Off topic. We dodged a bullet. I wouldn't have voted for Boris but many would.
Boris would have made the members vote. Boris would have won the members vote We would have more to worry about that Leaky Sue.
Boris would have lost the members vote which is why he pulled out. That would have been utterly humiliating.
Wishful thinking. I was at a members event last weekend and it was chock full of older members lamenting they didn't get a chance to put Boris back in. No amount of calling them out of touch with reality gets through to them, they are impervious to real life. Everything is some kind of conspiracy to prevent "those of us who worked hard all our lives" from "having our say", some of the more delusional ones seemed to think that Rishi conspire with Labour to strip them of their votes. Honestly, the Tory party membership is a complete mess. The Mail has completely addled their brains.
Look at our very own @Casino_Royale here who, with an 80-seat majority in the HoC, nevertheless blames "the LIberati" for frustrating ordinary decent peoples' plans to torpedo boats in the channel bringing Albanians over here to wash our cars.
That is pretty much what ODP really do want. Can't buck the polling.
I remember Roger Moore's complaints about his final outing, A View To A Kill. Christopher Walken's character callously machine-gunning his own henchmen.
That is how the ODP envisage the solution to the boat people issue. With the Nigel likely on his boat directing the fire. That is the level of vitriol and hatred that has been whipped up. Once again I have seen a lot of hate directed at the RNLI for their actions rescuing drowning people from the water. This is madness.
I might regret asking this but what does ODP stand for?
Off topic. We dodged a bullet. I wouldn't have voted for Boris but many would.
Boris would have made the members vote. Boris would have won the members vote We would have more to worry about that Leaky Sue.
Boris would have lost the members vote which is why he pulled out. That would have been utterly humiliating.
Wishful thinking. I was at a members event last weekend and it was chock full of older members lamenting they didn't get a chance to put Boris back in. No amount of calling them out of touch with reality gets through to them, they are impervious to real life. Everything is some kind of conspiracy to prevent "those of us who worked hard all our lives" from "having our say", some of the more delusional ones seemed to think that Rishi conspire with Labour to strip them of their votes. Honestly, the Tory party membership is a complete mess. The Mail has completely addled their brains.
Look at our very own @Casino_Royale here who, with an 80-seat majority in the HoC, nevertheless blames "the LIberati" for frustrating ordinary decent peoples' plans to torpedo boats in the channel bringing Albanians over here to wash our cars.
That is pretty much what ODP really do want. Can't buck the polling.
I remember Roger Moore's complaints about his final outing, A View To A Kill. Christopher Walken's character callously machine-gunning his own henchmen.
That is how the ODP envisage the solution to the boat people issue. With the Nigel likely on his boat directing the fire. That is the level of vitriol and hatred that has been whipped up. Once again I have seen a lot of hate directed at the RNLI for their actions rescuing drowning people from the water. This is madness.
I might regret asking this but what does ODP stand for?
From the thread, I think "ordinary decent people".
Off topic. We dodged a bullet. I wouldn't have voted for Boris but many would.
Boris would have made the members vote. Boris would have won the members vote We would have more to worry about that Leaky Sue.
Boris would have lost the members vote which is why he pulled out. That would have been utterly humiliating.
Wishful thinking. I was at a members event last weekend and it was chock full of older members lamenting they didn't get a chance to put Boris back in. No amount of calling them out of touch with reality gets through to them, they are impervious to real life. Everything is some kind of conspiracy to prevent "those of us who worked hard all our lives" from "having our say", some of the more delusional ones seemed to think that Rishi conspire with Labour to strip them of their votes. Honestly, the Tory party membership is a complete mess. The Mail has completely addled their brains.
Look at our very own @Casino_Royale here who, with an 80-seat majority in the HoC, nevertheless blames "the LIberati" for frustrating ordinary decent peoples' plans to torpedo boats in the channel bringing Albanians over here to wash our cars.
That is pretty much what ODP really do want. Can't buck the polling.
I remember Roger Moore's complaints about his final outing, A View To A Kill. Christopher Walken's character callously machine-gunning his own henchmen.
That is how the ODP envisage the solution to the boat people issue. With the Nigel likely on his boat directing the fire. That is the level of vitriol and hatred that has been whipped up. Once again I have seen a lot of hate directed at the RNLI for their actions rescuing drowning people from the water. This is madness.
I might regret asking this but what does ODP stand for?
Is there value betting AGAINST the Arizona favourite, Kari Lake, at these odds?
The early votes are modestly good for the Dems, the polls have significantly tightened. No way Kari Lake is that big a favourite
She's 2 points clear in the 538 pollnig average. Barring two 11 point lead polls the polls are very consistent at a 1-3 point lead for Lake.
So betting against her is betting on herding polling error in favour of the Democrats.
I am not tempted but 5/1 is definitely in the zone of temptation for betting on Hobbs here.
I would bet that the polls - in aggregate - are going to overstate Dems by 2-3% or overstate Republicans by the same amount. That makes 5-1 or more on Hobbs in AZ a decent bet.
Off topic. We dodged a bullet. I wouldn't have voted for Boris but many would.
Boris would have made the members vote. Boris would have won the members vote We would have more to worry about that Leaky Sue.
Boris would have lost the members vote which is why he pulled out. That would have been utterly humiliating.
Wishful thinking. I was at a members event last weekend and it was chock full of older members lamenting they didn't get a chance to put Boris back in. No amount of calling them out of touch with reality gets through to them, they are impervious to real life. Everything is some kind of conspiracy to prevent "those of us who worked hard all our lives" from "having our say", some of the more delusional ones seemed to think that Rishi conspire with Labour to strip them of their votes. Honestly, the Tory party membership is a complete mess. The Mail has completely addled their brains.
Look at our very own @Casino_Royale here who, with an 80-seat majority in the HoC, nevertheless blames "the LIberati" for frustrating ordinary decent peoples' plans to torpedo boats in the channel bringing Albanians over here to wash our cars.
That is pretty much what ODP really do want. Can't buck the polling.
I remember Roger Moore's complaints about his final outing, A View To A Kill. Christopher Walken's character callously machine-gunning his own henchmen.
That is how the ODP envisage the solution to the boat people issue. With the Nigel likely on his boat directing the fire. That is the level of vitriol and hatred that has been whipped up. Once again I have seen a lot of hate directed at the RNLI for their actions rescuing drowning people from the water. This is madness.
I might regret asking this but what does ODP stand for?
'Ordinary Decent People'
EDIT: or possibly Old Dirty Pastard. I lose track of his soubriquets.
Off topic. We dodged a bullet. I wouldn't have voted for Boris but many would.
Boris would have made the members vote. Boris would have won the members vote We would have more to worry about that Leaky Sue.
Boris would have lost the members vote which is why he pulled out. That would have been utterly humiliating.
Wishful thinking. I was at a members event last weekend and it was chock full of older members lamenting they didn't get a chance to put Boris back in. No amount of calling them out of touch with reality gets through to them, they are impervious to real life. Everything is some kind of conspiracy to prevent "those of us who worked hard all our lives" from "having our say", some of the more delusional ones seemed to think that Rishi conspire with Labour to strip them of their votes. Honestly, the Tory party membership is a complete mess. The Mail has completely addled their brains.
Look at our very own @Casino_Royale here who, with an 80-seat majority in the HoC, nevertheless blames "the LIberati" for frustrating ordinary decent peoples' plans to torpedo boats in the channel bringing Albanians over here to wash our cars.
That is pretty much what ODP really do want. Can't buck the polling.
I remember Roger Moore's complaints about his final outing, A View To A Kill. Christopher Walken's character callously machine-gunning his own henchmen.
That is how the ODP envisage the solution to the boat people issue. With the Nigel likely on his boat directing the fire. That is the level of vitriol and hatred that has been whipped up. Once again I have seen a lot of hate directed at the RNLI for their actions rescuing drowning people from the water. This is madness.
I might regret asking this but what does ODP stand for?
From the thread, I think "ordinary decent people".
Meaning anyone who thinks Farage is a wishy-washy liberal.
Off topic. We dodged a bullet. I wouldn't have voted for Boris but many would.
Boris would have made the members vote. Boris would have won the members vote We would have more to worry about that Leaky Sue.
Boris would have lost the members vote which is why he pulled out. That would have been utterly humiliating.
Wishful thinking. I was at a members event last weekend and it was chock full of older members lamenting they didn't get a chance to put Boris back in. No amount of calling them out of touch with reality gets through to them, they are impervious to real life. Everything is some kind of conspiracy to prevent "those of us who worked hard all our lives" from "having our say", some of the more delusional ones seemed to think that Rishi conspire with Labour to strip them of their votes. Honestly, the Tory party membership is a complete mess. The Mail has completely addled their brains.
Look at our very own @Casino_Royale here who, with an 80-seat majority in the HoC, nevertheless blames "the LIberati" for frustrating ordinary decent peoples' plans to torpedo boats in the channel bringing Albanians over here to wash our cars.
That is pretty much what ODP really do want. Can't buck the polling.
I remember Roger Moore's complaints about his final outing, A View To A Kill. Christopher Walken's character callously machine-gunning his own henchmen.
That is how the ODP envisage the solution to the boat people issue. With the Nigel likely on his boat directing the fire. That is the level of vitriol and hatred that has been whipped up. Once again I have seen a lot of hate directed at the RNLI for their actions rescuing drowning people from the water. This is madness.
I might regret asking this but what does ODP stand for?
From the thread, I think "ordinary decent people".
Off topic. We dodged a bullet. I wouldn't have voted for Boris but many would.
Boris would have made the members vote. Boris would have won the members vote We would have more to worry about that Leaky Sue.
Boris would have lost the members vote which is why he pulled out. That would have been utterly humiliating.
Wishful thinking. I was at a members event last weekend and it was chock full of older members lamenting they didn't get a chance to put Boris back in. No amount of calling them out of touch with reality gets through to them, they are impervious to real life. Everything is some kind of conspiracy to prevent "those of us who worked hard all our lives" from "having our say", some of the more delusional ones seemed to think that Rishi conspire with Labour to strip them of their votes. Honestly, the Tory party membership is a complete mess. The Mail has completely addled their brains.
Look at our very own @Casino_Royale here who, with an 80-seat majority in the HoC, nevertheless blames "the LIberati" for frustrating ordinary decent peoples' plans to torpedo boats in the channel bringing Albanians over here to wash our cars.
That is pretty much what ODP really do want. Can't buck the polling.
I remember Roger Moore's complaints about his final outing, A View To A Kill. Christopher Walken's character callously machine-gunning his own henchmen.
That is how the ODP envisage the solution to the boat people issue. With the Nigel likely on his boat directing the fire. That is the level of vitriol and hatred that has been whipped up. Once again I have seen a lot of hate directed at the RNLI for their actions rescuing drowning people from the water. This is madness.
I might regret asking this but what does ODP stand for?
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
7/1 is value where 5/1 is marginal, but I think Lake still squeaks it and the bet is a good value loser.
The range of odds is fantastic, perhaps because not all markets are included on Oddschecker, probably because they are priced up by the teaboy reading 538 in his lunch break, and I should imagine stakes are limited.
I was bored last night and calculated that Britain is four times closer to Russia (Lowestoft to Kaliningrad) than it is to the US (Cornwall to Maine).
Kalingrad’s cheating a little bit though.
I doubt that worries the poster, for whom the KPI is to sow doubt in the minds of UK online communities about:
- Britain being "in too deep" in the Ukraine war and implicated in acts like the Sevastopol attack - Ukraine being in a weaker position than media would have us think - The risk of nuclear war and the danger of escalation
All of which is supposed to lead to "maybe we should make a deal with Putin".
Interestingly most of their posts have been coming at this from a left rather than right wing perspective, hence the absence of anti-vax comments so far. A new tactic. More subtle than most too, and only a few less obvious tells - I think this is one of the top performers.
I agree, and I do hope he or she stays, and does nothing ban worthy - it's good that this perspective has a presence here.
Who are we talking about?
Our current agent of influence. Or Russian troll, as unkind souls have it.
I've repeatedly asked to keep one as a pet - promised to take it for walks, feed it etc. But the mods say no....
TBF, if this one is a troll (and my instinctive reaction to his/her first posts was, 'Dynamo's back') it's the least troll-like one I've ever come across. Plenty of the posts are entirely lucid and you can have an enlightening conversation about almost any subject.
