Do these numbers account for US politics, or is it the other way round ?
https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/2022/03/15/americans-misestimate-small-subgroups-population ...When people’s average perceptions of group sizes are compared to actual population estimates, an intriguing pattern emerges: Americans tend to vastly overestimate the size of minority groups. This holds for sexual minorities, including the proportion of gays and lesbians (estimate: 30%, true: 3%), bisexuals (estimate: 29%, true: 4%), and people who are transgender (estimate: 21%, true: 0.6%).
It also applies to religious minorities, such as Muslim Americans (estimate: 27%, true: 1%) and Jewish Americans (estimate: 30%, true: 2%). And we find the same sorts of overestimates for racial and ethnic minorities, such as Native Americans (estimate: 27%, true: 1%), Asian Americans (estimate: 29%, true: 6%), and Black Americans (estimate: 41%, true: 12%)...
Would be interesting to know what answers each individual demographic gave.
Do people overestimate 'people like us' or 'people like them'.
Given that Dem voting demographics are massively overestimated it would be especially interesting to know the answers from 'the election was stolen, Biden could not have got 80m votes, believers were.
If it is anything like Britain then "People like them."
I think Opinium does a British social issues survey where they ask participants about social issues and how much of a problem issue X is locally and nationally.
Without fail every issue is perceived as a great issue nationally than locally. Often by huge margins. The local MP is perceived as good but national MPs are a disaster. Crime is fine locally but the rest of the country is a lawless hellscape. No issue with teen pregnancies locally but the rest of the country is knee deep in sprogs etc.
Not sure if this answers the question, but the YouGov link above says:
"If exaggerated perceptions of minority groups’ share of the American population are due to fear, we would expect estimates of those groups’ share that are made by the groups’ members to be more accurate than those made by others. We tested this theory on minority groups that were represented by at least 100 respondents within our sample and found that they were no better (and often worse) than non-group members at guessing the relative size of the minority group they belong to.
Black Americans estimate that, on average, Black people make up 52% of the U.S. adult population; non-Black Americans estimate the proportion is roughly 39%, closer to the real figure of 12%. First-generation immigrants we surveyed estimate that first-generation immigrants account for 40% of U.S. adults, while non-immigrants guess it is around 31%, closer to the actual figure of 14%."
Black Americans think, on average, that the US is majority black?
It probably is in their community, due to how segregated things can still be over there.
That non-Black Americans estimated 39% is more surprising to me.
I take a different view from the earlier consensus on the mid-terms.
I am expecting Republican control of the Senate by 3-4 with Georgia still to come on a run off and a reasonably easy win in the House. I wish it were not so, I am deeply disappointed by the apparent indifference of Americans to the dreadfully stacked SC where there have been a series of terrible decisions with, no doubt, much to come. I am dismayed that American women in particular are not more angry about Dobbs and I am appalled that people who expressly promise to use the position they are running for to defeat democratic results get the time of day. But that is what we are seeing and the wave of revulsion is not apparent to me.
The US ceasing to be a functioning democracy is now more than likely, as is the US ceasing to be a reliable NATO partner or even, perhaps, a NATO member. I wish I thought the UK and other European countries were at least thinking about what the consequences of this might be. But it’s pretty clear they’re not.
Climate. War. Inequality. Female Emancipation. Trump/GOP.
These are the top 5 global concerns right now. Not necessarily in that order.
While I think Trump/GOP is a definite global concern, is it a greater global concern than Putin or Xi or maybe even Modi?
I'd say short term Putin/Ukraine tops Trump/MAGA and long term maybe so does China and India. But long or short term, Trump/MAGA is right up there as a global concern imo. A weird pernicious mindset is threatening to take over the USA.
On topic, this is one area that I can't get too worked up about. Deferring the peerages until the General Election isn't great. But there are several worse examples of sleaze and corruption around at the moment.
By-elections are fun and, as Mike Smithson has demonstrated, good betting opportunities.
What I really want is a General Election. Time to reboot British politics.
Deferring these peerages is neither sleaze nor corruption.
It's a bit of both but not on a major scale. As I mentioned, not something I can get too worked up about. So it probably wasn't worth your while replying really. Less is more and all that.
Wise words you should apply to your own posts.
Anyway nonsense needs challenging. Deferring the peerages is neither sleaze nor corruption. It’s a ridiculous comment. I’m also amused at how many people online post they are not bothered about something and then continue to talk about what they are not bothered by. 😂😂😂😂
Given that a failed politician being allowed to appoint his pals as members of the legislature for life is about as corrupt a political concept as you can imagine, it's a bit difficult to assert that anything connected with the process isn't sleazy or corrupt!
Not really, I just did and stand by what I said.
The honours system as a whole needs reform.
Heathener was talking about 4 people deferring their elevation to the lords as sleaze and corruption. It isn’t.
I think the whole peerages thing is corrupt from top to bottom personally. A crook's charter and always has been , though Tories have taken it to a new level of crookery.
I take a different view from the earlier consensus on the mid-terms.
I am expecting Republican control of the Senate by 3-4 with Georgia still to come on a run off and a reasonably easy win in the House. I wish it were not so, I am deeply disappointed by the apparent indifference of Americans to the dreadfully stacked SC where there have been a series of terrible decisions with, no doubt, much to come. I am dismayed that American women in particular are not more angry about Dobbs and I am appalled that people who expressly promise to use the position they are running for to defeat democratic results get the time of day. But that is what we are seeing and the wave of revulsion is not apparent to me.
The US ceasing to be a functioning democracy is now more than likely, as is the US ceasing to be a reliable NATO partner or even, perhaps, a NATO member. I wish I thought the UK and other European countries were at least thinking about what the consequences of this might be. But it’s pretty clear they’re not.
Climate. War. Inequality. Female Emancipation. Trump/GOP.
These are the top 5 global concerns right now. Not necessarily in that order.
It's so cool how it's exactly the same list as your personal top 5.
I kinda feel like that's sort of inevitable. If there was a way of objectively determining what the top 5 most important issues were I'd like to think that I would be able to accept that evidence and they would become my top 5 issues.
I mean, of course I'm going to think that my opinions were right. If I thought my opinions were wrong I'd have different opinions!
Do these numbers account for US politics, or is it the other way round ?
https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/2022/03/15/americans-misestimate-small-subgroups-population ...When people’s average perceptions of group sizes are compared to actual population estimates, an intriguing pattern emerges: Americans tend to vastly overestimate the size of minority groups. This holds for sexual minorities, including the proportion of gays and lesbians (estimate: 30%, true: 3%), bisexuals (estimate: 29%, true: 4%), and people who are transgender (estimate: 21%, true: 0.6%).
It also applies to religious minorities, such as Muslim Americans (estimate: 27%, true: 1%) and Jewish Americans (estimate: 30%, true: 2%). And we find the same sorts of overestimates for racial and ethnic minorities, such as Native Americans (estimate: 27%, true: 1%), Asian Americans (estimate: 29%, true: 6%), and Black Americans (estimate: 41%, true: 12%)...
Would be interesting to know what answers each individual demographic gave.
Do people overestimate 'people like us' or 'people like them'.
Given that Dem voting demographics are massively overestimated it would be especially interesting to know the answers from 'the election was stolen, Biden could not have got 80m votes, believers were.
If it is anything like Britain then "People like them."
I think Opinium does a British social issues survey where they ask participants about social issues and how much of a problem issue X is locally and nationally.
Without fail every issue is perceived as a great issue nationally than locally. Often by huge margins. The local MP is perceived as good but national MPs are a disaster. Crime is fine locally but the rest of the country is a lawless hellscape. No issue with teen pregnancies locally but the rest of the country is knee deep in sprogs etc.
Not sure if this answers the question, but the YouGov link above says:
"If exaggerated perceptions of minority groups’ share of the American population are due to fear, we would expect estimates of those groups’ share that are made by the groups’ members to be more accurate than those made by others. We tested this theory on minority groups that were represented by at least 100 respondents within our sample and found that they were no better (and often worse) than non-group members at guessing the relative size of the minority group they belong to.
Black Americans estimate that, on average, Black people make up 52% of the U.S. adult population; non-Black Americans estimate the proportion is roughly 39%, closer to the real figure of 12%. First-generation immigrants we surveyed estimate that first-generation immigrants account for 40% of U.S. adults, while non-immigrants guess it is around 31%, closer to the actual figure of 14%."
Black Americans think, on average, that the US is majority black?
It probably is in their community, due to how segregated things can still be over there.
That non-Black Americans estimated 39% is more surprising to me.
NFL/NBA influence? I think both of those sports are majority black.
Coming back to the topic, we have no written constitution therefore no written "rules" as to how things are done, the rules effectively being "what has always been done".
What has always been done is that a retiring PM gets the opportunity to make a batch of people into peers at the point of their retirement, and these people then become peers, there and then.
The Conservatives are now effectively changing the rules such that, in the case of serving politicians, their appointment can be deferred until the end of their elected term. This will almost certainly become a permanent change in procedure, since what governing party would want to volunteer to defend a set of by-elections?
The most obvious effect of this change is that there'll now be fewer by-elections.
The second effect will be that a greater proportion of people nominated to the upper house through this route will be serving MPs (and therefore correspondingly fewer from other walks of life, on the assumption that the retiring PM has in mind a figure of how many to appoint in total). In the past, the prospect of tricky by-elections will have acted as a brake on a retiring PM sending too many of his or her friends on the green benches straight to the red benches; this brake has now been removed.
The third effect is that the electors of the affected constituencies have someone who is guaranteed a plumb job as one of our lawmakers, for life, and therefore little incentive to 'go the extra mile' in their current role. At the extreme, they could simply follow Johnson into a series of beach holidays and let their constituents go hang. Of course, most MPs will have more sense of duty than Johnson does (they could hardly have less!), but which of us could say - if we were guaranteed a plumb lifetime paid role in our field, starting in a couple of years' time, that it wouldn't affect our attitude and approach to our current role?
Having a by-election right away gave the electors the opportunity to choose someone fresh to represent us, now that our chosen representative is effectively retiring from the arena. That opportunity is now taken away.
The counter is if they are guaranteed a place in the lords they are no longer beholden to the whips so they can fearlessly stand up for the interests of their constituents.
I recognise that this is a theoretical comment and anyone who was nominated by BoJo may not be a fearless campaigner for truth and justice…
On topic, I don't see the problem here. They were elected for a full parliamentary term and I'm not aware of any time limit between nomination for a peerage and acceptance of it.
So the Lib Dems wasted some time and money preparing for a nonexistent by-election based on speculation? Oh well.
While that's no doubt true, I'd love a by election, I would (Nigel Adams's constituency). So: boo, hiss etc
(Not that, here, I think the result would be in any doubt on current boundaries - maybe a possibility if it had been under Truss)
ETA: What's Johnson up to, anyway? Surely he'd enjoy knifing Sunak with a few by elections and (likely, in some places?) defeats?
I take a different view from the earlier consensus on the mid-terms.
I am expecting Republican control of the Senate by 3-4 with Georgia still to come on a run off and a reasonably easy win in the House. I wish it were not so, I am deeply disappointed by the apparent indifference of Americans to the dreadfully stacked SC where there have been a series of terrible decisions with, no doubt, much to come. I am dismayed that American women in particular are not more angry about Dobbs and I am appalled that people who expressly promise to use the position they are running for to defeat democratic results get the time of day. But that is what we are seeing and the wave of revulsion is not apparent to me.
The US ceasing to be a functioning democracy is now more than likely, as is the US ceasing to be a reliable NATO partner or even, perhaps, a NATO member. I wish I thought the UK and other European countries were at least thinking about what the consequences of this might be. But it’s pretty clear they’re not.
Climate. War. Inequality. Female Emancipation. Trump/GOP.
These are the top 5 global concerns right now. Not necessarily in that order.
It's so cool how it's exactly the same list as your personal top 5.
I kinda feel like that's sort of inevitable. If there was a way of objectively determining what the top 5 most important issues were I'd like to think that I would be able to accept that evidence and they would become my top 5 issues.
I mean, of course I'm going to think that my opinions were right. If I thought my opinions were wrong I'd have different opinions!
I take a different view from the earlier consensus on the mid-terms.
I am expecting Republican control of the Senate by 3-4 with Georgia still to come on a run off and a reasonably easy win in the House. I wish it were not so, I am deeply disappointed by the apparent indifference of Americans to the dreadfully stacked SC where there have been a series of terrible decisions with, no doubt, much to come. I am dismayed that American women in particular are not more angry about Dobbs and I am appalled that people who expressly promise to use the position they are running for to defeat democratic results get the time of day. But that is what we are seeing and the wave of revulsion is not apparent to me.
The US ceasing to be a functioning democracy is now more than likely, as is the US ceasing to be a reliable NATO partner or even, perhaps, a NATO member. I wish I thought the UK and other European countries were at least thinking about what the consequences of this might be. But it’s pretty clear they’re not.
Climate. War. Inequality. Female Emancipation. Trump/GOP.
These are the top 5 global concerns right now. Not necessarily in that order.
