This is exactly the sort of nerdishness I just can't enough of. FiveThirtyEight are, as far as I've experienced, the most thoughtful pollsters around (actually, they are complete statistics geeks) and last Sunday they released their latest UK model. First of all, they dispense with any assumptions of uniform swing, which means they are already further along than any other model being discussed. They use a full matrix of voting transitions from 2005 to 2010, and build in elements of tactical voting in each seat (that is, the shift from one party to another is more likely in close seats where the transition is to the second place party, for example). They also build in more regional variation, and things like incumbency advantage and shifts between voting and not-voting.

The current results are starkly different to anything else out there. Firstly, there is no chance, in this model, of Labour finishing first in seats with the third largest vote. The predicted seats based on the slowly stabilising vote share poll of polls position (Con 34, LD 28, Lab 27) give the Tories 100 more seats than Labour, although they would be short of a majority. The Liberal Democrats take 120 seats, 80 fewer than Labour. Because of the built-in larger swing between Labour and the other two in seats where they are more likely to win, the model penalises Labour more in terms of seats than, for example, the BBC's simple uniform swing model does. A Lib-Lab coalition doesn't have a majority either, although the margin is tiny.

Obviously, it's our quirky election system, so who really knows, and in a sense its just an academic exercise. But if this is close to what happens on Thursday, what a remarkable month it will have been.

Tonight, Ronnie O'Sullivan's annual campaign to become world snooker champion and my annual campaign to see Ronnie O'Sullivan prevented from becoming world snooker champion coincidentally came to an end, with a favourable end for just one of us. Mark Selby, you are a beautiful man.

So it's Selby vs. Dott and Robertson vs. Carter. A Selby-Robertson final would be my ideal, because both are guys I've wanted to see win this for the last few years, and aside from Dott's victory of Maguire and Allen's early round performances, both have probably played the best snooker this tournament.

Greek unemployment is over 11% and will almost certainly continue to drop. The UK's unemployment is about 9%, and has probably reached the bottom. Greece's S&P rating went from BBB to BB yesterday, thus crossing the threshold into junk bond territory. The UK's credit rating is the maximum AAA. The UK is not Greece.

What people need to realise is that debt can be willingly held by investors. In the case of Greece, it is not. In the case of the UK, it is at present. Would this change? Only if it becomes apparent that we can not service it - that is, if we can not pay the interest on it. Our tax revenues are likely to rise as the economy begins to grow again, and benefits are likely to fall. I know people get frightened by big numbers, but there is always a context. I don't know how you make this case convincingly to the public, but all the scaremongerers need to stop it. Mainly, I'm talking about the Tories, but Vince Cable this morning sounded no better.

That doesn't mean I think we shouldn't start to reduce our debt, but not for the reasons that are usually touted. Debt is a transfer of resources over time. With governments, this can be between generations. If debt is built up for investment, then the benefits of such investment will probably outweigh the costs of repaying it, so future generations are not made worse off. However, crisis management has a more immediate payoff and much less of one for people in 30 years time. It is not fair that the costs of that be paid by the future generations, nor that the government's ability to crisis manage should a similar thing happen again in the future be impeded by a shortage of cash.

I've broadly agreed with the consensus views on both televised debates so far. Clegg impressed more and mastered the format immediately in the first, whilst in the second things were a lot more even. Brown did well as the statesman during the foreign policy questions, but came completely unstuck with his attack on the Tories health policies for the elderly, leading to Cameron's strongest moment of the debate.

What I found most interesting was the immigration question in the second debate. By all rights, Clegg should not do well here. His parties view on immigration is far more liberal than the average British position. For the record, he's not liberal enough on immigration for me, but then no-one ever will be. I'm uneasy with the points system for that reason, but I completely support the idea of an amnesty, and the idea that it would encourage more problematic illegal immigration in the future holds no track with me. That said, he went on the attack against both Brown and Cameron, and came out looking like a guy who might be able to actually deal with a system that has become seen as broken. His line against the Tories was simple enough - if there is going to be a cap, what's the number? - and utterly rubbishes their policy as simply rhetoric. His response to Brown, however, seemed off the cuff, yet managed to be both genuinely funny and a real argument winner.

It's been a fun ten days. Surely, we must be on the brink of a completely new political reality.

I had an idea today. If the Tories get into power, Cath and I will get £150 for being married. I will promise not to touch it, and put it in a bank. We'd earn a little interest on it. Next year, I will pay a couple £150 plus interest to get divorced.

Murder By Death (AKA The Greatest American Rock Band of the Past Decade) are back in Oxford in June. In honour of that, here's some Murder By Death videos (AKA Videos of the Number One and Best Rock Music on the Planet):

Brother.
Until Morale Improves, the Beatings Will Continue.
The Big Sleep - make sure you get to the climax at 3:30.
Those Who Stayed.

