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The July 20th by-elections – Could the Tories lose all three? – politicalbetting.com

SystemSystem Posts: 11,797
edited July 2023 in General
imageThe July 20th by-elections – Could the Tories lose all three? – politicalbetting.com

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  • Options
    TazTaz Posts: 12,022
    edited June 2023
    Yes.

    Oh, and first !!!!
  • Options
    eekeek Posts: 25,855
    edited June 2023
    Threads to which the answer is clearly Yes
  • Options
    rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 59,282
    I've gone for a wild bet that Tories somehow retain Uxbridge.
  • Options
    rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 59,282
    As an aside did we lose the 'like' button after that debate the other day?
  • Options
    eekeek Posts: 25,855

    I've gone for a wild bet that Tories somehow retain Uxbridge.

    I can't see it the trend is so clearly towards Labour it looks inevitable - especially as I suspect that 2019 Uxbridge vote may have a fair few personal votes for Bozo....


  • Options
    TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 115,412
    I think the Tories will only hold Selby & Ainsty.
  • Options
    eekeek Posts: 25,855

    As an aside did we lose the 'like' button after that debate the other day?

    I think it was more @rcs1000 got fed up Leon complaining about it yesterday.

    Leon may have disliked the Like button but I think everyone hates it disappearing and replacement with some random WFH option - that's only useful for responding to posts by Leon or HYUFD.
  • Options
    Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 28,243

    I've gone for a wild bet that Tories somehow retain Uxbridge.

    I think the swing in Uxbridge could be a lot lower than the others but they'll still lose it.
  • Options
    PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 76,146
    Selby should be competitive, Labour haven't produced a swing in a BE to take the seat against the Tories that large since South East Staffs in 1996.
    It would be some achievement for Starmer to take the seat.
  • Options
    WhisperingOracleWhisperingOracle Posts: 8,705
    edited June 2023
    Tories to lose all three, and move to around 22 in the opinion polls; Putin to be deposed ; Trump to be arrested and jailed ; and aliens to arrive, and make their presence felt, on the White House lawn.

    All these to happen before August, but then I also would be worried about the impact on my holiday..
  • Options
    tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,469

    I've gone for a wild bet that Tories somehow retain Uxbridge.

    Would be funny if only to annoy Boris Johnson.
  • Options
    kle4kle4 Posts: 93,321
    Yes they could. Only one looked a viable hold and they've gone backwards since then.
  • Options
    kle4kle4 Posts: 93,321
    edited June 2023
    Speaking of going backwards apparently Wagner will be handing over their heavy equipment to the MOD. (BBC: not the British MOD)

    He had his day, but looks like the chef is cooked
  • Options
    eek said:

    As an aside did we lose the 'like' button after that debate the other day?

    I think it was more @rcs1000 got fed up Leon complaining about it yesterday.

    Leon may have disliked the Like button but I think everyone hates it disappearing and replacement with some random WFH option - that's only useful for responding to posts by Leon or HYUFD.
    A WFH button is so 2020.
  • Options
    PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 76,146
    edited June 2023
    Pulpstar said:

    Selby should be competitive, Labour haven't produced a swing in a BE to take the seat against the Tories that large since South East Staffs in 1996.
    It would be some achievement for Starmer to take the seat.

    If the polling is truly as good as it looks for Labour they should take the seat though.

    Uxbridge is gone but the demographics (Hindu population) will probably mean the Tory vote holds up a bit better than the national polling.

    Edit: Actually on current polling via UNS I make Selby a narrow hold (Con +11.4 -> -20) implying a general 15.7% swing which isn't enough) but Baxter has it in the red column for the next GE currently.
  • Options
    kle4kle4 Posts: 93,321
    eek said:

    As an aside did we lose the 'like' button after that debate the other day?

    I think it was more @rcs1000 got fed up Leon complaining about it yesterday.

    Leon may have disliked the Like button but I think everyone hates it disappearing and replacement with some random WFH option - that's only useful for responding to posts by Leon or HYUFD.
    People occasionally moan about likes or emoji or the nesting etc. Bottom line is no one had to like if they didn't want, what baby gets triggered by that?
  • Options
    WillGWillG Posts: 2,223
    kle4 said:

    I thought @TheScreamingEagles said this wouldn't happen?