While I think Trump/GOP is a definite global concern, is it a greater global concern than Putin or Xi or maybe even Modi?
I'd say short term Putin/Ukraine tops Trump/MAGA and long term maybe so does China and India. But long or short term, Trump/MAGA is right up there as a global concern imo. A weird pernicious mindset is threatening to take over the USA.
And also without sane US leadership, all the other problems, whether China or climate catastrophe or Putin, start to look really hopeless.
Prediction for today: Democrats will outperform expectations. Will lose House very narrowly but will hold on to Senate.
It will be reported as a disaster for Biden but in all honestly will actually be a pretty good set of midterms for him, given the historical precedents.
He is however going to be completely stymied for the next two years. Nothing will get done. It will all get very nasty.
On topic, this is one area that I can't get too worked up about. Deferring the peerages until the General Election isn't great. But there are several worse examples of sleaze and corruption around at the moment.
By-elections are fun and, as Mike Smithson has demonstrated, good betting opportunities.
What I really want is a General Election. Time to reboot British politics.
Deferring these peerages is neither sleaze nor corruption.
It's a bit of both but not on a major scale. As I mentioned, not something I can get too worked up about. So it probably wasn't worth your while replying really. Less is more and all that.
Wise words you should apply to your own posts.
Anyway nonsense needs challenging. Deferring the peerages is neither sleaze nor corruption. It’s a ridiculous comment. I’m also amused at how many people online post they are not bothered about something and then continue to talk about what they are not bothered by. 😂😂😂😂
Given that a failed politician being allowed to appoint his pals as members of the legislature for life is about as corrupt a political concept as you can imagine, it's a bit difficult to assert that anything connected with the process isn't sleazy or corrupt!
Not really, I just did and stand by what I said.
The honours system as a whole needs reform.
Heathener was talking about 4 people deferring their elevation to the lords as sleaze and corruption. It isn’t.
I think the whole peerages thing is corrupt from top to bottom personally. A crook's charter and always has been , though Tories have taken it to a new level of crookery.
I take a different view from the earlier consensus on the mid-terms.
I am expecting Republican control of the Senate by 3-4 with Georgia still to come on a run off and a reasonably easy win in the House. I wish it were not so, I am deeply disappointed by the apparent indifference of Americans to the dreadfully stacked SC where there have been a series of terrible decisions with, no doubt, much to come. I am dismayed that American women in particular are not more angry about Dobbs and I am appalled that people who expressly promise to use the position they are running for to defeat democratic results get the time of day. But that is what we are seeing and the wave of revulsion is not apparent to me.
The US ceasing to be a functioning democracy is now more than likely, as is the US ceasing to be a reliable NATO partner or even, perhaps, a NATO member. I wish I thought the UK and other European countries were at least thinking about what the consequences of this might be. But it’s pretty clear they’re not.
Climate. War. Inequality. Female Emancipation. Trump/GOP.
These are the top 5 global concerns right now. Not necessarily in that order.
Well they are what people claim are their greatest concerns. But I wonder how much of a disconnect there is between those claimed issues and what people actually vote on in the polling booth. I suspect far more people vote on issues that are immediate and tangible to them than issues they think 'sound right'.
Though I would add that my statement is based on the perception that these issues are derived from the link mentioned earlier of polling in 19 mostly first world countries. Clearly if it were based on polling in, for example, India, then Inequality and Female Emancipation might be far more immediate and pressing issues.
One tory MP’s voice trembles with rage as he tells me “Williamson is a nasty b****** and knows where the skeletons are buried. He’s given me a few sleepless nights. Yeah politics is about being tough and pushing ppl to do what you want them to but this is on another level” https://twitter.com/sima_kotecha/status/1589927342688067584
On topic, this is one area that I can't get too worked up about. Deferring the peerages until the General Election isn't great. But there are several worse examples of sleaze and corruption around at the moment.
By-elections are fun and, as Mike Smithson has demonstrated, good betting opportunities.
What I really want is a General Election. Time to reboot British politics.
Deferring these peerages is neither sleaze nor corruption.
It's a bit of both but not on a major scale. As I mentioned, not something I can get too worked up about. So it probably wasn't worth your while replying really. Less is more and all that.
Wise words you should apply to your own posts.
Anyway nonsense needs challenging. Deferring the peerages is neither sleaze nor corruption. It’s a ridiculous comment. I’m also amused at how many people online post they are not bothered about something and then continue to talk about what they are not bothered by. 😂😂😂😂
Given that a failed politician being allowed to appoint his pals as members of the legislature for life is about as corrupt a political concept as you can imagine, it's a bit difficult to assert that anything connected with the process isn't sleazy or corrupt!
Not really, I just did and stand by what I said.
The honours system as a whole needs reform.
Heathener was talking about 4 people deferring their elevation to the lords as sleaze and corruption. It isn’t.
I think the whole peerages thing is corrupt from top to bottom personally. A crook's charter and always has been , though Tories have taken it to a new level of crookery.
Indeed they have.
David Cameron even gave his barber a MBE.
It stinks. The whole thing needs reform.
I still can’t escape the thought that we should have an indirectly elected second chamber, with representatives from local government and the devolved administrations. Adds an extra factor to local democracy, maintains an even geographic spread and a party political element, but removes the top-down patronage.
I take a different view from the earlier consensus on the mid-terms.
I am expecting Republican control of the Senate by 3-4 with Georgia still to come on a run off and a reasonably easy win in the House. I wish it were not so, I am deeply disappointed by the apparent indifference of Americans to the dreadfully stacked SC where there have been a series of terrible decisions with, no doubt, much to come. I am dismayed that American women in particular are not more angry about Dobbs and I am appalled that people who expressly promise to use the position they are running for to defeat democratic results get the time of day. But that is what we are seeing and the wave of revulsion is not apparent to me.
The US ceasing to be a functioning democracy is now more than likely, as is the US ceasing to be a reliable NATO partner or even, perhaps, a NATO member. I wish I thought the UK and other European countries were at least thinking about what the consequences of this might be. But it’s pretty clear they’re not.
Climate. War. Inequality. Female Emancipation. Trump/GOP.
These are the top 5 global concerns right now. Not necessarily in that order.
While I think Trump/GOP is a definite global concern, is it a greater global concern than Putin or Xi or maybe even Modi?
I'd say short term Putin/Ukraine tops Trump/MAGA and long term maybe so does China and India. But long or short term, Trump/MAGA is right up there as a global concern imo. A weird pernicious mindset is threatening to take over the USA.
And also without sane US leadership, all the other problems, whether China or climate catastrophe or Putin, start to look really hopeless.
Yes, in reality there's lots of overlap and connectivity between the big global issues.
On topic, this is one area that I can't get too worked up about. Deferring the peerages until the General Election isn't great. But there are several worse examples of sleaze and corruption around at the moment.
By-elections are fun and, as Mike Smithson has demonstrated, good betting opportunities.
What I really want is a General Election. Time to reboot British politics.
Deferring these peerages is neither sleaze nor corruption.
It's a bit of both but not on a major scale. As I mentioned, not something I can get too worked up about. So it probably wasn't worth your while replying really. Less is more and all that.
Wise words you should apply to your own posts.
Anyway nonsense needs challenging. Deferring the peerages is neither sleaze nor corruption. It’s a ridiculous comment. I’m also amused at how many people online post they are not bothered about something and then continue to talk about what they are not bothered by. 😂😂😂😂
Given that a failed politician being allowed to appoint his pals as members of the legislature for life is about as corrupt a political concept as you can imagine, it's a bit difficult to assert that anything connected with the process isn't sleazy or corrupt!
Not really, I just did and stand by what I said.
The honours system as a whole needs reform.
Heathener was talking about 4 people deferring their elevation to the lords as sleaze and corruption. It isn’t.
I think the whole peerages thing is corrupt from top to bottom personally. A crook's charter and always has been , though Tories have taken it to a new level of crookery.
Indeed they have.
David Cameron even gave his barber a MBE.
It stinks. The whole thing needs reform.
One of my prize possessions is a shirt made by Lord Wetherill, snapped up at TKMax for £20.
I take a different view from the earlier consensus on the mid-terms.
I am expecting Republican control of the Senate by 3-4 with Georgia still to come on a run off and a reasonably easy win in the House. I wish it were not so, I am deeply disappointed by the apparent indifference of Americans to the dreadfully stacked SC where there have been a series of terrible decisions with, no doubt, much to come. I am dismayed that American women in particular are not more angry about Dobbs and I am appalled that people who expressly promise to use the position they are running for to defeat democratic results get the time of day. But that is what we are seeing and the wave of revulsion is not apparent to me.
The impact of Dobbs pretty clearly seems to have been overstated, and that's probably because people can see that the effects of it were overstated - after all, it didn't ban abortion! So when there is a specific measure on the question, it drives turnout (as we saw in Kansas) but that doesn't need to translate to elections more generally.
I rather suspect by "terrible decisions" you mean "decisions you don't like". Objectively Dobbs was a better decision than Roe v Wade, which invented a constitutional right that was never justified by the text. I'd rather there were such a right, but there isn't.
Coming back to the topic, we have no written constitution therefore no written "rules" as to how things are done, the rules effectively being "what has always been done".
What has always been done is that a retiring PM gets the opportunity to make a batch of people into peers at the point of their retirement, and these people then become peers, there and then.
The Conservatives are now effectively changing the rules such that, in the case of serving politicians, their appointment can be deferred until the end of their elected term. This will almost certainly become a permanent change in procedure, since what governing party would want to volunteer to defend a set of by-elections?
The most obvious effect of this change is that there'll now be fewer by-elections.
The second effect will be that a greater proportion of people nominated to the upper house through this route will be serving MPs (and therefore correspondingly fewer from other walks of life, on the assumption that the retiring PM has in mind a figure of how many to appoint in total). In the past, the prospect of tricky by-elections will have acted as a brake on a retiring PM sending too many of his or her friends on the green benches straight to the red benches; this brake has now been removed.
The third effect is that the electors of the affected constituencies have someone who is guaranteed a plumb job as one of our lawmakers, for life, and therefore little incentive to 'go the extra mile' in their current role. At the extreme, they could simply follow Johnson into a series of beach holidays and let their constituents go hang. Of course, most MPs will have more sense of duty than Johnson does (they could hardly have less!), but which of us could say - if we were guaranteed a plumb lifetime paid role in our field, starting in a couple of years' time, that it wouldn't affect our attitude and approach to our current role?
Having a by-election right away gave the electors the opportunity to choose someone fresh to represent us, now that our chosen representative is effectively retiring from the arena. That opportunity is now taken away.
Your third effect is applicable to any MP who has decided not to stand again, not just those who expect or hope to get into the HoL.
Possibly, but that does depend on what they hope to do next. For example if they are hoping for a peerage then they would be well advised to continue pulling their weight.
Slightly misleading table to the extent that it uses both 0% (taxpayers earning more than £1M) and 'less than 1%' (Transgender and Jewish) for the same small but non-zero value. Differentiating in that way gives the impression on face value is that there are no taxpayers earning more than £1M which is clearly not the case.
Is that table even right anyway? I was always told by a homosexual friend that there were significantly more people who are homosexual or bisexual than admitted it, roughly 10% of the population. He could be talking rubbish, but 2% being 'actually' gay or lesbian seems low.
IF I'm right (I know, I know) then is it possible the actuals are wrong as well as the 'estimated'?
I take a different view from the earlier consensus on the mid-terms.
I am expecting Republican control of the Senate by 3-4 with Georgia still to come on a run off and a reasonably easy win in the House. I wish it were not so, I am deeply disappointed by the apparent indifference of Americans to the dreadfully stacked SC where there have been a series of terrible decisions with, no doubt, much to come. I am dismayed that American women in particular are not more angry about Dobbs and I am appalled that people who expressly promise to use the position they are running for to defeat democratic results get the time of day. But that is what we are seeing and the wave of revulsion is not apparent to me.
The US ceasing to be a functioning democracy is now more than likely, as is the US ceasing to be a reliable NATO partner or even, perhaps, a NATO member. I wish I thought the UK and other European countries were at least thinking about what the consequences of this might be. But it’s pretty clear they’re not.
Climate. War. Inequality. Female Emancipation. Trump/GOP.
These are the top 5 global concerns right now. Not necessarily in that order.
It's so cool how it's exactly the same list as your personal top 5.
I kinda feel like that's sort of inevitable. If there was a way of objectively determining what the top 5 most important issues were I'd like to think that I would be able to accept that evidence and they would become my top 5 issues.
I mean, of course I'm going to think that my opinions were right. If I thought my opinions were wrong I'd have different opinions!
Not really. I know that there are maybe a few billion people for whom finding clean drinking water is not straightforward. Doesn't make it one of my priorities.
Same goes for vaccinations, medicine, and a bunch of other things low down on Maslow's pyramid thingy.
Prediction for today: Democrats will outperform expectations. Will lose House very narrowly but will hold on to Senate.
