Categories
Why I’m betting that Trump won’t be the WH2024 nominee – politicalbetting.com
Why I’m betting that Trump won’t be the WH2024 nominee – politicalbetting.com
As I write Donald Trump is currently rated on Betfair as having a 66% chance of being the Republican Party nominee for the 2024 White House race when he will be 78 years old. While I think he is a strong favourite I am not convinced he has a 65% chance which is how bets should be assessed.
0
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
I’ll now have to think of something to say on topic?
Um.
Rather Trump than DeSantis. You sense Trump only does it for money it can make him, and the massaging of his ego. He doesn’t actually believe any of the rubbish he comes out with, or the Q Anon rubbish of many of his supporters. None of them believe it, Trump, Tucker, Marg Greene, Alex Jones, they are all too intelligent. It makes them money, massages their ego.
DeSantis would do it for God.
This is how I would answer the header, answer that Mike is spot on in his instincts. Things are different now, in how many people may want Trump policies, but now realise he is the very last person who can actually deliver Trump policies. That’s the fact that is the final nail in Trumps political coffin. And the same for Boris in UK. Like Trump there is no come back for Boris - even if you like his policies, you now know he’s incapable of delivering what he’s promising.
This answer is word perfect here, is it not:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhe0amOv5Lw
Personally I'd take the other side of this bet. I think Trump is stronger in republican world than when he won 2016 nomination.
All the polling has only showed his backing among those likely to vote in primaries increasing, and his lead over everyone else is daunting.
Note that his acolytes in the party have also changed a substantial number of large state primaries to winner takes all, which further reduces the room for another candidate to build momentum once the primaries start.
If Tump is not to be the candidate, it unlikely to be the type of calculations that you're talking about which make the difference.
That said, I agree with Mike.
UK water companies offer apology and £10bn investment for sewage spills
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/may/18/uk-water-companies-offer-apology-and-10bn-investment-for-sewage-spills
What say their apologists now ?
I'm inclined to agree with this take.
Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey said: “This apology and plan just don’t go far enough. For years water companies have arrogantly dismissed the public’s fears of rivers, lakes and coastlines being damaged by sewage discharges.
“This announcement does nothing to match the billions water firms have paid out in dividends to overseas investors, or stop their CEOs being handed multimillion pound bonuses.”
The water industry has been by far the most successful of the privatised industries in thwarting competition. It is complacent, greedy, inefficient, overly politicised and borderline corrupt because its revenues are directly in the government's gift. Typical monopolists in fact.
This is a preemptive strike by the water companies in an effort to maintain them.
But it does also make a nonsense of their previous protestations.
It is already scary that someone with his record can gain such traction. It shows a weakness in the American demos that will be there long after he has gone. But hopefully it will be a while until we have another US politician responsible for an attack on Congress.
https://twitter.com/AllieHBNews/status/1658929213305503744?s=20
The prime minister insisted that the government was “in control” of immigration despite official data that will be published next week that is expected to show net migration hit another record high of about 700,000 last year.
That would be more than two and a half times the level of net migration in 2019, which was 271,000. The Conservative Party promised in its 2019 election manifesto that “overall numbers will come down”.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/jeremy-hunt-splits-from-suella-braverman-on-migrant-labour-dpt2c63bq
Perhaps the Daily Mail staff have been indulging too much in cheaper Brexit beer (and sanitary products).
https://afrikanfrontier.com/arts/unveiling-the-origins-of-benin-bronzes-new-research-reveals-german-rhineland-brass-manillas/
So we should return them to said former slavers for them to disappear into a private collection?
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/berlins-benin-bronze-return-a-fiasco-as-artefacts-vanish-jq9xsn9cf
https://twitter.com/skynews/status/1659053239239688194?s=61&t=s0ae0IFncdLS1Dc7J0P_TQ
Oh that's okay then.
Time to nationalise them and chuck them in jail, at this point they can be nationalised without compensation, what a bunch of crooks.
There should be huge fines for water companies that dump sewage beyond whatever the agreed threshold is. If that means they face losses due to previous underinvestment, then so be it. And they should continue to be fined until they invest to meet their obligations.
If that is unaffordable, then the equity holders can get wiped out and the debt holders can take control of the company and have another go.
That's how the market is supposed to work, particularly for highly regulated local monopolies.
More generally- if we don't know what Brexit is intended to do (apart from to exist), how is it ever going to be a success?
All they can hope to do is minimise the damage of likely defeat by trying to retain some of the bluewall and marginal seats Cameron won
We sold these companies. We have the right to change the rules. Say, as an extreme example, we nationalised without compensation. We would be foolish to expect any other investors to buy similar assets in the future.
Similarly if we change the return profile such that water companies are only allowed to earn 8% on their investments vs 11% (dummy numbers) the value goes down. It’s just maths.
We currently run a trade deficit which needs to be funded by selling assets. @DavidL is suggesting we should stop doing that…
Rubbish.
Also Benin supposedly banned the sale of slaves in the 16th century.
- there is not sufficient infrastructure all of us who already live here
- the AI wave will hit us increasingly over the next decade
- we need to raise productivity to enable us to pay our bills and cheap labour takes us in the opposite direction.
The UK needs to get back to addressing the fundamentals of the economy and stop doubling down on failed policies.
Oh, and the picture agency with the photos, is the same one this couple uses for their staged pap shots. The whole thing has nothing whatsoever to do with an ongoing court case about police security.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/uk-and-japan-strike-trade-deal-at-g7-summit-amid-china-concerns-kbcrdf6ml
Last week it was various allegations and prosecutions against him, including the civil sexual assault case, but this week it’s John Durahm’s report suggesting that large parts of the State apparatus tried to take him down while he was in office.
