I recall asking on here a while back, how many PBers have actually observed their local election process.
Number told of their experiences canvassing and otherwise campaigning for candidates.
Very few had actually observed ballot processing and vote counting in person. Which is too bad, as for one thing, increases ones respect for election workers.
I'd love to be a vote counter. I'd do it for free.
You might want to check with your local council or authority then (not today obviously). In US there it's pretty easy most places to serve as a temporary election worker, tends to be dominated by older, retired people with the time to do it.
Generally best practice to pay something, as then people tend to take the job - and instructions - more seriously.
The Green Party of New Zealand has just voted to change their constitution, which affects who can be leader.
The Greens have two co-leaders. Previously one had to be male, and one female.
Now, - at least one must be female - at least one must be Māori
There is some weird stuff happening these days in NZ about so-called co-governance, a modern interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi which provokes new governance models to ensure special status for Māori.
The government just ended an attempt to impose a several councillors on Rotorua which could only be voted for by a special small Māori electorate, in the face of massive backlash by voters who realised it was an attack on “one person one vote”.
It is one of the reasons Jacinda will lose the next election.
How are they defining Maori. Is it someone who is 100% Maori or who is part Maori, maybe one Maori parent or grandparent ?
In Australia, at least, some of the more interesting types are going for self identification.
That is, anyone who says they are First Australian is First Australian and it's bad to question that. And asking for an actual test would be racist...
What could possibly go wrong?
How do you propose to test? Cranial measurement?
Dunno.
But I do know that "activists" who are nothing to do with the First Australians will so self identify and take up space in the political and economic landscape that First Australians sorely need.
You don’t know because if you think about it for more than five seconds you realise that self-identification is the only way to do it.
There are always weird activists getting in on one cause or another. Good luck proscribing that.
There's always genetics...
Are you proposing genetic tests before people can identify as a particular race?
Are you saying that "races" are not identifiable genetically?
They are but what the man on the street calls "race" is not what a geneticist would call race. David Reich has a very nuanced article on this:
"Race is a social construct" is a realisation scientists came to in the 1940s, it is not some modern woke idea. The crux, as identified in the article, is that you can take a person and put them in Brazil and they would be considered "white". You take the same person and put them in America and they would be considered "black"
It’s a realisation they came to after the Holocaust and Nazi race laws, when anything to do with “race” or “defining people by race” was considered highly offensive (very understandably) so they went way too far the other way and decided “all races are social constructs” - see the official 1945-46 UNESCO statements on race. They are politically motivated, not scientifically grounded. An early version of Woke, indeed - but after Hitler, no one was quibbling
But it is palpable nonsense. Races - ancestries - exist. They are extremely fuzzy at the edges, where one race blurs into the next, but then that is true of animal species
If races didn’t exist there wouldn’t be medical therapies aimed specifically at certain races, but there are
Agyemang C, Bhopal R, Bruijnzeels M. Negro, Black, Black African, African Caribbean, African American or what? Labelling African origin populations in the health arena in the 21st century. Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health. 2005 Dec 1;59(12):1014-8.
And:
Chowkwanyun M, Reed Jr AL. Racial health disparities and Covid-19—caution and context. New England Journal of Medicine. 2020 May 6
... for rebuttals.
Lol
I’m intrigued (to an extent) by people like you. Do you honestly think it advances your argument or makes you look superior to just shout “racist” all time? Don’t you ever consider it might have diminishing effect, simply because you hand it out so much?
Was it yesterday that you accused Travellers of being genetically inferior? Or was that the day before?
Today, you have claimed humans have different sub-species, in contradiction to all known genetic studies.
You are being racist. I doubt you're going to stop. I'm not trying to persuade you or argue with you: that seems like a waste of time. I just hope that other people reading your nonsense are not taken in by your faux confidence and somehow imagine that you know what you are talking about.
“Was it yesterday that you accused Travellers of being genetically inferior? Or was that the day before?“
But I didn’t say that, did I? I asked why Traveller communities seemed to have a predisposition to fuck with/neglect their environment, and I asked whether it was cultural or genetic?