It will be reported as a disaster for Biden but in all honestly will actually be a pretty good set of midterms for him, given the historical precedents.
Yeah, that would be a pretty good result. I think that even "narrow senate loss plus smallish house loss" is probably better than the 'fundamentals' of being the governing party while the economy's not great might suggest, though I doubt they'll get much credit for "avoided big midterm red wave" in that outcome...
I take a different view from the earlier consensus on the mid-terms.
I am expecting Republican control of the Senate by 3-4 with Georgia still to come on a run off and a reasonably easy win in the House. I wish it were not so, I am deeply disappointed by the apparent indifference of Americans to the dreadfully stacked SC where there have been a series of terrible decisions with, no doubt, much to come. I am dismayed that American women in particular are not more angry about Dobbs and I am appalled that people who expressly promise to use the position they are running for to defeat democratic results get the time of day. But that is what we are seeing and the wave of revulsion is not apparent to me.
The US ceasing to be a functioning democracy is now more than likely, as is the US ceasing to be a reliable NATO partner or even, perhaps, a NATO member. I wish I thought the UK and other European countries were at least thinking about what the consequences of this might be. But it’s pretty clear they’re not.
Climate. War. Inequality. Female Emancipation. Trump/GOP.
These are the top 5 global concerns right now. Not necessarily in that order.
Well they are what people claim are their greatest concerns. But I wonder how much of a disconnect there is between those claimed issues and what people actually vote on in the polling booth. I suspect far more people vote on issues that are immediate and tangible to them than issues they think 'sound right'.
Though I would add that my statement is based on the perception that these issues are derived from the link mentioned earlier of polling in 19 mostly first world countries. Clearly if it were based on polling in, for example, India, then Inequality and Female Emancipation might be far more immediate and pressing issues.
What I find interesting is the difference between thinking something and feeling it. Eg, intellectually I'm more convinced of the need to combat climate change than to abolish private schools. But when it comes to how these 2 opinions reside within me the latter is stronger and takes up more space. I think both but I truly feel only one.
Slightly misleading table to the extent that it uses both 0% (taxpayers earning more than £1M) and 'less than 1%' (Transgender and Jewish) for the same small but non-zero value. Differentiating in that way gives the impression on face value is that there are no taxpayers earning more than £1M which is clearly not the case.
Is that table even right anyway? I was always told by a homosexual friend that there were significantly more people who are homosexual or bisexual than admitted it, roughly 10% of the population. He could be talking rubbish, but 2% being 'actually' gay or lesbian seems low.
IF I'm right (I know, I know) then is it possible the actuals are wrong as well as the 'estimated'?
It’s all a sliding scale isn’t it, I can imagine 2% of the population or maybe slightly higher may be exclusively homosexual, the actual proportion of people who may harbour some feelings of same-sex attraction but without necessarily labelling themselves bisexual may indeed be much higher than 10%.
Well they are what people claim are their greatest concerns. But I wonder how much of a disconnect there is between those claimed issues and what people actually vote on in the polling booth. I suspect far more people vote on issues that are immediate and tangible to them than issues they think 'sound right'.
I think far more people vote on neither of those but vote on some mix of "this is my team/this is who I've always voted for/this is the party I trust in general", especially in the US where I think polarisation has advanced further than here. There aren't that many swing voters...
'Stephen Kinnock, the shadow immigration minister, revealed that an identity scheme was being looked at “very, very carefully indeed”, arguing it would be “so helpful” in reassuring the public that “we have control of our borders”.'
Please don't, tud.
That dreadful mug, I mean. I'm not massively anti having some sort of ID card.
There could be a special (greatly reworked) Red Wall re-issue, with a list of all the broken 'levelling up' promises and "I'm a mug, I'm voting Tory"
On over-estimating the proportions of different groups. Back in the 1980s, when I was teaching sixth formers in a predominantly white British area, I used to ask them: 'What percentage of people in this country do you think are from minority ethnic backgrounds?". The answers, over many years and many students, ranged from 10% to 60%, with around 33% the average. At that time, the answer was around 6-7%.
At that time, the representation of ethnic minorities on TV etc. was very low. The idea that people exaggerate now because of 'positive discrimination' on TV is absurd. I suspect the poor estimates were more to do with tabloid coverage of so many 'foreigners' in our country.
Well they are what people claim are their greatest concerns. But I wonder how much of a disconnect there is between those claimed issues and what people actually vote on in the polling booth. I suspect far more people vote on issues that are immediate and tangible to them than issues they think 'sound right'.
I think far more people vote on neither of those but vote on some mix of "this is my team/this is who I've always voted for/this is the party I trust in general", especially in the US where I think polarisation has advanced further than here. There aren't that many swing voters...
Yes and party affiliation is tied up so much with identity now in the US - this is how I see myself, this is how I see my country, this is how I see my values. Ergo I am a Republican / a Democrat.
If there is one thing that a Tory shellacking in 2024 will give me cheer about, it’s that it will show that people are still willing to switch teams on competence grounds, despite there being signs we were going the way of the US.
'Stephen Kinnock, the shadow immigration minister, revealed that an identity scheme was being looked at “very, very carefully indeed”, arguing it would be “so helpful” in reassuring the public that “we have control of our borders”.'
Please don't, tud.
That dreadful mug, I mean. I'm not massively anti having some sort of ID card.
There could be a special (greatly reworked) Red Wall re-issue, with a list of all the broken 'levelling up' promises and "I'm a mug, I'm voting Tory"
Much prefer that, yes. In fact that's very good. But it violates the "Mustn't Diss The Voters" principle so I don't suppose SKS would sign off on it.
On over-estimating the proportions of different groups. Back in the 1980s, when I was teaching sixth formers in a predominantly white British area, I used to ask them: 'What percentage of people in this country do you think are from minority ethnic backgrounds?". The answers, over many years and many students, ranged from 10% to 60%, with around 33% the average. At that time, the answer was around 6-7%.
At that time, the representation of ethnic minorities on TV etc. was very low. The idea that people exaggerate now because of 'positive discrimination' on TV is absurd. I suspect the poor estimates were more to do with tabloid coverage of so many 'foreigners' in our country.
I think it's just basic psychology that you notice people who are different more than those who are in the majority. And obviously visible difference is going to have more of an effect than invisible difference.
Isn't one of the problems with the whole system that once elected, an MP has no requirement to attend Parliament, conduct surgeries or do anything at all?
Whilst accusations are made about Johnson, less recently we had Jared O'Mara fiasco and I'm pretty sure one Gordon Brown, after losing in 2010 but still elected as an MP, did nothing for five years.
Election as an MP should carry with it a requirement to: 1. Attend Parliament for a set number of days a year; and 2. Hold surgeries for your constituients for a set amount a year, if you're worried about security then perhaps online could be the way to go, and perhaps ministers and cabinet ministers might be required to hold less but to lose the link between the people who elected you and the representative isn't the right way to go (even for the PM's seat, I would still insist on at least one or two... online... surgeries to be held).
Failure to meet either requirement triggers....... A recall petition? An automatic by-election?
Not sure.
Yes yes, I can already hear the wails from Sinn Fein, but screw them. It'd force a by-election each year in some NI seats, but that is a small price to pay for increasing accountability. If the people of NI want to be represented by absentionists, then they accept a yearly by-election.
Well they are what people claim are their greatest concerns. But I wonder how much of a disconnect there is between those claimed issues and what people actually vote on in the polling booth. I suspect far more people vote on issues that are immediate and tangible to them than issues they think 'sound right'.
I think far more people vote on neither of those but vote on some mix of "this is my team/this is who I've always voted for/this is the party I trust in general", especially in the US where I think polarisation has advanced further than here. There aren't that many swing voters...
Yes and party affiliation is tied up so much with identity now in the US - this is how I see myself, this is how I see my country, this is how I see my values. Ergo I am a Republican / a Democrat.
If there is one thing that a Tory shellacking in 2024 will give me cheer about, it’s that it will show that people are still willing to switch teams on competence grounds, despite there being signs we were going the way of the US.
Americans do seem to split their ballots quite often though, so the partisanship only goes so far. Compared with the identity clefts in British politics the US divide seems to be electorally a little stronger than Brexit is here, possibly equally salient as independence is in Scotland, and somewhat weaker than the sectarian divide in NI.
On over-estimating the proportions of different groups. Back in the 1980s, when I was teaching sixth formers in a predominantly white British area, I used to ask them: 'What percentage of people in this country do you think are from minority ethnic backgrounds?". The answers, over many years and many students, ranged from 10% to 60%, with around 33% the average. At that time, the answer was around 6-7%.
At that time, the representation of ethnic minorities on TV etc. was very low. The idea that people exaggerate now because of 'positive discrimination' on TV is absurd. I suspect the poor estimates were more to do with tabloid coverage of so many 'foreigners' in our country.
An interesting test of that would be actual versus estimated polling that splits by ethnic group - not sure whether that has been done. If your hypothesis is correct, then you'd might expect more overestimation of the Muslim population compared to Sikh or Hindu, say. And also, in a different topic area, perhaps more overestimation of the trans population (lots of press recently) compared to the homosexual population, say.
Slightly misleading table to the extent that it uses both 0% (taxpayers earning more than £1M) and 'less than 1%' (Transgender and Jewish) for the same small but non-zero value. Differentiating in that way gives the impression on face value is that there are no taxpayers earning more than £1M which is clearly not the case.
Is that table even right anyway? I was always told by a homosexual friend that there were significantly more people who are homosexual or bisexual than admitted it, roughly 10% of the population. He could be talking rubbish, but 2% being 'actually' gay or lesbian seems low.
IF I'm right (I know, I know) then is it possible the actuals are wrong as well as the 'estimated'?
An estimated 3.1% of the UK population aged 16 years and over identified as lesbian, gay or bisexual (LGB) in 2020, an increase from 2.7% in 2019 and almost double the percentage from 2014 (1.6%). The proportion of men in the UK identifying as LGB increased from 1.9% to 3.4% between 2014 and 2020; the proportion of women identifying as LGB has risen from 1.4% to 2.8% over the same period.
I take a different view from the earlier consensus on the mid-terms.
I am expecting Republican control of the Senate by 3-4 with Georgia still to come on a run off and a reasonably easy win in the House. I wish it were not so, I am deeply disappointed by the apparent indifference of Americans to the dreadfully stacked SC where there have been a series of terrible decisions with, no doubt, much to come. I am dismayed that American women in particular are not more angry about Dobbs and I am appalled that people who expressly promise to use the position they are running for to defeat democratic results get the time of day. But that is what we are seeing and the wave of revulsion is not apparent to me.
The impact of Dobbs pretty clearly seems to have been overstated, and that's probably because people can see that the effects of it were overstated - after all, it didn't ban abortion! So when there is a specific measure on the question, it drives turnout (as we saw in Kansas) but that doesn't need to translate to elections more generally.
I rather suspect by "terrible decisions" you mean "decisions you don't like". Objectively Dobbs was a better decision than Roe v Wade, which invented a constitutional right that was never justified by the text. I'd rather there were such a right, but there isn't.
Regardless of arcane arguments about how the Constitution maps to the modern world the practical upshot is that for 50 years American women had basic reproductive rights and now they don't.
Just back from doing the family's various advance meat orders for Christmas...... even without a turkey the approx cost is officially shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit bro. Cost of Living has moved to intensely irritating. Next stop, concerned.
Slightly misleading table to the extent that it uses both 0% (taxpayers earning more than £1M) and 'less than 1%' (Transgender and Jewish) for the same small but non-zero value. Differentiating in that way gives the impression on face value is that there are no taxpayers earning more than £1M which is clearly not the case.
Is that table even right anyway? I was always told by a homosexual friend that there were significantly more people who are homosexual or bisexual than admitted it, roughly 10% of the population. He could be talking rubbish, but 2% being 'actually' gay or lesbian seems low.
IF I'm right (I know, I know) then is it possible the actuals are wrong as well as the 'estimated'?
An estimated 3.1% of the UK population aged 16 years and over identified as lesbian, gay or bisexual (LGB) in 2020, an increase from 2.7% in 2019 and almost double the percentage from 2014 (1.6%). The proportion of men in the UK identifying as LGB increased from 1.9% to 3.4% between 2014 and 2020; the proportion of women identifying as LGB has risen from 1.4% to 2.8% over the same period.
Slightly misleading table to the extent that it uses both 0% (taxpayers earning more than £1M) and 'less than 1%' (Transgender and Jewish) for the same small but non-zero value. Differentiating in that way gives the impression on face value is that there are no taxpayers earning more than £1M which is clearly not the case.
Is that table even right anyway? I was always told by a homosexual friend that there were significantly more people who are homosexual or bisexual than admitted it, roughly 10% of the population. He could be talking rubbish, but 2% being 'actually' gay or lesbian seems low.
IF I'm right (I know, I know) then is it possible the actuals are wrong as well as the 'estimated'?
If you assume the human condition in most respects is a spectrum rather than a binary one (height, cognitive aptitude, agreeableness, hair colour), 'how many people are gay' and such like questions can't be answered because they are not knowable items.
