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After 3 days the House of Representatives is still without a Speaker – politicalbetting.com
After 3 days the House of Representatives is still without a Speaker – politicalbetting.com
What has been gripping American politics throughout the whole week has still not resolved itself and that is the election of a Speaker to the House of Representatives.
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Edit - and for clarification, they have now had 11 votes without an outcome. Also they don't need 50% of all representatives, they need 50% of all representatives who vote for somebody. (ie absent, or abstein reduces the threshold)
https://mobile.twitter.com/jim_newell/status/1611153923942793217
Impossible, surely? They can't be sworn in until one is elected.
Here’s another issue complicating matters and what could push speaker fight into next week: At least four Republican members have to leave town Friday because of some serious family issues they have to attend to, per source
https://mobile.twitter.com/mkraju/status/1611123154658942977
(Btw, is that a euphemism for being in the mafia ?)
In the case of the EU, the leading counties - France, Germany etc - saw FOM as a difficult thing. For them. The issues about wages for the low/no skilled apply there, as well as to the U.K.. Hence the riots in France on a regular basis.
What politicians, in those countries, saw was that if they compromised on FOM, everyone would want an “adjustment”.
The pro EU politicians involved saw FOM as something that they had jointly sacrificed for - a lynch pin of their wider vision for the EU.
So it was an unshakeable redline.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5192bvUS7k
The Freedom Caucus alias a bunch of nutjobs will cause mayhem . They will want all manner of concessions to raise that which the Democrats will balk at .
It’s pretty clear that the GOP are a clear and present danger to the USA and it’s a tragedy that they have the majority in the House .
The stupidity of a section of voters to keep voting against their own interests beggars belief !
It is hard to see him backing down without serious moves by other GOP leaders to get him to step aside and by more of his caucus deserting him - as long as the current deadlock holds I don’t think he’s going anywhere.
Thing to watch for is if others start peeling away beyond the 20 - that’s when it gets serious for him.
Thankfully I managed to protect that because of my family but am really sad that many younger people can no longer enjoy that.
Shame on all those so called loving grandparents who robbed their grandchildren of that freedom !
It's like saying here you really, really want to be a Returning Officer.....
In theory it’s an exciting time, but now Sunak has got his feet under the table and proven to be singularly uninspiring it feels like we’re now in a holding pattern where the Tories are still crap, Labour are still looking like the next government and the national outlook for the next 12 months isn’t feeling very rosy.
I am considering stepping away from everything politics-related for a few months, certainly on the UK side at least, until we get to the autumn and things start to get more real re the next GE. The last few years have just been exhausting politically. It seems like a sensible time to take a break…
I don't personally think that the benefit system was that big a draw, and mostly the Eastern European migration to the UK was driven by people wanting to work and be paid in the UK as this was significantly more lucrative than staying at home. But the perception was very different. The inability to obtain a council house came to be blamed on freedom of movement.
We got here via a series of decisions that built a structure. In the UK it was something like
1) Deregulated labour market
2) FOM
3) An insistence on a labour market with no barriers to entry.
4) Shout down anyone who raised issues.
5) Refusal to discuss changes to the labour market system
6) BREXIT
In France it was something like
1) Highly stratified labour market - part is incredibly protected.
2) FOM
3) Point at 1, ignore those not protected.
4) No FREXIT, but a bunch voting for the National Ramblers.
Many of the failings blamed on the EU were in fact UK government failures to invest in services and not address the issue of how the benefit system worked .
Maybe the simulation just resets forward and then itself goes into sleep mode until you wake up?
The Speaker in the House of Representatives is effectively a party political position, carrying a great deal of power (though not for McCarthy, since he has already bargained away a good deal of that power in an attempt to get elected).
The immigration from outside the EU is the biggest issue .
My guess (and it is only a guess) is that both pre- and post-Brexit, most working abroad is in Anglophone countries.
There are numerous barriers to working abroad, and the administrative ones are fairly trivial compared to the barriers of language, of culture, of the sheer bloody hassle of uprooting a family and moving them to a different part of the world.
If it is worth overcoming those latter barriers, overcoming the right to work issue is fairly minor.
The reality is that for the vast majority of Brits, going to live and work in a country where English is not the first language is such a large barrier to overcome that having the right to do so is irrelevant.
If we had the right to live and work in Australia and New Zealand and Canada, that would be a different matter. But I think we gave that up in 1974.
Most Speakers never had a realistic chance of being President.
"Things have got worse": 25%
Economy/rising costs: 19%
"We were lied to" / hasn't turned out as expected: 11%
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2023/01/06/why-have-some-leave-voters-changed-their-mind-brex https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1611317751611641856/photo/1
The UK chose, repeatedly, to do nothing about the issues which were raised.
If we do nothing about those issues, it is highly probable that FOM won't be reintroduced.
It's far from the only reason for the generational divide on Brexit, but it is one where the division is stark.
The Fistful of Dollars?
The Unforgiven?
The Million Dollar Babies?
The Dirty Harry’s?