    @faisalislam
    NEW

    Chancellor Jeremy Hunt in Brussels to sign financial services cooperation Memorandum of Understanding with EU, one of the fruits of the Windsor Agreement over NI Brexit rules…


    https://twitter.com/faisalislam/status/1673621357345611779

    Try not to have a panic attack over the word cooperation, ERG.
    The EU has definitely won the messaging war, but the UK is getting everything that was said to be "cherry picking". No EU law, no FoM but an open border in Northern Ireland, an expansive free trade agreement and equivalence in banking.
  • Options
    eekeek Posts: 25,855
    Tony Diver
    @Tony_Diver
    There is a now a dispute going on between CCHQ and Downing Street over Dan Korski.

    Party says he was a gvt employee at the time so it's a matter for the Cabinet Office, but No10 says he's a Tory candidate so it's their problem.

    This will have to be sorted out quite soon.
  • Options
    TimSTimS Posts: 10,594

    I've gone for a wild bet that Tories somehow retain Uxbridge.

    There is a vague plausibility to Uxbridge going out of sync with the country. And Shelby and Ainsty is a tough call for Labour. So vaguely possible they may only lose one, S&F to the Lib Dems. But my bet would be Uxbridge and S&F go, S&A hangs on.
  • Options
    HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 118,021
    Somerton and Frome will be a LD gain I think. Uxbridge I think could be a Tory hold due to a more local Tory candidate who is a Hillingdon councillor than the Camden councillor Labour candidate and the high Hindu vote.

    Selby could go either way, narrow Tory hold or narrow Labour gain
  • Options
    eek said:

    Tony Diver
    @Tony_Diver
    There is a now a dispute going on between CCHQ and Downing Street over Dan Korski.

    Party says he was a gvt employee at the time so it's a matter for the Cabinet Office, but No10 says he's a Tory candidate so it's their problem.

    This will have to be sorted out quite soon.

    Both are right surely?

    He was a government employee at the time so Cabinet Office are responsible.

    And he's a Tory candidate, so he's the Tories problem to deal with.

    It's not either-or.
  • Options
    HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 118,021
    edited June 2023
    eek said:

    Tony Diver
    @Tony_Diver
    There is a now a dispute going on between CCHQ and Downing Street over Dan Korski.

    Party says he was a gvt employee at the time so it's a matter for the Cabinet Office, but No10 says he's a Tory candidate so it's their problem.

    This will have to be sorted out quite soon.

    CCHQ approved him to be on the approved London Mayoral candidate final list ahead of the likes of experienced London Tory Assembly Members Andrew Boff and Nicholas Rogers and the alleged incident happened under Cameron's No 10 not Sunak's. So it is largely a CCHQ problem
  • Options
    148grss148grss Posts: 3,919
    Whilst it is clearly possible for Labour to win all three, I think it is more likely they won't - but I don't know which one is the least likely to fall. All of them would require pretty big swings (10-20%) which, whilst certainly doable, aren't certain. I also don't know if Uxbridge and South Ruislip will have a particular issue with it previously being Johnson's seat.

    I think purely on numbers, I'd bet the Tories will keep Selby and Ainsty. My gut is telling me they won't, but will keep Uxbridge and South Ruislip.

    The other question for me is - how will the Tory party, and Sunak, react to whatever loses? And how will Johnson world spin Ux & SR result; if it gets lost they can spin it as "see, Johnson is in a unique position to win due to personal popularity" and if it is held they can go "see, Johnson was well liked locally and that good will helped the Cons despite national trends".
  • Options
    TazTaz Posts: 12,022
    148grss said:

    Whilst it is clearly possible for Labour to win all three, I think it is more likely they won't - but I don't know which one is the least likely to fall. All of them would require pretty big swings (10-20%) which, whilst certainly doable, aren't certain. I also don't know if Uxbridge and South Ruislip will have a particular issue with it previously being Johnson's seat.