If it's a real troll, it's a class act and deserves promotion.
But I'm gradually inclining to the view that it's a real poster with a bit of a different perspective on Ukraine.
I know what you mean. The thing that doesn't quite add up though is the very clear lack of emotional or flippant response to anything, all posts are written in quite a detached way. The same measured tone throughout. No glimpses into the personal hinterland. No obscure niche interests or bugbears. All a tiny bit too clean and tidy. But I agree, not 100% clear cut.
This is the kind of thing that imagine would make it fascinating working for GCHQ. Spotting patterns of speech, winkling out trolls from real people and so on.
Well, there are a couple of indications that they may be a troll:
(1) Their email address is with an obscure super private email company. (2) The 'stem' of the email address (their name) doesn't seem to show up anywhere else on the internet (and nor does DJ41) for that matter (3) Every visit to the site seems to be from a different IP address (4) Quite a few of their IPs are on blacklists
But you know what: he/she/they are polite, not obsessed by vaccines and trans, I say let 'em stay.
Is there value betting AGAINST the Arizona favourite, Kari Lake, at these odds?
The early votes are modestly good for the Dems, the polls have significantly tightened. No way Kari Lake is that big a favourite
She's 2 points clear in the 538 pollnig average. Barring two 11 point lead polls the polls are very consistent at a 1-3 point lead for Lake.
So betting against her is betting on herding polling error in favour of the Democrats.
I am not tempted but 5/1 is definitely in the zone of temptation for betting on Hobbs here.
I would bet that the polls - in aggregate - are going to overstate Dems by 2-3% or overstate Republicans by the same amount. That makes 5-1 or more on Hobbs in AZ a decent bet.
Hobbs, btw, seems to be a dreadful candidate. Here she is, desperately struggling on a friendly tv show, as she explains why she won’t ever debate on TV. Not good
7/1 is value where 5/1 is marginal, but I think Lake still squeaks it and the bet is a good value loser.
The range of odds is fantastic, perhaps because not all markets are included on Oddschecker, probably because they are priced up by the teaboy reading 538 in his lunch break, and I should imagine stakes are limited.
My account wasn't particularly limited. Got £18.55 Arizona, other sums on Kansas and Wisconsin.
Some good odds there as well on the minority side, but didn't fancy it ATM.
Is there value betting AGAINST the Arizona favourite, Kari Lake, at these odds?
The early votes are modestly good for the Dems, the polls have significantly tightened. No way Kari Lake is that big a favourite
Be careful, the market might be settled on the basis of whether Kari Lake claims victory or not.
+1 - I think Arizona is a State where the initial counting will be Republican votes made on the day, with early voting Democrat votes only counted afterwards.
So it's possible that the initial result won't reflect reality and let Karl Lake claim a victor that turns out to be based on incomplete counting.
I was bored last night and calculated that Britain is four times closer to Russia (Lowestoft to Kaliningrad) than it is to the US (Cornwall to Maine).
Kalingrad’s cheating a little bit though.
I doubt that worries the poster, for whom the KPI is to sow doubt in the minds of UK online communities about:
- Britain being "in too deep" in the Ukraine war and implicated in acts like the Sevastopol attack - Ukraine being in a weaker position than media would have us think - The risk of nuclear war and the danger of escalation
All of which is supposed to lead to "maybe we should make a deal with Putin".
Interestingly most of their posts have been coming at this from a left rather than right wing perspective, hence the absence of anti-vax comments so far. A new tactic. More subtle than most too, and only a few less obvious tells - I think this is one of the top performers.
I agree, and I do hope he or she stays, and does nothing ban worthy - it's good that this perspective has a presence here.
Who are we talking about?
Our current agent of influence. Or Russian troll, as unkind souls have it.
I've repeatedly asked to keep one as a pet - promised to take it for walks, feed it etc. But the mods say no....
TBF, if this one is a troll (and my instinctive reaction to his/her first posts was, 'Dynamo's back') it's the least troll-like one I've ever come across. Plenty of the posts are entirely lucid and you can have an enlightening conversation about almost any subject.
If it's a real troll, it's a class act and deserves promotion.
But I'm gradually inclining to the view that it's a real poster with a bit of a different perspective on Ukraine.
I know what you mean. The thing that doesn't quite add up though is the very clear lack of emotional or flippant response to anything, all posts are written in quite a detached way. The same measured tone throughout. No glimpses into the personal hinterland. No obscure niche interests or bugbears. All a tiny bit too clean and tidy. But I agree, not 100% clear cut.
This is the kind of thing that imagine would make it fascinating working for GCHQ. Spotting patterns of speech, winkling out trolls from real people and so on.
Well, there are a couple of indications that they may be a troll:
(1) Their email address is with an obscure super private email company. (2) The 'stem' of the email address (their name) doesn't seem to show up anywhere else on the internet (and nor does DJ41) for that matter (3) Every visit to the site seems to be from a different IP address (4) Quite a few of their IPs are on blacklists
But you know what: he/she/they are polite, not obsessed by vaccines and trans, I say let 'em stay.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
7/1 is value where 5/1 is marginal, but I think Lake still squeaks it and the bet is a good value loser.
The range of odds is fantastic, perhaps because not all markets are included on Oddschecker, probably because they are priced up by the teaboy reading 538 in his lunch break, and I should imagine stakes are limited.
I can quite imagine there’s a lot of arbs out there, for anyone with a pile of cash and a lot of working bookie accounts, who wants to spend the weekend crunching numbers.
FPT: Nigelb said: "In terms of losing competent moderates, he's had a greater effect." (Trump has done more to drive competent moderates from the Republican Party than Obama did from the Democratic Party.)
You may be right. I haven't done counts of the two parties. But there are still some impressive Republican governors, for example, Chris Sununu of New Hampshire. And Maryland's Governor, Larry Hogan, is conducting a low-key campaign for the presidency. He's term-limited, so he'll have plenty of time next year to begin a campaign, and he has already visited Iowa and New Hampshire. (He calls himself a "commonsense conservative", which is accurate, as far as I know.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Hogan
I was bored last night and calculated that Britain is four times closer to Russia (Lowestoft to Kaliningrad) than it is to the US (Cornwall to Maine).
Kalingrad’s cheating a little bit though.
I doubt that worries the poster, for whom the KPI is to sow doubt in the minds of UK online communities about:
- Britain being "in too deep" in the Ukraine war and implicated in acts like the Sevastopol attack - Ukraine being in a weaker position than media would have us think - The risk of nuclear war and the danger of escalation
All of which is supposed to lead to "maybe we should make a deal with Putin".
Interestingly most of their posts have been coming at this from a left rather than right wing perspective, hence the absence of anti-vax comments so far. A new tactic. More subtle than most too, and only a few less obvious tells - I think this is one of the top performers.
I agree, and I do hope he or she stays, and does nothing ban worthy - it's good that this perspective has a presence here.
Who are we talking about?
Our current agent of influence. Or Russian troll, as unkind souls have it.
I've repeatedly asked to keep one as a pet - promised to take it for walks, feed it etc. But the mods say no....
TBF, if this one is a troll (and my instinctive reaction to his/her first posts was, 'Dynamo's back') it's the least troll-like one I've ever come across. Plenty of the posts are entirely lucid and you can have an enlightening conversation about almost any subject.
If it's a real troll, it's a class act and deserves promotion.
But I'm gradually inclining to the view that it's a real poster with a bit of a different perspective on Ukraine.
I know what you mean. The thing that doesn't quite add up though is the very clear lack of emotional or flippant response to anything, all posts are written in quite a detached way. The same measured tone throughout. No glimpses into the personal hinterland. No obscure niche interests or bugbears. All a tiny bit too clean and tidy. But I agree, not 100% clear cut.
This is the kind of thing that imagine would make it fascinating working for GCHQ. Spotting patterns of speech, winkling out trolls from real people and so on.
Well, there are a couple of indications that they may be a troll:
(1) Their email address is with an obscure super private email company. (2) The 'stem' of the email address (their name) doesn't seem to show up anywhere else on the internet (and nor does DJ41) for that matter (3) Every visit to the site seems to be from a different IP address (4) Quite a few of their IPs are on blacklists
But you know what: he/she/they are polite, not obsessed by vaccines and trans, I say let 'em stay.
Just out of interest how would someone's IP address show up if they were using a VPN? I occasionally use one and certain everyday sites can't be accessed as a result. So in the end I normally just switch it off as it is more hassle than it is worth.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
It's easy to be too doom and gloom but it's also easy to be complacent. My impression is that the state of the public sector is really quite bad and it could deteriorate quite quickly from here. It desperately needs more money, but there isn't any money.
Is there value betting AGAINST the Arizona favourite, Kari Lake, at these odds?
The early votes are modestly good for the Dems, the polls have significantly tightened. No way Kari Lake is that big a favourite
She's 2 points clear in the 538 pollnig average. Barring two 11 point lead polls the polls are very consistent at a 1-3 point lead for Lake.
So betting against her is betting on herding polling error in favour of the Democrats.
I am not tempted but 5/1 is definitely in the zone of temptation for betting on Hobbs here.
I would bet that the polls - in aggregate - are going to overstate Dems by 2-3% or overstate Republicans by the same amount. That makes 5-1 or more on Hobbs in AZ a decent bet.
Hobbs, btw, seems to be a dreadful candidate. Here she is, desperately struggling on a friendly tv show, as she explains why she won’t ever debate on TV. Not good
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
Thats too extreme. Schools and Uni's are open, the hospitals are cracking on with trying to reduce waiting lists, while still dealing with covid (less so but still there), unemployment is low, there are jobs available. Immigration is in the public eye but is at lower levels than most European nations. The economy is being buffeted by global events and is not alone. Tough times ahead, same as elsewhere.
The well off will be fine, the middle incomes will struggle some more and the poor as always will suffer the most.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
If anything, the situation is worse than that.
All the systems are still working- albeit not very well and dependant on goodwill and sticky tape.
That's worse than utter collapse, because I fear that we won't do anything to solve the underlying problems (wanting too much for too little, with the gap made up by consuming seedcorn and leaving the crumbling assets for the future to fix) until something breaks properly.
And even then, it will be somebody else's fault, because it always is.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
Sorry Mike, two pins that might burst your balloons.
Here's Joe Ralston - who's pretty spot on when it comes to Nevada's elections - with this take on the NV early voting, with the headline "The Democrats are in trouble"
Trende'a point about everyone being able to read what they want into what they see so far seems apt
My like is for the analysis itself (and TKC's posting thereof) and NOT the import IF it's correct!
One thing about Early Voting, is that the earlier a voter votes, the LESS the impact of late-breaking news on their voting decisions, because their vote is already in the can, or in the mail.
This factor is one main reason cited by voters, for waiting until later (in some cases TOO late) to cast their ballot.
Is there value betting AGAINST the Arizona favourite, Kari Lake, at these odds?
The early votes are modestly good for the Dems, the polls have significantly tightened. No way Kari Lake is that big a favourite
She's 2 points clear in the 538 pollnig average. Barring two 11 point lead polls the polls are very consistent at a 1-3 point lead for Lake.
So betting against her is betting on herding polling error in favour of the Democrats.
I am not tempted but 5/1 is definitely in the zone of temptation for betting on Hobbs here.
I would bet that the polls - in aggregate - are going to overstate Dems by 2-3% or overstate Republicans by the same amount. That makes 5-1 or more on Hobbs in AZ a decent bet.
Hobbs, btw, seems to be a dreadful candidate. Here she is, desperately struggling on a friendly tv show, as she explains why she won’t ever debate on TV. Not good
Suggests that a better Dem might have won quite easily?
TV debates are now so entrenched in US politics, that it’s always going to be counted against someone who doesn’t want to do them - even when their opponent is a brilliant media performer.
The one exception that comes to mind this year, is John Fetterman, clearly not recovered from a stroke some months ago, and as with Biden sad to see on TV.
"Obviously there was nothing like a data science team to provide modern infrastructure, never mind apply state-of-the-art tools to practical prediction problems. (A reason we organised the polling on covid (to provide data on symptoms, footfall etc for SAGE) the way we did was to use the cloud dashboards we’d built for the election campaign weeks earlier — not political data but the infrastructure which No10/70WH did not have — so we could share information across Whitehall using modern tools [...])"