PBers might be better at this than average; professionals only ever odds and markets on 'knowable items'. It's quite a good guide.
(On an allied subject, people often get divided religiously/philosophically into sections like 'theist', 'atheist' and 'agnostic'. These too are not knowable items. Everyone is agnostic on the subject, just as they are on the subject of life on other galaxies.)
I blame TV. Every advert that shows a couple or family is now seemingly mixed race. I get that the advertisers are trying to represent the market but really - is this the only or indeed best way to do it? And then there is the shows like Bake Off, Sewing Bee, Woodworking etc. If there are 10 contestests there will be a guarateed quota of LGBTQ+, ethnic background etc etc (as the figures show, far in excess of reality (2% gay/lesbian does not mean every show has to have one.). So if you watch TV there is a normallisation of the high numbers in the survey that does not match reality.
Note - I have no issue with anyones ethnicity, sexual orientation, choice of partner, but it is striking how different TV is from the real country.
During the Women's Euro competition the England team got a bit of stick for their lack of diversity and representation. This made me curious and I looked up some figures (for England and Wales as that's how the ONS records them) and concluded that the Women's team was quite close to being representative of the population, and was much more representative than the Men's team is.
Basically if you ignore the socio-economic aspects that influence participation in football an England Women's 11 should have 9 white players per match, 1 player of Asian descent, and a black player only every third match, with the other two matches being a white player of non-British descent (Irish and Eastern European mainly).
The group that actually stands out as being unrepresented in my opinion is players of Asian descent.
Slightly misleading table to the extent that it uses both 0% (taxpayers earning more than £1M) and 'less than 1%' (Transgender and Jewish) for the same small but non-zero value. Differentiating in that way gives the impression on face value is that there are no taxpayers earning more than £1M which is clearly not the case.
Is that table even right anyway? I was always told by a homosexual friend that there were significantly more people who are homosexual or bisexual than admitted it, roughly 10% of the population. He could be talking rubbish, but 2% being 'actually' gay or lesbian seems low.
IF I'm right (I know, I know) then is it possible the actuals are wrong as well as the 'estimated'?
If you assume the human condition in most respects is a spectrum rather than a binary one (height, cognitive aptitude, agreeableness, hair colour), 'how many people are gay' and such like questions can't be answered because they are not knowable items.
PBers might be better at this than average; professionals only ever odds and markets on 'knowable items'. It's quite a good guide.
(On an allied subject, people often get divided religiously/philosophically into sections like 'theist', 'atheist' and 'agnostic'. These too are not knowable items. Everyone is agnostic on the subject, just as they are on the subject of life on other galaxies.)
I am an atheist, not an agnostic. I don't believe in religion.
You can never know for certain, but you can have a belief (theist), or not (atheist), so that doesn't make you agnostic.
Its the same as a court of law. I would say that my lack of belief in established religions goes beyond the "balance of probabilities" threshold and the "beyond a reasonable doubt" threshold in my opinion. It is not beyond all doubt, but that's not a threshold people realistically use.
Just back from doing the family's various advance meat orders for Christmas...... even without a turkey the approx cost is officially shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit bro. Cost of Living has moved to intensely irritating. Next stop, concerned.
Just back from doing the family's various advance meat orders for Christmas...... even without a turkey the approx cost is officially shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit bro. Cost of Living has moved to intensely irritating. Next stop, concerned.
To be honest I've found Christmas birds extremely expensive for several years, geese more so than Turkeys or Roosters. I remember being shocked at paying about £70 for a goose over a decade ago.
Couple of ducks and a large chicken is a cheaper way to achieve the same effect but having said that we've bought a goose again (because the butcher called us up and asked if we wanted to order).
I blame TV. Every advert that shows a couple or family is now seemingly mixed race. I get that the advertisers are trying to represent the market but really - is this the only or indeed best way to do it? And then there is the shows like Bake Off, Sewing Bee, Woodworking etc. If there are 10 contestests there will be a guarateed quota of LGBTQ+, ethnic background etc etc (as the figures show, far in excess of reality (2% gay/lesbian does not mean every show has to have one.). So if you watch TV there is a normallisation of the high numbers in the survey that does not match reality.
Note - I have no issue with anyones ethnicity, sexual orientation, choice of partner, but it is striking how different TV is from the real country.
During the Women's Euro competition the England team got a bit of stick for their lack of diversity and representation. This made me curious and I looked up some figures (for England and Wales as that's how the ONS records them) and concluded that the Women's team was quite close to being representative of the population, and was much more representative than the Men's team is.
Basically if you ignore the socio-economic aspects that influence participation in football an England Women's 11 should have 9 white players per match, 1 player of Asian descent, and a black player only every third match, with the other two matches being a white player of non-British descent (Irish and Eastern European mainly).
The group that actually stands out as being unrepresented in my opinion is players of Asian descent.
This has been the case across football for as long as I can remember. Nobody seems to know what the "solution" is.
I used to laugh at the reactionary red faced Tory gammon when I saw them huffing and puffing on question time.
Now I laugh at so called democratic Socialists defending SKS huffing and puffing about foreign workers in the NHS like a red faced reactionary gammon, and telling climate change protestors to get up and go home like a reactionary red faced gammon.
I blame TV. Every advert that shows a couple or family is now seemingly mixed race. I get that the advertisers are trying to represent the market but really - is this the only or indeed best way to do it? And then there is the shows like Bake Off, Sewing Bee, Woodworking etc. If there are 10 contestests there will be a guarateed quota of LGBTQ+, ethnic background etc etc (as the figures show, far in excess of reality (2% gay/lesbian does not mean every show has to have one.). So if you watch TV there is a normallisation of the high numbers in the survey that does not match reality.
Note - I have no issue with anyones ethnicity, sexual orientation, choice of partner, but it is striking how different TV is from the real country.
During the Women's Euro competition the England team got a bit of stick for their lack of diversity and representation. This made me curious and I looked up some figures (for England and Wales as that's how the ONS records them) and concluded that the Women's team was quite close to being representative of the population, and was much more representative than the Men's team is.
Basically if you ignore the socio-economic aspects that influence participation in football an England Women's 11 should have 9 white players per match, 1 player of Asian descent, and a black player only every third match, with the other two matches being a white player of non-British descent (Irish and Eastern European mainly).
The group that actually stands out as being unrepresented in my opinion is players of Asian descent.
This has been the case across football for as long as I can remember. Nobody seems to know what the "solution" is.
Slightly misleading table to the extent that it uses both 0% (taxpayers earning more than £1M) and 'less than 1%' (Transgender and Jewish) for the same small but non-zero value. Differentiating in that way gives the impression on face value is that there are no taxpayers earning more than £1M which is clearly not the case.
Is that table even right anyway? I was always told by a homosexual friend that there were significantly more people who are homosexual or bisexual than admitted it, roughly 10% of the population. He could be talking rubbish, but 2% being 'actually' gay or lesbian seems low.
IF I'm right (I know, I know) then is it possible the actuals are wrong as well as the 'estimated'?
An estimated 3.1% of the UK population aged 16 years and over identified as lesbian, gay or bisexual (LGB) in 2020, an increase from 2.7% in 2019 and almost double the percentage from 2014 (1.6%). The proportion of men in the UK identifying as LGB increased from 1.9% to 3.4% between 2014 and 2020; the proportion of women identifying as LGB has risen from 1.4% to 2.8% over the same period.
With that rate of increase, I'm surprised the Mail hasn't had headlines along the lines of Is avocado on TOAST making your children GAY?
What will be interesting in the next census is how the current 16-24 cohort continues to identify a decade on:
People aged 16 to 24 years continue to be the most likely to identify as LGB in 2020 (8.0%) reflecting an increasing trend for this age group since 2014; this breaks down to 2.7% identifying as gay or lesbian, and 5.3% identifying as bisexual.
Just back from doing the family's various advance meat orders for Christmas...... even without a turkey the approx cost is officially shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit bro. Cost of Living has moved to intensely irritating. Next stop, concerned.
To be honest I've found Christmas birds extremely expensive for several years, geese more so than Turkeys or Roosters. I remember being shocked at paying about £70 for a goose over a decade ago.
Couple of ducks and a large chicken is a cheaper way to achieve the same effect but having said that we've bought a goose again (because the butcher called us up and asked if we wanted to order).
Good shout, as discussed the other day, turkey is a poor meat. We never eat it outside Christmas for good reason, and it's not even traditional. Go goose, or sack the birds off entirely and eat beef.
Slightly misleading table to the extent that it uses both 0% (taxpayers earning more than £1M) and 'less than 1%' (Transgender and Jewish) for the same small but non-zero value. Differentiating in that way gives the impression on face value is that there are no taxpayers earning more than £1M which is clearly not the case.
Is that table even right anyway? I was always told by a homosexual friend that there were significantly more people who are homosexual or bisexual than admitted it, roughly 10% of the population. He could be talking rubbish, but 2% being 'actually' gay or lesbian seems low.
IF I'm right (I know, I know) then is it possible the actuals are wrong as well as the 'estimated'?
If you assume the human condition in most respects is a spectrum rather than a binary one (height, cognitive aptitude, agreeableness, hair colour), 'how many people are gay' and such like questions can't be answered because they are not knowable items.
PBers might be better at this than average; professionals only ever odds and markets on 'knowable items'. It's quite a good guide.
(On an allied subject, people often get divided religiously/philosophically into sections like 'theist', 'atheist' and 'agnostic'. These too are not knowable items. Everyone is agnostic on the subject, just as they are on the subject of life on other galaxies.)
You wouldn't say this if you had spoken to my Dad. As devout an atheist as you could ever hope to meet. Describing him as agnostic would be absurd.
Joe Biden seems confused about how democracy works:
@POTUS You don’t get to accept hundreds of thousands of dollars in pandemic loans and then attack my Administration for helping working folks get some relief.
I take a different view from the earlier consensus on the mid-terms.
I am expecting Republican control of the Senate by 3-4 with Georgia still to come on a run off and a reasonably easy win in the House. I wish it were not so, I am deeply disappointed by the apparent indifference of Americans to the dreadfully stacked SC where there have been a series of terrible decisions with, no doubt, much to come. I am dismayed that American women in particular are not more angry about Dobbs and I am appalled that people who expressly promise to use the position they are running for to defeat democratic results get the time of day. But that is what we are seeing and the wave of revulsion is not apparent to me.
The impact of Dobbs pretty clearly seems to have been overstated, and that's probably because people can see that the effects of it were overstated - after all, it didn't ban abortion! So when there is a specific measure on the question, it drives turnout (as we saw in Kansas) but that doesn't need to translate to elections more generally.
I rather suspect by "terrible decisions" you mean "decisions you don't like". Objectively Dobbs was a better decision than Roe v Wade, which invented a constitutional right that was never justified by the text. I'd rather there were such a right, but there isn't.
I blame TV. Every advert that shows a couple or family is now seemingly mixed race. I get that the advertisers are trying to represent the market but really - is this the only or indeed best way to do it? And then there is the shows like Bake Off, Sewing Bee, Woodworking etc. If there are 10 contestests there will be a guarateed quota of LGBTQ+, ethnic background etc etc (as the figures show, far in excess of reality (2% gay/lesbian does not mean every show has to have one.). So if you watch TV there is a normallisation of the high numbers in the survey that does not match reality.
Note - I have no issue with anyones ethnicity, sexual orientation, choice of partner, but it is striking how different TV is from the real country.
During the Women's Euro competition the England team got a bit of stick for their lack of diversity and representation. This made me curious and I looked up some figures (for England and Wales as that's how the ONS records them) and concluded that the Women's team was quite close to being representative of the population, and was much more representative than the Men's team is.
Basically if you ignore the socio-economic aspects that influence participation in football an England Women's 11 should have 9 white players per match, 1 player of Asian descent, and a black player only every third match, with the other two matches being a white player of non-British descent (Irish and Eastern European mainly).
The group that actually stands out as being unrepresented in my opinion is players of Asian descent.
This has been the case across football for as long as I can remember. Nobody seems to know what the "solution" is.
Maybe its a similar position tio swimming where there are not many top class black swimmers.
This has been the case across football for as long as I can remember. Nobody seems to know what the "solution" is.
It is weird though, as much of the complaints were along the lines of "where are the black players" not noticing that there is a much larger group almost entirely absent from the game, and the Women's team is closer to ideal representation than the Men's team so they didn't warrant the extra criticism.
It is a legitimate issue but most people's view of what representation should look like appears to be highly skewed.
Slightly misleading table to the extent that it uses both 0% (taxpayers earning more than £1M) and 'less than 1%' (Transgender and Jewish) for the same small but non-zero value. Differentiating in that way gives the impression on face value is that there are no taxpayers earning more than £1M which is clearly not the case.
Is that table even right anyway? I was always told by a homosexual friend that there were significantly more people who are homosexual or bisexual than admitted it, roughly 10% of the population. He could be talking rubbish, but 2% being 'actually' gay or lesbian seems low.