SNP treasurer Colin Beattie was on holiday when police went to arrest him
Police officers investigating the SNP’s finances failed to arrest the party’s treasurer on the same day they raided Nicola Sturgeon’s home because he was on holiday in Tuscany.
Officers turned up at Colin Beattie’s large Georgian home in Eskbank, Dalkeith, on April 5, as part of a co-ordinated swoop on him and Peter Murrell, the former SNP chief executive who is married to the former first minister. They simultaneously carried out a search of the party’s Edinburgh headquarters and seized a camper van from outside the home of Murrell’s mother in Dunfermline.
However, the MSP for Midlothian North & Musselburgh was holidaying in Italy during Holyrood’s Easter recess. Officers targeted him again 13 days later, on the day that MSPs returned to the Scottish parliament when it was guaranteed he would be back in the country.
The Times has learnt that Beattie was told of the earlier arrest attempt while being questioned under caution. Both he and Murrell were released without charge pending further inquiries. Beattie resigned as treasurer; Murrell had stepped down in March.
The timing of Beattie’s arrest overshadowed Humza Yousaf’s first major speech to the Scottish parliament and prompted claims that the timing of the raid was politically motivated. “It would have been better for us if Colin had just been at home,” said one senior figure.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/snp-treasurer-colin-beattie-was-on-holiday-when-police-went-to-arrest-him-fbsgds83j
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/an-african-country-reckons-with-its-history-of-selling-slaves/2018/01/29/5234f5aa-ff9a-11e7-86b9-8908743c79dd_story.html
"Between the seventeenth and the first half of the nineteenth century, its coast was one of main embarking regions for the transatlantic slave trade"
https://eap.bl.uk/project/EAP1055
Entirely off topic, I am having my third tustle with Covid. Seems to be about midway between the first (debilitating) and second (virtually asymptomatic). A pain.
PS - The Daily Mail and Suella Braverman expect you to go into the office with Covid, otherwise you're a commie who wants to destroy the economy.
I certainly don't believe anything in The Sun or other such rags. The Telegraph is run by the Barclay brothers. Nuff said. Grauniad is a left wing rag so that leaves the Times as the only serious newspaper. I have said b4 that I subscribe to the Times for that very reason.
This is a shocking read and a sobering reminder of the kind of injustices that happen under the guise of being "tough on crime". Labour to blame for this one, too, I'm ashamed to say.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/may/18/the-rubbishscapes-of-essex-why-our-buried-trash-is-back-to-haunt-us
As we continue to sell income generating assets, the cash outflow increases.
Time to put an end to that - particularly for monopoly utilities, which simply don't need to produce outsize dividends.
The current proposal is outrageous, since if approved, it would allow these companies to borrow to improve their assets, entirely at the expense of customers.
They should be paying for much of this work out of current profits.
It's indeed the level of profits and dividends - generated by benefit of monopoly position rather than good performance - which I object to.
Sounded like a schoolboy.
Davey is not proposing limiting the profits of privatised companies. The Lib Dem policy on water companies is fairly clear and sensible:
- Enforce existing rules including more regularly taking companies that infringe to court, and increasing fines to levels that actually have an effect
- Replace Ofwat with a regulator with more teeth
- Set more ambitious binding water quality targets
All things that are perfectly reasonable, and if they are enough to scare off foreign investment then perhaps that’s not the kind of rent-seeking foreign investment we want.
F1: sure you've all heard but the planned race this weekend is off due to flooding. Shame we lost an Italian race rather than Miami or Monaco, but there we are.
This time round it will be criminal indictments, which is quite a different prospect from his usual run through the courts.
You can find very good reporting in the Times, Guardian and FT; also dross.
The question is rather which are worth bothering with, and which not.
All of that leaves Europe facing the very real prospect of significant cuts to US aid to Ukraine and a major strengthening of Putin’s position, if he can hold on until January 2025. How is the line held if that happens? At that point President Xi becomes even more important as someone who can constrain Putin. That only happens if he feels there is something in it for China. And that something is trade and other ties with Europe that he doesn’t want disrupted. For that reason I expect increasing divergence over China strategy between Europe, including the UK, and the US over the coming years - with a significant acceleration if the GOP takes the White House in November 2024.
Proof it it were ever needed that Labour Lawyers are unfit for Government. Real ones or David Blunkett.
And good morning one, and all!
Foreign investment in industry. Not foreign non-investment. This laisse-faire regulation of water which you support - has it driven a bonanza of foreign investment in everything else? No - instead the rest of the stuff we flogged off is also at risk - the entire car industry saying "sort Brexit or we're off" being the latest triumph.
I couldn't say this while I was at @thetimes as it would have been bad manners. But how that witless throwback Quentin Letts holds his job when Rob Hutton is out there is one of the mysteries of modern British journalism. But what do I know?
https://swingometer.substack.com/p/throw-the-rascals-out
We enjoy these reductio ad absurdam arguments on here, but I don’t think it works here.
*this does not mean it’s entirely straightforward. ‘Less complex’ maybe.
Though I acknowledge I'm probably more hard line than Davey on this.
"Mykola Bielieskov
@MBielieskov
RU intensified 🚀 strikes after leaked grim JCS estimates of UA air
defense capacity. RU aim is simple one - deplete UA interceptors stock&open avenues for RU piloted aviation. That’s why though UA air&missile defense performed well it’s not the time to fall into complacency."
https://twitter.com/MBielieskov/status/1659081784624136193
Britain's latest package of defence assistance did include more air defence missiles, so hopefully Russia will run out of long-range missiles a long time before Ukraine runs out of air defence missiles.
But the Russian Kinzhal they're shooting down is double that.