Trump's 'base' is immovable. He literally could shoot and kill someone on 5th Avenue and they'd still vote for him. They are that wilfully blind.
However the base on its own isn't enough to get him past the finish line. He needs the - admittedly diminishing - strata of independents and centrists. A criminal trial is hardly going to endear him to them more than in 2020. That said, Biden's age and potential increasing infirmity due to it is going to worry a lot of people too. Not that they'll vote for the (alleged) felon but they might just sit on their hands. Biden has to know this, but then the Dems have hardly got an obvious star in the wings waiting Biden to step aside to land the vacancy. Kamala is simply not that inspiring and she too would just have people she needs sitting on their hands. Trump could get in by just the skin of his teeth again. And then we really do have a problem.
I fully expect that Trump is going to be losing the indies. Not only by his own actions, but by the vomit-inducing rhetoric his supporters will come out with. Especially as this is happening at Easter. The notion of him being "crucified" will feature large, I reckon.
US politics is so finely balanced, he can't afford to lose anybody in his voter coalition.
I mean he lost the popular vote by millions last time, and didn’t even win it in 2016, so his electoral appeal does seem rather limited at the best of times.
I’d have thought the same is true of RDS too, when push comes to shove.
I read that as IDS, thinking "that's not going to need much push!"
This is what Trump does to you - I'm liking posts because I think they are good posts, but I don't really want to use the like button because they are about the potential of Trump winning in 2024 and I don't want to like that.
Am I the only person who never used the like button? I've just never seen the point, and I've never looked at my own likes. I'm not even old, I just don't get it.
I like the like button. I like it when people like my posts. But I've never checked who has liked my post, partly because I don't know how to, but mainly because that would be nuts.
It's like admitting to masturbation.
you'll never have a healthy sex life if you don't admit to masturbation
You just had to toss that one out there, didn't you?
What they used to call an ejaculation in Victorian and Edwardian novels.
Briefly: "As Donald Trump seeks to mobilize his base against a potential indictment, a big question is: Just how big is Trump’s true-believer base? How many people are willing to stand by Trump no matter what? . . . The answer: Die-hard support remains substantial. But the number has clearly shrunk. And it’s apparently not a majority of the Republican Party."
As Aaron Blake goes on to show, there has been a gradual, but steady, decrease in Trump's support, among Republicans.
"While Fox News polling in October 2020 showed that 7 in 10 Republicans had a “strongly” favorable opinion of him, by December 2022, that 69 percent had dropped to 43 percent."
And by December of last year the percentage with unfavorable opinions of Trump, had more than doubled from about 10 percent to more than 20 percent.
This steady shift against Trump has occurred before any trials, and before any of his Republican opponents have had much opportunity to make the case against him. (For example, Asa Hutchinson's announcement was not front page news in many newspapers, and was not the lead story on many news programs.)
This is what Trump does to you - I'm liking posts because I think they are good posts, but I don't really want to use the like button because they are about the potential of Trump winning in 2024 and I don't want to like that.
Am I the only person who never used the like button? I've just never seen the point, and I've never looked at my own likes. I'm not even old, I just don't get it.
I like the like button. I like it when people like my posts. But I've never checked who has liked my post, partly because I don't know how to, but mainly because that would be nuts.
It's like admitting to masturbation.
you'll never have a healthy sex life if you don't admit to masturbation
You just had to toss that one out there, didn't you?
What they used to call an ejaculation in Victorian and Edwardian novels.
Trump's 'base' is immovable. He literally could shoot and kill someone on 5th Avenue and they'd still vote for him. They are that wilfully blind.
However the base on its own isn't enough to get him past the finish line. He needs the - admittedly diminishing - strata of independents and centrists. A criminal trial is hardly going to endear him to them more than in 2020. That said, Biden's age and potential increasing infirmity due to it is going to worry a lot of people too. Not that they'll vote for the (alleged) felon but they might just sit on their hands. Biden has to know this, but then the Dems have hardly got an obvious star in the wings waiting Biden to step aside to land the vacancy. Kamala is simply not that inspiring and she too would just have people she needs sitting on their hands. Trump could get in by just the skin of his teeth again. And then we really do have a problem.
I fully expect that Trump is going to be losing the indies. Not only by his own actions, but by the vomit-inducing rhetoric his supporters will come out with. Especially as this is happening at Easter. The notion of him being "crucified" will feature large, I reckon.
US politics is so finely balanced, he can't afford to lose anybody in his voter coalition.
I mean he lost the popular vote by millions last time, and didn’t even win it in 2016, so his electoral appeal does seem rather limited at the best of times.
I’d have thought the same is true of RDS too, when push comes to shove.
Looking at the PV is pointless because a large degree of that difference is due to states like California and New York where the Republicans know they are not going to win and so don't bother whereas (in CA at least) the unions make sure the (Democrat) voters come out.
The better way of looking at things is to say, if under 50K voters in three swing states (AZ, GA and WI) had voted R instead of D, it would have been 269 each. That is how close it is.
This is what Trump does to you - I'm liking posts because I think they are good posts, but I don't really want to use the like button because they are about the potential of Trump winning in 2024 and I don't want to like that.
Am I the only person who never used the like button? I've just never seen the point, and I've never looked at my own likes. I'm not even old, I just don't get it.
I like the like button. I like it when people like my posts. But I've never checked who has liked my post, partly because I don't know how to, but mainly because that would be nuts.
It's like admitting to masturbation.
you'll never have a healthy sex life if you don't admit to masturbation
You just had to toss that one out there, didn't you?
What they used to call an ejaculation in Victorian and Edwardian novels.
Not just those either. Look at the way Ginger was always ejaculating in Biggles.
Er, that is, the way WE Johns used the word 'ejaculate' a lot when Ginger was speaking in Biggles novels.
Histogram analysis shows the first two categories post more than the last two in the ratio of about 60:40 or 65:35, depending (roughly) on how well/badly the Tories are doing at the time.
You missed a category:
Anti-woke posters with far too much time on their hands: 1.
Its quite funny how The Herd know exactly who they are and willingly self-identify.
I think in general we all play quite nicely on here. We don't need some self-identifying straight down the middle non-partisan to categorise us as left, right, up or down.
Yeah, sure.
You're still one of the Labour Herd though.
Owls?
Good question!
On Casino's scale, I have you down as an LD. Perish the thought.
Sky and BBC have been following his motorcade to his plane and take off, and it is a relief they cannot fly alongside his plane as they would fly alongside him to New York if they could, but of course they will pick it up again when he arrives in New Your later this evening and travels to Trump Towers
I dread Trump standing in 24 but it does seem he is playing a dangerous game with the US voters and if he does become a martyr for his cause who knows what happens in 24
Biden v Trump is enough to depress the whole of the western world
Surely America can do better than this
I'd put Biden in the top quartile of President since WWII, so that's mince, IMO.
So far he’s done a pretty solid job.
Could probably do more on energy security in terms of oil and gas, encouraging more US production while the transition to renewables proceeds. But overall a decent job.
Briefly: "As Donald Trump seeks to mobilize his base against a potential indictment, a big question is: Just how big is Trump’s true-believer base? How many people are willing to stand by Trump no matter what? . . . The answer: Die-hard support remains substantial. But the number has clearly shrunk. And it’s apparently not a majority of the Republican Party."
As Aaron Blake goes on to show, there has been a gradual, but steady, decrease in Trump's support, among Republicans.
"While Fox News polling in October 2020 showed that 7 in 10 Republicans had a “strongly” favorable opinion of him, by December 2022, that 69 percent had dropped to 43 percent."
And by December of last year the percentage with unfavorable opinions of Trump, had more than doubled from about 10 percent to more than 20 percent.
This steady shift against Trump has occurred before any trials, and before any of his Republican opponents have had much opportunity to make the case against him. (For example, Asa Hutchinson's announcement was not front page news in many newspapers, and was not the lead story on many news programs.)
But a strongly committed 35% of the party is easily enough to see him to the nomination in a winner takes all primary system. Especially now DeSantis seems weak and the anti-Trumpers are looking round for saviours elsewhere.
I don’t know what I find the more ridiculous @Casino_Royale's poster analysis or the individual I saw on Facebook complaining he’d lost money betting on Wrestlemania.