The Dirty Harry’s for me 🚬
Yikes.
No one likes to lose a freedom because of another’s vote .
Most GEs don’t encompass a fundamental change in the rights of citizens , this is why a drastic change in that front should need a super majority if it’s a referendum choice .
Of course because of the previous Scottish Indy ref that was set as a simple majority and then it became politically difficult to change the franchise for the EU ref. This might be unpopular with those who want independence but a decision of that magnitude needs a strong majority and it should need at least 55% .
Referendums can often be proxy votes for other things and there’s no denying that was an issue with the Brexit vote .
My guess is that most people who have thought about the matter have a view on what the 'right' value of houses should be - no-one genuinely thinks it a good thing if house prices continue to significantly outpace inflation, nor to fall away to nothing.
My view is that house prices are some way above this 'right' level*, and have been for some time - and therefore, falling house prices are to be welcomed (cautiously - clearly there are winners and losers to this, and we don't want too many losers losing too much too quickly - a 'rebalancing' is probably preferable to a 'shock'.)
My guess is that this has gone from being a minority position (as it probably would have been, in say, 1992) to a majority position (i.e. most people would welcome lower house prices). But again, this is a guess, and I would be genuinely interested if there is any evidence to where the balance lies.
(I am (largely through good fortune) a homeowner, so am notionally well off as a result of high house prices - but it is entirely notional: I need exactly one house to live in; I have no particular desire to move to another house, but if I did that other house would be expensive too. But I would like, one day, my children to be able to afford to be homeowners.)
*The 'right' level, for me, is that a steady but not necessarily massively well-paid middle class job - teacher, say, or policeman - should pay enough to be able to afford a mortgage on a 'normal' house - a three bed semi in Timperley, say - without needing an inheritance or other intergenerational assistance.
It's a shame the new determination didn't happen last summer; the war might otherwise be nearly over.
Germany's Marder IFV delivery to include Gepard anti-aircraft tanks - Spiegel
40 Marders will be supplied in Q1 2023, creating a mechanized battalion, acc to Spiegel. Additionally, Germany wants to provide more Gepards, in addition to 30 already delivered
https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1611318469361864704
Over 65 graduates voted mostly Remain in 2016 but under 35 non graduates mostly voted Leave
- Lab still more than 20 points ahead;
- Starmer still leads on Best PM;
- Tories have Big deficits on approval on all main issues (see other polls). https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1611314689052483584
I would argue that fondness for the pre-Brexit era relates largely to issues which are not Brexit related.
- there's betting on this?! how defined? how bad taste?
- your're clearly a Russian troll for using 'Kiev', despite outwardly suggesting a Ukranian victory
- but maybe you're really a sly Russian troll, meaning that 'Kiev' will prevail over 'Kyiv'
- Am I overthinking this?
- Oh, it's 'Kev'
- This'll be the US House thing then
https://www.fox-moving.com/top-10-countries-brits-emigrate/
Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist party? "No"
Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist party? "No"
Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist party? "No"
Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist party? "No"
Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist party? "No"
Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist party? "No"
Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist party? "No"
Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist party? "No"
China Covid: wave of celebrity deaths sparks doubt over actual toll
Users of Chinese social media have questioned the country’s official statistics after a surge in the number of public figures dying
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/06/china-covid-wave-of-celebrity-deaths-sparks-concern-over-actual-death-toll
"China has recorded only 22 Covid deaths since December"
Friends have commented that they have had to ask people to stop so that they can practise their language skills.
I’d adapt the old saw about democracy: 50% +1 is the worst form of referendum, apart from all the others.
FOM was great in practice for the EU as nearly 4 times as many EU citizens have made their lives in the U.K. than vice versa.
Quite doable against Starmer.
Rising house prices
Falling house prices
Static house prices
and two things which are shameful, disastrous and the end of civilization:
Building more houses
and
Not building more houses.
How else would the media pages be filled?
On my recent jaunt to the North of Finland, I met a Frenchman who had moved there from Lyon. (Lyon, was apparently, too crowded. He must have had a pretty low bar for 'too crowded' if he had to go all the way to Lapland for this criterion to be met. Anyway.) He had been there for 2 years. I asked him how he had managed with the language. He told me he liked a challenge, but had other things he wanted to do with his time than learn Finnish - he got by (including working) using English.
I am utterly baffled by this approach. How can you get by, working, when you don't have the same language as your co-workers? And indeed how can you get by using a language which is neither your first language nor theirs? And, as someone to whom foreign languages have always proved utterly ungraspable*, how do you begin to operate in a language which is not your own?
Clearly people do. I just don't understand how.
*I got an A in GCSE German back in the early 90s. But this was based entirely on my ability to speak and write the language, which could be memorised with a bit of work. If I was trying to read or, especially, listen to the language, I largely had to guess what was going on. I just don't understand how people's brains can begin to process language which isn't their own.
I agree that house prices are too high, but ultimately house price inflation cannot be disentangled from general inflation. What I do think though is that undersupply in large parts of the country means that prices cannot fall that much, particularly given population increase.