Anyone who has encountered Traveller communities will know that what I say is simply the case. Denying it is futile. It’s like denying Deep South Americans are more obese than most (which I also did recently). In neither situation am I claiming either community is “inferior”. Just pointing out an undeniable trait
Someone suggested that the reason for Traveller attitudes to waste/litter might be a cultural aversion to The Man, doing anything that looks like co-operation with society. That seems reasonable. So maybe not genetic, at most epigenetic and most likely cultural. Nurture not nature, not something that springs from a deeply rooted “nomadic” lifestyle
Don’t you claim to be some senior Woke academic at a shit university? Gawd elp the kids
Cultural, obviously*, but I think some city-dwellers don't understand just how emotive an issue it is for people in rural areas. It should be discussed openly and fairly.
On your main point, race must be recognised, not least for the stark differences in the way people react to various medicines.
*Good episode of Mad Men where they dump all their litter after a picnic. Americans only stopped littering after a huge campaign against it relatively recently.
The American attitude to despoliation is fascinating. As long ago as Jefferson, Americans were lamenting that the problem they had was “too much land, not enough people” - the opposite of Europe. “So we waste it, and don’t farm it properly” - hence the importation of slave labour to pick cotton and tobacco and whatever.
The attitude persists - we have so much land, who cares. You can see it in the development of the “strip mall”. Obviously horrible yet they stretch for miles around so many towns. Because there is always good land beyond
And yet at the same time Americans pioneered the National Park. Perfect preservation of glorious landscapes (and hooray for that)
The Green Party of New Zealand has just voted to change their constitution, which affects who can be leader.
The Greens have two co-leaders. Previously one had to be male, and one female.
Now, - at least one must be female - at least one must be Māori
There is some weird stuff happening these days in NZ about so-called co-governance, a modern interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi which provokes new governance models to ensure special status for Māori.
The government just ended an attempt to impose a several councillors on Rotorua which could only be voted for by a special small Māori electorate, in the face of massive backlash by voters who realised it was an attack on “one person one vote”.
It is one of the reasons Jacinda will lose the next election.
How are they defining Maori. Is it someone who is 100% Maori or who is part Maori, maybe one Maori parent or grandparent ?
In Australia, at least, some of the more interesting types are going for self identification.
That is, anyone who says they are First Australian is First Australian and it's bad to question that. And asking for an actual test would be racist...
What could possibly go wrong?
How do you propose to test? Cranial measurement?
Dunno.
But I do know that "activists" who are nothing to do with the First Australians will so self identify and take up space in the political and economic landscape that First Australians sorely need.
You don’t know because if you think about it for more than five seconds you realise that self-identification is the only way to do it.
There are always weird activists getting in on one cause or another. Good luck proscribing that.
There's always genetics...
Are you proposing genetic tests before people can identify as a particular race?
Are you saying that "races" are not identifiable genetically?
They are but what the man on the street calls "race" is not what a geneticist would call race. David Reich has a very nuanced article on this:
"Race is a social construct" is a realisation scientists came to in the 1940s, it is not some modern woke idea. The crux, as identified in the article, is that you can take a person and put them in Brazil and they would be considered "white". You take the same person and put them in America and they would be considered "black"
It’s a realisation they came to after the Holocaust and Nazi race laws, when anything to do with “race” or “defining people by race” was considered highly offensive (very understandably) so they went way too far the other way and decided “all races are social constructs” - see the official 1945-46 UNESCO statements on race. They are politically motivated, not scientifically grounded. An early version of Woke, indeed - but after Hitler, no one was quibbling
But it is palpable nonsense. Races - ancestries - exist. They are extremely fuzzy at the edges, where one race blurs into the next, but then that is true of animal species
If races didn’t exist there wouldn’t be medical therapies aimed specifically at certain races, but there are
Agyemang C, Bhopal R, Bruijnzeels M. Negro, Black, Black African, African Caribbean, African American or what? Labelling African origin populations in the health arena in the 21st century. Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health. 2005 Dec 1;59(12):1014-8.