You're down as one of the LDs.
Is that ridiculous?
No, I’m happy and ridiculous wasn’t the right word. Why have you done this analysis?
The only two things you need to know about PB are:
One, your first post was and will always be your best and the quality of your posts becomes inversely proportional to their quantity.
Two, if you post between 4am and noon you are sad, if you post between noon and 8pm you are mad and if you post between 8pm and 4am you are bad.
Sky and BBC have been following his motorcade to his plane and take off, and it is a relief they cannot fly alongside his plane as they would fly alongside him to New York if they could, but of course they will pick it up again when he arrives in New Your later this evening and travels to Trump Towers
I dread Trump standing in 24 but it does seem he is playing a dangerous game with the US voters and if he does become a martyr for his cause who knows what happens in 24
Biden v Trump is enough to depress the whole of the western world
Surely America can do better than this
I'd put Biden in the top quartile of President since WWII, so that's mince, IMO.
there have been 13 presidents since 1945. Top quartile is 3. So who have you excluded. Truman, JFK, Reagan, Clinton ?
Personally I think Obama called him right,
I'd rank LBJ and even Obama ahead of him as well as all those you mention. I think the report card reads, not as bad as feared and occasionally effective.
LBJ, sadly, chose to escalate in Vietnam. And it's pretty clear that it was his choice - there were strong voices in his administration against it, alongside those urging it. Had he chose differently, he might be remembered as one of the greatest of all Presidents, for all his faults.
On the question of "likes": Recently, I have started giving a like to comments where someone admits an error. As many others do, I often give a like to someone being civilized by, for example, wishing someone else a quick recovery.
Trump's 'base' is immovable. He literally could shoot and kill someone on 5th Avenue and they'd still vote for him. They are that wilfully blind.
However the base on its own isn't enough to get him past the finish line. He needs the - admittedly diminishing - strata of independents and centrists. A criminal trial is hardly going to endear him to them more than in 2020. That said, Biden's age and potential increasing infirmity due to it is going to worry a lot of people too. Not that they'll vote for the (alleged) felon but they might just sit on their hands. Biden has to know this, but then the Dems have hardly got an obvious star in the wings waiting Biden to step aside to land the vacancy. Kamala is simply not that inspiring and she too would just have people she needs sitting on their hands. Trump could get in by just the skin of his teeth again. And then we really do have a problem.
I fully expect that Trump is going to be losing the indies. Not only by his own actions, but by the vomit-inducing rhetoric his supporters will come out with. Especially as this is happening at Easter. The notion of him being "crucified" will feature large, I reckon.
US politics is so finely balanced, he can't afford to lose anybody in his voter coalition.
I mean he lost the popular vote by millions last time, and didn’t even win it in 2016, so his electoral appeal does seem rather limited at the best of times.
I’d have thought the same is true of RDS too, when push comes to shove.
Looking at the PV is pointless because a large degree of that difference is due to states like California and New York where the Republicans know they are not going to win and so don't bother whereas (in CA at least) the unions make sure the (Democrat) voters come out.
The better way of looking at things is to say, if under 50K voters in three swing states (AZ, GA and WI) had voted R instead of D, it would have been 269 each. That is how close it is.
We all know that because it’s drilled into us by the pundits, but he got very lucky in 2016.
Sky and BBC have been following his motorcade to his plane and take off, and it is a relief they cannot fly alongside his plane as they would fly alongside him to New York if they could, but of course they will pick it up again when he arrives in New Your later this evening and travels to Trump Towers
I dread Trump standing in 24 but it does seem he is playing a dangerous game with the US voters and if he does become a martyr for his cause who knows what happens in 24
Biden v Trump is enough to depress the whole of the western world
Surely America can do better than this
I'd put Biden in the top quartile of President since WWII, so that's mince, IMO.
there have been 13 presidents since 1945. Top quartile is 3. So who have you excluded. Truman, JFK, Reagan, Clinton ?
Personally I think Obama called him right,
I'd rank LBJ and even Obama ahead of him as well as all those you mention. I think the report card reads, not as bad as feared and occasionally effective.
Eisenhower? Even Bush Snr? The poor ones are surely Nixon, Ford, Carter, Bush jnr. Plus the utterly appalling Trump.
It likely won't make too much difference to his chances of winning the GOP nomination but will hit his chances if he is nominee for the general election, especially with Independents if convicted
I think that will depend how its done if he is convicted. If its seen as political persecution he will gain votes;
I think that's a very fair point. On the one hand, most Independents don't want him to run. OTOH, Independents' trust in the media has absolutely cratered according to Gallup and is a lot closer to the Republican opinion of the media than the Democrats so I don't think it helps if CNN et al suddenly declare this is the crime of the century.
I think the (London) Times had this right, the prosecution case had better be rock solid.
Sky and BBC have been following his motorcade to his plane and take off, and it is a relief they cannot fly alongside his plane as they would fly alongside him to New York if they could, but of course they will pick it up again when he arrives in New Your later this evening and travels to Trump Towers
I dread Trump standing in 24 but it does seem he is playing a dangerous game with the US voters and if he does become a martyr for his cause who knows what happens in 24
Biden v Trump is enough to depress the whole of the western world
Surely America can do better than this
I'd put Biden in the top quartile of President since WWII, so that's mince, IMO.
there have been 13 presidents since 1945. Top quartile is 3. So who have you excluded. Truman, JFK, Reagan, Clinton ?
Personally I think Obama called him right,
I think the report card reads, not as bad as feared and occasionally effective.
Without wishing to fall into a 'politicians used to be so much better' trap, that report card might be considered pretty top notch compared to so many of the other options out there.
Oh yes, it really could have been much worse. Trump, for example. Biden makes the US look vaguely normal again which is a significant change for the better.
For me, Obama was one of the most disappointing. The best rhetoric since JFK, beautiful and persuasive written work. And he really achieved the square root of F all. In fairness, the period post the GFC was not a great time for adventurous government as Cameron and Osborne discovered here. But jeez, gun control, protecting the sanity of the US SC, the catastrophic drug issues, the racial inequality and education. Even GWB did more in education. Disappointing is probably excessively kind.
Briefly: "As Donald Trump seeks to mobilize his base against a potential indictment, a big question is: Just how big is Trump’s true-believer base? How many people are willing to stand by Trump no matter what? . . . The answer: Die-hard support remains substantial. But the number has clearly shrunk. And it’s apparently not a majority of the Republican Party."
As Aaron Blake goes on to show, there has been a gradual, but steady, decrease in Trump's support, among Republicans.
"While Fox News polling in October 2020 showed that 7 in 10 Republicans had a “strongly” favorable opinion of him, by December 2022, that 69 percent had dropped to 43 percent."
And by December of last year the percentage with unfavorable opinions of Trump, had more than doubled from about 10 percent to more than 20 percent.
This steady shift against Trump has occurred before any trials, and before any of his Republican opponents have had much opportunity to make the case against him. (For example, Asa Hutchinson's announcement was not front page news in many newspapers, and was not the lead story on many news programs.)
But a strongly committed 35% of the party is easily enough to see him to the nomination in a winner takes all primary system. Especially now DeSantis seems weak and the anti-Trumpers are looking round for saviours elsewhere.
I very much look forward to being wrong, but it feels like straw clutching to say, effectively, that 'He's the most popular, but not as popular as he was'.
I don’t know what I find the more ridiculous @Casino_Royale's poster analysis or the individual I saw on Facebook complaining he’d lost money betting on Wrestlemania.
You're down as one of the LDs.
Is that ridiculous?
No, I’m happy and ridiculous wasn’t the right word. Why have you done this analysis?
The only two things you need to know about PB are:
One, your first post was and will always be your best and the quality of your posts becomes inversely proportional to their quantity.
Two, if you post between 4am and noon you are sad, if you post between noon and 8pm you are mad and if you post between 8pm and 4am you are bad.
Histogram analysis shows the first two categories post more than the last two in the ratio of about 60:40 or 65:35, depending (roughly) on how well/badly the Tories are doing at the time.
You missed a category:
Anti-woke posters with far too much time on their hands: 1.
Its quite funny how The Herd know exactly who they are and willingly self-identify.