IF I'm right (I know, I know) then is it possible the actuals are wrong as well as the 'estimated'?
An estimated 3.1% of the UK population aged 16 years and over identified as lesbian, gay or bisexual (LGB) in 2020, an increase from 2.7% in 2019 and almost double the percentage from 2014 (1.6%). The proportion of men in the UK identifying as LGB increased from 1.9% to 3.4% between 2014 and 2020; the proportion of women identifying as LGB has risen from 1.4% to 2.8% over the same period.
With that rate of increase, I'm surprised the Mail hasn't had headlines along the lines of Is avocado on TOAST making your children GAY?
What will be interesting in the next census is how the current 16-24 cohort continues to identify a decade on:
People aged 16 to 24 years continue to be the most likely to identify as LGB in 2020 (8.0%) reflecting an increasing trend for this age group since 2014; this breaks down to 2.7% identifying as gay or lesbian, and 5.3% identifying as bisexual.
I imagine that this number will continue to increase, as the stigma of bisexuality has almost completely gone, from all directions.
Just back from doing the family's various advance meat orders for Christmas...... even without a turkey the approx cost is officially shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit bro. Cost of Living has moved to intensely irritating. Next stop, concerned.
To be honest I've found Christmas birds extremely expensive for several years, geese more so than Turkeys or Roosters. I remember being shocked at paying about £70 for a goose over a decade ago.
Couple of ducks and a large chicken is a cheaper way to achieve the same effect but having said that we've bought a goose again (because the butcher called us up and asked if we wanted to order).
Good shout, as discussed the other day, turkey is a poor meat. We never eat it outside Christmas for good reason, and it's not even traditional. Go goose, or sack the birds off entirely and eat beef.
I don't see anything wrong with sticking with chicken at Christmas, unless you're feeding a small army.
I take a different view from the earlier consensus on the mid-terms.
I am expecting Republican control of the Senate by 3-4 with Georgia still to come on a run off and a reasonably easy win in the House. I wish it were not so, I am deeply disappointed by the apparent indifference of Americans to the dreadfully stacked SC where there have been a series of terrible decisions with, no doubt, much to come. I am dismayed that American women in particular are not more angry about Dobbs and I am appalled that people who expressly promise to use the position they are running for to defeat democratic results get the time of day. But that is what we are seeing and the wave of revulsion is not apparent to me.
The impact of Dobbs pretty clearly seems to have been overstated, and that's probably because people can see that the effects of it were overstated - after all, it didn't ban abortion! So when there is a specific measure on the question, it drives turnout (as we saw in Kansas) but that doesn't need to translate to elections more generally.
I rather suspect by "terrible decisions" you mean "decisions you don't like". Objectively Dobbs was a better decision than Roe v Wade, which invented a constitutional right that was never justified by the text. I'd rather there were such a right, but there isn't.
'Stephen Kinnock, the shadow immigration minister, revealed that an identity scheme was being looked at “very, very carefully indeed”, arguing it would be “so helpful” in reassuring the public that “we have control of our borders”.'
Please don't, tud.
That dreadful mug, I mean. I'm not massively anti having some sort of ID card.
The problem with ID cards is never the ID cards. The last time round the problem was that they wanted to link all state held records together and make them accessible to any state official who claimed to need them. So anyone with access to the system would access to your entire life. Given that the sale of police records is a thing, what could possibly go wrong?
For extra laughs, the problem was acknowledged - records for "important" people would be sequestered in a special, hard to access sub-system.
Do these numbers account for US politics, or is it the other way round ?
https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/2022/03/15/americans-misestimate-small-subgroups-population ...When people’s average perceptions of group sizes are compared to actual population estimates, an intriguing pattern emerges: Americans tend to vastly overestimate the size of minority groups. This holds for sexual minorities, including the proportion of gays and lesbians (estimate: 30%, true: 3%), bisexuals (estimate: 29%, true: 4%), and people who are transgender (estimate: 21%, true: 0.6%).
It also applies to religious minorities, such as Muslim Americans (estimate: 27%, true: 1%) and Jewish Americans (estimate: 30%, true: 2%). And we find the same sorts of overestimates for racial and ethnic minorities, such as Native Americans (estimate: 27%, true: 1%), Asian Americans (estimate: 29%, true: 6%), and Black Americans (estimate: 41%, true: 12%)...
Would be interesting to know what answers each individual demographic gave.
Do people overestimate 'people like us' or 'people like them'.
Given that Dem voting demographics are massively overestimated it would be especially interesting to know the answers from 'the election was stolen, Biden could not have got 80m votes, believers were.
If it is anything like Britain then "People like them."
I think Opinium does a British social issues survey where they ask participants about social issues and how much of a problem issue X is locally and nationally.
Without fail every issue is perceived as a great issue nationally than locally. Often by huge margins. The local MP is perceived as good but national MPs are a disaster. Crime is fine locally but the rest of the country is a lawless hellscape. No issue with teen pregnancies locally but the rest of the country is knee deep in sprogs etc.
Not sure if this answers the question, but the YouGov link above says:
"If exaggerated perceptions of minority groups’ share of the American population are due to fear, we would expect estimates of those groups’ share that are made by the groups’ members to be more accurate than those made by others. We tested this theory on minority groups that were represented by at least 100 respondents within our sample and found that they were no better (and often worse) than non-group members at guessing the relative size of the minority group they belong to.
Black Americans estimate that, on average, Black people make up 52% of the U.S. adult population; non-Black Americans estimate the proportion is roughly 39%, closer to the real figure of 12%. First-generation immigrants we surveyed estimate that first-generation immigrants account for 40% of U.S. adults, while non-immigrants guess it is around 31%, closer to the actual figure of 14%."
Black Americans think, on average, that the US is majority black?
Ghettoisation. Highly credible.
I am trying to remember the study - but in some minority communities, their chances of interacting with a non-member of their minority in the course of a week, at a personal level, was very very low.
Slightly misleading table to the extent that it uses both 0% (taxpayers earning more than £1M) and 'less than 1%' (Transgender and Jewish) for the same small but non-zero value. Differentiating in that way gives the impression on face value is that there are no taxpayers earning more than £1M which is clearly not the case.
Is that table even right anyway? I was always told by a homosexual friend that there were significantly more people who are homosexual or bisexual than admitted it, roughly 10% of the population. He could be talking rubbish, but 2% being 'actually' gay or lesbian seems low.
IF I'm right (I know, I know) then is it possible the actuals are wrong as well as the 'estimated'?
There's a long-running debate on the question. It is complicated by many factors. How people identify may be different from what they do: a higher proportion of people have had sex with someone of the same sex than who identify as LGB. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality#Demographics has some details.
Just back from doing the family's various advance meat orders for Christmas...... even without a turkey the approx cost is officially shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit bro. Cost of Living has moved to intensely irritating. Next stop, concerned.
To be honest I've found Christmas birds extremely expensive for several years, geese more so than Turkeys or Roosters. I remember being shocked at paying about £70 for a goose over a decade ago.
Couple of ducks and a large chicken is a cheaper way to achieve the same effect but having said that we've bought a goose again (because the butcher called us up and asked if we wanted to order).
Good shout, as discussed the other day, turkey is a poor meat. We never eat it outside Christmas for good reason, and it's not even traditional. Go goose, or sack the birds off entirely and eat beef.
We've found that Turkey mince is delicious when used to make meatballs. My Christmas meat of choice is a roast ham.
I used to laugh at the reactionary red faced Tory gammon when I saw them huffing and puffing on question time.
Now I laugh at so called democratic Socialists defending SKS huffing and puffing about foreign workers in the NHS like a red faced reactionary gammon, and telling climate change protestors to get up and go home like a reactionary red faced gammon.
It's sub-optimal for sure. But just checking - now it's Sunak not Johnson you are back to preferring Labour to the Tories, aren't you?
I take a different view from the earlier consensus on the mid-terms.
I am expecting Republican control of the Senate by 3-4 with Georgia still to come on a run off and a reasonably easy win in the House. I wish it were not so, I am deeply disappointed by the apparent indifference of Americans to the dreadfully stacked SC where there have been a series of terrible decisions with, no doubt, much to come. I am dismayed that American women in particular are not more angry about Dobbs and I am appalled that people who expressly promise to use the position they are running for to defeat democratic results get the time of day. But that is what we are seeing and the wave of revulsion is not apparent to me.
The impact of Dobbs pretty clearly seems to have been overstated, and that's probably because people can see that the effects of it were overstated - after all, it didn't ban abortion! So when there is a specific measure on the question, it drives turnout (as we saw in Kansas) but that doesn't need to translate to elections more generally.
I rather suspect by "terrible decisions" you mean "decisions you don't like". Objectively Dobbs was a better decision than Roe v Wade, which invented a constitutional right that was never justified by the text. I'd rather there were such a right, but there isn't.
I think that most of the Dobbs protestors, are not in States particularly facing restrictions on abortion. Of those who are, their political choices should be aimed at their own State legislatures, rather than Washington.
Yes, Roe was a terrible judgement, irrespective of the arguments for against abortion. Obergefell, which treated homosexual marriage in the same way, was similarly terrible and will also have to be replaced at some point.
Just back from doing the family's various advance meat orders for Christmas...... even without a turkey the approx cost is officially shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit bro. Cost of Living has moved to intensely irritating. Next stop, concerned.
To be honest I've found Christmas birds extremely expensive for several years, geese more so than Turkeys or Roosters. I remember being shocked at paying about £70 for a goose over a decade ago.
Couple of ducks and a large chicken is a cheaper way to achieve the same effect but having said that we've bought a goose again (because the butcher called us up and asked if we wanted to order).
Good shout, as discussed the other day, turkey is a poor meat. We never eat it outside Christmas for good reason, and it's not even traditional. Go goose, or sack the birds off entirely and eat beef.
I like Turkey and eat it far more often than just Christmas. Sadly our local free range supplier has had to cull all his birds (Turkeys, geese and chickens) because of Avian flu so we are looking for an alternative supplier.
The point about TV adverts overestimating minorities is a difficult one, because the makers of each individual advert might only have two parts to fill, and they don't want them both to go to white actors, so they end up with at least 50% minority representation. Aggregate across a few hundred ads, and of course you get a wildly skewed perception of reality, but of course the makers of each individual ad aren't responsible for that.
'Stephen Kinnock, the shadow immigration minister, revealed that an identity scheme was being looked at “very, very carefully indeed”, arguing it would be “so helpful” in reassuring the public that “we have control of our borders”.'
Please don't, tud.
That dreadful mug, I mean. I'm not massively anti having some sort of ID card.
The problem with ID cards is never the ID cards. The last time round the problem was that they wanted to link all state held records together and make them accessible to any state official who claimed to need them. So anyone with access to the system would access to your entire life. Given that the sale of police records is a thing, what could possibly go wrong?
For extra laughs, the problem was acknowledged - records for "important" people would be sequestered in a special, hard to access sub-system.
I don't feel threatened by the idea - and I can see the benefits - but it wouldn't be a priority in my mind. We muddle along ok without them.
I take a different view from the earlier consensus on the mid-terms.
I am expecting Republican control of the Senate by 3-4 with Georgia still to come on a run off and a reasonably easy win in the House. I wish it were not so, I am deeply disappointed by the apparent indifference of Americans to the dreadfully stacked SC where there have been a series of terrible decisions with, no doubt, much to come. I am dismayed that American women in particular are not more angry about Dobbs and I am appalled that people who expressly promise to use the position they are running for to defeat democratic results get the time of day. But that is what we are seeing and the wave of revulsion is not apparent to me.
The impact of Dobbs pretty clearly seems to have been overstated, and that's probably because people can see that the effects of it were overstated - after all, it didn't ban abortion! So when there is a specific measure on the question, it drives turnout (as we saw in Kansas) but that doesn't need to translate to elections more generally.
I rather suspect by "terrible decisions" you mean "decisions you don't like". Objectively Dobbs was a better decision than Roe v Wade, which invented a constitutional right that was never justified by the text. I'd rather there were such a right, but there isn't.
I think that most of the Dobbs protestors, are not in States particularly facing restrictions on abortion. Of those who are, their political choices should be aimed at their own State legislatures, rather than Washington.
Yes, Roe was a terrible judgement, irrespective of the arguments for against abortion. Obergefell, which treated homosexual marriage in the same way, was similarly terrible and will also have to be replaced at some point.
Obergefell was entirely sound legal judgement, following the law and precedent that existed.
What argument do you have against it that it is terrible?
I take a different view from the earlier consensus on the mid-terms.
I am expecting Republican control of the Senate by 3-4 with Georgia still to come on a run off and a reasonably easy win in the House. I wish it were not so, I am deeply disappointed by the apparent indifference of Americans to the dreadfully stacked SC where there have been a series of terrible decisions with, no doubt, much to come. I am dismayed that American women in particular are not more angry about Dobbs and I am appalled that people who expressly promise to use the position they are running for to defeat democratic results get the time of day. But that is what we are seeing and the wave of revulsion is not apparent to me.