And:
Chowkwanyun M, Reed Jr AL. Racial health disparities and Covid-19—caution and context. New England Journal of Medicine. 2020 May 6
... for rebuttals.
Lol
I’m intrigued (to an extent) by people like you. Do you honestly think it advances your argument or makes you look superior to just shout “racist” all time? Don’t you ever consider it might have diminishing effect, simply because you hand it out so much?
Was it yesterday that you accused Travellers of being genetically inferior? Or was that the day before?
Today, you have claimed humans have different sub-species, in contradiction to all known genetic studies.
You are being racist. I doubt you're going to stop. I'm not trying to persuade you or argue with you: that seems like a waste of time. I just hope that other people reading your nonsense are not taken in by your faux confidence and somehow imagine that you know what you are talking about.
“Was it yesterday that you accused Travellers of being genetically inferior? Or was that the day before?“
But I didn’t say that, did I? I asked why Traveller communities seemed to have a predisposition to fuck with/neglect their environment, and I asked whether it was cultural or genetic?
Anyone who has encountered Traveller communities will know that what I say is simply the case. Denying it is futile. It’s like denying Deep South Americans are more obese than most (which I also did recently). In neither situation am I claiming either community is “inferior”. Just pointing out an undeniable trait
Someone suggested that the reason for Traveller attitudes to waste/litter might be a cultural aversion to The Man, doing anything that looks like co-operation with society. That seems reasonable. So maybe not genetic, at most epigenetic and most likely cultural. Nurture not nature, not something that springs from a deeply rooted “nomadic” lifestyle
Don’t you claim to be some senior Woke academic at a shit university? Gawd elp the kids
Cultural, obviously*, but I think some city-dwellers don't understand just how emotive an issue it is for people in rural areas. It should be discussed openly and fairly.
On your main point, race must be recognised, not least for the stark differences in the way people react to various medicines.
*Good episode of Mad Men where they dump all their litter after a picnic. Americans only stopped littering after a huge campaign against it relatively recently.
What startled me, just pre COVID, at Reading festival was the completely inability of the young to use a bin.
I generally despise Festival Republic (formerly Mean Fiddler) - but they had provided bins every few yards. And people going round picking up trash.
Yet the ground was covered in discarded plastic and paper. Everywhere. Ground into the ground. You'd have to scrape the top soil off and sieve it, to get rid of it.
For the Christians on here, I hadn't realised that the Bible, when it mentions abortion at all (which is almost never) is actually in favour of it. Though I don't think 'pro-choice' quite describes it. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Numbers+5
For the Christians on here, I hadn't realised that the Bible, when it mentions abortion at all (which is almost never) is actually in favour of it. Though I don't think 'pro-choice' quite describes it. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Numbers+5
Old Testament God was bit OTT. But after he had the mid-life crisis - found a younger lady, had a kid - he mellowed a lot.
No Liberal Democrat candidate in my Ward but as far too many have suffered in history for the simple right to have a vote or choice, I always vote.
14 candidates for three votes and I voted Reform (local man, reasonable programme, more coherent than anything offered by many of the other candidates) and Independent (well, he's Socialist Labour but he's most likely to give Labour a hard time). I thought about Green for the third vote but they've made no effort in my Ward - I should add the two above both leafletted.
The polling station nicely busy with a queue as we left. The well turned out Conservative spoke to me (ignoring Mrs Stodge) and said "good evening, I'm (he gave his name) and I represent the Conservative Party. I'm from the young generation and I'm Conservative" to which my implacable response was "I'm from the older generation and I'm not".
I love political discourse on the streets - it's like improv, a form of "Whose Vote is it Anyway?".
I recall asking on here a while back, how many PBers have actually observed their local election process.
Number told of their experiences canvassing and otherwise campaigning for candidates.
Very few had actually observed ballot processing and vote counting in person. Which is too bad, as for one thing, increases ones respect for election workers.
Lots of us will have done. What do you want to know?