I think in general we all play quite nicely on here. We don't need some self-identifying straight down the middle non-partisan to categorise us as left, right, up or down.
Sky and BBC have been following his motorcade to his plane and take off, and it is a relief they cannot fly alongside his plane as they would fly alongside him to New York if they could, but of course they will pick it up again when he arrives in New Your later this evening and travels to Trump Towers
I dread Trump standing in 24 but it does seem he is playing a dangerous game with the US voters and if he does become a martyr for his cause who knows what happens in 24
Biden v Trump is enough to depress the whole of the western world
Surely America can do better than this
I'd put Biden in the top quartile of President since WWII, so that's mince, IMO.
there have been 13 presidents since 1945. Top quartile is 3. So who have you excluded. Truman, JFK, Reagan, Clinton ?
Personally I think Obama called him right,
Truman for me all the way. Probably the best President of the 20th century, closely followed by Reagan.
On the question of "likes": Recently, I have started giving a like to comments where someone admits an error. As many others do, I often give a like to someone being civilized by, for example, wishing someone else a quick recovery.
On the latter point the PB community is remarkably supportive. I doubt you have had to "like" too many of the former posts.
This is what Trump does to you - I'm liking posts because I think they are good posts, but I don't really want to use the like button because they are about the potential of Trump winning in 2024 and I don't want to like that.
Am I the only person who never used the like button? I've just never seen the point, and I've never looked at my own likes. I'm not even old, I just don't get it.
I like the like button. I like it when people like my posts. But I've never checked who has liked my post, partly because I don't know how to, but mainly because that would be nuts.
It's like admitting to masturbation.
you'll never have a healthy sex life if you don't admit to masturbation
You just had to toss that one out there, didn't you?
What they used to call an ejaculation in Victorian and Edwardian novels.
Not just those either. Look at the way Ginger was always ejaculating in Biggles.
Er, that is, the way WE Johns used the word 'ejaculate' a lot when Ginger was speaking in Biggles novels.
Yes, such great works as Biggles Flies Undone and Algy and Biggles Nip Behind the Hangar count as Georgian novels!
I had to laugh when I saw a trailer for that new The Flash movie coming out. Apart from the opening it seemed to playing itself much more as a Batman movie, and even the movie poster seems to play it that way. I almost feed bad for the lead.
Sky and BBC have been following his motorcade to his plane and take off, and it is a relief they cannot fly alongside his plane as they would fly alongside him to New York if they could, but of course they will pick it up again when he arrives in New Your later this evening and travels to Trump Towers
I dread Trump standing in 24 but it does seem he is playing a dangerous game with the US voters and if he does become a martyr for his cause who knows what happens in 24
Biden v Trump is enough to depress the whole of the western world
Surely America can do better than this
I'd put Biden in the top quartile of President since WWII, so that's mince, IMO.
there have been 13 presidents since 1945. Top quartile is 3. So who have you excluded. Truman, JFK, Reagan, Clinton ?
Personally I think Obama called him right,
I'd rank LBJ and even Obama ahead of him as well as all those you mention. I think the report card reads, not as bad as feared and occasionally effective.
LBJ, sadly, chose to escalate in Vietnam. And it's pretty clear that it was his choice - there were strong voices in his administration against it, alongside those urging it. Had he chose differently, he might be remembered as one of the greatest of all Presidents, for all his faults.
Yes, Vietnam was a terrible mistake. But he did far more to change America than most Presidents. I found it interesting to read something linked to on here that the thing that did most to make the US pause was the fact that the UK was not willing to play.
This is what Trump does to you - I'm liking posts because I think they are good posts, but I don't really want to use the like button because they are about the potential of Trump winning in 2024 and I don't want to like that.
Am I the only person who never used the like button? I've just never seen the point, and I've never looked at my own likes. I'm not even old, I just don't get it.
I use it as a way to say, "I agree with that," or, "Thanks, that's interesting," or, "I appreciate the time you spent writing a thoughtful and cogent reply, but I don't have anything to add right now," or, "This is important, but, ugh," without cluttering up the thread with a comment that doesn't itself add anything interesting or useful (except this one time, obviously).
Sky and BBC have been following his motorcade to his plane and take off, and it is a relief they cannot fly alongside his plane as they would fly alongside him to New York if they could, but of course they will pick it up again when he arrives in New Your later this evening and travels to Trump Towers
I dread Trump standing in 24 but it does seem he is playing a dangerous game with the US voters and if he does become a martyr for his cause who knows what happens in 24
Biden v Trump is enough to depress the whole of the western world
Surely America can do better than this
I'd put Biden in the top quartile of President since WWII, so that's mince, IMO.
there have been 13 presidents since 1945. Top quartile is 3. So who have you excluded. Truman, JFK, Reagan, Clinton ?
Personally I think Obama called him right,
I'd rank LBJ and even Obama ahead of him as well as all those you mention. I think the report card reads, not as bad as feared and occasionally effective.
Eisenhower? Even Bush Snr? The poor ones are surely Nixon, Ford, Carter, Bush jnr. Plus the utterly appalling Trump.
I remember reading exasperated admiration of Ike from JFK. He said, the less he does the more popular he gets. Reagan was similar in some ways.
WillG - It is true that winner-take-all rules in the Republican Party could help Trump win the nomination, just as they did in 2016. But I predict (as I have earlier) that all the court cases, and the Republican opponents, will erode his support even further. And there is likely to be even more tactical voting than in 2016.
(Incidentally, the few state polls in early states I have seen show him much weaker against opponents than the national polls do.)
This is what Trump does to you - I'm liking posts because I think they are good posts, but I don't really want to use the like button because they are about the potential of Trump winning in 2024 and I don't want to like that.
Am I the only person who never used the like button? I've just never seen the point, and I've never looked at my own likes. I'm not even old, I just don't get it.
I use it as a way to say, "I agree with that," or, "Thanks, that's interesting," or, "I appreciate the time you spent writing a thoughtful and cogent reply, but I don't have anything to add right now," or, "This is important, but, ugh," without cluttering up the thread with a comment that doesn't itself add anything interesting or useful (except this one time, obviously).
I still think he should have insisted on hand cuffs
EXCLUSIVE: Trump is demanding a high-profile surrender to NY authorities. “He wanted a perp walk, he wanted daylight hours,” one source tells @RollingStone . “He wants to get out of the vehicle and walk up the stairs.”
Sky and BBC have been following his motorcade to his plane and take off, and it is a relief they cannot fly alongside his plane as they would fly alongside him to New York if they could, but of course they will pick it up again when he arrives in New Your later this evening and travels to Trump Towers
I dread Trump standing in 24 but it does seem he is playing a dangerous game with the US voters and if he does become a martyr for his cause who knows what happens in 24
Biden v Trump is enough to depress the whole of the western world
Surely America can do better than this
I'd put Biden in the top quartile of President since WWII, so that's mince, IMO.
there have been 13 presidents since 1945. Top quartile is 3. So who have you excluded. Truman, JFK, Reagan, Clinton ?
Personally I think Obama called him right,
Truman for me all the way. Probably the best President of the 20th century, closely followed by Reagan.
For me, FDR was the greatest US President of all time, even ahead of Lincoln. It was by no means a sure thing that the US was going to survive in 1932. The scale of collapse in the US then made the GFC look like a passing zephyr compared to a hurricane. When he was elected many American states had no banks left. Millions faced starvation. It is hard to imagine from the country that would, within a decade, be arming the whole of the free world and Russia to boot.
"The best definition of populist government, I think, is passing laws you know won’t work, to solve a problem that you don’t really think exists, because it polls well.
Both Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak, in part because they share an essential “ideal son-in-law” energy, are often presented as having, if not vanquished populism, at least put the disease into remission. Yet one of the UK’s most far-reaching bits of populist legislation has passed the House of Commons under Sunak’s premiership and with the full support of the leader of the opposition.
The hunting trophies (import prohibition) bill may yet come unstuck in the House of Lords, though this is a rare populist measure with plenty of champions in the UK’s unelected second chamber. The bill would ban people from bringing hunting trophies — lion pelts, zebra hide, warthog tusks and the like — into Britain." (via G search)
Look at this truly bizarre correlation. The first is American counties by life expectancy. The second is American counties by immigration. It seems Americans are fleeing the places where they live longest, so they can go to places where they die at 56
It’s all to do with the Covid response and crime levels. People are leaving LA, SF, Portland, and NY; heading to mostly Miami and Austin.