OK he says the people wearing Tory campaigner hats didn't transfer political data to themselves wearing Whitehall hats and they only transferred digital tools they'd built, but this in itself is interesting and raises questions about the relationship between party and state. Whose was the intellectual property and did the state pay for it, either at the time or in favours later?
Train strikes off. They should still forego wages for Saturday and Monday as the timetable can't be changed at this point.
Sod's Law. I decided to travel by train today because although there's a partial strike on it wasn't going to be as bad as tomorrow.
I suspect it will be just as chaotic due to rolling stock being in the wrong place.
My train at Moor Street broke down after 20 seconds. Ended up being delayed by ages on packed carriages. At least I didn't have to stand up the whole way like last time.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
It's easy to be too doom and gloom but it's also easy to be complacent. My impression is that the state of the public sector is really quite bad and it could deteriorate quite quickly from here. It desperately needs more money, but there isn't any money.
Public services around the world are struggling to cope with inflation which must be imposing significant real term cuts.
Of course, in the US it hardly matters because there are no public services to speak of and the immiseration of the bottom 30% is a feature not a bug.
But I don’t get any sense that the UK government has any interest in conceding the scale of the problem. Even Rishi still rides on a wave of Johnsonian boosterism.
A storm blew into the Seattle area overnight, bringing a flurry of warnings, watches and advisories in addition to the heavy rain, strong winds and mountain snow that are expected to blast the region through the weekend.
Heavy snow fell in the Cascades overnight, with a foot of snow at Snoqualmie Pass, and the resulting vehicle crashes, causing a full closure of Interstate 90 until around 5 a.m. Friday.
A warmer air mass then moved in, said Jeff Michalski, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Seattle. That’s bringing heavy mountain rainfall, but the rains in Seattle will be scattered because of “a rain shadow effect with some winds coming down off of the Olympics,” he said.
In King County, strong winds are expected across much of the lowlands Friday, with gusts reaching 40 to 50 mph and a wind advisory from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. (Just be happy we aren’t up on Mount Rainier, where gusts up to 100 mph are expected, along with a pleasant 6 to 8 inches of snow.)
Because of the mountain rains, a flood watch was issued in King County and a flash-flood warning for the burn scar from the Bolt Creek fire near Skykomish.
The weather service is watching for sharp changes and fast flows in the Snoqualmie River near Snoqualmie Falls and Carnation, the Tolt River near Carnation, the Green River and the White River.
SSI - Current weather radar shows it raining (snowing in mountains) like a sonofabitch everywhere in Western WA EXCEPT for Seattle and nearest burbs. Hopefully holds off here a bit longer, long enough anyway for me to get to the grocery store & back!
"Obviously there was nothing like a data science team to provide modern infrastructure, never mind apply state-of-the-art tools to practical prediction problems. (A reason we organised the polling on covid (to provide data on symptoms, footfall etc for SAGE) the way we did was to use the cloud dashboards we’d built for the election campaign weeks earlier — not political data but the infrastructure which No10/70WH did not have — so we could share information across Whitehall using modern tools."
OK he says the people wearing Tory campaigner hats didn't transfer political data to themselves wearing Whitehall hats and they only transferred digital tools they'd built, but this in itself is interesting and raises questions about the relationship between party and state. Whose was the intellectual property and did the state pay for it, either at the time or in favours later?
Get on this, Keir. (As if he ever would!)
With Dominic Cummings, a good rule of thumb is when he describes an event, assume it didn't happen or at least, didn't happen in that way.
So far, this rule has never let me down.
Although I agree that there are awkward questions around the relationship between party and state particularly the way that he and Johnson appear to have mismanaged the entire Downing Street operation, I don't think Starmer will be unduly exercised about this without considerably more information.
A storm blew into the Seattle area overnight, bringing a flurry of warnings, watches and advisories in addition to the heavy rain, strong winds and mountain snow that are expected to blast the region through the weekend.
Heavy snow fell in the Cascades overnight, with a foot of snow at Snoqualmie Pass, and the resulting vehicle crashes, causing a full closure of Interstate 90 until around 5 a.m. Friday.
A warmer air mass then moved in, said Jeff Michalski, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Seattle. That’s bringing heavy mountain rainfall, but the rains in Seattle will be scattered because of “a rain shadow effect with some winds coming down off of the Olympics,” he said.
In King County, strong winds are expected across much of the lowlands Friday, with gusts reaching 40 to 50 mph and a wind advisory from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. (Just be happy we aren’t up on Mount Rainier, where gusts up to 100 mph are expected, along with a pleasant 6 to 8 inches of snow.)
Because of the mountain rains, a flood watch was issued in King County and a flash-flood warning for the burn scar from the Bolt Creek fire near Skykomish.
The weather service is watching for sharp changes and fast flows in the Snoqualmie River near Snoqualmie Falls and Carnation, the Tolt River near Carnation, the Green River and the White River.
SSI - Current weather radar shows it raining (snowing in mountains) like a sonofabitch everywhere in Western WA EXCEPT for Seattle and nearest burbs. Hopefully holds off here a bit longer, long enough anyway for me to get to the grocery store & back!
Meanwhile here it's a beautiful sunny evening and I've been sitting in the conservatory basking in the warmth. Again.
This is now the latest date for me putting on the central heating by three weeks. And I still haven't put it on!
"Obviously there was nothing like a data science team to provide modern infrastructure, never mind apply state-of-the-art tools to practical prediction problems. (A reason we organised the polling on covid (to provide data on symptoms, footfall etc for SAGE) the way we did was to use the cloud dashboards we’d built for the election campaign weeks earlier — not political data but the infrastructure which No10/70WH did not have — so we could share information across Whitehall using modern tools."
OK he says the people wearing Tory campaigner hats didn't transfer political data to themselves wearing Whitehall hats and they only transferred digital tools they'd built, but this in itself is interesting and raises questions about the relationship between party and state. Whose was the intellectual property and did the state pay for it, either at the time or in favours later?
Get on this, Keir. (As if he ever would!)
With Dominic Cummings, a good rule of thumb is when he describes an event, assume it didn't happen or at least, didn't happen in that way.
So far, this rule has never let me down.
Although I agree that there are awkward questions around the relationship between party and state particularly the way that he and Johnson appear to have mismanaged the entire Downing Street operation, I don't think Starmer will be unduly exercised about this without considerably more information.
The very sinews of governance appear to have atrophied in the UK.
How much this is Brexit, or Johnson, or even Blair (sofa style) I don’t know. But it seems to be one dysfunctional, amateurish cluster-fuck after another.
It is hard now to pin-point anything that looks successful. Vaccine procurement and Ukrainian military training, yes, but both seem rather “exceptional” items. Where are the BAU successes?
While Elon is dicking around on Twitter... which the media are totally obsessed with treating downsizing of a company in a way they don't do with any others. Live rolling reports all day. Proves just how sucked into the tw@tterverse journos are!
Yet another factor in reading Early Voting (including absentee voting by mail) in US midterms, it the abatement of the Great Fear that millions of Democratic voters experienced in 2020 - fear that Trump & GOP (Grifters On Parade) were deliberately sabotaging the US Postal Service in order to rig the presidential election.
Still some leery feeling from sea to shining sea re: issues impacting USPS mail processing & delivery, but NOT as much as when 45 was still infesting the White House.
A storm blew into the Seattle area overnight, bringing a flurry of warnings, watches and advisories in addition to the heavy rain, strong winds and mountain snow that are expected to blast the region through the weekend.
Heavy snow fell in the Cascades overnight, with a foot of snow at Snoqualmie Pass, and the resulting vehicle crashes, causing a full closure of Interstate 90 until around 5 a.m. Friday.
A warmer air mass then moved in, said Jeff Michalski, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Seattle. That’s bringing heavy mountain rainfall, but the rains in Seattle will be scattered because of “a rain shadow effect with some winds coming down off of the Olympics,” he said.
In King County, strong winds are expected across much of the lowlands Friday, with gusts reaching 40 to 50 mph and a wind advisory from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. (Just be happy we aren’t up on Mount Rainier, where gusts up to 100 mph are expected, along with a pleasant 6 to 8 inches of snow.)
Because of the mountain rains, a flood watch was issued in King County and a flash-flood warning for the burn scar from the Bolt Creek fire near Skykomish.
The weather service is watching for sharp changes and fast flows in the Snoqualmie River near Snoqualmie Falls and Carnation, the Tolt River near Carnation, the Green River and the White River.
SSI - Current weather radar shows it raining (snowing in mountains) like a sonofabitch everywhere in Western WA EXCEPT for Seattle and nearest burbs. Hopefully holds off here a bit longer, long enough anyway for me to get to the grocery store & back!
Meanwhile here it's a beautiful sunny evening and I've been sitting in the conservatory basking in the warmth. Again.
This is now the latest date for me putting on the central heating by three weeks. And I still haven't put it on!
19 degree high here this arvo. 23 expected both Saturday and Sunday.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Here's my assessment of how fucked things are from personal experience:
NHS: fucked. Almost impossible to get appointments. Long waits for referrals. Schools: okay but getting worse. Obviously less resources than a few years ago. Secondary school staff turnover and occasional staff shortages suggests wages too low to retain staff in London. All extra curricular activities need to be paid for. Public transport: okay but getting worse. Bus routes cut, less frequent buses. Tube okay. New Elizabeth Line an obvious improvement. Trains okay, same as ever. Council services: obviously very stretched. Street cleaning way down. Basic services covered, nothing else, impossible to speak to anyone about anything. Fly tipping out of control. Roads: surfaces increasingly poor. Perhaps there is an effort at catch up given amount of works going on, but a lot of that seems to be water related. Frequent burst water mains. Prices of everything massively up. Taxes up. Private sector obviously seeing staff shortages, evident in retail, hospitality and construction. Occasional glimpses of additional border red tape but doesn't affect me much directly. Overall: quality of life is deteriorating.
"Obviously there was nothing like a data science team to provide modern infrastructure, never mind apply state-of-the-art tools to practical prediction problems. (A reason we organised the polling on covid (to provide data on symptoms, footfall etc for SAGE) the way we did was to use the cloud dashboards we’d built for the election campaign weeks earlier — not political data but the infrastructure which No10/70WH did not have — so we could share information across Whitehall using modern tools [...])"
OK he says the people wearing Tory campaigner hats didn't transfer political data to themselves wearing Whitehall hats and they only transferred digital tools they'd built, but this in itself is interesting and raises questions about the relationship between party and state. Whose was the intellectual property and did the state pay for it, either at the time or in favours later?
Get on this, Keir. (As if he ever would!)
Sounds like a bloody good example of outside-the-box thinking, using every and all tools available in the face of a serious national emergency.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
A storm blew into the Seattle area overnight, bringing a flurry of warnings, watches and advisories in addition to the heavy rain, strong winds and mountain snow that are expected to blast the region through the weekend.
Heavy snow fell in the Cascades overnight, with a foot of snow at Snoqualmie Pass, and the resulting vehicle crashes, causing a full closure of Interstate 90 until around 5 a.m. Friday.
A warmer air mass then moved in, said Jeff Michalski, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Seattle. That’s bringing heavy mountain rainfall, but the rains in Seattle will be scattered because of “a rain shadow effect with some winds coming down off of the Olympics,” he said.
In King County, strong winds are expected across much of the lowlands Friday, with gusts reaching 40 to 50 mph and a wind advisory from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. (Just be happy we aren’t up on Mount Rainier, where gusts up to 100 mph are expected, along with a pleasant 6 to 8 inches of snow.)
Because of the mountain rains, a flood watch was issued in King County and a flash-flood warning for the burn scar from the Bolt Creek fire near Skykomish.
The weather service is watching for sharp changes and fast flows in the Snoqualmie River near Snoqualmie Falls and Carnation, the Tolt River near Carnation, the Green River and the White River.
SSI - Current weather radar shows it raining (snowing in mountains) like a sonofabitch everywhere in Western WA EXCEPT for Seattle and nearest burbs. Hopefully holds off here a bit longer, long enough anyway for me to get to the grocery store & back!
Meanwhile here it's a beautiful sunny evening and I've been sitting in the conservatory basking in the warmth. Again.
This is now the latest date for me putting on the central heating by three weeks. And I still haven't put it on!
Similar situation in Eastern USA, just more so.
Current temperature in Boston, Mass is 71 F (22 C) which is WAY above normal for November, and forecast to remain above 70 F through the weekend.