Turnout has, by and large, not been brisk(tm) in this Conservative-controlled district. Too early to say but I wonder if the "pissed off Tory voters are just going to stay home" narrative may be coming true.
The Green Party of New Zealand has just voted to change their constitution, which affects who can be leader.
The Greens have two co-leaders. Previously one had to be male, and one female.
Now, - at least one must be female - at least one must be Māori
There is some weird stuff happening these days in NZ about so-called co-governance, a modern interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi which provokes new governance models to ensure special status for Māori.
The government just ended an attempt to impose a several councillors on Rotorua which could only be voted for by a special small Māori electorate, in the face of massive backlash by voters who realised it was an attack on “one person one vote”.
It is one of the reasons Jacinda will lose the next election.
How are they defining Maori. Is it someone who is 100% Maori or who is part Maori, maybe one Maori parent or grandparent ?
In Australia, at least, some of the more interesting types are going for self identification.
That is, anyone who says they are First Australian is First Australian and it's bad to question that. And asking for an actual test would be racist...
What could possibly go wrong?
How do you propose to test? Cranial measurement?
Dunno.
But I do know that "activists" who are nothing to do with the First Australians will so self identify and take up space in the political and economic landscape that First Australians sorely need.
You don’t know because if you think about it for more than five seconds you realise that self-identification is the only way to do it.
There are always weird activists getting in on one cause or another. Good luck proscribing that.
There's always genetics...
Are you proposing genetic tests before people can identify as a particular race?
Are you saying that "races" are not identifiable genetically?
They are but what the man on the street calls "race" is not what a geneticist would call race. David Reich has a very nuanced article on this:
"Race is a social construct" is a realisation scientists came to in the 1940s, it is not some modern woke idea. The crux, as identified in the article, is that you can take a person and put them in Brazil and they would be considered "white". You take the same person and put them in America and they would be considered "black"
It’s a realisation they came to after the Holocaust and Nazi race laws, when anything to do with “race” or “defining people by race” was considered highly offensive (very understandably) so they went way too far the other way and decided “all races are social constructs” - see the official 1945-46 UNESCO statements on race. They are politically motivated, not scientifically grounded. An early version of Woke, indeed - but after Hitler, no one was quibbling
But it is palpable nonsense. Races - ancestries - exist. They are extremely fuzzy at the edges, where one race blurs into the next, but then that is true of animal species
If races didn’t exist there wouldn’t be medical therapies aimed specifically at certain races, but there are
Agyemang C, Bhopal R, Bruijnzeels M. Negro, Black, Black African, African Caribbean, African American or what? Labelling African origin populations in the health arena in the 21st century. Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health. 2005 Dec 1;59(12):1014-8.
And:
Chowkwanyun M, Reed Jr AL. Racial health disparities and Covid-19—caution and context. New England Journal of Medicine. 2020 May 6
... for rebuttals.
Lol
I’m intrigued (to an extent) by people like you. Do you honestly think it advances your argument or makes you look superior to just shout “racist” all time? Don’t you ever consider it might have diminishing effect, simply because you hand it out so much?
Was it yesterday that you accused Travellers of being genetically inferior? Or was that the day before?
Today, you have claimed humans have different sub-species, in contradiction to all known genetic studies.
You are being racist. I doubt you're going to stop. I'm not trying to persuade you or argue with you: that seems like a waste of time. I just hope that other people reading your nonsense are not taken in by your faux confidence and somehow imagine that you know what you are talking about.
“Was it yesterday that you accused Travellers of being genetically inferior? Or was that the day before?“
But I didn’t say that, did I? I asked why Traveller communities seemed to have a predisposition to fuck with/neglect their environment, and I asked whether it was cultural or genetic?
Anyone who has encountered Traveller communities will know that what I say is simply the case. Denying it is futile. It’s like denying Deep South Americans are more obese than most (which I also did recently). In neither situation am I claiming either community is “inferior”. Just pointing out an undeniable trait
Someone suggested that the reason for Traveller attitudes to waste/litter might be a cultural aversion to The Man, doing anything that looks like co-operation with society. That seems reasonable. So maybe not genetic, at most epigenetic and most likely cultural. Nurture not nature, not something that springs from a deeply rooted “nomadic” lifestyle
Don’t you claim to be some senior Woke academic at a shit university? Gawd elp the kids
Cultural, obviously*, but I think some city-dwellers don't understand just how emotive an issue it is for people in rural areas. It should be discussed openly and fairly.