It's all to do with personal tax levels, IMHO.
The places people are leaving have high taxes, and the places they are going have low taxes.
In my part of California, you pay:
13% state income tax (which also applies to capital gains) 11% sales tax Property tax based on the purchase price of your property. If you buy a $1m house, you will be paying c. $18,000/year in annual property taxes.
By contrast, in Nevada there are dramatically lower property taxes and no state income tax.
I’ll go with a fair bit of both. If you can WFH from Nevada or Texas, and don’t need to be in Silicon Valley five days a week, then of course you’ll leave.
Policymakers and large companies are belatedly realising, that people really hated spending two or three or four hours a day commuting.
In my day job I advise businesses on location, and the US is really unique in the way personal and property tax levels (as opposed to corporate taxes) have such a material effect. In the post-Covid WFH world this has definitely become more acute. It's also messing up a lot of companies' careful state tax planning that relied on them avoiding nexus in lots of states.
In other countries it's a consideration - Switzerland's cantons being an example, German municipal taxes another - but much less marked.
The US has this great advantage of federalism that hundreds of millions of people and thousands of businesses can simply jump in a car and move somewhere with the same language, currency and culture but different laws on almost everything: a giant 50 state experiment. The EU at least within Schengen is closer to that than it used to be, with the Euro and free movement, but language and culture are still much bigger barriers.
The UK will soon face a major problem with unattached WFH freelancers effing off to Portugal, Spain, Greece to be digital nomads, with residency rights, paying much lower taxes, in the sun
Look at the tax rate!
"Remote workers can pay a reduced tax rate of 15 per cent during the first four years of their stay, provided they earn below €600,000 a year. This is instead of the usual 24 per cent rate."
And note this, it allows Freedom of Movement
"Remote workers can also apply for a residency card, which grants the ability to travel throughout the EU while living in Spain."
You need to have had a relationship with the Spanish company for three years before you can apply though.
Or maybe your publications in Flint Knapper Espana would count?
No, you don't. In fact it's the opposite. They don't want you to be working for Spanish companies (and taking work from Spaniards)
"Spain's digital nomad visa is open to non-EU nationals who work remotely for non-Spanish companies. Applicants are allowed to get a maximum of 20 per cent of their income from Spanish firms
Both self-employed freelancers with multiple clients and remote workers employed by a single company outside of Spain are eligible for the visa."
I did not realise about the full-time employment bit. If I was a few years younger I would do it tomorrow. What a fantastic opportunity.
I am literally applying right now. Brexit has just been rendered almost meaningless in terms of FoM
The tax rate is hard to believe. 15%!!
It's 15% they wouldn't otherwise get, so it's a win for them too. Do you have to show a list of clients etc?
I believe so, but that's easily done for a freelancer
I'm busily looking for the obvious catch, but I have yet to find it. It seems incredibly generous, and yet also clever. It will be a real menace to the economies of rainier countries
I guess the catch is that you are restricted to the amount of time you can be in the UK for each year. Go over that and you are subject to tax here too. But it's not much of a catch.
From the Spanish, Portuguese etc perspective they are getting well-established, well-paid freelancers earning well above the average wage, so even though the tax rate is lower the income is still pretty healthy - and the incomers are spending money every day too.
Greece is doing it as well. If they had better bogs I'd probably go for Greece. A year on a beautiful island, with winter in Bangkok and 3 months in London in the late spring/summer? Sublime. That's pretty much a perfect lifestyle, if you have the ability to work from home, don't mind being a bit isolated, etc
I have friends in Spain and Greece. This is a real temptation
A lot of freelancers need Spain/Portugal for the better timezone.
True. If I do this I will probably end up doing Spain. And the toilets are a real issue in Greece. UGH
The food in Portugal is mediocre, it is amazing in much of Spain
But where in Spain? If it's a big city the obvious choices are Barcelona or Malaga. But maybe it's time think out of the box
Barcelona if I wanted to get stuff done. Galicia for bleak mornfulness. Not Seville; it's uninhabitable for three months a year. Maybe Granada.
Estepona looks fun
Donostia-San Sebastian has the best food and drink in Spain. Just 20 clicks from France too.
But by Spanish standards, it has really shite weather
If I'm gonna do this, I want my 2,500 hours of sun a year, minimum, and guaranteed long warm dry summers
Majorca? Plenty of space there to avoid the tourists.
A beautiful island but very damp in the winter.
I have never found Majorca particularly beautiful? The fabled north coast, where Graves lived, is overrun with tourists and snooty little hotels
The rest of it is quite meh. Menorca is lovelier, tho windy
However I do really like Palma, the Majorcan capital
My grandparents retired there back in the 1980s so I've been there quite a few times over the years. I only really know the area around Pollenca well, it is very pretty. I also love the old wooden train from Palma to Soller. I don't know the mega touristy bit in the South at all.
Soller is also mega touristy
... and very expensive. I love Puerta de Pollensa.. going in Sept. Can't wait
I reckon I've narrowed it down to Valencia, Estepona, Malaga, Palma de Mallorca
Menorca is a just-possible, also Cadaques or Sitges
Rent out my flat here - if I do this - spend winter in Bangkok
Do you not think Sitges may be a little bohemian for a man of your apparent reactionary tendencies?
I'm seriously thinking of turning gay for my Third Act
Tiny dog, flamboyant cerise trousers, indolent wrist movements. Smoking tiny tiny tiny cigarillos as I sip my vintage sherry, alone, on my balcony. In Cadaques. Reading Cavafy
There are worse fates
Are you considering turning gay or just turning into Laurence Durrell?
More importantly what will @Leon decide his pronouns will be ?
Sky and BBC have been following his motorcade to his plane and take off, and it is a relief they cannot fly alongside his plane as they would fly alongside him to New York if they could, but of course they will pick it up again when he arrives in New Your later this evening and travels to Trump Towers
I dread Trump standing in 24 but it does seem he is playing a dangerous game with the US voters and if he does become a martyr for his cause who knows what happens in 24
Biden v Trump is enough to depress the whole of the western world
Surely America can do better than this
Both the BBC and Sky have been Trump's biggest backers. They may quibble about small matters, but it's all Trump agenda. In part this is because Biden is just a vacuum. Nobody dislikes him, but he's a pointless walking corpse to be frank. The US will get it's proper delivery Obama moment, but it seems just not yet.
The support for Andrew Tate amongst almost half of all 16-24 year old boys/men show that Trumpy type support is here for the long-term.
The Woke don't realise that by sowing the wind, they reap the whirlwind.
Ok, I didn't realise Tate was woke - I just thought criminal. Just my perception - I know almost nothing about the case and the little I do know makes me sure that I don't want to know more.
My sister had to explain the concepts of rape and human trafficking to her two boys, aged 9 and 10, when Tate was arrested. They knew who he was, and didn’t understand why he was suddenly a bad one.
Similar experience with my nine year old. He just thought Tate was an internet-famous man with lots of cool cars.
A propos nothing and in the vain hope of alleviating the sense of ennui among some on here, I noted plenty of people out and about with suitcases travelling both from and to London.
The trains from Waterloo to Exeter and Weymouth this morning were busy and this afternoon the train up from the West Country disgorged (is that the right word?) on its arrival.
Yes it’s Easter and it’s school holidays but clearly there’s plenty of money still about for people to travel. I suspect many are still using the cash they accumulated during the pandemic and couldn’t use and we still see the wealthier parts of Britain with money to spend.
We’ve also seen this in the resilient consumer data and while the impending rises in petrol will be a shock and inflation remains stubbornly high there are some hopeful signs but we’ll see.
Sky and BBC have been following his motorcade to his plane and take off, and it is a relief they cannot fly alongside his plane as they would fly alongside him to New York if they could, but of course they will pick it up again when he arrives in New Your later this evening and travels to Trump Towers
I dread Trump standing in 24 but it does seem he is playing a dangerous game with the US voters and if he does become a martyr for his cause who knows what happens in 24
Biden v Trump is enough to depress the whole of the western world
Surely America can do better than this
I'd put Biden in the top quartile of President since WWII, so that's mince, IMO.
there have been 13 presidents since 1945. Top quartile is 3. So who have you excluded. Truman, JFK, Reagan, Clinton ?