The US ceasing to be a functioning democracy is now more than likely, as is the US ceasing to be a reliable NATO partner or even, perhaps, a NATO member. I wish I thought the UK and other European countries were at least thinking about what the consequences of this might be. But it’s pretty clear they’re not.
Climate. War. Inequality. Female Emancipation. Trump/GOP.
These are the top 5 global concerns right now. Not necessarily in that order.
It's so cool how it's exactly the same list as your personal top 5.
Yep. What I tend to do is give my opinion on things rather than other people's. Bit unambitious, perhaps, but I know my limits.
Yeah, I also prefer giving my opinion on things rather than other people's.
What I try not to do is to pass my opinion off as a global majority view, unless I can prove it.
'Stephen Kinnock, the shadow immigration minister, revealed that an identity scheme was being looked at “very, very carefully indeed”, arguing it would be “so helpful” in reassuring the public that “we have control of our borders”.'
Please don't, tud.
That dreadful mug, I mean. I'm not massively anti having some sort of ID card.
The problem with ID cards is never the ID cards. The last time round the problem was that they wanted to link all state held records together and make them accessible to any state official who claimed to need them. So anyone with access to the system would access to your entire life. Given that the sale of police records is a thing, what could possibly go wrong?
For extra laughs, the problem was acknowledged - records for "important" people would be sequestered in a special, hard to access sub-system.
Witness protection scheme? Add them to the "important" list. GCHQ? Straight to the "important" list.
I'm sure there would be no issue with this at all...
I blame TV. Every advert that shows a couple or family is now seemingly mixed race. I get that the advertisers are trying to represent the market but really - is this the only or indeed best way to do it? And then there is the shows like Bake Off, Sewing Bee, Woodworking etc. If there are 10 contestests there will be a guarateed quota of LGBTQ+, ethnic background etc etc (as the figures show, far in excess of reality (2% gay/lesbian does not mean every show has to have one.). So if you watch TV there is a normallisation of the high numbers in the survey that does not match reality.
Note - I have no issue with anyones ethnicity, sexual orientation, choice of partner, but it is striking how different TV is from the real country.
During the Women's Euro competition the England team got a bit of stick for their lack of diversity and representation. This made me curious and I looked up some figures (for England and Wales as that's how the ONS records them) and concluded that the Women's team was quite close to being representative of the population, and was much more representative than the Men's team is.
Basically if you ignore the socio-economic aspects that influence participation in football an England Women's 11 should have 9 white players per match, 1 player of Asian descent, and a black player only every third match, with the other two matches being a white player of non-British descent (Irish and Eastern European mainly).
The group that actually stands out as being unrepresented in my opinion is players of Asian descent.
Yes, I have done similar sums with panel shows. Taskmaster, for example, always has its ethnic minority contestant (though they are excitingly creative in this, with the Maori-heritage Rose Matafeo taking that role in series 9.) The typical line up would be four white, one non-white. Which isn't far off what you would expect. But what you wouldn't expect, statistically, would be over 14 series to never get an all-white line up. The chances of never, over the course of 14 series, having an all-white line up, assuming an 87% white population, are, if my maths is right, roughly 1 in 8,500. Richard Osman's House of Games, with four contestants rather than five, and churning through the series far faster, achieves feats of even greater mathematical improbability, although browsing the lists of contestants, there do appear to be a couple of all-white line ups. (The first four series was true to form, I think - 49 weeks of contestants without an all-white line up - the odds of achieving which by chance are roughly, I think, 1 in 714 trillion. But I think a couple of all white line ups have crept in since then.) In my long list of problems, this comes far, far down the list. I find it difficult to mind. But it clearly does happen.
Tory MP texts on Boris honours list: "What a shameful list of boot-lickers, bimbos & tropical island holiday facilitators who between them can be proud to have pushed trust in politics to an extreme low during their tenures & offered very little in return to the British people”
I take a different view from the earlier consensus on the mid-terms.
I am expecting Republican control of the Senate by 3-4 with Georgia still to come on a run off and a reasonably easy win in the House. I wish it were not so, I am deeply disappointed by the apparent indifference of Americans to the dreadfully stacked SC where there have been a series of terrible decisions with, no doubt, much to come. I am dismayed that American women in particular are not more angry about Dobbs and I am appalled that people who expressly promise to use the position they are running for to defeat democratic results get the time of day. But that is what we are seeing and the wave of revulsion is not apparent to me.
The impact of Dobbs pretty clearly seems to have been overstated, and that's probably because people can see that the effects of it were overstated - after all, it didn't ban abortion! So when there is a specific measure on the question, it drives turnout (as we saw in Kansas) but that doesn't need to translate to elections more generally.
I rather suspect by "terrible decisions" you mean "decisions you don't like". Objectively Dobbs was a better decision than Roe v Wade, which invented a constitutional right that was never justified by the text. I'd rather there were such a right, but there isn't.
I think that most of the Dobbs protestors, are not in States particularly facing restrictions on abortion. Of those who are, their political choices should be aimed at their own State legislatures, rather than Washington.
Yes, Roe was a terrible judgement, irrespective of the arguments for against abortion. Obergefell, which treated homosexual marriage in the same way, was similarly terrible and will also have to be replaced at some point.
Obergefell has a stronger textual basis through the Equal Protection Clause. But certainly Congress should learn the lessons from what it didn't do after Roe v Wade.
Just back from doing the family's various advance meat orders for Christmas...... even without a turkey the approx cost is officially shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit bro. Cost of Living has moved to intensely irritating. Next stop, concerned.
To be honest I've found Christmas birds extremely expensive for several years, geese more so than Turkeys or Roosters. I remember being shocked at paying about £70 for a goose over a decade ago.
Couple of ducks and a large chicken is a cheaper way to achieve the same effect but having said that we've bought a goose again (because the butcher called us up and asked if we wanted to order).
Good shout, as discussed the other day, turkey is a poor meat. We never eat it outside Christmas for good reason, and it's not even traditional. Go goose, or sack the birds off entirely and eat beef.
The main issue with that in my family is only my Dad and I are red meat eaters, the rest are chicken/Turkey at Christmas dedicates. Id very happily have goose or a duck or any number of beef joints or a good venison joint but its unfortunately and very unusually not all about me goddammit! I have got Dad to myself eve and Box so we have partridges/game chips and a roasted fillet to top and tail (sourced a Turkey elsewhere for Fussy McGee on Xmas Day). As for chicken, for a small family its not a bad option, but it does run the risk of 'Its just Sunday dinner isnt it?' I'd maybe go with a brace of guinea fowl for a family of 4.
'Stephen Kinnock, the shadow immigration minister, revealed that an identity scheme was being looked at “very, very carefully indeed”, arguing it would be “so helpful” in reassuring the public that “we have control of our borders”.'
Please don't, tud.
That dreadful mug, I mean. I'm not massively anti having some sort of ID card.
The problem with ID cards is never the ID cards. The last time round the problem was that they wanted to link all state held records together and make them accessible to any state official who claimed to need them. So anyone with access to the system would access to your entire life. Given that the sale of police records is a thing, what could possibly go wrong?
For extra laughs, the problem was acknowledged - records for "important" people would be sequestered in a special, hard to access sub-system.
I don't feel threatened by the idea - and I can see the benefits - but it wouldn't be a priority in my mind. We muddle along ok without them.
You should feel threatened by the idea that the chap investigating waste dumping for the local council would have access to peoples medical and tax and legal records.....
The concept was that demented. A fraudsters charter, for a start - one stop shopping for identity theft.
A single ID code that can be used to verify your identity on/off line is quite sensible. It's the other stuff that accreates around it, each time it is proposed.
I take a different view from the earlier consensus on the mid-terms.
I am expecting Republican control of the Senate by 3-4 with Georgia still to come on a run off and a reasonably easy win in the House. I wish it were not so, I am deeply disappointed by the apparent indifference of Americans to the dreadfully stacked SC where there have been a series of terrible decisions with, no doubt, much to come. I am dismayed that American women in particular are not more angry about Dobbs and I am appalled that people who expressly promise to use the position they are running for to defeat democratic results get the time of day. But that is what we are seeing and the wave of revulsion is not apparent to me.
The US ceasing to be a functioning democracy is now more than likely, as is the US ceasing to be a reliable NATO partner or even, perhaps, a NATO member. I wish I thought the UK and other European countries were at least thinking about what the consequences of this might be. But it’s pretty clear they’re not.
Climate. War. Inequality. Female Emancipation. Trump/GOP.
These are the top 5 global concerns right now. Not necessarily in that order.
It's so cool how it's exactly the same list as your personal top 5.
Yep. What I tend to do is give my opinion on things rather than other people's. Bit unambitious, perhaps, but I know my limits.
Yeah, I also prefer giving my opinion on things rather than other people's.
What I try not to do is to pass my opinion off as a global majority view, unless I can prove it.
Well just mentally insert an "imo" or "I think" in brackets for all my posts then. Sometimes I explicitly put that in and sometimes I don't. I don't like either extreme. If you never put it in you look bombastic. If you always put it in you look wishy washy and tentative. So, sometimes I do and other times I don't. A good balance. But that's just my personal opinion.
Just back from doing the family's various advance meat orders for Christmas...... even without a turkey the approx cost is officially shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit bro. Cost of Living has moved to intensely irritating. Next stop, concerned.
To be honest I've found Christmas birds extremely expensive for several years, geese more so than Turkeys or Roosters. I remember being shocked at paying about £70 for a goose over a decade ago.
Couple of ducks and a large chicken is a cheaper way to achieve the same effect but having said that we've bought a goose again (because the butcher called us up and asked if we wanted to order).
Good shout, as discussed the other day, turkey is a poor meat. We never eat it outside Christmas for good reason, and it's not even traditional. Go goose, or sack the birds off entirely and eat beef.
We've found that Turkey mince is delicious when used to make meatballs. My Christmas meat of choice is a roast ham.
The trimmings are the key to it all tasting Christmassy anyway, which is why I wouldn't go with beef - somehow Yorkshire puddings don't feel very festive. Stuffing (very cheap to make), bread sauce (likewise), pigs in blankets. Those are the 3 guarantors of festivity (and Cranberry sauce if you like it).
How long before the weekend newspapers start devoting special supplements to affordable family Christmas - "10 delicious ways to beat the cost of living crisis", with recommendations starting with "ditch the Turkey - chicken is tastier and better value" moving on to "leftovers are one of the joys of the festive season: here's [celebrity chef's] guide to creative ways to use all that excess turkey" (forgetting they'd just advised you to move to chicken), and a special wine section advising Cava or Cremant de [region] as an affordable and delicious alternative to Champagne.
I used to laugh at the reactionary red faced Tory gammon when I saw them huffing and puffing on question time.
Now I laugh at so called democratic Socialists defending SKS huffing and puffing about foreign workers in the NHS like a red faced reactionary gammon, and telling climate change protestors to get up and go home like a reactionary red faced gammon.
It's sub-optimal for sure. But just checking - now it's Sunak not Johnson you are back to preferring Labour to the Tories, aren't you?
There is also the fact that -
1) Provably (see the A level COVID fiasco and the resultant jump in university classes) the deliberate under training of medical staff has resulted in a large number of people not having a chance to go into good jobs. Guess which groups they come from?
2) Relying on overseas recruitment has fucked the healthcare systems in a number of countries - which have found themselves training staff who immediately leave.
'Stephen Kinnock, the shadow immigration minister, revealed that an identity scheme was being looked at “very, very carefully indeed”, arguing it would be “so helpful” in reassuring the public that “we have control of our borders”.'
Please don't, tud.
That dreadful mug, I mean. I'm not massively anti having some sort of ID card.
The problem with ID cards is never the ID cards. The last time round the problem was that they wanted to link all state held records together and make them accessible to any state official who claimed to need them. So anyone with access to the system would access to your entire life. Given that the sale of police records is a thing, what could possibly go wrong?
For extra laughs, the problem was acknowledged - records for "important" people would be sequestered in a special, hard to access sub-system.
I don't feel threatened by the idea - and I can see the benefits - but it wouldn't be a priority in my mind. We muddle along ok without them.
You should feel threatened by the idea that the chap investigating waste dumping for the local council would have access to peoples medical and tax and legal records.....
The concept was that demented. A fraudsters charter, for a start - one stop shopping for identity theft.
A single ID code that can be used to verify your identity on/off line is quite sensible. It's the other stuff that accreates around it, each time it is proposed.
Pretty much every ID card system in existence, has suffered from huge mission creep. What starts off being something to show when changing employment or other government interactions, becomes something asked for routinely by retailers and hospitality outlets to anyone paying by card, staying in an hotel, renting a car etc…
Joe Biden seems confused about how democracy works:
@POTUS You don’t get to accept hundreds of thousands of dollars in pandemic loans and then attack my Administration for helping working folks get some relief.
Just back from doing the family's various advance meat orders for Christmas...... even without a turkey the approx cost is officially shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit bro. Cost of Living has moved to intensely irritating. Next stop, concerned.