    I think purely on numbers, I'd bet the Tories will keep Selby and Ainsty. My gut is telling me they won't, but will keep Uxbridge and South Ruislip.

    The other question for me is - how will the Tory party, and Sunak, react to whatever loses? And how will Johnson world spin Ux & SR result; if it gets lost they can spin it as "see, Johnson is in a unique position to win due to personal popularity" and if it is held they can go "see, Johnson was well liked locally and that good will helped the Cons despite national trends".

    Labour won't win all three.

    The Lib Dems will take Somerton and Frome in spite of, what would appear to be, an awful choice of candidate.
  • Options
    eekeek Posts: 25,855

    I think the Tories will only hold Selby & Ainsty.

    It depends on whether there ends up being a clear anti-Tory candidate that voters consolidate around.

    I suspect that there won't be one and Labour / Lib Dems will split the vote whilst between them getting 5-8,000 more than the Tory candidate.
  • Options
    kle4kle4 Posts: 93,321
    edited June 2023
    WillG said:

    kle4 said:

    I thought @TheScreamingEagles said this wouldn't happen?

    @faisalislam
    NEW

    Chancellor Jeremy Hunt in Brussels to sign financial services cooperation Memorandum of Understanding with EU, one of the fruits of the Windsor Agreement over NI Brexit rules…


    https://twitter.com/faisalislam/status/1673621357345611779

    Try not to have a panic attack over the word cooperation, ERG.
    The EU has definitely won the messaging war, but the UK is getting everything that was said to be "cherry picking". No EU law, no FoM but an open border in Northern Ireland, an expansive free trade agreement and equivalence in banking.
    The no cherry picking stuff was always nonsense, yet people lapped it up to suggest asking for anything was unreasonable. If there were no cherries to be picked there'd be no point in negotiations at all since there'd be no points of contention.

    The issue was whether unrealistic cherries were being sought, and given the politics at the time that'd be yes.
  • Options
    TimSTimS Posts: 10,594
    Pulpstar said:

    Pulpstar said:

    Selby should be competitive, Labour haven't produced a swing in a BE to take the seat against the Tories that large since South East Staffs in 1996.
    It would be some achievement for Starmer to take the seat.

    If the polling is truly as good as it looks for Labour they should take the seat though.

    Uxbridge is gone but the demographics (Hindu population) will probably mean the Tory vote holds up a bit better than the national polling.

    Edit: Actually on current polling via UNS I make Selby a narrow hold (Con +11.4 -> -20) implying a general 15.7% swing which isn't enough) but Baxter has it in the red column for the next GE currently.
    Useful set of BEs to gauge the walls by comparing vs National swing. Especially nice to have them all at once.

    We’ve already had blue wall by-election losses so that’s already proven. Uxbridge is Brexity London-margins which are due a test as the last one was Bexley and a comfortable Tory hold. S&F is proper west country / farming land last tested in N Shropshire. S&A is sort of but not quite red wall.

  • Options
    Two quick questions:-

    1. Are all three by elections definitely taking place on the same day? (I think I have missed the announcements)
    2. Are any of the bookies offering any tasty combination bets? What odds could I get for the Tories to lose all three?
  • Options

    Pro_Rata said:

    Farooq said:

    Taz said:

    Pulpstar said:

    🚨 EXCLUSIVE: Bayern Munich have today submitted an official proposal to sign Harry Kane from Tottenham Hotspur. #FCBayern written offer to #THFC for 29yo striker worth €70m + add-ons. England captain has 1yr left of existing Spurs contract @TheAthleticFC

    https://twitter.com/David_Ornstein/status/1673636610942943232

    Very steep for 1 year left. I'd take the money if I was Spuds or extend his contract.
    He's not extending his contract at Spurs.
    Don't blame him. He wants to win things not play in a team of gallant losers. A gallant loser is.......a loser.
    He looks at Kyle Walker who moved on, he looks at Jordan Henderson who has won everything, he must ache at the missed opportunities.
    I can't be alone in thinking how funny it would be if Kane went to City and Spurs won the title.