Personally I think Obama called him right,
Truman for me all the way. Probably the best President of the 20th century, closely followed by Reagan.
For me, FDR was the greatest US President of all time, even ahead of Lincoln. It was by no means a sure thing that the US was going to survive in 1932. The scale of collapse in the US then made the GFC look like a passing zephyr compared to a hurricane. When he was elected many American states had no banks left. Millions faced starvation. It is hard to imagine from the country that would, within a decade, be arming the whole of the free world and Russia to boot.
Had his health been better was it his intention to go on as long as possible, or had he meant his final win to he his last? I've never looked into it.
I honestly had no idea he was as young as he was when he died.
Histogram analysis shows the first two categories post more than the last two in the ratio of about 60:40 or 65:35, depending (roughly) on how well/badly the Tories are doing at the time.
Assuming this is serious, well done on attempting it. I bet we'd all love to see where we've been categorised though!
Look at this truly bizarre correlation. The first is American counties by life expectancy. The second is American counties by immigration. It seems Americans are fleeing the places where they live longest, so they can go to places where they die at 56
It’s all to do with the Covid response and crime levels. People are leaving LA, SF, Portland, and NY; heading to mostly Miami and Austin.
It's all to do with personal tax levels, IMHO.
The places people are leaving have high taxes, and the places they are going have low taxes.
In my part of California, you pay:
13% state income tax (which also applies to capital gains) 11% sales tax Property tax based on the purchase price of your property. If you buy a $1m house, you will be paying c. $18,000/year in annual property taxes.
By contrast, in Nevada there are dramatically lower property taxes and no state income tax.
I’ll go with a fair bit of both. If you can WFH from Nevada or Texas, and don’t need to be in Silicon Valley five days a week, then of course you’ll leave.
Policymakers and large companies are belatedly realising, that people really hated spending two or three or four hours a day commuting.
In my day job I advise businesses on location, and the US is really unique in the way personal and property tax levels (as opposed to corporate taxes) have such a material effect. In the post-Covid WFH world this has definitely become more acute. It's also messing up a lot of companies' careful state tax planning that relied on them avoiding nexus in lots of states.
In other countries it's a consideration - Switzerland's cantons being an example, German municipal taxes another - but much less marked.
The US has this great advantage of federalism that hundreds of millions of people and thousands of businesses can simply jump in a car and move somewhere with the same language, currency and culture but different laws on almost everything: a giant 50 state experiment. The EU at least within Schengen is closer to that than it used to be, with the Euro and free movement, but language and culture are still much bigger barriers.
The UK will soon face a major problem with unattached WFH freelancers effing off to Portugal, Spain, Greece to be digital nomads, with residency rights, paying much lower taxes, in the sun
Look at the tax rate!
"Remote workers can pay a reduced tax rate of 15 per cent during the first four years of their stay, provided they earn below €600,000 a year. This is instead of the usual 24 per cent rate."
And note this, it allows Freedom of Movement
"Remote workers can also apply for a residency card, which grants the ability to travel throughout the EU while living in Spain."
You need to have had a relationship with the Spanish company for three years before you can apply though.
Or maybe your publications in Flint Knapper Espana would count?
No, you don't. In fact it's the opposite. They don't want you to be working for Spanish companies (and taking work from Spaniards)
"Spain's digital nomad visa is open to non-EU nationals who work remotely for non-Spanish companies. Applicants are allowed to get a maximum of 20 per cent of their income from Spanish firms
Both self-employed freelancers with multiple clients and remote workers employed by a single company outside of Spain are eligible for the visa."
I did not realise about the full-time employment bit. If I was a few years younger I would do it tomorrow. What a fantastic opportunity.
I am literally applying right now. Brexit has just been rendered almost meaningless in terms of FoM
The tax rate is hard to believe. 15%!!
It's 15% they wouldn't otherwise get, so it's a win for them too. Do you have to show a list of clients etc?
I believe so, but that's easily done for a freelancer
I'm busily looking for the obvious catch, but I have yet to find it. It seems incredibly generous, and yet also clever. It will be a real menace to the economies of rainier countries
I guess the catch is that you are restricted to the amount of time you can be in the UK for each year. Go over that and you are subject to tax here too. But it's not much of a catch.
From the Spanish, Portuguese etc perspective they are getting well-established, well-paid freelancers earning well above the average wage, so even though the tax rate is lower the income is still pretty healthy - and the incomers are spending money every day too.
Greece is doing it as well. If they had better bogs I'd probably go for Greece. A year on a beautiful island, with winter in Bangkok and 3 months in London in the late spring/summer? Sublime. That's pretty much a perfect lifestyle, if you have the ability to work from home, don't mind being a bit isolated, etc
I have friends in Spain and Greece. This is a real temptation
A lot of freelancers need Spain/Portugal for the better timezone.
True. If I do this I will probably end up doing Spain. And the toilets are a real issue in Greece. UGH
The food in Portugal is mediocre, it is amazing in much of Spain
But where in Spain? If it's a big city the obvious choices are Barcelona or Malaga. But maybe it's time think out of the box
Barcelona if I wanted to get stuff done. Galicia for bleak mornfulness. Not Seville; it's uninhabitable for three months a year. Maybe Granada.
Estepona looks fun
Donostia-San Sebastian has the best food and drink in Spain. Just 20 clicks from France too.
But by Spanish standards, it has really shite weather
If I'm gonna do this, I want my 2,500 hours of sun a year, minimum, and guaranteed long warm dry summers
Majorca? Plenty of space there to avoid the tourists.
A beautiful island but very damp in the winter.
I have never found Majorca particularly beautiful? The fabled north coast, where Graves lived, is overrun with tourists and snooty little hotels
The rest of it is quite meh. Menorca is lovelier, tho windy
However I do really like Palma, the Majorcan capital
My grandparents retired there back in the 1980s so I've been there quite a few times over the years. I only really know the area around Pollenca well, it is very pretty. I also love the old wooden train from Palma to Soller. I don't know the mega touristy bit in the South at all.
Soller is also mega touristy
... and very expensive. I love Puerta de Pollensa.. going in Sept. Can't wait
I reckon I've narrowed it down to Valencia, Estepona, Malaga, Palma de Mallorca
Menorca is a just-possible, also Cadaques or Sitges
Rent out my flat here - if I do this - spend winter in Bangkok
Do you not think Sitges may be a little bohemian for a man of your apparent reactionary tendencies?
I'm seriously thinking of turning gay for my Third Act
Tiny dog, flamboyant cerise trousers, indolent wrist movements. Smoking tiny tiny tiny cigarillos as I sip my vintage sherry, alone, on my balcony. In Cadaques. Reading Cavafy
There are worse fates
Are you considering turning gay or just turning into Laurence Durrell?
More importantly what will @Leon decide his pronouns will be ?
One/One's
Surely
“We/They”
And when the horse batteries come they come in droves
This is what Trump does to you - I'm liking posts because I think they are good posts, but I don't really want to use the like button because they are about the potential of Trump winning in 2024 and I don't want to like that.
Am I the only person who never used the like button? I've just never seen the point, and I've never looked at my own likes. I'm not even old, I just don't get it.
I like the like button. I like it when people like my posts. But I've never checked who has liked my post, partly because I don't know how to, but mainly because that would be nuts.
It's like admitting to masturbation.
you'll never have a healthy sex life if you don't admit to masturbation
You just had to toss that one out there, didn't you?
What they used to call an ejaculation in Victorian and Edwardian novels.
Not just those either. Look at the way Ginger was always ejaculating in Biggles.
Er, that is, the way WE Johns used the word 'ejaculate' a lot when Ginger was speaking in Biggles novels.
There is a vas deferens between his understanding of that word and ours.
Completely off topic but having watched PBS America yesterday I was gobsmacked to find out I didn't know who first circumnavigated the earth, or at least it wasn't who I thought it was. Just leaving that out there for people to fret over before using Google.