On your main point, race must be recognised, not least for the stark differences in the way people react to various medicines.
*Good episode of Mad Men where they dump all their litter after a picnic. Americans only stopped littering after a huge campaign against it relatively recently.
The American attitude to despoliation is fascinating. As long ago as Jefferson, Americans were lamenting that the problem they had was “too much land, not enough people” - the opposite of Europe. “So we waste it, and don’t farm it properly” - hence the importation of slave labour to pick cotton and tobacco and whatever.
The attitude persists - we have so much land, who cares. You can see it in the development of the “strip mall”. Obviously horrible yet they stretch for miles around so many towns. Because there is always good land beyond
And yet at the same time Americans pioneered the National Park. Perfect preservation of glorious landscapes (and hooray for that)
The John Muir Way (Scotland) is something of an anti-climax after the John Muir Trail (California)...
On your main point, race must be recognised, not least for the stark differences in the way people react to various medicines.
People can react very differently to various medicines. Most of that variation has nothing to do with where you or your ancestors come from. A little bit of that variation does line up with you or your ancestors coming from certain places, but none of that variation lines up with Leon's proposed 3-4 "races" (which are remarkably similar to traditional 19th century ideas of "race").
There has been a surge of interest in the idea of drugs targeted at particular ethnic groups. There have been critiques of that surge of interest! I suggest this short editorial on the topic if you're interested: https://www.bmj.com/content/330/7499/1036
Boeing is moving its corporate headquarters from Chicago to Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC.
Considerable schadenfreude in Seattle, the FIRST city betrayed by Boeing's bean-counting, no-brains leadership.
All the better to lobby from ?
Indeed.
The first target is use of SAA Fixed Price for NASA contracts. Apparently it is very unfair on big companies like Boeing. According to their wholly owned Senators and Congresscriters, anyway.
If Tories get up to 34 in these places in these conditions that will be an excellent outcome for them. 😕
All the boring things from electionologists have been pointing to a Meh result for the last two weeks to be honest. Maybe it’s just the set of elections this year following high tide for anti Tory vote last time they are up, it can’t just be as much fun as hoped?
Us Libdems can still have fun at Labours expense though, taking Hull off Starmer 😈
That would be just a 2% swing to Labour, compared to 2018, equivalent to a Labour lead of 3% nationwide. The Conservatives would be perfectly happy with that.
The way the government is undermining it, you do question it.
A direct line can be traced from Sinn Féin’s performance today and that vote in 2016 which I keep banging on about.
Sinn Féin's performance in the most recent Assembly elections:
2007: 26.2% 2011: 26.9% 2016: 24.0% 2017: 27.9%
The latest tracker poll has them on 26%. If anything stands out post-that-vote-in-2016, it's not Sinn Féin's performance but the growth of the Alliance.
Or rather, the collapse of the DUP
Sinn Fein has a ceiling in the mid 20s %. The overall nationalist vote share seems to have peaked, too.
Re: today's elections what is basic timetable for results? For example, will they start counting in Northern Ireland tonight OR wait until Friday?
Am guessing that returns from local elections in Britain will start trickling in around midnight? Specifically, what about London?
ALSO what are some good links for live blogs & results reporting?
Thanks in advance for your aid & assistance for your fellow PBer(s)!
N. Ireland is Friday. It's STV, a long count with multiple rounds, so needs a full day.
Same as in Republic. Sensible way to do it, election one day, counting the next.
Yours truly has observed plenty of elections, where election workers & administrators put in a full Election Day, and then some - and then work some more processing ballots & counting votes into the wee hours. NOT optimum from efficiency standpoint.
Whereas on the Emerald Isle, having the count the following day gives workers AND observers the opportunity to get a decent night's sleep between plunging into the vote counting bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.