A storm blew into the Seattle area overnight, bringing a flurry of warnings, watches and advisories in addition to the heavy rain, strong winds and mountain snow that are expected to blast the region through the weekend.
Heavy snow fell in the Cascades overnight, with a foot of snow at Snoqualmie Pass, and the resulting vehicle crashes, causing a full closure of Interstate 90 until around 5 a.m. Friday.
A warmer air mass then moved in, said Jeff Michalski, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Seattle. That’s bringing heavy mountain rainfall, but the rains in Seattle will be scattered because of “a rain shadow effect with some winds coming down off of the Olympics,” he said.
In King County, strong winds are expected across much of the lowlands Friday, with gusts reaching 40 to 50 mph and a wind advisory from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. (Just be happy we aren’t up on Mount Rainier, where gusts up to 100 mph are expected, along with a pleasant 6 to 8 inches of snow.)
Because of the mountain rains, a flood watch was issued in King County and a flash-flood warning for the burn scar from the Bolt Creek fire near Skykomish.
The weather service is watching for sharp changes and fast flows in the Snoqualmie River near Snoqualmie Falls and Carnation, the Tolt River near Carnation, the Green River and the White River.
SSI - Current weather radar shows it raining (snowing in mountains) like a sonofabitch everywhere in Western WA EXCEPT for Seattle and nearest burbs. Hopefully holds off here a bit longer, long enough anyway for me to get to the grocery store & back!
Meanwhile here it's a beautiful sunny evening and I've been sitting in the conservatory basking in the warmth. Again.
This is now the latest date for me putting on the central heating by three weeks. And I still haven't put it on!
I'm quite intrigued by this "puttin on the central heating" thing. We have a combi boiler and a central* thermostat that is programmed, plus TRVs. When the temperature at the central thermostat falls below what we set for that time/day of week, the heating comes on, unless we've set it to holiday mode because we're away. This seems like a reasonable solution to me. It comes on when we need it; it doesn't come on when we don't.
*we actually have two different zones now, one for the extension with underfloor heating, but we haven't gone for full zoned heating yet
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
The news channels are the best example of this.
I stopped listening to the Today show some years ago when I realised that 50% of the content was the government “failing” some group or another.
Nevertheless, I was talking about PB anecdotage and although everyone has an axe to grind, takes of dysfunction are getting pretty hard to ignore.
"Obviously there was nothing like a data science team to provide modern infrastructure, never mind apply state-of-the-art tools to practical prediction problems. (A reason we organised the polling on covid (to provide data on symptoms, footfall etc for SAGE) the way we did was to use the cloud dashboards we’d built for the election campaign weeks earlier — not political data but the infrastructure which No10/70WH did not have — so we could share information across Whitehall using modern tools [...])"
OK he says the people wearing Tory campaigner hats didn't transfer political data to themselves wearing Whitehall hats and they only transferred digital tools they'd built, but this in itself is interesting and raises questions about the relationship between party and state. Whose was the intellectual property and did the state pay for it, either at the time or in favours later?
Get on this, Keir. (As if he ever would!)
Sounds like a bloody good example of outside-the-box thinking, using every and all tools available in the face of a serious national emergency.
+1 - I have absolutely zero problem with people stealing / borrowing / using business systems written by other people.
The whole point is that it saves time, money and gives you something that works quickly.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
Thats too extreme. Schools and Uni's are open, the hospitals are cracking on with trying to reduce waiting lists, while still dealing with covid (less so but still there), unemployment is low, there are jobs available. Immigration is in the public eye but is at lower levels than most European nations. The economy is being buffeted by global events and is not alone. Tough times ahead, same as elsewhere.
The well off will be fine, the middle incomes will struggle some more and the poor as always will suffer the most.
I agree that it's too extreme a view. Our schools are actually OK, there are jobs, we still do a lot of stuff very well.
The area that seems closest to genuinely broken, to my outsider's eyes, is justice.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
The news channels are the best example of this.
See twitter laying off 4000 people....anybody would think this is a rerun of 2008 financial crash.
Obviously people losing their jobs isn't great, but for some perspective, Google have 140k employees, up double in 5 years. This isn't like a Google or an Apple laying off half their staff.
Is there value betting AGAINST the Arizona favourite, Kari Lake, at these odds?
The early votes are modestly good for the Dems, the polls have significantly tightened. No way Kari Lake is that big a favourite
She's 2 points clear in the 538 pollnig average. Barring two 11 point lead polls the polls are very consistent at a 1-3 point lead for Lake.
So betting against her is betting on herding polling error in favour of the Democrats.
I am not tempted but 5/1 is definitely in the zone of temptation for betting on Hobbs here.
I would bet that the polls - in aggregate - are going to overstate Dems by 2-3% or overstate Republicans by the same amount. That makes 5-1 or more on Hobbs in AZ a decent bet.
Hobbs, btw, seems to be a dreadful candidate. Here she is, desperately struggling on a friendly tv show, as she explains why she won’t ever debate on TV. Not good
Suggests that a better Dem might have won quite easily?
TV debates are now so entrenched in US politics, that it’s always going to be counted against someone who doesn’t want to do them - even when their opponent is a brilliant media performer.
The one exception that comes to mind this year, is John Fetterman, clearly not recovered from a stroke some months ago, and as with Biden sad to see on TV.
There's been a couple of responses by stroke specialists saying that Fetterman's performance, poor as it was, showed that his recovery is progressing well and the prognosis is a near-total recovery. That's not to take away from the fact that it won't have come over well to anyone watching the debate, and who doesn't then see these analyses.
"Obviously there was nothing like a data science team to provide modern infrastructure, never mind apply state-of-the-art tools to practical prediction problems. (A reason we organised the polling on covid (to provide data on symptoms, footfall etc for SAGE) the way we did was to use the cloud dashboards we’d built for the election campaign weeks earlier — not political data but the infrastructure which No10/70WH did not have — so we could share information across Whitehall using modern tools."
OK he says the people wearing Tory campaigner hats didn't transfer political data to themselves wearing Whitehall hats and they only transferred digital tools they'd built, but this in itself is interesting and raises questions about the relationship between party and state. Whose was the intellectual property and did the state pay for it, either at the time or in favours later?
Get on this, Keir. (As if he ever would!)
With Dominic Cummings, a good rule of thumb is when he describes an event, assume it didn't happen or at least, didn't happen in that way.
So far, this rule has never let me down.
Although I agree that there are awkward questions around the relationship between party and state particularly the way that he and Johnson appear to have mismanaged the entire Downing Street operation, I don't think Starmer will be unduly exercised about this without considerably more information.
The very sinews of governance appear to have atrophied in the UK.
How much this is Brexit, or Johnson, or even Blair (sofa style) I don’t know. But it seems to be one dysfunctional, amateurish cluster-fuck after another.
It is hard now to pin-point anything that looks successful. Vaccine procurement and Ukrainian military training, yes, but both seem rather “exceptional” items. Where are the BAU successes?
Gov.uk
The UK is - believe it or not - a world leader in digital public services.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Of the NHS, courts, asylum system and economy which is not in your view fucked? 24 hour waits for A and E, delays and backlogs of literally years, 10% inflation and a 2 year recession forecast. Are these lies confected by libtards?
"Obviously there was nothing like a data science team to provide modern infrastructure, never mind apply state-of-the-art tools to practical prediction problems. (A reason we organised the polling on covid (to provide data on symptoms, footfall etc for SAGE) the way we did was to use the cloud dashboards we’d built for the election campaign weeks earlier — not political data but the infrastructure which No10/70WH did not have — so we could share information across Whitehall using modern tools."
OK he says the people wearing Tory campaigner hats didn't transfer political data to themselves wearing Whitehall hats and they only transferred digital tools they'd built, but this in itself is interesting and raises questions about the relationship between party and state. Whose was the intellectual property and did the state pay for it, either at the time or in favours later?
Get on this, Keir. (As if he ever would!)
With Dominic Cummings, a good rule of thumb is when he describes an event, assume it didn't happen or at least, didn't happen in that way.
So far, this rule has never let me down.
Although I agree that there are awkward questions around the relationship between party and state particularly the way that he and Johnson appear to have mismanaged the entire Downing Street operation, I don't think Starmer will be unduly exercised about this without considerably more information.
The very sinews of governance appear to have atrophied in the UK.
How much this is Brexit, or Johnson, or even Blair (sofa style) I don’t know. But it seems to be one dysfunctional, amateurish cluster-fuck after another.
It is hard now to pin-point anything that looks successful. Vaccine procurement and Ukrainian military training, yes, but both seem rather “exceptional” items. Where are the BAU successes?
Gov.uk
The UK is - believe it or not - a world leader in digital public services.
NZ and Estonia are better. But, yes, UK is upper tier.
This is what I meant by bet AGAINST Lake. Bet on Hobbs
5/1 seems a little generous in an incredibly tight two horse race
And Lake has made a few errors recently - the Pelosi thing. Nothing terrible but it is very close
Oh, it's a value bet. But I've been caught in one too many value traps, that's all. For less timid people than me, it's worth a punt.
More to the point, since the odds on Ladbrokes aren't far off evens (both marginally odds-on) and on BFE only 1.7/2.08, if it is indeed 5/1 on another site there is money to be made on arbitrage. I can't imagine the odds above are still there?
Think those Ladbrokes prices are for the Senate seat, not the Governor's.
I was bored last night and calculated that Britain is four times closer to Russia (Lowestoft to Kaliningrad) than it is to the US (Cornwall to Maine).
Kalingrad’s cheating a little bit though.
I doubt that worries the poster, for whom the KPI is to sow doubt in the minds of UK online communities about:
- Britain being "in too deep" in the Ukraine war and implicated in acts like the Sevastopol attack - Ukraine being in a weaker position than media would have us think - The risk of nuclear war and the danger of escalation
All of which is supposed to lead to "maybe we should make a deal with Putin".
Interestingly most of their posts have been coming at this from a left rather than right wing perspective, hence the absence of anti-vax comments so far. A new tactic. More subtle than most too, and only a few less obvious tells - I think this is one of the top performers.
I agree, and I do hope he or she stays, and does nothing ban worthy - it's good that this perspective has a presence here.
Who are we talking about?
Our current agent of influence. Or Russian troll, as unkind souls have it.
I like to think PB is seen as an elite training ground, a sort of Turing test where the ultimate accolade is to pass off convincingly as British. They're getting closer, just a few tweaks needed. I can't believe PB would actually be seen as a valuable target in its own right.
A chunk of the British political class read PB. Whether this a is a good or bad thing....
After demonising the Albanians the entire right wing political class turned their attention to innocent PBers, with few surviving the experience.........
This is neither a good idea nor a long term plan - it just looks like admin hell and fraud heaven. Keep things simple.
This is an interesting campaign as it's actually not highlighting anything new. It's essentially the government signalling 'we're doing stuff about cost of living', except that nearly all of it is stuff that already existed.
"Obviously there was nothing like a data science team to provide modern infrastructure, never mind apply state-of-the-art tools to practical prediction problems. (A reason we organised the polling on covid (to provide data on symptoms, footfall etc for SAGE) the way we did was to use the cloud dashboards we’d built for the election campaign weeks earlier — not political data but the infrastructure which No10/70WH did not have — so we could share information across Whitehall using modern tools."
OK he says the people wearing Tory campaigner hats didn't transfer political data to themselves wearing Whitehall hats and they only transferred digital tools they'd built, but this in itself is interesting and raises questions about the relationship between party and state. Whose was the intellectual property and did the state pay for it, either at the time or in favours later?
Get on this, Keir. (As if he ever would!)
With Dominic Cummings, a good rule of thumb is when he describes an event, assume it didn't happen or at least, didn't happen in that way.
So far, this rule has never let me down.
Although I agree that there are awkward questions around the relationship between party and state particularly the way that he and Johnson appear to have mismanaged the entire Downing Street operation, I don't think Starmer will be unduly exercised about this without considerably more information.
The very sinews of governance appear to have atrophied in the UK.
How much this is Brexit, or Johnson, or even Blair (sofa style) I don’t know. But it seems to be one dysfunctional, amateurish cluster-fuck after another.
It is hard now to pin-point anything that looks successful. Vaccine procurement and Ukrainian military training, yes, but both seem rather “exceptional” items. Where are the BAU successes?