    Ok, ok, it's not very likely, but still.
    Continuing the football chat there is a striking bar chart of the nationalities of Premier League managers at the Athletic.

    Aside from English two nationalities have reached 25% or more - Scottish and Spanish. The Scottish during Fergusons reign (and dropped off dramatically after his retirment) and the Spanish during Guardiolas.

    Ridiculous bias searching for the next Ferguson/Guardiola based on nationality and similarities yet we are supposed to believe that generally in the economy firms employ the best person for the job rather than the person whose characteristics fit our ideal type for the job.

    https://theathletic.com/4624932/2023/06/25/premier-league-managers-nations/
    A lot of clubs bring in managers on a "fit for the club", "familiar with the system" type basis, so you'll get clubs going for a few cycles of managers that have been through the Barcelona / Dortmund etc. system and if you have an ambition to play the City way, for example, you may also buy in to a "graduate of the system" type appointment.

    It's merely a modern equivalent of "The Boot Room" approach of old Liverpool.

    It tends to be an approach that gets diminishing returns as you appoint lower and lower on food chain.

    In summary, nationality is not necessarily the driver here, rather it is buying into a system that has origins in Spain, with a glut of
    Spanish managers being a side effect.
    There were seven managers from Glasgow at one point, including dross like McCleish and Billy Davies trying to play the dour but gritty Ferguson character.
    Correlation does not equal causation.

    In the past Scotland provided a lot of managerial potential. This didn't begin with Ferguson, before Fergie even made his name Liverpool had Dalglish and Souness.

    Of course Scotland provided a portion of non English managerial talent in the past. The reason is obvious why if you follow football.

    And of course Spain does now, when Spanish football is consistently either the best in Europe or second best only to English football. The reason is also obvious why if you follow football.

    There is no foul play or bad motives afoot here.
  • Options
    .
    kle4 said:

    WillG said:

    kle4 said:

    I thought @TheScreamingEagles said this wouldn't happen?

    @faisalislam
    NEW

    Chancellor Jeremy Hunt in Brussels to sign financial services cooperation Memorandum of Understanding with EU, one of the fruits of the Windsor Agreement over NI Brexit rules…


    https://twitter.com/faisalislam/status/1673621357345611779

    Try not to have a panic attack over the word cooperation, ERG.
    The EU has definitely won the messaging war, but the UK is getting everything that was said to be "cherry picking". No EU law, no FoM but an open border in Northern Ireland, an expansive free trade agreement and equivalence in banking.
    The no cherry picking stuff was always nonsense, yet people lapped it up to suggest asking for anything was unreasonable. If there were no cherries to be picked there'd be no point in negotiations at all since there'd be no points of contention.

    The issue was whether unrealistic cherries were being sought, and given the politics at the time that'd be yes.
    What unreasonable cherries were being sought and how have we not got them now?

    It seems to me the cherries the UK wanted, the UK pretty much has now.

    It was May's weakness that allowed her to get boxed in, she should have resigned after the election in 2017, since she went the UK has consistently ratcheted what it wants. Which is a refreshing change from pre-2016 and shows what a good idea Brexit was.
  • Options
    noneoftheabovenoneoftheabove Posts: 21,371

    Pro_Rata said:

    Farooq said:

    Taz said:

    Pulpstar said:

    🚨 EXCLUSIVE: Bayern Munich have today submitted an official proposal to sign Harry Kane from Tottenham Hotspur. #FCBayern written offer to #THFC for 29yo striker worth €70m + add-ons. England captain has 1yr left of existing Spurs contract @TheAthleticFC

    https://twitter.com/David_Ornstein/status/1673636610942943232

    Very steep for 1 year left. I'd take the money if I was Spuds or extend his contract.
    He's not extending his contract at Spurs.
    Don't blame him. He wants to win things not play in a team of gallant losers. A gallant loser is.......a loser.
    He looks at Kyle Walker who moved on, he looks at Jordan Henderson who has won everything, he must ache at the missed opportunities.
    I can't be alone in thinking how funny it would be if Kane went to City and Spurs won the title.