To be honest I've found Christmas birds extremely expensive for several years, geese more so than Turkeys or Roosters. I remember being shocked at paying about £70 for a goose over a decade ago.
Couple of ducks and a large chicken is a cheaper way to achieve the same effect but having said that we've bought a goose again (because the butcher called us up and asked if we wanted to order).
Good shout, as discussed the other day, turkey is a poor meat. We never eat it outside Christmas for good reason, and it's not even traditional. Go goose, or sack the birds off entirely and eat beef.
We've found that Turkey mince is delicious when used to make meatballs. My Christmas meat of choice is a roast ham.
The trimmings are the key to it all tasting Christmassy anyway, which is why I wouldn't go with beef - somehow Yorkshire puddings don't feel very festive. Stuffing (very cheap to make), bread sauce (likewise), pigs in blankets. Those are the 3 guarantors of festivity (and Cranberry sauce if you like it).
How long before the weekend newspapers start devoting special supplements to affordable family Christmas - "10 delicious ways to beat the cost of living crisis", with recommendations starting with "ditch the Turkey - chicken is tastier and better value" moving on to "leftovers are one of the joys of the festive season: here's [celebrity chef's] guide to creative ways to use all that excess turkey" (forgetting they'd just advised you to move to chicken), and a special wine section advising Cava or Cremant de [region] as an affordable and delicious alternative to Champagne.
I don't know whether it is much cheaper, but I would heartily advocate capon over turkey. Tastes like you imagine a Christmas dinner should taste, rather than how it actually does taste. That said, as Tim says, the trimmings are the key. Gravy. (You get a ton of gravy off a capon.) Bramble jelly. Roast potatoes - as many as you can fit in the oven - cooked in goose fat. Roast parsnips. Carrots, soaked in a sugar and butter glaze. Leek and/or cauli in a cheese sauce. Roast red peppers with shallots. Sprouts, if you must (I dislike them but I like that they taste of Chistmas. I prefer them shredded and fried with pancetta and pine nuts.) Sausages. Sausagemeat. Pigs in blankets. Stuffing. My culinary highlight of the year. In all honesty I wouldn't particularly notice the lack if the turkey wasn't there at all.
'Stephen Kinnock, the shadow immigration minister, revealed that an identity scheme was being looked at “very, very carefully indeed”, arguing it would be “so helpful” in reassuring the public that “we have control of our borders”.'
Please don't, tud.
That dreadful mug, I mean. I'm not massively anti having some sort of ID card.
The problem with ID cards is never the ID cards. The last time round the problem was that they wanted to link all state held records together and make them accessible to any state official who claimed to need them. So anyone with access to the system would access to your entire life. Given that the sale of police records is a thing, what could possibly go wrong?
For extra laughs, the problem was acknowledged - records for "important" people would be sequestered in a special, hard to access sub-system.
I don't feel threatened by the idea - and I can see the benefits - but it wouldn't be a priority in my mind. We muddle along ok without them.
You should feel threatened by the idea that the chap investigating waste dumping for the local council would have access to peoples medical and tax and legal records.....
The concept was that demented. A fraudsters charter, for a start - one stop shopping for identity theft.
A single ID code that can be used to verify your identity on/off line is quite sensible. It's the other stuff that accreates around it, each time it is proposed.
That SuperLinked Card was never happening imo. But I'd oppose such a proposal if it ever looked like it might.
There's a balance here. Benefits vs Cost + Risk. And with the Risk you have to decide what is reasonable concern vs what is paranoia.
As I say, I'm agnostic on it. Maybe very marginally in favour but no way a priority what with all the other issues we face.
'Stephen Kinnock, the shadow immigration minister, revealed that an identity scheme was being looked at “very, very carefully indeed”, arguing it would be “so helpful” in reassuring the public that “we have control of our borders”.'
Please don't, tud.
That dreadful mug, I mean. I'm not massively anti having some sort of ID card.
The problem with ID cards is never the ID cards. The last time round the problem was that they wanted to link all state held records together and make them accessible to any state official who claimed to need them. So anyone with access to the system would access to your entire life. Given that the sale of police records is a thing, what could possibly go wrong?
For extra laughs, the problem was acknowledged - records for "important" people would be sequestered in a special, hard to access sub-system.
It was a very noughties thing, that approach. Here is a problem - there must be an IT solution. And it must be large and expensive.
'Stephen Kinnock, the shadow immigration minister, revealed that an identity scheme was being looked at “very, very carefully indeed”, arguing it would be “so helpful” in reassuring the public that “we have control of our borders”.'
Please don't, tud.
That dreadful mug, I mean. I'm not massively anti having some sort of ID card.
The problem with ID cards is never the ID cards. The last time round the problem was that they wanted to link all state held records together and make them accessible to any state official who claimed to need them. So anyone with access to the system would access to your entire life. Given that the sale of police records is a thing, what could possibly go wrong?
For extra laughs, the problem was acknowledged - records for "important" people would be sequestered in a special, hard to access sub-system.
I don't feel threatened by the idea - and I can see the benefits - but it wouldn't be a priority in my mind. We muddle along ok without them.
You should feel threatened by the idea that the chap investigating waste dumping for the local council would have access to peoples medical and tax and legal records.....
The concept was that demented. A fraudsters charter, for a start - one stop shopping for identity theft.
A single ID code that can be used to verify your identity on/off line is quite sensible. It's the other stuff that accreates around it, each time it is proposed.
That SuperLinked Card was never happening imo. But I'd oppose such a proposal if it ever looked like it might.
There's a balance here. Benefits vs Cost + Risk. And with the Risk you have to decide what is reasonable concern vs what is paranoia.
As I say, I'm agnostic on it. Maybe very marginally in favour but no way a priority what with all the other issues we face.
Very blasé to say something was never happening when it is exactly what was proposed. Not even slippery slope, it was being sold as the proposal.
Just back from doing the family's various advance meat orders for Christmas...... even without a turkey the approx cost is officially shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit bro. Cost of Living has moved to intensely irritating. Next stop, concerned.
To be honest I've found Christmas birds extremely expensive for several years, geese more so than Turkeys or Roosters. I remember being shocked at paying about £70 for a goose over a decade ago.
Couple of ducks and a large chicken is a cheaper way to achieve the same effect but having said that we've bought a goose again (because the butcher called us up and asked if we wanted to order).
Good shout, as discussed the other day, turkey is a poor meat. We never eat it outside Christmas for good reason, and it's not even traditional. Go goose, or sack the birds off entirely and eat beef.
We've found that Turkey mince is delicious when used to make meatballs. My Christmas meat of choice is a roast ham.
The trimmings are the key to it all tasting Christmassy anyway, which is why I wouldn't go with beef - somehow Yorkshire puddings don't feel very festive. Stuffing (very cheap to make), bread sauce (likewise), pigs in blankets. Those are the 3 guarantors of festivity (and Cranberry sauce if you like it).
How long before the weekend newspapers start devoting special supplements to affordable family Christmas - "10 delicious ways to beat the cost of living crisis", with recommendations starting with "ditch the Turkey - chicken is tastier and better value" moving on to "leftovers are one of the joys of the festive season: here's [celebrity chef's] guide to creative ways to use all that excess turkey" (forgetting they'd just advised you to move to chicken), and a special wine section advising Cava or Cremant de [region] as an affordable and delicious alternative to Champagne.
The sheer range of stuffing choices is joyous. Toasted breadcrumbs for sprinkling over your turkey is also essential. Yorkies with everything. Especially in CoL crisis as they resume their traditional role of filling empty tummies with inexpensive padding. Pigs in blankets are unecessary, a more appetising butchers chipolata with some crisped bacon that was moistening the turkey during roasting for me.
'Stephen Kinnock, the shadow immigration minister, revealed that an identity scheme was being looked at “very, very carefully indeed”, arguing it would be “so helpful” in reassuring the public that “we have control of our borders”.'
Please don't, tud.
That dreadful mug, I mean. I'm not massively anti having some sort of ID card.
The problem with ID cards is never the ID cards. The last time round the problem was that they wanted to link all state held records together and make them accessible to any state official who claimed to need them. So anyone with access to the system would access to your entire life. Given that the sale of police records is a thing, what could possibly go wrong?
For extra laughs, the problem was acknowledged - records for "important" people would be sequestered in a special, hard to access sub-system.
I don't feel threatened by the idea - and I can see the benefits - but it wouldn't be a priority in my mind. We muddle along ok without them.
You should feel threatened by the idea that the chap investigating waste dumping for the local council would have access to peoples medical and tax and legal records.....
The concept was that demented. A fraudsters charter, for a start - one stop shopping for identity theft.
A single ID code that can be used to verify your identity on/off line is quite sensible. It's the other stuff that accreates around it, each time it is proposed.
That SuperLinked Card was never happening imo. But I'd oppose such a proposal if it ever looked like it might.
There's a balance here. Benefits vs Cost + Risk. And with the Risk you have to decide what is reasonable concern vs what is paranoia.
As I say, I'm agnostic on it. Maybe very marginally in favour but no way a priority what with all the other issues we face.
Very blasé to say something was never happening when it is exactly what was proposed. Not even slippery slope, it was being sold as the proposal.
You're being very "leopards eating faces" here.
Not just proposed - the contracts to build the insane database linkages were actually being tendered. It was actually happening.
On over-estimating the proportions of different groups. Back in the 1980s, when I was teaching sixth formers in a predominantly white British area, I used to ask them: 'What percentage of people in this country do you think are from minority ethnic backgrounds?". The answers, over many years and many students, ranged from 10% to 60%, with around 33% the average. At that time, the answer was around 6-7%.
At that time, the representation of ethnic minorities on TV etc. was very low. The idea that people exaggerate now because of 'positive discrimination' on TV is absurd. I suspect the poor estimates were more to do with tabloid coverage of so many 'foreigners' in our country.
I don't think it's absurd. It's part of the answer, along with news reporting, the papers, and a host of other things. There was a post much earlier which said that the country is very heterogeneous, and this is absoutely true. I grew up in a rural Wiltshire village (nothing other than white), attended a grammar school in Salisbury which had as many black students as students with only one hand. The village has barely changed, the school more so I think. And yet some cities in the UK are majority non-white.
I blame TV. Every advert that shows a couple or family is now seemingly mixed race. I get that the advertisers are trying to represent the market but really - is this the only or indeed best way to do it? And then there is the shows like Bake Off, Sewing Bee, Woodworking etc. If there are 10 contestests there will be a guarateed quota of LGBTQ+, ethnic background etc etc (as the figures show, far in excess of reality (2% gay/lesbian does not mean every show has to have one.). So if you watch TV there is a normallisation of the high numbers in the survey that does not match reality.
Note - I have no issue with anyones ethnicity, sexual orientation, choice of partner, but it is striking how different TV is from the real country.
During the Women's Euro competition the England team got a bit of stick for their lack of diversity and representation. This made me curious and I looked up some figures (for England and Wales as that's how the ONS records them) and concluded that the Women's team was quite close to being representative of the population, and was much more representative than the Men's team is.
Basically if you ignore the socio-economic aspects that influence participation in football an England Women's 11 should have 9 white players per match, 1 player of Asian descent, and a black player only every third match, with the other two matches being a white player of non-British descent (Irish and Eastern European mainly).
The group that actually stands out as being unrepresented in my opinion is players of Asian descent.
Yes, I have done similar sums with panel shows. Taskmaster, for example, always has its ethnic minority contestant (though they are excitingly creative in this, with the Maori-heritage Rose Matafeo taking that role in series 9.) The typical line up would be four white, one non-white. Which isn't far off what you would expect. But what you wouldn't expect, statistically, would be over 14 series to never get an all-white line up. The chances of never, over the course of 14 series, having an all-white line up, assuming an 87% white population, are, if my maths is right, roughly 1 in 8,500. Richard Osman's House of Games, with four contestants rather than five, and churning through the series far faster, achieves feats of even greater mathematical improbability, although browsing the lists of contestants, there do appear to be a couple of all-white line ups. (The first four series was true to form, I think - 49 weeks of contestants without an all-white line up - the odds of achieving which by chance are roughly, I think, 1 in 714 trillion. But I think a couple of all white line ups have crept in since then.) In my long list of problems, this comes far, far down the list. I find it difficult to mind. But it clearly does happen.
Firstly, don't you think it is kind of sad to be worrying about this? Secondly, might it not be the case that ethnic minorities make up a larger proportion of the entertainment industry than the general population and therefore your calculations of the 'right' percentages are all wrong?
I mean, last night we spent ages chatting about toy soldiers and boardgames but counting the number of non-white faces on panel shows takes obscure pastimes to a whole new level.
I blame TV. Every advert that shows a couple or family is now seemingly mixed race. I get that the advertisers are trying to represent the market but really - is this the only or indeed best way to do it? And then there is the shows like Bake Off, Sewing Bee, Woodworking etc. If there are 10 contestests there will be a guarateed quota of LGBTQ+, ethnic background etc etc (as the figures show, far in excess of reality (2% gay/lesbian does not mean every show has to have one.). So if you watch TV there is a normallisation of the high numbers in the survey that does not match reality.