Gov.uk
The UK is - believe it or not - a world leader in digital public services.
NZ and Estonia are better. But, yes, UK is upper tier.
True -but the UK serves a far larger population with attendant complexity.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Here's my assessment of how fucked things are from personal experience:
NHS: fucked. Almost impossible to get appointments. Long waits for referrals. Schools: okay but getting worse. Obviously less resources than a few years ago. Secondary school staff turnover and occasional staff shortages suggests wages too low to retain staff in London. All extra curricular activities need to be paid for. Public transport: okay but getting worse. Bus routes cut, less frequent buses. Tube okay. New Elizabeth Line an obvious improvement. Trains okay, same as ever. Council services: obviously very stretched. Street cleaning way down. Basic services covered, nothing else, impossible to speak to anyone about anything. Fly tipping out of control. Roads: surfaces increasingly poor. Perhaps there is an effort at catch up given amount of works going on, but a lot of that seems to be water related. Frequent burst water mains. Prices of everything massively up. Taxes up. Private sector obviously seeing staff shortages, evident in retail, hospitality and construction. Occasional glimpses of additional border red tape but doesn't affect me much directly. Overall: quality of life is deteriorating.
You can apply all that to Wales under the Welsh labour government (apart from the tube obviously)
I was bored last night and calculated that Britain is four times closer to Russia (Lowestoft to Kaliningrad) than it is to the US (Cornwall to Maine).
Kalingrad’s cheating a little bit though.
I doubt that worries the poster, for whom the KPI is to sow doubt in the minds of UK online communities about:
- Britain being "in too deep" in the Ukraine war and implicated in acts like the Sevastopol attack - Ukraine being in a weaker position than media would have us think - The risk of nuclear war and the danger of escalation
All of which is supposed to lead to "maybe we should make a deal with Putin".
Interestingly most of their posts have been coming at this from a left rather than right wing perspective, hence the absence of anti-vax comments so far. A new tactic. More subtle than most too, and only a few less obvious tells - I think this is one of the top performers.
I agree, and I do hope he or she stays, and does nothing ban worthy - it's good that this perspective has a presence here.
Who are we talking about?
Our current agent of influence. Or Russian troll, as unkind souls have it.
I like to think PB is seen as an elite training ground, a sort of Turing test where the ultimate accolade is to pass off convincingly as British. They're getting closer, just a few tweaks needed. I can't believe PB would actually be seen as a valuable target in its own right.
A chunk of the British political class read PB. Whether this a is a good or bad thing....
After demonising the Albanians the entire right wing political class turned their attention to innocent PBers, with few surviving the experience.........
It's the Travelodge in Wolverhampton for us all, then ?
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
The news channels are the best example of this.
Though from another point of view, news channels are another example of the "it's all a bit rubbish" malaise.
Earlier this week, we heard about the cuts to BBC local radio. And whilst sounds are still coming out of the speakers, the content is noticeably thinner than it used to be. A couple of local evening news shows are being cancelled. The Romford Recorder has just gone up to £1.10, and there's not much in it.
The country is creaking, and it's not obvious how it improves.
I have just been e-scootering around Reykjavik. Great fun. Why have I never used an e-scooter before? DERRR
Anyway I went to see Hofdi house, a pretty little villa on the northern Reykjavik waterfront. It’s where Gorbachev and Reagan came close to abolishing all nuclear weapons. Almost too poignant, in the circs
The villa gazes at the wistful fjords and the distant glacier, lost in a Nordic dream of almost peace
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Here's my assessment of how fucked things are from personal experience:
NHS: fucked. Almost impossible to get appointments. Long waits for referrals. Schools: okay but getting worse. Obviously less resources than a few years ago. Secondary school staff turnover and occasional staff shortages suggests wages too low to retain staff in London. All extra curricular activities need to be paid for. Public transport: okay but getting worse. Bus routes cut, less frequent buses. Tube okay. New Elizabeth Line an obvious improvement. Trains okay, same as ever. Council services: obviously very stretched. Street cleaning way down. Basic services covered, nothing else, impossible to speak to anyone about anything. Fly tipping out of control. Roads: surfaces increasingly poor. Perhaps there is an effort at catch up given amount of works going on, but a lot of that seems to be water related. Frequent burst water mains. Prices of everything massively up. Taxes up. Private sector obviously seeing staff shortages, evident in retail, hospitality and construction. Occasional glimpses of additional border red tape but doesn't affect me much directly. Overall: quality of life is deteriorating.
You can apply all that to Wales under the Welsh labour government (apart from the tube obviously)
Welsh Labour seem less a political proposition than a kind of shitocracy. I presume the Welsh prefer it this way as the Welsh Tories are even worse.
Off topic. We dodged a bullet. I wouldn't have voted for Boris but many would.
Boris would have made the members vote. Boris would have won the members vote We would have more to worry about that Leaky Sue.
Boris would have lost the members vote which is why he pulled out. That would have been utterly humiliating.
I think that's right. And even if he'd won it he knew he didn't have enough MP support to be a viable PM. It's wrong to think we nearly had him back. It wasn't happening.
"Obviously there was nothing like a data science team to provide modern infrastructure, never mind apply state-of-the-art tools to practical prediction problems. (A reason we organised the polling on covid (to provide data on symptoms, footfall etc for SAGE) the way we did was to use the cloud dashboards we’d built for the election campaign weeks earlier — not political data but the infrastructure which No10/70WH did not have — so we could share information across Whitehall using modern tools."
OK he says the people wearing Tory campaigner hats didn't transfer political data to themselves wearing Whitehall hats and they only transferred digital tools they'd built, but this in itself is interesting and raises questions about the relationship between party and state. Whose was the intellectual property and did the state pay for it, either at the time or in favours later?
Get on this, Keir. (As if he ever would!)
With Dominic Cummings, a good rule of thumb is when he describes an event, assume it didn't happen or at least, didn't happen in that way.
So far, this rule has never let me down.
Although I agree that there are awkward questions around the relationship between party and state particularly the way that he and Johnson appear to have mismanaged the entire Downing Street operation, I don't think Starmer will be unduly exercised about this without considerably more information.
The very sinews of governance appear to have atrophied in the UK.
How much this is Brexit, or Johnson, or even Blair (sofa style) I don’t know. But it seems to be one dysfunctional, amateurish cluster-fuck after another.
It is hard now to pin-point anything that looks successful. Vaccine procurement and Ukrainian military training, yes, but both seem rather “exceptional” items. Where are the BAU successes?
Gov.uk
The UK is - believe it or not - a world leader in digital public services.
NZ and Estonia are better. But, yes, UK is upper tier.
True -but the UK serves a far larger population with attendant complexity.
Yes, although I always think British policymakers use that as a kind of excuse.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Here's my assessment of how fucked things are from personal experience:
Schools: okay but getting worse. Obviously less resources than a few years ago. Secondary school staff turnover and occasional staff shortages suggests wages too low to retain staff in London. All extra curricular activities need to be paid for. Public transport: okay but getting worse. Bus routes cut, less frequent buses. Tube okay. New Elizabeth Line an obvious improvement. Trains okay, same as ever.
Far too London-centric. It's not in London that schools have the major problems in getting and retaining staff. It's got a large supply of young graduates it can draw on, although they also move on fairly swiftly as you note. The North East is by far the worst but things are grim in the Midlands and West Country.
Similarly, good luck getting a bus round here for less than a fortune. Tube, of course, doesn't operate outside London.
Also, the train services are grossly overstretched due to capacity constraints, which is why HS2 being scaled back is a real worry.
Now, that's not to say things are totally desolate. This is still a great country to live in in lots of ways. But it's frustratingly badly run and run down because too many public servants of all shades give no shits about anything except their own careers, so won't make hard choices and won't tell people difficult truths about spending and policy choices.
Is there value betting AGAINST the Arizona favourite, Kari Lake, at these odds?
The early votes are modestly good for the Dems, the polls have significantly tightened. No way Kari Lake is that big a favourite
She's 2 points clear in the 538 pollnig average. Barring two 11 point lead polls the polls are very consistent at a 1-3 point lead for Lake.
So betting against her is betting on herding polling error in favour of the Democrats.
I am not tempted but 5/1 is definitely in the zone of temptation for betting on Hobbs here.
I would bet that the polls - in aggregate - are going to overstate Dems by 2-3% or overstate Republicans by the same amount. That makes 5-1 or more on Hobbs in AZ a decent bet.
Hobbs, btw, seems to be a dreadful candidate. Here she is, desperately struggling on a friendly tv show, as she explains why she won’t ever debate on TV. Not good
Suggests that a better Dem might have won quite easily?
TV debates are now so entrenched in US politics, that it’s always going to be counted against someone who doesn’t want to do them - even when their opponent is a brilliant media performer.
The one exception that comes to mind this year, is John Fetterman, clearly not recovered from a stroke some months ago, and as with Biden sad to see on TV.
There's been a couple of responses by stroke specialists saying that Fetterman's performance, poor as it was, showed that his recovery is progressing well and the prognosis is a near-total recovery. That's not to take away from the fact that it won't have come over well to anyone watching the debate, and who doesn't then see these analyses.
Good to hear that Mr Fetterman’s prognosis is good - but this was an interview for a stressful job representing his State in the US Senate, not his weekly therapy session with the doctors.
Is there value betting AGAINST the Arizona favourite, Kari Lake, at these odds?
The early votes are modestly good for the Dems, the polls have significantly tightened. No way Kari Lake is that big a favourite
She's 2 points clear in the 538 pollnig average. Barring two 11 point lead polls the polls are very consistent at a 1-3 point lead for Lake.
So betting against her is betting on herding polling error in favour of the Democrats.
I am not tempted but 5/1 is definitely in the zone of temptation for betting on Hobbs here.
I would bet that the polls - in aggregate - are going to overstate Dems by 2-3% or overstate Republicans by the same amount. That makes 5-1 or more on Hobbs in AZ a decent bet.
Hobbs, btw, seems to be a dreadful candidate. Here she is, desperately struggling on a friendly tv show, as she explains why she won’t ever debate on TV. Not good
Suggests that a better Dem might have won quite easily?
TV debates are now so entrenched in US politics, that it’s always going to be counted against someone who doesn’t want to do them - even when their opponent is a brilliant media performer.
The one exception that comes to mind this year, is John Fetterman, clearly not recovered from a stroke some months ago, and as with Biden sad to see on TV.
Believe the impact of MOST of the TV debates in STATE races is today's media & political environment is generally overblown.
For example, in WA State 2022 televised debates between incumbent Patty Murray (D) and challenger Tiffany Smiley (R) have received relatively little coverage and generated (as far as I can tell) even less voter comment.
In strong contrast to the 1992 debate between relative newcomer Patty and incumbent Congressman Ron Chandler (R), which proved a major factor in her victory and his defeat.
Then and now, TV ads were MORE important than the actual TV debates, of course key debate moments (if any) can be deployed in advertising. AND also in news reports. In fact, way more voters are likely to view clips of debates via TV AND the Internet, than are likely to actually watch all or even part of televised debates.
Naturally with GREAT variations from state to state, campaign to campaign.
Just bought a Golf GTI to replace my beloved but not Ulezed old Merc that I've had since 1994 and has never - not once - let me down. So many memories, some lovely and none of them bad. Feel like a complete heel.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Here's my assessment of how fucked things are from personal experience:
Schools: okay but getting worse. Obviously less resources than a few years ago. Secondary school staff turnover and occasional staff shortages suggests wages too low to retain staff in London. All extra curricular activities need to be paid for. Public transport: okay but getting worse. Bus routes cut, less frequent buses. Tube okay. New Elizabeth Line an obvious improvement. Trains okay, same as ever.
Far too London-centric. It's not in London that schools have the major problems in getting and retaining staff. It's got a large supply of young graduates it can draw on, although they also move on fairly swiftly as you note. The North East is by far the worst but things are grim in the Midlands and West Country.
Similarly, good luck getting a bus round here for less than a fortune. Tube, of course, doesn't operate outside London.
Also, the train services are grossly overstretched due to capacity constraints, which is why HS2 being scaled back is a real worry.
Now, that's not to say things are totally desolate. This is still a great country to live in in lots of ways. But it's frustratingly badly run and run down because too many public servants of all shades give no shits about anything except their own careers, so won't make hard choices and won't tell people difficult truths about spending and policy choices.