    Ok, ok, it's not very likely, but still.
    Continuing the football chat there is a striking bar chart of the nationalities of Premier League managers at the Athletic.

    Aside from English two nationalities have reached 25% or more - Scottish and Spanish. The Scottish during Fergusons reign (and dropped off dramatically after his retirment) and the Spanish during Guardiolas.

    Ridiculous bias searching for the next Ferguson/Guardiola based on nationality and similarities yet we are supposed to believe that generally in the economy firms employ the best person for the job rather than the person whose characteristics fit our ideal type for the job.

    https://theathletic.com/4624932/2023/06/25/premier-league-managers-nations/
    A lot of clubs bring in managers on a "fit for the club", "familiar with the system" type basis, so you'll get clubs going for a few cycles of managers that have been through the Barcelona / Dortmund etc. system and if you have an ambition to play the City way, for example, you may also buy in to a "graduate of the system" type appointment.

    It's merely a modern equivalent of "The Boot Room" approach of old Liverpool.

    It tends to be an approach that gets diminishing returns as you appoint lower and lower on food chain.

    In summary, nationality is not necessarily the driver here, rather it is buying into a system that has origins in Spain, with a glut of
    Spanish managers being a side effect.
    There were seven managers from Glasgow at one point, including dross like McCleish and Billy Davies trying to play the dour but gritty Ferguson character.
    Correlation does not equal causation.

    In the past Scotland provided a lot of managerial potential. This didn't begin with Ferguson, before Fergie even made his name Liverpool had Dalglish and Souness.

    Of course Scotland provided a portion of non English managerial talent in the past. The reason is obvious why if you follow football.

    And of course Spain does now, when Spanish football is consistently either the best in Europe or second best only to English football. The reason is also obvious why if you follow football.

    There is no foul play or bad motives afoot here.
    It is human nature to search for the next "x" rather than consider people in the round. No suggestion of foul play or bad motives at all, quite the opposite, it is a neat example of people getting overpromoted because of their characteristics.
  • Options
    eekeek Posts: 25,855
    TimS said:

    Pulpstar said:

    Pulpstar said:

    Selby should be competitive, Labour haven't produced a swing in a BE to take the seat against the Tories that large since South East Staffs in 1996.
    It would be some achievement for Starmer to take the seat.

    If the polling is truly as good as it looks for Labour they should take the seat though.

    Uxbridge is gone but the demographics (Hindu population) will probably mean the Tory vote holds up a bit better than the national polling.

    Edit: Actually on current polling via UNS I make Selby a narrow hold (Con +11.4 -> -20) implying a general 15.7% swing which isn't enough) but Baxter has it in the red column for the next GE currently.
    Useful set of BEs to gauge the walls by comparing vs National swing. Especially nice to have them all at once.

    We’ve already had blue wall by-election losses so that’s already proven. Uxbridge is Brexity London-margins which are due a test as the last one was Bexley and a comfortable Tory hold. S&F is proper west country / farming land last tested in N Shropshire. S&A is sort of but not quite red wall.

    S&A isn't even a good test for the next election - because the boundaries change so much next time round.

    In theory it's currently a safe Tory seat almost like Rishi's Richmondshire one...
  • Options
    rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 59,282
    eek said:

    As an aside did we lose the 'like' button after that debate the other day?

    I think it was more @rcs1000 got fed up Leon complaining about it yesterday.

    Leon may have disliked the Like button but I think everyone hates it disappearing and replacement with some random WFH option - that's only useful for responding to posts by Leon or HYUFD.
    I quite liked the 'like' button.
  • Options
    kle4kle4 Posts: 93,321
    edited June 2023

    .

    kle4 said:

    WillG said:

    kle4 said:

    I thought @TheScreamingEagles said this wouldn't happen?