Sky and BBC have been following his motorcade to his plane and take off, and it is a relief they cannot fly alongside his plane as they would fly alongside him to New York if they could, but of course they will pick it up again when he arrives in New Your later this evening and travels to Trump Towers
I dread Trump standing in 24 but it does seem he is playing a dangerous game with the US voters and if he does become a martyr for his cause who knows what happens in 24
Biden v Trump is enough to depress the whole of the western world
Surely America can do better than this
I'd put Biden in the top quartile of President since WWII, so that's mince, IMO.
there have been 13 presidents since 1945. Top quartile is 3. So who have you excluded. Truman, JFK, Reagan, Clinton ?
Personally I think Obama called him right,
Truman for me all the way. Probably the best President of the 20th century, closely followed by Reagan.
For me, FDR was the greatest US President of all time, even ahead of Lincoln. It was by no means a sure thing that the US was going to survive in 1932. The scale of collapse in the US then made the GFC look like a passing zephyr compared to a hurricane. When he was elected many American states had no banks left. Millions faced starvation. It is hard to imagine from the country that would, within a decade, be arming the whole of the free world and Russia to boot.
Had his health been better was it his intention to go on as long as possible, or had he meant his final win to he his last? I've never looked into it.
I honestly had no idea he was as young as he was when he died.
Honestly don't know. These days he was barely old enough to stand when he died. Only 63, I think.
Histogram analysis shows the first two categories post more than the last two in the ratio of about 60:40 or 65:35, depending (roughly) on how well/badly the Tories are doing at the time.
Assuming this is serious, well done on attempting it. I bet we'd all love to see where we've been categorised though!
Completely off topic but having watched PBS America yesterday I was gobsmacked to find out I didn't know who first circumnavigated the earth, or at least it wasn't who I thought it was. Just leaving that out there for people to fret over before using Google.
It was who I thought it was (unless I’m missing something). Who were you thinking of?
I'm curious as to how you know one another. You seem not to feature concurrently.
Shut up
There's nothing wrong with the story that a long-time lurker became friends with horse's favourite poster and then revealed horseself to campaign for Chubby to be reinstated with posting rights
Histogram analysis shows the first two categories post more than the last two in the ratio of about 60:40 or 65:35, depending (roughly) on how well/badly the Tories are doing at the time.
Assuming this is serious, well done on attempting it. I bet we'd all love to see where we've been categorised though!
What constitutes a regular poster, I wonder.
Indeed. So many of us are irregular, which is at least half the fun.
Sky and BBC have been following his motorcade to his plane and take off, and it is a relief they cannot fly alongside his plane as they would fly alongside him to New York if they could, but of course they will pick it up again when he arrives in New Your later this evening and travels to Trump Towers
I dread Trump standing in 24 but it does seem he is playing a dangerous game with the US voters and if he does become a martyr for his cause who knows what happens in 24
Biden v Trump is enough to depress the whole of the western world
Surely America can do better than this
I'd put Biden in the top quartile of President since WWII, so that's mince, IMO.
there have been 13 presidents since 1945. Top quartile is 3. So who have you excluded. Truman, JFK, Reagan, Clinton ?
Personally I think Obama called him right,
Truman for me all the way. Probably the best President of the 20th century, closely followed by Reagan.
Lot to be said for Carter. An honest man, sabotaged by events.
I do hope that behind his bluster and evasions Trump genuinely is bricking it right now. I'd like to think rich, powerful people who have always managed to bully and buy their way out of problems, or simply avoid them by virtue of status, would really start to sweat when they face a real challenge, even if their wealth still makes that unlikely.
Histogram analysis shows the first two categories post more than the last two in the ratio of about 60:40 or 65:35, depending (roughly) on how well/badly the Tories are doing at the time.
You missed a category:
Anti-woke posters with far too much time on their hands: 1.
Its quite funny how The Herd know exactly who they are and willingly self-identify.
I think in general we all play quite nicely on here. We don't need some self-identifying straight down the middle non-partisan to categorise us as left, right, up or down.
Completely off topic but having watched PBS America yesterday I was gobsmacked to find out I didn't know who first circumnavigated the earth, or at least it wasn't who I thought it was. Just leaving that out there for people to fret over before using Google.
Sebastian del Cano, Anthony Pigafetta and 31 others who crewed the Victoria would be my assumption?
Histogram analysis shows the first two categories post more than the last two in the ratio of about 60:40 or 65:35, depending (roughly) on how well/badly the Tories are doing at the time.
You missed a category:
Anti-woke posters with far too much time on their hands: 1.
Completely off topic but having watched PBS America yesterday I was gobsmacked to find out I didn't know who first circumnavigated the earth, or at least it wasn't who I thought it was. Just leaving that out there for people to fret over before using Google.
It was who I thought it was (unless I’m missing something). Who were you thinking of?
Histogram analysis shows the first two categories post more than the last two in the ratio of about 60:40 or 65:35, depending (roughly) on how well/badly the Tories are doing at the time.
Assuming this is serious, well done on attempting it. I bet we'd all love to see where we've been categorised though!
What constitutes a regular poster, I wonder.
Indeed. So many of us are irregular, which is at least half the fun.
A propos nothing and in the vain hope of alleviating the sense of ennui among some on here, I noted plenty of people out and about with suitcases travelling both from and to London.
The trains from Waterloo to Exeter and Weymouth this morning were busy and this afternoon the train up from the West Country disgorged (is that the right word?) on its arrival.
Yes it’s Easter and it’s school holidays but clearly there’s plenty of money still about for people to travel. I suspect many are still using the cash they accumulated during the pandemic and couldn’t use and we still see the wealthier parts of Britain with money to spend.
We’ve also seen this in the resilient consumer data and while the impending rises in petrol will be a shock and inflation remains stubbornly high there are some hopeful signs but we’ll see.
You have to be a bit careful at looking at just one sector of the economy in isolation. Consumer spending on travel might be expected to be a bit more resilient, because people will be making up for lost time during the pandemic, but the recent house price data suggests that people might have a bit more money left over for travel because there's been a big reduction in spending on moving house, which you would expect to see have a consequential knock-on effect in a lot of related areas of consumer spending.
The recent Kantar figures on grocery spending in Ireland were interesting in this regard. Prices are up nearly 17%, but the value of groceries sold is up only 13%, as people trade down from brands to own label, and from own label to value ranges. And yet that 13% increase in spending on groceries will far outstrip most people's increase in income, pointing to a squeeze elsewhere.
Histogram analysis shows the first two categories post more than the last two in the ratio of about 60:40 or 65:35, depending (roughly) on how well/badly the Tories are doing at the time.
Assuming this is serious, well done on attempting it. I bet we'd all love to see where we've been categorised though!
What constitutes a regular poster, I wonder.
Someone who's posted in the last 12 months, who I've clocked.
Histogram analysis shows the first two categories post more than the last two in the ratio of about 60:40 or 65:35, depending (roughly) on how well/badly the Tories are doing at the time.
So 46 Labour, LD or Nat and only 41 Tory or centre right, PB now leans left/liberal, even more in terms of regular posters
Still disproportionately right identifying compared to the British population according to current polling.
Histogram analysis shows the first two categories post more than the last two in the ratio of about 60:40 or 65:35, depending (roughly) on how well/badly the Tories are doing at the time.
Assuming this is serious, well done on attempting it. I bet we'd all love to see where we've been categorised though!
His book, the View from Number 11, is one of the very best political books I have ever read. He didn't go by chronology but by topic and as a result gave really fascinating insights as to how policy was formed and the limitations on government. It is a good innings but that is sad news. An intellectual giant compared to almost anyone in any political party today.
Completely off topic but having watched PBS America yesterday I was gobsmacked to find out I didn't know who first circumnavigated the earth, or at least it wasn't who I thought it was. Just leaving that out there for people to fret over before using Google.
Sebastian del Cano, Anthony Pigafetta and 31 others who crewed the Victoria would be my assumption?
Smarty pants.
Not what most people would answer, nor me before yesterday.
His book, the View from Number 11, is one of the very best political books I have ever read. He didn't go by chronology but by topic and as a result gave really fascinating insights as to how policy was formed and the limitations on government. It is a good innings but that is sad news. An intellectual giant compared to almost anyone in any political party today.