Politicians, of course, have the best motivation for not making hard choices and telling people difficult truths: it loses them elections.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Here's my assessment of how fucked things are from personal experience:
Schools: okay but getting worse. Obviously less resources than a few years ago. Secondary school staff turnover and occasional staff shortages suggests wages too low to retain staff in London. All extra curricular activities need to be paid for. Public transport: okay but getting worse. Bus routes cut, less frequent buses. Tube okay. New Elizabeth Line an obvious improvement. Trains okay, same as ever.
Far too London-centric. It's not in London that schools have the major problems in getting and retaining staff. It's got a large supply of young graduates it can draw on, although they also move on fairly swiftly as you note. The North East is by far the worst but things are grim in the Midlands and West Country.
Similarly, good luck getting a bus round here for less than a fortune. Tube, of course, doesn't operate outside London.
Also, the train services are grossly overstretched due to capacity constraints, which is why HS2 being scaled back is a real worry.
Now, that's not to say things are totally desolate. This is still a great country to live in in lots of ways. But it's frustratingly badly run and run down because too many public servants of all shades give no shits about anything except their own careers, so won't make hard choices and won't tell people difficult truths about spending and policy choices.
You have to explain though, why it seems to have got worse, and indeed whether the decline has hit the UK harder.
Hard to really tell as the English speaking media really only care about the UK and the US who are both fucked in quite different ways.
We mostly hear utter bullshit about Europe, and pretty much nothing about anywhere else.
Is there value betting AGAINST the Arizona favourite, Kari Lake, at these odds?
The early votes are modestly good for the Dems, the polls have significantly tightened. No way Kari Lake is that big a favourite
She's 2 points clear in the 538 pollnig average. Barring two 11 point lead polls the polls are very consistent at a 1-3 point lead for Lake.
So betting against her is betting on herding polling error in favour of the Democrats.
I am not tempted but 5/1 is definitely in the zone of temptation for betting on Hobbs here.
I would bet that the polls - in aggregate - are going to overstate Dems by 2-3% or overstate Republicans by the same amount. That makes 5-1 or more on Hobbs in AZ a decent bet.
Hobbs, btw, seems to be a dreadful candidate. Here she is, desperately struggling on a friendly tv show, as she explains why she won’t ever debate on TV. Not good
Suggests that a better Dem might have won quite easily?
TV debates are now so entrenched in US politics, that it’s always going to be counted against someone who doesn’t want to do them - even when their opponent is a brilliant media performer.
The one exception that comes to mind this year, is John Fetterman, clearly not recovered from a stroke some months ago, and as with Biden sad to see on TV.
There's been a couple of responses by stroke specialists saying that Fetterman's performance, poor as it was, showed that his recovery is progressing well and the prognosis is a near-total recovery. That's not to take away from the fact that it won't have come over well to anyone watching the debate, and who doesn't then see these analyses.
Good to hear that Mr Fetterman’s prognosis is good - but this was an interview for a stressful job representing his State in the US Senate, not his weekly therapy session with the doctors.
Even an incapacitated Fetterman is superior than Oz who is quite clearly a Grade A lying shit.
Not sure cancelling the new Sizewell power station is a good idea.
Won't happen.
The power station, or the cancellation of it?
If it’s to be cancelled, then at least announcing what will replace it at the same time, might be seen as good politics at a time of record high energy bills!
Cancellation. Just the Treasury chestbeating.
There are leaks to the media day-by-day at the moment as they look at all potential tax and spending options.
Everything will need to be "reviewed" as part of a top to bottom exercise but this won't go anywhere. Sunak and Macron shook hands on it only 7 days ago.
Oh, I completely agree that there needs to be a zero-based spending review over the winter, with absolutely everything on the table - but it needs to be done in a coherent manner, finishing with a single announcement before the start of the financial year.
Dripping negative spending stories out one at a time, won’t do much for the government’s popularity. Do it all at once, to avoid every single-issue pressure group having their own day in the sun.
It will also damage investment.
Sizewell C relies on private sector investment and the government had already made the commitment.
This raises huge questions about the UK's reliability and consistency.
The real question is what the government will replace it with, we still have a huge energy deficit in 10 years time, cancelling Sizewell C may be a good decision because the EPR is clearly not good enough, bit we still need reliable energy to replace the existing nuclear reactors that will be decommissioned by then. I'd like to see a firm commitment to the modular reactors from RR and wind+storage. By firm commitment, I mean £8-10bn in state investment and another £20-30bn from the private sector. Cutting spending on future energy generation seems like an incredibly poor idea.
Successive governments back to Blair/Brown have shat on new nuclear with their prevaricating bullshit for over 20 years. This is why.
Sizewell C is ready to go and can build directly on the lessons learned from Hinkley Point C - it is a carbon copy.
There are 27 years left to achieve Net Zero and this plant decarbonises 7% of the grid.
It'd be utter insanity to cancel it.
The issue I have with sizewell C is that it's using a dead end technology like EPR which has yet to be proven to work reliably. Taishan is continuously closed for repairs, Flammanvile still hasn't opened and Olkiluoto still seems delayed indefinitely because of cracks in the reactor vessel. The issue I've got with Sizewell C isn't because it's nuclear, it's because it's EPR and that technology just doesn't seem like it works. For HPC we have EDF on the hook for all of the delays and eventual failure if they can't open it. Sizewell put the taxpayer on the hook for a reactor design that just seems flawed. We're much better off with the RR design (and RR shares are up today on the news of Sizewell C being cancelled) and investing in Moltex, First light fusion and a small next gen fusion reactor project rather than the white elephant that ITER is turning into.
Hold on why aren't we just doing a cfd deal for Sizewell C ?
Doing it as a RAB model allows private funding to buy in and lowers the WACC (a big part of HPC cost) and thus the cost to the taxpayer/consumer.
I know a lot about this project as am involved with it so feel free to DM for more.
But that assumes no construction cost increases and delays. Every single EPR has been late and over budget, I don't understand why anyone thinks it won't be exactly the same for Sizewell C.
It's replicated (design and supply chain) so can avoid a lot of the first time integration issues that Hinkley Point C experienced.
But the issue isn't first time integration, it's a flawed reactor design that needs refinement. Every single EPR has suffered from the same issues, cracks in the main reactor vessel and in China radioactive gas releases. The design needs fixing, with HPC the taxpayer isn't on the hook for their broken reactor design, with Sizewell C we are. EDF and Areva have struggled to get any of the EPRs working and if the Chinese reactor was in Europe it would never have been commissioned, it's only because of lower safety standards that it was allowed to power up.
First time integration is only the principle issue if what comes out of it is a sound design that can be replicated, working.
Replicating a dodgy design just replicates the flaws.
Indeed, I just hope in 2026 we don't have the same pauses in construction that the Finnish and French reactors have needed. I don't hold out a lot of hope as they don't seem to have figured it out yet.
There are some teething issues but it's far from as bad as you make out.
Taishan is back online now - those issues were fixed. Olkiluoto 3 in Finland achieved criticality last December and is due to go commercial next month. Safety standards are very high.
There have been some issues with cracks in impellers and inlets. They arent fundamental. EPR is a next generation PWR design, which is well proven; it's not fatally flawed. It's not dissimilar to Prince of Wales aircraft issues - all big megaprojects have issues - and they will be ironed out.
DM me if you like. We're doing a lot of work on investor engagement on this.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Of the NHS, courts, asylum system and economy which is not in your view fucked? 24 hour waits for A and E, delays and backlogs of literally years, 10% inflation and a 2 year recession forecast. Are these lies confected by libtards?
I agree those things are all quite banjaxed, and yet in my recent travels this year - and I have been to many countries - the UK does not stand out as feeling notably buggered
For a fucked country, try Armenia. My God
In fact here’s a list from most fucked to least fucked of all the countries I have visited this year. This is purely subjective. Just what I *feel* on the ground
Most fucked…
Armenia Sri Lanka Georgia Turkey Greece Montenegro United States Portugal Italy United Kingdom Spain Germany Iceland
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
Thats too extreme. Schools and Uni's are open, the hospitals are cracking on with trying to reduce waiting lists, while still dealing with covid (less so but still there), unemployment is low, there are jobs available. Immigration is in the public eye but is at lower levels than most European nations. The economy is being buffeted by global events and is not alone. Tough times ahead, same as elsewhere.
The well off will be fine, the middle incomes will struggle some more and the poor as always will suffer the most.
I agree that it's too extreme a view. Our schools are actually OK, there are jobs, we still do a lot of stuff very well.
The area that seems closest to genuinely broken, to my outsider's eyes, is justice.
They're really, really not. That's a system right on the edge.
The thing is that the staff are trying their hardest to keep the full scale of the unfolding disaster from impacting the children so it isn't immediately obvious to outsiders just how bad it is.
Amusingly, in a grim way, I've just been sent yet another pleading email to go on supply. I checked where they wanted me and it was the very school I'd left. In fact, my old job. They haven't been able to replace me yet, six whole months after I informed them I was leaving.
Is there value betting AGAINST the Arizona favourite, Kari Lake, at these odds?
The early votes are modestly good for the Dems, the polls have significantly tightened. No way Kari Lake is that big a favourite
She's 2 points clear in the 538 pollnig average. Barring two 11 point lead polls the polls are very consistent at a 1-3 point lead for Lake.
So betting against her is betting on herding polling error in favour of the Democrats.
I am not tempted but 5/1 is definitely in the zone of temptation for betting on Hobbs here.
I would bet that the polls - in aggregate - are going to overstate Dems by 2-3% or overstate Republicans by the same amount. That makes 5-1 or more on Hobbs in AZ a decent bet.
Hobbs, btw, seems to be a dreadful candidate. Here she is, desperately struggling on a friendly tv show, as she explains why she won’t ever debate on TV. Not good
Suggests that a better Dem might have won quite easily?
TV debates are now so entrenched in US politics, that it’s always going to be counted against someone who doesn’t want to do them - even when their opponent is a brilliant media performer.
The one exception that comes to mind this year, is John Fetterman, clearly not recovered from a stroke some months ago, and as with Biden sad to see on TV.
There's been a couple of responses by stroke specialists saying that Fetterman's performance, poor as it was, showed that his recovery is progressing well and the prognosis is a near-total recovery. That's not to take away from the fact that it won't have come over well to anyone watching the debate, and who doesn't then see these analyses.
Good to hear that Mr Fetterman’s prognosis is good - but this was an interview for a stressful job representing his State in the US Senate, not his weekly therapy session with the doctors.
Even an incapacitated Fetterman is superior than Oz who is quite clearly a Grade A lying shit.
You look at the array of 'Trump' candidates for these midterms and every single one makes you either shudder or squirm or both. Absolute freakshow.
"The MP for North Devon said that migrants had been moved into a “fully functioning tourist hotel in Ilfracombe” that was forced to sack “all its staff to become a hotel for the Home Office without any consultation with the council”. Previously when migrants have moved into hotels existing staff have been sacked to be replaced by Home Office staff."
Times.
This is not the sort of thing I want happening in my, erm, back yard.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
Thats too extreme. Schools and Uni's are open, the hospitals are cracking on with trying to reduce waiting lists, while still dealing with covid (less so but still there), unemployment is low, there are jobs available. Immigration is in the public eye but is at lower levels than most European nations. The economy is being buffeted by global events and is not alone. Tough times ahead, same as elsewhere.
The well off will be fine, the middle incomes will struggle some more and the poor as always will suffer the most.
I agree that it's too extreme a view. Our schools are actually OK, there are jobs, we still do a lot of stuff very well.
The area that seems closest to genuinely broken, to my outsider's eyes, is justice.
They're really, really not. That's a system right on the edge.
The thing is that the staff are trying their hardest to keep the full scale of the unfolding disaster from impacting the children so it isn't immediately obvious to outsiders just how bad it is.
Amusingly, in a grim way, I've just been sent yet another pleading email to go on supply. I checked where they wanted me and it was the very school I'd left. In fact, my old job. They haven't been able to replace me yet, six whole months after I informed them I was leaving.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
Thats too extreme. Schools and Uni's are open, the hospitals are cracking on with trying to reduce waiting lists, while still dealing with covid (less so but still there), unemployment is low, there are jobs available. Immigration is in the public eye but is at lower levels than most European nations. The economy is being buffeted by global events and is not alone. Tough times ahead, same as elsewhere.
