi=21056183&-ex=1&-rfr=3925suid=3925&-bspi=3925
5). Please also use InTrade. I haven’-t worked out how to use this yet.
6). Obviously, it is possible for you to lose your money. If you are not willing to accept that risk, please do not bet. Furthermore, if you believe all gambling to be wrong, or gambling on politics to be wrong, please ignore this advice entirely.
7). If you do bet and Shan Oakes is elected, please consider sending a proportion of your earnings (eg half) to the Green Party. If not, please at least consider sending a proportion to a social or environmental organisation. Please also consider sending me 1% of your earnings at [email protected], as a reward for having come up with the idea. Of course, copyleft ideas cannot be copyrighted, and you are under no obligation whatsoever to send me the 1%, though I would appreciate it enormously.
8). If Shan Oakes is not elected (which looks increasingly unlikely), please do not come after me (at [email protected]) with malice aforethought. Any risks taken are taken on by those betting, and candidates can be unelected as much as elected, just as house prices can (and are) coming down. The housing bubble has burst. So has David Davis’-s so-called ‘-freedom’- bandwagon, whose wheels didn’-t work after all. Davis supported 28 days without trial and voted for ID cards in 2004, so his ‘-crusade for liberty’- is, very obviously, naked leadership positioning. Verily the Emperor weareth no clothes. That doesn’-t mean, however, that the voters of H&-H are incapable of returning him to rob us off our taxation on his salary, expenses, and second home allowances all over again, and take us into another ill-judged and illegal colonial misadventure such as an invasion of Iran. Hopefully, however, they will see sense and choose not to, and instead reward Shan Oakes’-s positivity by returning her to Westminster with a landslide.
9). To help the flow, please donate as much as you can to the Shan Oakes campaign. You can donate using the online button at http://shanoakes.blogspot.com.
It’-s the ecolonomy, stupid!
ECOLONOMICS INSTITUTE:
http://www.instituteofecolonomics.org/
RAOUL VANEIGEM: CORPSES IN THEIR MOUTHS
http://www.scenewash.org/lobbies/chainthinker/situationist/vaneigem/rel/rel08.html
IAN BROWN: CORPSES IN THEIR MOUTHS:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4jQf-BeaMA
IAN BROWN: ILLEGAL ATTACKS:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqfBH1IJkWo
Love from Paddy Hedges
Anti-Hedge Fund Manager (AHFM)
INTRADE have now opened a market on Haltemprice and Howden:
http://www.intrade.com/jsp/int…..altemprice
@Paddy Hedges: Yes, I did put that link in your post.
Garbage again.
A shame you think that, Mr.Smithson!
Almost all of the work I most admire – whether in the political
field, or outside it, was greeted with accusations of being “garbage”,
“madness”, “rubbish” etc.
A classic example is Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring”, which caused a
near-riot when first performed in Paris in 1913. Half the audience
hated it (and were very threatened by it); the other half loved it – it
was just what they were yearning for all along.
I note with interest that you believe over at politicalbetting.com
that the seat is a shoe-in for Quixote Davis, with a possible Saward
second. I hope I am too respectful to dismiss it as “garbage”
and I thank you for the advice, but I shall not be following it.
I have already placed my ?71,428.57 and I shall either be a
significantly more impoverished man on 11th July or else
safely tucked up in the Cayman Islands with a bottle of
Bollinger.
Best wishes,
Hedges, P
(AHFM)
@Paddy Hedges: Mike Smithson has the right to say that, and you have the right to publish what you think on Midas Oracle.
–
Midas Oracle is a group blog with 74 authors, and we value diversity in opinion.
–
@Paddy Hedges: I like the idea that a world citizen can post on a group blog, ask for the creation of new prediction markets, get those event derivative contracts created by an Irish exchange or British exchange, and encourage other people to trade their views. That’s our modern form of democracy.
Dear Chris,
Yes, Mr.Smithson has a right to his opinion, and to express it. It is heartening that Midas Oracle is
a forum where people can express their opinions without being censored, ‘moderated’, written off
as ‘mad’ or a ‘troll’ or ’spam’. You are therefore running a very valuable service in what are
deeply repressive and undemocratic times, certainly in the UK at the moment.
But yes – you are right – there are other forms of democracy, and hallelujah for people like you to
provide fora which ARE genuinely liberated spaces.
Unlike, alas, the Westminster Bubble Parliament.
Best,
PH
@Paddy Hedges: The difference between Political Betting and Midas Oracle is that Midas Oracle focuses on prediction markets (while PB focuses on UK politics), and that we try to give air time to as many people as possible.
–
By “democracy”, I meant that betting exchanges allow people to reveal their true opinions… and the probabilistic predictions generated are the best possible accurate forecast (although omni-science does not exist). So I meant that betting exchanges are good for the democracy, and that, in that perspective, people have the right to propose new prediction markets, and to incite other people to bet on them. That’s good. It’s not “garbage”. It’s freedom of speech. It’s life, in its diversity.