I've been a counting agent, most recently for the EU referendum, in Luton. And, you're right, everyone is exhausted, and ballot papers are constantly being put into the wrong pile. You have to concentrate really hard.
Fantastic news, I've often said we should limit the number of grammar school educated people at the elite universities.
Talented grammar school pupils should not be sidelined for the sake of improving diversity, elite universities have been told.
Professor Stephen Toope, the vice-chancellor of Cambridge, has said the university might introduce figures on grammar school recruitment because focusing on intake from state schools as a whole was not an effective indicator of wealth or social class.
Toope, a Canadian who leaves Cambridge this September, told The Times Education Commission on Tuesday that “substituting more grammar school students for students from independent schools” would not “accomplish widening participation goals”.
Just visiting my parents up in Enfield, it's completely dead on the roads. Loads of people out walking and the bars/restaurants are packed. Discretionary spending on petrol/visits has definitely tanked in suburban north London. For now the bars, pubs and restaurants are doing roaring trade.
I recall asking on here a while back, how many PBers have actually observed their local election process.
Number told of their experiences canvassing and otherwise campaigning for candidates.
Very few had actually observed ballot processing and vote counting in person. Which is too bad, as for one thing, increases ones respect for election workers.
When I stood as a candidate (and thankfully lost) I attended my count. Seeing the comments on the spoilt ballots was amusing, and standing on the stage for my declaration was a nice experience. I'd even worn my red tie for the occasion!
Comments
Generally best practice to pay something, as then people tend to take the job - and instructions - more seriously.
The attitude persists - we have so much land, who cares. You can see it in the development of the “strip mall”. Obviously horrible yet they stretch for miles around so many towns. Because there is always good land beyond
And yet at the same time Americans pioneered the National Park. Perfect preservation of glorious landscapes (and hooray for that)
I generally despise Festival Republic (formerly Mean Fiddler) - but they had provided bins every few yards. And people going round picking up trash.
Yet the ground was covered in discarded plastic and paper. Everywhere. Ground into the ground. You'd have to scrape the top soil off and sieve it, to get rid of it.
Though I don't think 'pro-choice' quite describes it.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Numbers+5
I think when the country realises what the removal of the right to privacy means it'll be too late.
The GOP appear to see The Handmaid's Tale as an achievable policy goal.
14 candidates for three votes and I voted Reform (local man, reasonable programme, more coherent than anything offered by many of the other candidates) and Independent (well, he's Socialist Labour but he's most likely to give Labour a hard time). I thought about Green for the third vote but they've made no effort in my Ward - I should add the two above both leafletted.
The polling station nicely busy with a queue as we left. The well turned out Conservative spoke to me (ignoring Mrs Stodge) and said "good evening, I'm (he gave his name) and I represent the Conservative Party. I'm from the young generation and I'm Conservative" to which my implacable response was "I'm from the older generation and I'm not".
I love political discourse on the streets - it's like improv, a form of "Whose Vote is it Anyway?".
🔴 Sadiq Khan has admitted that comparing Sir Keir Starmer's "beergate" with "partygate" is fair, as the Labour leader faced growing questions from his party over the handling of the scandal
https://twitter.com/telegraph/status/1522285539352850434
There has been a surge of interest in the idea of drugs targeted at particular ethnic groups. There have been critiques of that surge of interest! I suggest this short editorial on the topic if you're interested: https://www.bmj.com/content/330/7499/1036
May 10 - Nebraska, West Virginia
May 17 - Idaho, Kentucky, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania
May 24 - Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia and Texas Runoff.
The first target is use of SAA Fixed Price for NASA contracts. Apparently it is very unfair on big companies like Boeing. According to their wholly owned Senators and Congresscriters, anyway.
They are probably worried the idea might spread.
It appears that “White British” has dropped from 78% since 2010 to 70%.
Not sure IF that counts as "relatively recently" or not.
Actually, think you'd be an improvement, even if all you know is what you glean from the web!
I presume there might be some of that, but not much.