The well off will be fine, the middle incomes will struggle some more and the poor as always will suffer the most.
I agree that it's too extreme a view. Our schools are actually OK, there are jobs, we still do a lot of stuff very well.
The area that seems closest to genuinely broken, to my outsider's eyes, is justice.
They're really, really not. That's a system right on the edge.
The thing is that the staff are trying their hardest to keep the full scale of the unfolding disaster from impacting the children so it isn't immediately obvious to outsiders just how bad it is.
Amusingly, in a grim way, I've just been sent yet another pleading email to go on supply. I checked where they wanted me and it was the very school I'd left. In fact, my old job. They haven't been able to replace me yet, six whole months after I informed them I was leaving.
Are you on a break from teaching then atm?
Depends on what you mean by 'on a break.' I'm doing a fair amount of tutoring although more would be nice (if OGH doesn't mind me pushing my own wares, I'm happy to be contacted by VM if anyone needs English, History or RS tutoring) but I'm not working in a school.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Here's my assessment of how fucked things are from personal experience:
NHS: fucked. Almost impossible to get appointments. Long waits for referrals. Schools: okay but getting worse. Obviously less resources than a few years ago. Secondary school staff turnover and occasional staff shortages suggests wages too low to retain staff in London. All extra curricular activities need to be paid for. Public transport: okay but getting worse. Bus routes cut, less frequent buses. Tube okay. New Elizabeth Line an obvious improvement. Trains okay, same as ever. Council services: obviously very stretched. Street cleaning way down. Basic services covered, nothing else, impossible to speak to anyone about anything. Fly tipping out of control. Roads: surfaces increasingly poor. Perhaps there is an effort at catch up given amount of works going on, but a lot of that seems to be water related. Frequent burst water mains. Prices of everything massively up. Taxes up. Private sector obviously seeing staff shortages, evident in retail, hospitality and construction. Occasional glimpses of additional border red tape but doesn't affect me much directly. Overall: quality of life is deteriorating.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Here's my assessment of how fucked things are from personal experience:
Schools: okay but getting worse. Obviously less resources than a few years ago. Secondary school staff turnover and occasional staff shortages suggests wages too low to retain staff in London. All extra curricular activities need to be paid for. Public transport: okay but getting worse. Bus routes cut, less frequent buses. Tube okay. New Elizabeth Line an obvious improvement. Trains okay, same as ever.
Far too London-centric. It's not in London that schools have the major problems in getting and retaining staff. It's got a large supply of young graduates it can draw on, although they also move on fairly swiftly as you note. The North East is by far the worst but things are grim in the Midlands and West Country.
Similarly, good luck getting a bus round here for less than a fortune. Tube, of course, doesn't operate outside London.
Also, the train services are grossly overstretched due to capacity constraints, which is why HS2 being scaled back is a real worry.
Now, that's not to say things are totally desolate. This is still a great country to live in in lots of ways. But it's frustratingly badly run and run down because too many public servants of all shades give no shits about anything except their own careers, so won't make hard choices and won't tell people difficult truths about spending and policy choices.
You have to explain though, why it seems to have got worse, and indeed whether the decline has hit the UK harder.
Hard to really tell as the English speaking media really only care about the UK and the US who are both fucked in quite different ways.
We mostly hear utter bullshit about Europe, and pretty much nothing about anywhere else.
I have a fair bit of experience of life, infrastructure and public services in France, admittedly as a second home owner who only has secondhand evidence on say education or policing.
They are much much better, in almost all ways. The planning process is less bureaucratic but seems to work effectively to prevent poor development. The healthcare system is quick and effective. Private transport infrastructure is way better, the roads better maintained (but public transport less so). Nursery and early years education and childcare are excellent meaning women are back in the workplace much more quickly than in Britain. The care system, from what I've seen, is well funded and humane. Environmental management is active, largely delegated to town hall or even commune level, and taken seriously.
The things that don't work as well in France as the UK include: buses - even thinner on the ground than here, very sparse local rail network, choice in things like prescription medicine which remains heavily restricted to private pharmacies, choice in other things like energy provider or broadband, shop opening hours of course, and the tendency of public sector workers to go on strike with alarming frequency. There are a few things like police heavy handedness where we seem to be equally as bad as each other. But all in all things are pretty good.
Doesn't stop the locals from moaning endlessly about how their country is going aux chiens though.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
Thats too extreme. Schools and Uni's are open, the hospitals are cracking on with trying to reduce waiting lists, while still dealing with covid (less so but still there), unemployment is low, there are jobs available. Immigration is in the public eye but is at lower levels than most European nations. The economy is being buffeted by global events and is not alone. Tough times ahead, same as elsewhere.
The well off will be fine, the middle incomes will struggle some more and the poor as always will suffer the most.
I agree that it's too extreme a view. Our schools are actually OK, there are jobs, we still do a lot of stuff very well.
The area that seems closest to genuinely broken, to my outsider's eyes, is justice.
They're really, really not. That's a system right on the edge.
The thing is that the staff are trying their hardest to keep the full scale of the unfolding disaster from impacting the children so it isn't immediately obvious to outsiders just how bad it is.
Amusingly, in a grim way, I've just been sent yet another pleading email to go on supply. I checked where they wanted me and it was the very school I'd left. In fact, my old job. They haven't been able to replace me yet, six whole months after I informed them I was leaving.
Are you on a break from teaching then atm?
Depends on what you mean by 'on a break.' I'm doing a fair amount of tutoring although more would be nice (if OGH doesn't mind me pushing my own wares, I'm happy to be contacted by VM if anyone needs English, History or RS tutoring) but I'm not working in a school.
Ah right. All the best with that. I did mean school, yes. The battleground.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Of the NHS, courts, asylum system and economy which is not in your view fucked? 24 hour waits for A and E, delays and backlogs of literally years, 10% inflation and a 2 year recession forecast. Are these lies confected by libtards?
I agree those things are all quite banjaxed, and yet in my recent travels this year - and I have been to many countries - the UK does not stand out as feeling notably buggered
For a fucked country, try Armenia. My God
In fact here’s a list from most fucked to least fucked of all the countries I have visited this year. This is purely subjective. Just what I *feel* on the ground
Most fucked…
Armenia Sri Lanka Georgia Turkey Greece Montenegro United States Italy United Kingdom Spain Germany Iceland
…. Least fucked
Just don't get prosecuted, deported, educated or ill. I have seriously thought about limiting my riding because of the bleak outlook for A&E. Then I think fuck it, it's usually a helicopter job off the moor so at least I jump the ambulance queue.
What a good day to turn from American politics to:
Thy shadow, Earth, from Pole to Central Sea, Now steals along upon the Moon's meek shine In even monochrome and curving line Of imperturbable serenity.
How shall I link such sun-cast symmetry With the torn troubled form I know as thine, That profile, placid as a brow divine, With continents of moil and misery?
And can immense Mortality but throw So small a shade, and Heaven's high human scheme Be hemmed within the coasts yon arc implies?
Is such the stellar gauge of earthly show, Nation at war with nation, brains that teem, Heroes, and women fairer than the skies?
Thomas Hardy
Or even RS Thomas's 'The Moon in Lleyn' - one of the great 20th century religious poems, also on lunar eclipses.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Of the NHS, courts, asylum system and economy which is not in your view fucked? 24 hour waits for A and E, delays and backlogs of literally years, 10% inflation and a 2 year recession forecast. Are these lies confected by libtards?
I agree those things are all quite banjaxed, and yet in my recent travels this year - and I have been to many countries - the UK does not stand out as feeling notably buggered
For a fucked country, try Armenia. My God
In fact here’s a list from most fucked to least fucked of all the countries I have visited this year. This is purely subjective. Just what I *feel* on the ground
Most fucked…
Armenia Sri Lanka Georgia Turkey Greece Montenegro United States Portugal Italy United Kingdom Spain Germany Iceland
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Of the NHS, courts, asylum system and economy which is not in your view fucked? 24 hour waits for A and E, delays and backlogs of literally years, 10% inflation and a 2 year recession forecast. Are these lies confected by libtards?
I agree those things are all quite banjaxed, and yet in my recent travels this year - and I have been to many countries - the UK does not stand out as feeling notably buggered
For a fucked country, try Armenia. My God
In fact here’s a list from most fucked to least fucked of all the countries I have visited this year. This is purely subjective. Just what I *feel* on the ground
Most fucked…
Armenia Sri Lanka Georgia Turkey Greece Montenegro United States Italy United Kingdom Spain Germany Iceland
…. Least fucked
Just don't get prosecuted, deported, educated or ill. I have seriously thought about limiting my riding because of the bleak outlook for A&E. Then I think fuck it, it's usually a helicopter job off the moor so at least I jump the ambulance queue.
Presumably you are not at risk of deportation.
As a dual passport holder, however, it is theoretically possible for the UK to strip British citizenship from me by means of a secret court.
As Shania Twain once said, that don’t impress me much.
Jonathan Swan @jonathanvswan Scoop: Former President Trump's inner circle is discussing announcing the launch of a 2024 presidential campaign on Nov. 14 — with the official announcement possibly followed by a multi-day series of political events.
Incidentally, I am amazed to discover that posters who told us the polls could not be trusted and GOP were going to do well in 2018 midterms & that Trump was going to win bigly in 2020 and that the polls could not be trusted (and that May was going to win big in 2017 and the polls could not be trusted) seem to be happy with the trustworthiness of the polls in 2022 when they are showing a GOP sweep.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
Envy of the World, the NHS - said no-one who’s ever lived anywhere else.
It’s not just the NHS though, is it.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
A good proportion of posts on here are from people with a vested interest in making people believe that everything is fucked.
Here's my assessment of how fucked things are from personal experience:
NHS: fucked. Almost impossible to get appointments. Long waits for referrals. Schools: okay but getting worse. Obviously less resources than a few years ago. Secondary school staff turnover and occasional staff shortages suggests wages too low to retain staff in London. All extra curricular activities need to be paid for. Public transport: okay but getting worse. Bus routes cut, less frequent buses. Tube okay. New Elizabeth Line an obvious improvement. Trains okay, same as ever. Council services: obviously very stretched. Street cleaning way down. Basic services covered, nothing else, impossible to speak to anyone about anything. Fly tipping out of control. Roads: surfaces increasingly poor. Perhaps there is an effort at catch up given amount of works going on, but a lot of that seems to be water related. Frequent burst water mains. Prices of everything massively up. Taxes up. Private sector obviously seeing staff shortages, evident in retail, hospitality and construction. Occasional glimpses of additional border red tape but doesn't affect me much directly. Overall: quality of life is deteriorating.
You can apply all that to Wales under the Welsh labour government (apart from the tube obviously)
Welsh Labour seem less a political proposition than a kind of shitocracy. I presume the Welsh prefer it this way as the Welsh Tories are even worse.
I've never understood the popularity of Mark Drakeford.
Comments
Market is at
https://www.betfred.com/sports/event/21290383.2
EDIT: or possibly Old Dirty Pastard. I lose track of his soubriquets.
”Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing [medical] need and been unable to get access… This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average.”
John Burn-Murdoch in the FT
https://twitter.com/boutela/status/1588424842524602368?s=46&t=Eidx6Xe5098C09qmwWaNOA
No doubt I get a partial view (as PBers do of the US) but the place seems totally fuckerooed and the prospect is dismal at least according to the BoE.
(1) Their email address is with an obscure super private email company.
(2) The 'stem' of the email address (their name) doesn't seem to show up anywhere else on the internet (and nor does DJ41) for that matter
(3) Every visit to the site seems to be from a different IP address
(4) Quite a few of their IPs are on blacklists
But you know what: he/she/they are polite, not obsessed by vaccines and trans, I say let 'em stay.
https://twitter.com/bennyjohnson/status/1587857312491999232?s=46&t=UVsl97Ly0PSlwj_zcU3XYw
Suggests that a better Dem might have won quite easily?
Some good odds there as well on the minority side, but didn't fancy it ATM.
So it's possible that the initial result won't reflect reality and let Karl Lake claim a victor that turns out to be based on incomplete counting.
Judging just by the posts on here, the courts are fucked, immigration and asylum is totally broken, education is a disaster, there’s a new government every five minutes, and of course the economy is buggered.