Chris, that’s a very cheap way of describing a modern day democracy / freedom of speech.
–
We have freedom of speech in the US, yet we don’t have betting exchanges. Same deal in Holland.
Over the past decade or so a number of respected people (politicians, people from the media) have fought hard to remind us all about the value of freedom of speech. By expressing opinions which border on what society will tolerate, thereby teaching, opening room for discussion, confronting people with their prejudices. Some of them have been shot, others still have a price on their heads. I know there has been a lot of interest from the US about what has been going on here, unfortunately I don’t know how it is looked upon.
–
What I’ve been witnessing in the UK over the past few years, is that large institutions (political ones as well) will do all they can to influence (manipulate) the public opinion. You simply cannot have a real democracy or freedom of speech when you don’t respect the opinions of others. And that’s what we’re seeing in the UK today, mostly by the large institutions, who are neglecting their responsibility and abusing their influence.
What you need in the UK is what we have had here, in Holland. There will be a price to pay for those with enough courage to step forward. But in the end, we all die anyway. If you believe in death.
@Medemi: When you bet, you express an opinion. When you look at the betting exchange odds, you see the consensus. All this should be protected under the First Amendment.
We here in Britain don’t currently have freedom of expression, a First Amendment, or any kind of
written constitution. What we DO have is personal debt outstripping GDP, a house price crash,
and a whole host of media pundits (in a corporate vested interest Fourth Estate) queuing up to
offer the same uniform opinion: Davis’s victory is inevitable.
Some of us beg to differ.
John Maynard Keynes on Speculation:
“Professional investment may be likened to those newspaper competitions in which the competitors have to pick out the six prettiest faces from a hundred photographs, the prize being awarded to the competitor whose choice most nearly corresponds to the average preferences of the competitors as a whole; so that each competitor has to pick, not the faces which he himself finds the prettiest, but those which he thinks likeliest to catch the fancy of the other competitors, all of whom are looking at the problem from the same point of view.”
“It is not a case of choosing those which, to the best of one’s judgment, are really the prettiest, nor even those which average opinion genuinely thinks the prettiest. We have reached the third degree when we devote our intelligences to anticipating what average opinion expects the average opinion to be. And there are some, I believe, who practise the fourth, fifth and higher degrees.”
Keynes, John Maynard The general theory of employment, interest and money. London : Macmillan, St. Martin’s Press, 1936. page 156.
http://www.projects.ex.ac.uk/R…..tives.html
There’s a lot of criticism, here in Holland, on US policy, Bush, etc. Most of it unjustified IMO. Being a world leader you’re also an easy victim in these modern times. But you’d have to be a nutter to be criticizing the US when you live in Britain.
–
I’m not aware of any criticism on UK policy etc. We simply don’t talk about that, or maybe we’re not interested. I will change that.
For now, I’m eagerly awaiting betfair’s next move. And I already know what it is, because I have friends on the inside. 
Well, that makes us a nation of nutters then, Medemi.
http://www.hyperguide.co.uk/mha/
I studied the statistics on minimum wages once. It is hard for me to remember the exact rankings, but to my surprise it was the UK who surpassed Holland and is now top of the list I believe (when you forget about Luxembourg). That should act as a buffer when house prices do come tumbling down. The US is clearly lacking here.
–
The point is, we can learn a lot from each other. And when we’re criticizing the US it should be for the right reasons. That’s not what I’m seeing.
Well, one statistic is that, according to the New Economics Foundation, the UK is 108th in the
Happy Planet Index:
http://www.neweconomics.org/ge…..20706.aspx
I have another one for you. Child well-being. Page 2.
–
http://www.unicef-irc.org/publ…..c7_eng.pdf
–
Which I was celebrating on the betfair forum.
The problem we have, is that the government has a tendecy to tax us to death, and do it in an inefficient way.
“No such thing as society”.
–
http://www.margaretthatcher.or…..cid=106689
“I think we have gone through a period when too many children and people have been given to understand”I have a problem, it is the Government’s job to cope with it!” or”I have a problem, I will go and get a grant to cope with it!” “I am homeless, the Government must house me!” and so they are casting their problems on society and who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and[fo 1] there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first.”
–
That’s just heartbreaking, innit ? the responsibility and commitment of the Government.
Now compare that to what Unicef have to say:
–
The true measure of a nation’s standing is
how well it attends to its children – their
health and safety, their material security,
their education and socialization, and
their sense of being loved, valued, and
included in the families and societies into
which they are born.
Max Keiser and Stacey Herbert discuss how to bid on the Shan Oakes campaign at Betfair, Intrade etc:
http://www.maxkeiser.com/tam050708.mp3
Please sign the ‘Shan Syndicate’ pledge at Pledgebank before laying bets:
http://www.pledgebank.com/shansyndicate
Mate, you are an idiot. What a load of nonsense this is. The Greens struggled to beat the loony English Democrats. What a shambles.