    @faisalislam
    NEW

    Chancellor Jeremy Hunt in Brussels to sign financial services cooperation Memorandum of Understanding with EU, one of the fruits of the Windsor Agreement over NI Brexit rules…


    https://twitter.com/faisalislam/status/1673621357345611779

    Try not to have a panic attack over the word cooperation, ERG.
    The EU has definitely won the messaging war, but the UK is getting everything that was said to be "cherry picking". No EU law, no FoM but an open border in Northern Ireland, an expansive free trade agreement and equivalence in banking.
    The no cherry picking stuff was always nonsense, yet people lapped it up to suggest asking for anything was unreasonable. If there were no cherries to be picked there'd be no point in negotiations at all since there'd be no points of contention.

    The issue was whether unrealistic cherries were being sought, and given the politics at the time that'd be yes.
    What unreasonable cherries were being sought and how have we not got them now?

    It seems to me the cherries the UK wanted, the UK pretty much has now.

    It was May's weakness that allowed her to get boxed in, she should have resigned after the election in 2017, since she went the UK has consistently ratcheted what it wants. Which is a refreshing change from pre-2016 and shows what a good idea Brexit was.
    I said the politics of the time deliberately because it means what might have been reasonable demands by either side on objective grounds would not have made it through the Commons or the EU, for different reasons.

    I think it's pretty obvious the EU were in part in punishment mode, and people denied that by claiming cherry picking was not permitted. But our own chaos and confusion meant we were in no position to realistically get lots of what we might ask for. Passage of time has allowed it.
  • Options
    FarooqFarooq Posts: 11,833

    eek said:

    As an aside did we lose the 'like' button after that debate the other day?

    I think it was more @rcs1000 got fed up Leon complaining about it yesterday.

    Leon may have disliked the Like button but I think everyone hates it disappearing and replacement with some random WFH option - that's only useful for responding to posts by Leon or HYUFD.
    I quite liked the 'like' button.
    like
  • Options
    Peter_the_PunterPeter_the_Punter Posts: 13,849

    Tories to lose all three, and move to around 22 in the opinion polls; Putin to be deposed ; Trump to be arrested and jailed ; and aliens to arrive, and make their presence felt, on the White House lawn.

    All these to happen before August, but then I also would be worried about the impact on my holiday..

    Yes, these will all come to pass but not until TSE is in charge.
  • Options
    I'm getting a Labour advert a lot in between YouTube videos. It's not great, just a picture of a bomb (an old school bomb that gets dropped out of a plane) with something about the Tories Mortgage Ticking Time bomb. Really basic, but at least they're trying.
  • Options

    Pro_Rata said:

    Farooq said:

    Taz said:

    Pulpstar said:

    🚨 EXCLUSIVE: Bayern Munich have today submitted an official proposal to sign Harry Kane from Tottenham Hotspur. #FCBayern written offer to #THFC for 29yo striker worth €70m + add-ons. England captain has 1yr left of existing Spurs contract @TheAthleticFC

    https://twitter.com/David_Ornstein/status/1673636610942943232

    Very steep for 1 year left. I'd take the money if I was Spuds or extend his contract.
    He's not extending his contract at Spurs.
    Don't blame him. He wants to win things not play in a team of gallant losers. A gallant loser is.......a loser.
    He looks at Kyle Walker who moved on, he looks at Jordan Henderson who has won everything, he must ache at the missed opportunities.
    I can't be alone in thinking how funny it would be if Kane went to City and Spurs won the title.

    Ok, ok, it's not very likely, but still.
    Continuing the football chat there is a striking bar chart of the nationalities of Premier League managers at the Athletic.

    Aside from English two nationalities have reached 25% or more - Scottish and Spanish. The Scottish during Fergusons reign (and dropped off dramatically after his retirment) and the Spanish during Guardiolas.

    Ridiculous bias searching for the next Ferguson/Guardiola based on nationality and similarities yet we are supposed to believe that generally in the economy firms employ the best person for the job rather than the person whose characteristics fit our ideal type for the job.

    https://theathletic.com/4624932/2023/06/25/premier-league-managers-nations/
    A lot of clubs bring in managers on a "fit for the club", "familiar with the system" type basis, so you'll get clubs going for a few cycles of managers that have been through the Barcelona / Dortmund etc. system and if you have an ambition to play the City way, for example, you may also buy in to a "graduate of the system" type appointment.

    It's merely a modern equivalent of "The Boot Room" approach of old Liverpool.