We did a run of our Byron and Shelley improv show last week for Oxfringe, although in a three man format with Joe taking the role of Byron as Jim was out of the country accidentally. Andy retained the role of Shelley and I continued as Maurice the boatman.

If you came to see it, thank you - I hope you enjoyed it. Overall, I thought the run was pretty good. I think on reflection I liked it more than our Burton Taylor run last October, but then again, I think my opinions of that were skewed by my own lack of personal enjoyment of those shows, rather than an assessment of the show as a collaborative effort. There were parts of the style of improv that we were shooting for - conversational, rather than plot-driven - which we managed on a couple of occasions, and there were other things which pleased me on a technical level, like the tying in of themes by the conclusion and what we call 'finding the game' of a scene. On the downside, I don't think we got the audience response that we wanted (crave, need, exist for, etc.). There was laughter, sure, and sometimes a lot of it, but it felt like hard work at times, which indicated to us that it wasn't the sort of free-flowing, uncontainable joy that we always picture it could be but something a lot more workmanlike.

In fact, the mood after the last show was very low-key and disappointed, followed by the saddest looking after show party you could possibly imagine: three guys sat around one full cider, one half beer and one Coke attempting to politely work out what went wrong and not apportion blame. Ultimately, however, we came to two conclusions. The first is that discussing what we would do next may largely be pointless - the four of us each have an increasing number of commitments, far more than we anticipated last June, and looking ahead seems to suggest that we will be quickly become even more geographically spread out over the coming six months. Realistically, another run of shows with the amount of rehearsal time we needed doesn't seem like an option.

The second was skirted around a lot more, but it came out implicitly: this show isn't working as we hoped. Maybe we have lofty expectations and are perfectionists, because friends and critical reception have always been positive (at least on balance), but I'm also sure that we should be having more fun. We discussed that before, but it seems that no number of directives and edicts ordering us to have fun with the show made that more likely.

I don't think we've canned it completely: it definitely feels like more of a shelving. It seems easier at this point to focus on point one and acknowledge the practical problems which mean that point two is somewhat moot. Given the opportunity, I think we would definitely come back to this project at another time and try and make it work, if only to be sure that we've done as much as we could. I hate giving up on something that I've spent so much time on. Sunk cost fallacy it may be, but it still feels no less of a failure.

Which is silly, if I think about it objectively. Financially, the two runs of shows and additional extra performances broke about even - the first made money, this one lost a little. I've gained a lot of experience from the technical and production side and, most importantly, I was involved in a hugely ambitious show which, to an acceptable standard, worked. People are generally amazed by the notion of improv in its short-form format, so the reaction to the risks a entirely improvised play receives are quite something. It's hard not to believe I'm not a better improviser now; I know for sure that I am.

And I've also learned a lot about what sort of things I want to do and am suited for. I think long-form improv is a niche performance type (at best) that I would dearly love to help push forward to wider recognition. I think I have a certain approach to improv which is useful to it: I actively look to spot themes and ideas that can brought back in again and again, I think I have a good eye for finding resolution to complicated narratives and I think the use of mime and physicality for establishing scenes is underutilised by most improvisers. Yet, if I am being honest, I have struggled with this particular format: I've felt hemmed in by a character that I never properly got into. I never felt at ease playing the straight man (and I have an immense amount of respect for anyone who can). Worst of all, I often felt superfluous to whatever stories have been developed by the others, especially in the first run of shows.

My approach to my comedy ventures has long been: I want to do things I enjoy, I want to try as hard as possible to be a success with it and if anything ever really works I'd be delighted. If not, I am fortunate to have plenty of career opportunities ahead of me and a comfortable existence. So, all of these lessons are good to know. There will be many more projects and experiments, no doubt, and I'm one step closer to working out which things I want to do and how I want to do them. And that is today's life lesson.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8602988.stm

This is an annoying debate from both sides. Firstly, a rise in employer national insurance contributions will likely lead to fewer jobs than a world where this did not happen. The economics is pretty simple to anyone familiar with a downward sloping demand curve. Any evidence based on past experiences of the form "last time NI went up, employment also went up" is nonsense, because we don't see the counterfactual: a world where NI didn't go up. Probably, in that world, employment went up even more.

I say probably in all of this because firm decision making tends to be lumpy, rather than marginal. I'm not convinced a large firm can distinguish expected profits from creating 18 new jobs and creating 22 new jobs, for example, especially in service and retail companies (which is where many of the Telegraph writers came from). I'm positive that actual research on this would yield mixed results across different firms.

All this said, there is a deficit to correct, and that money needs to come from somewhere. I'd rather Darling came out and made the argument that as we expect the economy to grow and employment to start to expand, we are raising NI contributions from employers as a way of raising extra revenue by sharing in the returns to this growth. After all, the government's deficit is partially the result of the support it gave to employers during the recession (including the giveaway to business that was the 15% VAT rate). That seems fair to me, certainly moreso that many other sources of tax income.