NEW: Ukraine's military has suffered an outage on 1300 SpaceX Starlink terminals, sources tell me & @snlyngaas. It's a "huge problem" one source said, they're "very important" for the fight a sr official added. https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/04/politics/spacex-ukraine-elon-musk-starlink-internet-outage/index.html
You may be right. I haven't done counts of the two parties. But there are still some impressive Republican governors, for example, Chris Sununu of New Hampshire. And Maryland's Governor, Larry Hogan, is conducting a low-key campaign for the presidency. He's term-limited, so he'll have plenty of time next year to begin a campaign, and he has already visited Iowa and New Hampshire. (He calls himself a "commonsense conservative", which is accurate, as far as I know.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Hogan
(His wife is an immigrant from South Korea, and an accomplished artist. https://governor.maryland.gov/firstlady/ )
The well off will be fine, the middle incomes will struggle some more and the poor as always will suffer the most.
All the systems are still working- albeit not very well and dependant on goodwill and sticky tape.
That's worse than utter collapse, because I fear that we won't do anything to solve the underlying problems (wanting too much for too little, with the gap made up by consuming seedcorn and leaving the crumbling assets for the future to fix) until something breaks properly.
And even then, it will be somebody else's fault, because it always is.
One thing about Early Voting, is that the earlier a voter votes, the LESS the impact of late-breaking news on their voting decisions, because their vote is already in the can, or in the mail.
This factor is one main reason cited by voters, for waiting until later (in some cases TOO late) to cast their ballot.
The one exception that comes to mind this year, is John Fetterman, clearly not recovered from a stroke some months ago, and as with Biden sad to see on TV.
"Obviously there was nothing like a data science team to provide modern infrastructure, never mind apply state-of-the-art tools to practical prediction problems. (A reason we organised the polling on covid (to provide data on symptoms, footfall etc for SAGE) the way we did was to use the cloud dashboards we’d built for the election campaign weeks earlier — not political data but the infrastructure which No10/70WH did not have — so we could share information across Whitehall using modern tools [...])"
OK he says the people wearing Tory campaigner hats didn't transfer political data to themselves wearing Whitehall hats and they only transferred digital tools they'd built, but this in itself is interesting and raises questions about the relationship between party and state. Whose was the intellectual property and did the state pay for it, either at the time or in favours later?
Get on this, Keir. (As if he ever would!)
Of course, in the US it hardly matters because there are no public services to speak of and the immiseration of the bottom 30% is a feature not a bug.
But I don’t get any sense that the UK government has any interest in conceding the scale of the problem. Even Rishi still rides on a wave of Johnsonian boosterism.
Seattle Times ($)
A storm blew into the Seattle area overnight, bringing a flurry of warnings, watches and advisories in addition to the heavy rain, strong winds and mountain snow that are expected to blast the region through the weekend.
Heavy snow fell in the Cascades overnight, with a foot of snow at Snoqualmie Pass, and the resulting vehicle crashes, causing a full closure of Interstate 90 until around 5 a.m. Friday.
A warmer air mass then moved in, said Jeff Michalski, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Seattle. That’s bringing heavy mountain rainfall, but the rains in Seattle will be scattered because of “a rain shadow effect with some winds coming down off of the Olympics,” he said.
In King County, strong winds are expected across much of the lowlands Friday, with gusts reaching 40 to 50 mph and a wind advisory from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. (Just be happy we aren’t up on Mount Rainier, where gusts up to 100 mph are expected, along with a pleasant 6 to 8 inches of snow.)
Because of the mountain rains, a flood watch was issued in King County and a flash-flood warning for the burn scar from the Bolt Creek fire near Skykomish.
The weather service is watching for sharp changes and fast flows in the Snoqualmie River near Snoqualmie Falls and Carnation, the Tolt River near Carnation, the Green River and the White River.
SSI - Current weather radar shows it raining (snowing in mountains) like a sonofabitch everywhere in Western WA EXCEPT for Seattle and nearest burbs. Hopefully holds off here a bit longer, long enough anyway for me to get to the grocery store & back!
So far, this rule has never let me down.
Although I agree that there are awkward questions around the relationship between party and state particularly the way that he and Johnson appear to have mismanaged the entire Downing Street operation, I don't think Starmer will be unduly exercised about this without considerably more information.
This is now the latest date for me putting on the central heating by three weeks. And I still haven't put it on!
How much this is Brexit, or Johnson, or even Blair (sofa style) I don’t know. But it seems to be one dysfunctional, amateurish cluster-fuck after another.
It is hard now to pin-point anything that looks successful. Vaccine procurement and Ukrainian military training, yes, but both seem rather “exceptional” items. Where are the BAU successes?
Still some leery feeling from sea to shining sea re: issues impacting USPS mail processing & delivery, but NOT as much as when 45 was still infesting the White House.
23 expected both Saturday and Sunday.
NY Marathoners on Sunday will be quite toasty.
NHS: fucked. Almost impossible to get appointments. Long waits for referrals.
Schools: okay but getting worse. Obviously less resources than a few years ago. Secondary school staff turnover and occasional staff shortages suggests wages too low to retain staff in London. All extra curricular activities need to be paid for.
Public transport: okay but getting worse. Bus routes cut, less frequent buses. Tube okay. New Elizabeth Line an obvious improvement. Trains okay, same as ever.
Council services: obviously very stretched. Street cleaning way down. Basic services covered, nothing else, impossible to speak to anyone about anything. Fly tipping out of control.
Roads: surfaces increasingly poor. Perhaps there is an effort at catch up given amount of works going on, but a lot of that seems to be water related. Frequent burst water mains.
Prices of everything massively up. Taxes up.
Private sector obviously seeing staff shortages, evident in retail, hospitality and construction.
Occasional glimpses of additional border red tape but doesn't affect me much directly.
Overall: quality of life is deteriorating.
Current temperature in Boston, Mass is 71 F (22 C) which is WAY above normal for November, and forecast to remain above 70 F through the weekend.
*we actually have two different zones now, one for the extension with underfloor heating, but we haven't gone for full zoned heating yet
Nevertheless, I was talking about PB anecdotage and although everyone has an axe to grind, takes of dysfunction are getting pretty hard to ignore.
The whole point is that it saves time, money and gives you something that works quickly.
This is neither a good idea nor a long term plan - it just looks like admin hell and fraud heaven. Keep things simple.
The area that seems closest to genuinely broken, to my outsider's eyes, is justice.
Obviously people losing their jobs isn't great, but for some perspective, Google have 140k employees, up double in 5 years. This isn't like a Google or an Apple laying off half their staff.
The UK is - believe it or not - a world leader in digital public services.
But, yes, UK is upper tier.
A total lunar eclipse will turn the moon blood red on Election Day
The total eclipse will last for nearly 90 minutes from coast to coast across the U.S.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/11/04/total-lunar-eclipse-blood-moon/
Earlier this week, we heard about the cuts to BBC local radio. And whilst sounds are still coming out of the speakers, the content is noticeably thinner than it used to be. A couple of local evening news shows are being cancelled. The Romford Recorder has just gone up to £1.10, and there's not much in it.
The country is creaking, and it's not obvious how it improves.
Anyway I went to see Hofdi house, a pretty little villa on the northern Reykjavik waterfront. It’s where Gorbachev and Reagan came close to abolishing all nuclear weapons. Almost too poignant, in the circs
The villa gazes at the wistful fjords and the distant glacier, lost in a Nordic dream of almost peace
Similarly, good luck getting a bus round here for less than a fortune. Tube, of course, doesn't operate outside London.
Also, the train services are grossly overstretched due to capacity constraints, which is why HS2 being scaled back is a real worry.
Now, that's not to say things are totally desolate. This is still a great country to live in in lots of ways. But it's frustratingly badly run and run down because too many public servants of all shades give no shits about anything except their own careers, so won't make hard choices and won't tell people difficult truths about spending and policy choices.
For example, in WA State 2022 televised debates between incumbent Patty Murray (D) and challenger Tiffany Smiley (R) have received relatively little coverage and generated (as far as I can tell) even less voter comment.
In strong contrast to the 1992 debate between relative newcomer Patty and incumbent Congressman Ron Chandler (R), which proved a major factor in her victory and his defeat.
Then and now, TV ads were MORE important than the actual TV debates, of course key debate moments (if any) can be deployed in advertising. AND also in news reports. In fact, way more voters are likely to view clips of debates via TV AND the Internet, than are likely to actually watch all or even part of televised debates.
Naturally with GREAT variations from state to state, campaign to campaign.
Hard to really tell as the English speaking media really only care about the UK and the US who are both fucked in quite different ways.
We mostly hear utter bullshit about Europe, and pretty much nothing about anywhere else.
Taishan is back online now - those issues were fixed. Olkiluoto 3 in Finland achieved criticality last December and is due to go commercial next month. Safety standards are very high.
There have been some issues with cracks in impellers and inlets. They arent fundamental. EPR is a next generation PWR design, which is well proven; it's not fatally flawed. It's not dissimilar to Prince of Wales aircraft issues - all big megaprojects have issues - and they will be ironed out.
DM me if you like. We're doing a lot of work on investor engagement on this.
For a fucked country, try Armenia. My God
In fact here’s a list from most fucked to least fucked of all the countries I have visited this year. This is purely subjective. Just what I *feel* on the ground
Most fucked…
Armenia
Sri Lanka
Georgia
Turkey
Greece
Montenegro
United States
Portugal
Italy
United Kingdom
Spain
Germany
Iceland
…. Least fucked
The thing is that the staff are trying their hardest to keep the full scale of the unfolding disaster from impacting the children so it isn't immediately obvious to outsiders just how bad it is.
Amusingly, in a grim way, I've just been sent yet another pleading email to go on supply. I checked where they wanted me and it was the very school I'd left. In fact, my old job. They haven't been able to replace me yet, six whole months after I informed them I was leaving.
"The MP for North Devon said that migrants had been moved into a “fully functioning tourist hotel in Ilfracombe” that was forced to sack “all its staff to become a hotel for the Home Office without any consultation with the council”. Previously when migrants have moved into hotels existing staff have been sacked to be replaced by Home Office staff."
Times.
This is not the sort of thing I want happening in my, erm, back yard.
They are much much better, in almost all ways. The planning process is less bureaucratic but seems to work effectively to prevent poor development. The healthcare system is quick and effective. Private transport infrastructure is way better, the roads better maintained (but public transport less so). Nursery and early years education and childcare are excellent meaning women are back in the workplace much more quickly than in Britain. The care system, from what I've seen, is well funded and humane. Environmental management is active, largely delegated to town hall or even commune level, and taken seriously.
The things that don't work as well in France as the UK include: buses - even thinner on the ground than here, very sparse local rail network, choice in things like prescription medicine which remains heavily restricted to private pharmacies, choice in other things like energy provider or broadband, shop opening hours of course, and the tendency of public sector workers to go on strike with alarming frequency. There are a few things like police heavy handedness where we seem to be equally as bad as each other. But all in all things are pretty good.
Doesn't stop the locals from moaning endlessly about how their country is going aux chiens though.
https://twitter.com/ClaraJeffery/status/1588295098197950464
Thy shadow, Earth, from Pole to Central Sea,
Now steals along upon the Moon's meek shine
In even monochrome and curving line
Of imperturbable serenity.
How shall I link such sun-cast symmetry
With the torn troubled form I know as thine,
That profile, placid as a brow divine,
With continents of moil and misery?
And can immense Mortality but throw
So small a shade, and Heaven's high human scheme
Be hemmed within the coasts yon arc implies?
Is such the stellar gauge of earthly show,
Nation at war with nation, brains that teem,
Heroes, and women fairer than the skies?
Thomas Hardy
Or even RS Thomas's 'The Moon in Lleyn' - one of the great 20th century religious poems, also on lunar eclipses.
As a dual passport holder, however, it is theoretically possible for the UK to strip British citizenship from me by means of a secret court.
As Shania Twain once said, that don’t impress me much.
@jonathanvswan
Scoop: Former President Trump's inner circle is discussing announcing the launch of a 2024 presidential campaign on Nov. 14 — with the official announcement possibly followed by a multi-day series of political events.
https://twitter.com/jonathanvswan/status/1588508759491760128
@FrankLuntz
·
23h
Regardless of who wins next week's #PASen race, we won't know until 24-48 hours after Election Day.
Pennsylvania differs sharply from Florida in that they don't process early vote ballots as they come in – they only start on Election Day.