At least people had actual ideas back in those days, and you could disagree about things in a reasonable manner.
The coarsening of political discourse has led directly to the current dim crop of politicians.
Histogram analysis shows the first two categories post more than the last two in the ratio of about 60:40 or 65:35, depending (roughly) on how well/badly the Tories are doing at the time.
Assuming this is serious, well done on attempting it. I bet we'd all love to see where we've been categorised though!
What constitutes a regular poster, I wonder.
Someone who's posted in the last 12 months, who I've clocked.
I'm disappointed that you didn't scrape vanilla forums with a Python script as I had - naturally - assumed.
Completely off topic but having watched PBS America yesterday I was gobsmacked to find out I didn't know who first circumnavigated the earth, or at least it wasn't who I thought it was. Just leaving that out there for people to fret over before using Google.
Sebastian del Cano, Anthony Pigafetta and 31 others who crewed the Victoria would be my assumption?
Smarty pants.
Not what most people would answer, nor me before yesterday.
Yeah, I was wrong above. I thought it was Magzy but my googling was lazy.
Histogram analysis shows the first two categories post more than the last two in the ratio of about 60:40 or 65:35, depending (roughly) on how well/badly the Tories are doing at the time.
Assuming this is serious, well done on attempting it. I bet we'd all love to see where we've been categorised though!
What constitutes a regular poster, I wonder.
Someone who's posted in the last 12 months, who I've clocked.
I'm disappointed that you didn't scrape vanilla forums with a Python script as I had - naturally - assumed.
His book, the View from Number 11, is one of the very best political books I have ever read. He didn't go by chronology but by topic and as a result gave really fascinating insights as to how policy was formed and the limitations on government. It is a good innings but that is sad news. An intellectual giant compared to almost anyone in any political party today.
At least people had actual ideas back in those days, and you could disagree about things in a reasonable manner.
The coarsening of political discourse has led directly to the current dim crop of politicians.
Histogram analysis shows the first two categories post more than the last two in the ratio of about 60:40 or 65:35, depending (roughly) on how well/badly the Tories are doing at the time.
Assuming this is serious, well done on attempting it. I bet we'd all love to see where we've been categorised though!
What constitutes a regular poster, I wonder.
Someone who's posted in the last 12 months, who I've clocked.
Special ignominy awards for those posting in the last 12 months but not clocked?
His book, the View from Number 11, is one of the very best political books I have ever read. He didn't go by chronology but by topic and as a result gave really fascinating insights as to how policy was formed and the limitations on government. It is a good innings but that is sad news. An intellectual giant compared to almost anyone in any political party today.
Noteable how he hsd differences with Mrs T over Europe, but became such an outspoken Brexiteer in later life.
Completely off topic but having watched PBS America yesterday I was gobsmacked to find out I didn't know who first circumnavigated the earth, or at least it wasn't who I thought it was. Just leaving that out there for people to fret over before using Google.
Sebastian del Cano, Anthony Pigafetta and 31 others who crewed the Victoria would be my assumption?
Smarty pants.
Not what most people would answer, nor me before yesterday.
Really? Would you have gone for Drake, sixty years later, or Magellan, who was killed at Mactan?
Histogram analysis shows the first two categories post more than the last two in the ratio of about 60:40 or 65:35, depending (roughly) on how well/badly the Tories are doing at the time.
Assuming this is serious, well done on attempting it. I bet we'd all love to see where we've been categorised though!
What constitutes a regular poster, I wonder.
Someone who's posted in the last 12 months, who I've clocked.
I'm disappointed that you didn't scrape vanilla forums with a Python script as I had - naturally - assumed.
I agree with others on here that Trumps legal woes probably fire up the base and give him a decent shot in the primaries, but will prove fatal for him in the general (assuming Biden is the nominee and makes it to Election Day - if he doesn’t it makes it slightly murkier though I’d still make the Dem favourite, but more narrowly).
Sky and BBC have been following his motorcade to his plane and take off, and it is a relief they cannot fly alongside his plane as they would fly alongside him to New York if they could, but of course they will pick it up again when he arrives in New Your later this evening and travels to Trump Towers
I dread Trump standing in 24 but it does seem he is playing a dangerous game with the US voters and if he does become a martyr for his cause who knows what happens in 24
Biden v Trump is enough to depress the whole of the western world
Surely America can do better than this
Both the BBC and Sky have been Trump's biggest backers. They may quibble about small matters, but it's all Trump agenda. In part this is because Biden is just a vacuum. Nobody dislikes him, but he's a pointless walking corpse to be frank. The US will get it's proper delivery Obama moment, but it seems just not yet.
The support for Andrew Tate amongst almost half of all 16-24 year old boys/men show that Trumpy type support is here for the long-term.
The Woke don't realise that by sowing the wind, they reap the whirlwind.
I hadn't realised that Andrew Tate had converted to Islam.
All he needs to do is get a job driving a taxi in a Northern Mill town and Tory heads will explode.
Sky and BBC have been following his motorcade to his plane and take off, and it is a relief they cannot fly alongside his plane as they would fly alongside him to New York if they could, but of course they will pick it up again when he arrives in New Your later this evening and travels to Trump Towers
I dread Trump standing in 24 but it does seem he is playing a dangerous game with the US voters and if he does become a martyr for his cause who knows what happens in 24
Biden v Trump is enough to depress the whole of the western world
Surely America can do better than this
I'd put Biden in the top quartile of President since WWII, so that's mince, IMO.
there have been 13 presidents since 1945. Top quartile is 3. So who have you excluded. Truman, JFK, Reagan, Clinton ?
Personally I think Obama called him right,
Truman for me all the way. Probably the best President of the 20th century, closely followed by Reagan.
For me, FDR was the greatest US President of all time, even ahead of Lincoln. It was by no means a sure thing that the US was going to survive in 1932. The scale of collapse in the US then made the GFC look like a passing zephyr compared to a hurricane. When he was elected many American states had no banks left. Millions faced starvation. It is hard to imagine from the country that would, within a decade, be arming the whole of the free world and Russia to boot.
Not a bad call. After all we know what happened in Germany, which of the other major economies saw the worst economic decline.
Greatest chancellor of all time. All downhill since.
I agree when it comes to microeconomics. We reaped the benefits of his supply-side reforms for the next twenty years until Brown buggered it all up.
When it comes to macro, I'm not so sure. He was badly wrong about the ERM, though I don't think he ever quite admitted it, and the monetary squeeze of the early 80s was probably too severe.
Still in his memoirs, he points out that Chancellors at that time had to fulfil three or four roles often split in other countries (Finance Minister, Economy Minister, Monetary Policy Director, Deputy PM, etc.), and being good at all of them is impossible.
A propos nothing and in the vain hope of alleviating the sense of ennui among some on here, I noted plenty of people out and about with suitcases travelling both from and to London.
The trains from Waterloo to Exeter and Weymouth this morning were busy and this afternoon the train up from the West Country disgorged (is that the right word?) on its arrival.
Yes it’s Easter and it’s school holidays but clearly there’s plenty of money still about for people to travel. I suspect many are still using the cash they accumulated during the pandemic and couldn’t use and we still see the wealthier parts of Britain with money to spend.
We’ve also seen this in the resilient consumer data and while the impending rises in petrol will be a shock and inflation remains stubbornly high there are some hopeful signs but we’ll see.
You have to be a bit careful at looking at just one sector of the economy in isolation. Consumer spending on travel might be expected to be a bit more resilient, because people will be making up for lost time during the pandemic, but the recent house price data suggests that people might have a bit more money left over for travel because there's been a big reduction in spending on moving house, which you would expect to see have a consequential knock-on effect in a lot of related areas of consumer spending.
The recent Kantar figures on grocery spending in Ireland were interesting in this regard. Prices are up nearly 17%, but the value of groceries sold is up only 13%, as people trade down from brands to own label, and from own label to value ranges. And yet that 13% increase in spending on groceries will far outstrip most people's increase in income, pointing to a squeeze elsewhere.
People who don't have variable mortgages or rent to pay, and wealthy enough to cope with food and fuel inflation are the ones with money to spend on travel. Holidays are selling well, hence the queues at Dover and airports.