Note - I have no issue with anyones ethnicity, sexual orientation, choice of partner, but it is striking how different TV is from the real country.
During the Women's Euro competition the England team got a bit of stick for their lack of diversity and representation. This made me curious and I looked up some figures (for England and Wales as that's how the ONS records them) and concluded that the Women's team was quite close to being representative of the population, and was much more representative than the Men's team is.
Basically if you ignore the socio-economic aspects that influence participation in football an England Women's 11 should have 9 white players per match, 1 player of Asian descent, and a black player only every third match, with the other two matches being a white player of non-British descent (Irish and Eastern European mainly).
The group that actually stands out as being unrepresented in my opinion is players of Asian descent.
Fascinating and a bit revealing. I think the contrast is with mens football, where the black representation exceeds the average for the country. You can go down a rabbit hole asking why that is (are black people better footballers on average than white? What does that even mean?)
I used to laugh at the reactionary red faced Tory gammon when I saw them huffing and puffing on question time.
Now I laugh at so called democratic Socialists defending SKS huffing and puffing about foreign workers in the NHS like a red faced reactionary gammon, and telling climate change protestors to get up and go home like a reactionary red faced gammon.
It's sub-optimal for sure. But just checking - now it's Sunak not Johnson you are back to preferring Labour to the Tories, aren't you?
There is also the fact that -
1) Provably (see the A level COVID fiasco and the resultant jump in university classes) the deliberate under training of medical staff has resulted in a large number of people not having a chance to go into good jobs. Guess which groups they come from?
2) Relying on overseas recruitment has fucked the healthcare systems in a number of countries - which have found themselves training staff who immediately leave.
Re 2)
I find, to my surprise, most of the medics who were at University with me are now working in the US, Australia, Canada or the Gulf States.
One particularly outspoken young socialist seems to have matured into a very well-paid consultant in Abu Dhabi.
Ultimately, the training of more doctors and medical staff in the UK (which is a good thing) is not going to fix things unless they are retained in the UK.
Because it is not just third world countries that find they are "training staff who immediately leave."
I used to laugh at the reactionary red faced Tory gammon when I saw them huffing and puffing on question time.
Now I laugh at so called democratic Socialists defending SKS huffing and puffing about foreign workers in the NHS like a red faced reactionary gammon, and telling climate change protestors to get up and go home like a reactionary red faced gammon.
It's sub-optimal for sure. But just checking - now it's Sunak not Johnson you are back to preferring Labour to the Tories, aren't you?
There is also the fact that -
1) Provably (see the A level COVID fiasco and the resultant jump in university classes) the deliberate under training of medical staff has resulted in a large number of people not having a chance to go into good jobs. Guess which groups they come from?
2) Relying on overseas recruitment has fucked the healthcare systems in a number of countries - which have found themselves training staff who immediately leave.
Re 2)
I find, to my surprise, most of the medics who were at University with me are now working in the US, Australia, Canada or the Gulf States.
One particularly outspoken young socialist seems to have matured into a very well-paid consultant in Abu Dhabi.
Ultimately, the training of more doctors and medical staff in the UK (which is a good thing) is not going to fix things unless they are retained in the UK.
Because it is not just third world countries that find they are "training staff who immediately leave."
There is a shortage of medical staff worldwide. We have the potential, in this country, to train more medics than the NHS requires. Instead, we have an institutional policy of training less.
Comments
That non-Black Americans estimated 39% is more surprising to me.
I mean, of course I'm going to think that my opinions were right. If I thought my opinions were wrong I'd have different opinions!
I recognise that this is a theoretical comment and anyone who was nominated by BoJo may not be a fearless campaigner for truth and justice…
(Not that, here, I think the result would be in any doubt on current boundaries - maybe a possibility if it had been under Truss)
ETA: What's Johnson up to, anyway? Surely he'd enjoy knifing Sunak with a few by elections and (likely, in some places?) defeats?
https://youtu.be/ZqZmx265N80
It will be reported as a disaster for Biden but in all honestly will actually be a pretty good set of midterms for him, given the historical precedents.
He is however going to be completely stymied for the next two years. Nothing will get done. It will all get very nasty.
David Cameron even gave his barber a MBE.
It stinks. The whole thing needs reform.
Though I would add that my statement is based on the perception that these issues are derived from the link mentioned earlier of polling in 19 mostly first world countries. Clearly if it were based on polling in, for example, India, then Inequality and Female Emancipation might be far more immediate and pressing issues.
https://twitter.com/sima_kotecha/status/1589927342688067584
I rather suspect by "terrible decisions" you mean "decisions you don't like". Objectively Dobbs was a better decision than Roe v Wade, which invented a constitutional right that was never justified by the text. I'd rather there were such a right, but there isn't.
IF I'm right (I know, I know) then is it possible the actuals are wrong as well as the 'estimated'?
Same goes for vaccinations, medicine, and a bunch of other things low down on Maslow's pyramid thingy.
At that time, the representation of ethnic minorities on TV etc. was very low. The idea that people exaggerate now because of 'positive discrimination' on TV is absurd. I suspect the poor estimates were more to do with tabloid coverage of so many 'foreigners' in our country.
If there is one thing that a Tory shellacking in 2024 will give me cheer about, it’s that it will show that people are still willing to switch teams on competence grounds, despite there being signs we were going the way of the US.
Whilst accusations are made about Johnson, less recently we had Jared O'Mara fiasco and I'm pretty sure one Gordon Brown, after losing in 2010 but still elected as an MP, did nothing for five years.
Election as an MP should carry with it a requirement to:
1. Attend Parliament for a set number of days a year; and
2. Hold surgeries for your constituients for a set amount a year, if you're worried about security then perhaps online could be the way to go, and perhaps ministers and cabinet ministers might be required to hold less but to lose the link between the people who elected you and the representative isn't the right way to go (even for the PM's seat, I would still insist on at least one or two... online... surgeries to be held).
Failure to meet either requirement triggers.......
A recall petition? An automatic by-election?
Not sure.
Yes yes, I can already hear the wails from Sinn Fein, but screw them. It'd force a by-election each year in some NI seats, but that is a small price to pay for increasing accountability. If the people of NI want to be represented by absentionists, then they accept a yearly by-election.
The proportion of men in the UK identifying as LGB increased from 1.9% to 3.4% between 2014 and 2020; the proportion of women identifying as LGB has risen from 1.4% to 2.8% over the same period.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/culturalidentity/sexuality/bulletins/sexualidentityuk/2020
Background on the 10% figure:
https://amp.theguardian.com/society/2015/apr/05/10-per-cent-population-gay-alfred-kinsey-statistics
Several MPs have echoed this sentiment. Cultural Qs to be asked about Westminster - is this behaviour expected in politics or unacceptable?
https://twitter.com/sima_kotecha/status/1589935914499084289
Cost of Living has moved to intensely irritating. Next stop, concerned.
PBers might be better at this than average; professionals only ever odds and markets on 'knowable items'. It's quite a good guide.
(On an allied subject, people often get divided religiously/philosophically into sections like 'theist', 'atheist' and 'agnostic'. These too are not knowable items. Everyone is agnostic on the subject, just as they are on the subject of life on other galaxies.)
Basically if you ignore the socio-economic aspects that influence participation in football an England Women's 11 should have 9 white players per match, 1 player of Asian descent, and a black player only every third match, with the other two matches being a white player of non-British descent (Irish and Eastern European mainly).
The group that actually stands out as being unrepresented in my opinion is players of Asian descent.
You can never know for certain, but you can have a belief (theist), or not (atheist), so that doesn't make you agnostic.
Its the same as a court of law. I would say that my lack of belief in established religions goes beyond the "balance of probabilities" threshold and the "beyond a reasonable doubt" threshold in my opinion. It is not beyond all doubt, but that's not a threshold people realistically use.
https://www.denbighshirefreepress.co.uk/news/23099667.latest-prices-ruthin-st-asaph-centres/
Couple of ducks and a large chicken is a cheaper way to achieve the same effect but having said that we've bought a goose again (because the butcher called us up and asked if we wanted to order).
Now I laugh at so called democratic Socialists defending SKS huffing and puffing about foreign workers in the NHS like a red faced reactionary gammon, and telling climate change protestors to get up and go home like a reactionary red faced gammon.
People aged 16 to 24 years continue to be the most likely to identify as LGB in 2020 (8.0%) reflecting an increasing trend for this age group since 2014; this breaks down to 2.7% identifying as gay or lesbian, and 5.3% identifying as bisexual.
@POTUS
You don’t get to accept hundreds of thousands of dollars in pandemic loans and then attack my Administration for helping working folks get some relief.
https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/1589762121780195328
It is a legitimate issue but most people's view of what representation should look like appears to be highly skewed.
For extra laughs, the problem was acknowledged - records for "important" people would be sequestered in a special, hard to access sub-system.
Yes, Roe was a terrible judgement, irrespective of the arguments for against abortion. Obergefell, which treated homosexual marriage in the same way, was similarly terrible and will also have to be replaced at some point.
What argument do you have against it that it is terrible?
What I try not to do is to pass my opinion off as a global majority view, unless I can prove it.
I'm sure there would be no issue with this at all...
Richard Osman's House of Games, with four contestants rather than five, and churning through the series far faster, achieves feats of even greater mathematical improbability, although browsing the lists of contestants, there do appear to be a couple of all-white line ups. (The first four series was true to form, I think - 49 weeks of contestants without an all-white line up - the odds of achieving which by chance are roughly, I think, 1 in 714 trillion. But I think a couple of all white line ups have crept in since then.)
In my long list of problems, this comes far, far down the list. I find it difficult to mind. But it clearly does happen.
"What a shameful list of boot-lickers, bimbos & tropical island holiday facilitators who between them can be proud to have pushed trust in politics to an extreme low during their tenures & offered very little in return to the British people”
https://twitter.com/AliFortescue/status/1589942126619807745
I have got Dad to myself eve and Box so we have partridges/game chips and a roasted fillet to top and tail (sourced a Turkey elsewhere for Fussy McGee on Xmas Day).
As for chicken, for a small family its not a bad option, but it does run the risk of 'Its just Sunday dinner isnt it?' I'd maybe go with a brace of guinea fowl for a family of 4.
The concept was that demented. A fraudsters charter, for a start - one stop shopping for identity theft.
A single ID code that can be used to verify your identity on/off line is quite sensible. It's the other stuff that accreates around it, each time it is proposed.
How long before the weekend newspapers start devoting special supplements to affordable family Christmas - "10 delicious ways to beat the cost of living crisis", with recommendations starting with "ditch the Turkey - chicken is tastier and better value" moving on to "leftovers are one of the joys of the festive season: here's [celebrity chef's] guide to creative ways to use all that excess turkey" (forgetting they'd just advised you to move to chicken), and a special wine section advising Cava or Cremant de [region] as an affordable and delicious alternative to Champagne.
1) Provably (see the A level COVID fiasco and the resultant jump in university classes) the deliberate under training of medical staff has resulted in a large number of people not having a chance to go into good jobs. Guess which groups they come from?
2) Relying on overseas recruitment has fucked the healthcare systems in a number of countries - which have found themselves training staff who immediately leave.
That said, as Tim says, the trimmings are the key. Gravy. (You get a ton of gravy off a capon.) Bramble jelly. Roast potatoes - as many as you can fit in the oven - cooked in goose fat. Roast parsnips. Carrots, soaked in a sugar and butter glaze. Leek and/or cauli in a cheese sauce. Roast red peppers with shallots. Sprouts, if you must (I dislike them but I like that they taste of Chistmas. I prefer them shredded and fried with pancetta and pine nuts.) Sausages. Sausagemeat. Pigs in blankets. Stuffing.
My culinary highlight of the year. In all honesty I wouldn't particularly notice the lack if the turkey wasn't there at all.
There's a balance here. Benefits vs Cost + Risk. And with the Risk you have to decide what is reasonable concern vs what is paranoia.
As I say, I'm agnostic on it. Maybe very marginally in favour but no way a priority what with all the other issues we face.
You're being very "leopards eating faces" here.
Yesterday it was Coventry City, today Liverpool.
His christmas shopping list seems to be changing as quickly as Rishi and Hunt's next tax grab.
Tommorow Leeds ?
Secondly, might it not be the case that ethnic minorities make up a larger proportion of the entertainment industry than the general population and therefore your calculations of the 'right' percentages are all wrong?
I mean, last night we spent ages chatting about toy soldiers and boardgames but counting the number of non-white faces on panel shows takes obscure pastimes to a whole new level.
I find, to my surprise, most of the medics who were at University with me are now working in the US, Australia, Canada or the Gulf States.
One particularly outspoken young socialist seems to have matured into a very well-paid consultant in Abu Dhabi.
Ultimately, the training of more doctors and medical staff in the UK (which is a good thing) is not going to fix things unless they are retained in the UK.
Because it is not just third world countries that find they are "training staff who immediately leave."
Maybe that's just me though.
This *guarantees* that we need overseas staff.