Of course we don't see those just scraping by, or failing to scrape by. That is the nature of the social divide. They are invisible.
Histogram analysis shows the first two categories post more than the last two in the ratio of about 60:40 or 65:35, depending (roughly) on how well/badly the Tories are doing at the time.
Assuming this is serious, well done on attempting it. I bet we'd all love to see where we've been categorised though!
What constitutes a regular poster, I wonder.
Someone who's posted in the last 12 months, who I've clocked.
It would be much easier to tell regular posters if there was place on posts that told us how many posts someone had posted, gave a warning when approaching 50,000, and if people had memorable avatars/logos that looked half like coloured in parts of a cow and half like a badly drawn map of the USA. But it won't ever happen.
A propos nothing and in the vain hope of alleviating the sense of ennui among some on here, I noted plenty of people out and about with suitcases travelling both from and to London.
The trains from Waterloo to Exeter and Weymouth this morning were busy and this afternoon the train up from the West Country disgorged (is that the right word?) on its arrival.
Yes it’s Easter and it’s school holidays but clearly there’s plenty of money still about for people to travel. I suspect many are still using the cash they accumulated during the pandemic and couldn’t use and we still see the wealthier parts of Britain with money to spend.
We’ve also seen this in the resilient consumer data and while the impending rises in petrol will be a shock and inflation remains stubbornly high there are some hopeful signs but we’ll see.
You have to be a bit careful at looking at just one sector of the economy in isolation. Consumer spending on travel might be expected to be a bit more resilient, because people will be making up for lost time during the pandemic, but the recent house price data suggests that people might have a bit more money left over for travel because there's been a big reduction in spending on moving house, which you would expect to see have a consequential knock-on effect in a lot of related areas of consumer spending.
The recent Kantar figures on grocery spending in Ireland were interesting in this regard. Prices are up nearly 17%, but the value of groceries sold is up only 13%, as people trade down from brands to own label, and from own label to value ranges. And yet that 13% increase in spending on groceries will far outstrip most people's increase in income, pointing to a squeeze elsewhere.
People who don't have variable mortgages or rent to pay, and wealthy enough to cope with food and fuel inflation are the ones with money to spend on travel. Holidays are selling well, hence the queues at Dover and airports.
Of course we don't see those just scraping by, or failing to scrape by. That is the nature of the social divide. They are invisible.
Savings rates also went up significantly during Covid, and of course people had to take fewer holidays. I think we’re still seeing that unwind.
Comments
EDIT I see there is a flag option. Presumably for hate speech. I don’t think Lib Dems yet fall into a protected group, though give us time.
source$:https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/03/27/how-big-is-trumps-true-believer-base/
Briefly: "As Donald Trump seeks to mobilize his base against a potential indictment, a big question is: Just how big is Trump’s true-believer base? How many people are willing to stand by Trump no matter what?
. . .
The answer: Die-hard support remains substantial. But the number has clearly shrunk. And it’s apparently not a majority of the Republican Party."
As Aaron Blake goes on to show, there has been a gradual, but steady, decrease in Trump's support, among Republicans.
"While Fox News polling in October 2020 showed that 7 in 10 Republicans had a “strongly” favorable opinion of him, by December 2022, that 69 percent had dropped to 43 percent."
And by December of last year the percentage with unfavorable opinions of Trump, had more than doubled from about 10 percent to more than 20 percent.
This steady shift against Trump has occurred before any trials, and before any of his Republican opponents have had much opportunity to make the case against him. (For example, Asa Hutchinson's announcement was not front page news in many newspapers, and was not the lead story on many news programs.)
The better way of looking at things is to say, if under 50K voters in three swing states (AZ, GA and WI) had voted R instead of D, it would have been 269 each. That is how close it is.
Er, that is, the way WE Johns used the word 'ejaculate' a lot when Ginger was speaking in Biggles novels.
On Casino's scale, I have you down as an LD. Perish the thought.
Could probably do more on energy security in terms of oil and gas, encouraging more US production while the transition to renewables proceeds. But overall a decent job.
The only two things you need to know about PB are:
One, your first post was and will always be your best and the quality of your posts becomes inversely proportional to their quantity.
Two, if you post between 4am and noon you are sad, if you post between noon and 8pm you are mad and if you post between 8pm and 4am you are bad.
Nothing else matters.
Had he chose differently, he might be remembered as one of the greatest of all Presidents, for all his faults.
I think the (London) Times had this right, the prosecution case had better be rock solid.
For me, Obama was one of the most disappointing. The best rhetoric since JFK, beautiful and persuasive written work. And he really achieved the square root of F all. In fairness, the period post the GFC was not a great time for adventurous government as Cameron and Osborne discovered here. But jeez, gun control, protecting the sanity of the US SC, the catastrophic drug issues, the racial inequality and education. Even GWB did more in education. Disappointing is probably excessively kind.
(Incidentally, the few state polls in early states I have seen show him much weaker against opponents than the national polls do.)
EXCLUSIVE: Trump is demanding a high-profile surrender to NY authorities. “He wanted a perp walk, he wanted daylight hours,” one source tells @RollingStone . “He wants to get out of the vehicle and walk up the stairs.”
https://twitter.com/NoahShachtman/status/1642963768777777180
My pronouns are you/mine
Deal with that wokely and linguistically
https://www.ft.com/content/9858497d-5891-4fd9-9774-c93dba424b84
"The best definition of populist government, I think, is passing laws you know won’t work, to solve a problem that you don’t really think exists, because it polls well.
Both Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak, in part because they share an essential “ideal son-in-law” energy, are often presented as having, if not vanquished populism, at least put the disease into remission. Yet one of the UK’s most far-reaching bits of populist legislation has passed the House of Commons under Sunak’s premiership and with the full support of the leader of the opposition.
The hunting trophies (import prohibition) bill may yet come unstuck in the House of Lords, though this is a rare populist measure with plenty of champions in the UK’s unelected second chamber. The bill would ban people from bringing hunting trophies — lion pelts, zebra hide, warthog tusks and the like — into Britain." (via G search)
The trains from Waterloo to Exeter and Weymouth this morning were busy and this afternoon the train up from the West Country disgorged (is that the right word?) on its arrival.
Yes it’s Easter and it’s school holidays but clearly there’s plenty of money still about for people to travel. I suspect many are still using the cash they accumulated during the pandemic and couldn’t use and we still see the wealthier parts of Britain with money to spend.
We’ve also seen this in the resilient consumer data and while the impending rises in petrol will be a shock and inflation remains stubbornly high there are some hopeful signs but we’ll see.
I honestly had no idea he was as young as he was when he died.
There's nothing wrong with the story that a long-time lurker became friends with horse's favourite poster and then revealed horseself to campaign for Chubby to be reinstated with posting rights
But the winner was his contemporary Geoffrey Howe...
The recent Kantar figures on grocery spending in Ireland were interesting in this regard. Prices are up nearly 17%, but the value of groceries sold is up only 13%, as people trade down from brands to own label, and from own label to value ranges. And yet that 13% increase in spending on groceries will far outstrip most people's increase in income, pointing to a squeeze elsewhere.
Both might help
Not what most people would answer, nor me before yesterday.
The coarsening of political discourse has led directly to the current dim crop of politicians.
I’ve only very recently joined so you will have to judge me for yourself. But if you don’t find me funny that’s okay too
I'm off to do something more interesting - like change the bed sheets.
All he needs to do is get a job driving a taxi in a Northern Mill town and Tory heads will explode.
Vaguely related- got a King Charles coin in some change today. Surprising quite how odd it felt.
After all we know what happened in Germany, which of the other major economies saw the worst economic decline.
https://twitter.com/thesun/status/1642984135814787079?s=61&t=s0ae0IFncdLS1Dc7J0P_TQ
When it comes to macro, I'm not so sure. He was badly wrong about the ERM, though I don't think he ever quite admitted it, and the monetary squeeze of the early 80s was probably too severe.
Still in his memoirs, he points out that Chancellors at that time had to fulfil three or four roles often split in other countries (Finance Minister, Economy Minister, Monetary Policy Director, Deputy PM, etc.), and being good at all of them is impossible.
Of course we don't see those just scraping by, or failing to scrape by. That is the nature of the social divide. They are invisible.