    It tends to be an approach that gets diminishing returns as you appoint lower and lower on food chain.

    In summary, nationality is not necessarily the driver here, rather it is buying into a system that has origins in Spain, with a glut of
    Spanish managers being a side effect.
    There were seven managers from Glasgow at one point, including dross like McCleish and Billy Davies trying to play the dour but gritty Ferguson character.
    Correlation does not equal causation.

    In the past Scotland provided a lot of managerial potential. This didn't begin with Ferguson, before Fergie even made his name Liverpool had Dalglish and Souness.

    Of course Scotland provided a portion of non English managerial talent in the past. The reason is obvious why if you follow football.

    And of course Spain does now, when Spanish football is consistently either the best in Europe or second best only to English football. The reason is also obvious why if you follow football.

    There is no foul play or bad motives afoot here.
    It is human nature to search for the next "x" rather than consider people in the round. No suggestion of foul play or bad motives at all, quite the opposite, it is a neat example of people getting overpromoted because of their characteristics.
    Or despite their characteristics or their characteristics had nothing to do with it at all.

    Again, Spain has dominated the elite of European football all century long, Spain has never left the top-2 in UEFA Coefficient and was first for almost all of the previous decade. The only time Spain has ever not been topping the UEFA Coefficient is when England has.

    So given Spanish clubs are at the top of European football, and given English clubs want to hire the best, why would they not hire from Spain? Other than England, Spain is the most logical and sensible place to look for relevant experience.

    In prior decades before continental European football came to be so intermeshed with English football, it was Scotland.

    If you want to use the fact English clubs have hired from Spain to show evidence of people being hired because of characteristics, you need a reason why English clubs would not have hired from Spain if it were not for those characteristics. Do you have one?
  • Options
    ClippPClippP Posts: 1,781

    Tories to lose all three, and move to around 22 in the opinion polls; Putin to be deposed ; Trump to be arrested and jailed ; and aliens to arrive, and make their presence felt, on the White House lawn.

    All these to happen before August, but then I also would be worried about the impact on my holiday..

    Yes, these will all come to pass but not until TSE is in charge.
    Like
  • Options
    Peter_the_PunterPeter_the_Punter Posts: 13,849

    Two quick questions:-

    1. Are all three by elections definitely taking place on the same day? (I think I have missed the announcements)
    2. Are any of the bookies offering any tasty combination bets? What odds could I get for the Tories to lose all three?

    It would be unusual for the bookies to allow a combination bet on related markets but in this case they might do some kind of special offer.

    Drop Shadsy a line at Smarkets. He's the most enterprising politics betting operator around these days.
  • Options
    Peter_the_PunterPeter_the_Punter Posts: 13,849
    ClippP said:

    Tories to lose all three, and move to around 22 in the opinion polls; Putin to be deposed ; Trump to be arrested and jailed ; and aliens to arrive, and make their presence felt, on the White House lawn.

    All these to happen before August, but then I also would be worried about the impact on my holiday..

    Yes, these will all come to pass but not until TSE is in charge.
    Like
    Like your like.*


    *Robert, sort this nonsense out please.
  • Options
    DavidLDavidL Posts: 51,985
    edited June 2023

    I'm getting a Labour advert a lot in between YouTube videos. It's not great, just a picture of a bomb (an old school bomb that gets dropped out of a plane) with something about the Tories Mortgage Ticking Time bomb. Really basic, but at least they're trying.

    Trying to do what? Mislead? Pretend that uniquely amongst western countries interest rates would not have gone up here if we had a Labour government? Pretending that not raising interest rates would somehow, magically, not have had adverse consequences for inflation and Sterling?

    The more I am seeing of Labour's economic policies the more concerned I am getting. We seem to be in danger of moving from Alice in Wonderland to somewhere a lot less pleasant.
  • Options
    noneoftheabovenoneoftheabove Posts: 21,371
    edited June 2023

    Pro_Rata said:

    Farooq said:

    Taz said:

    Pulpstar said:

    🚨 EXCLUSIVE: Bayern Munich have today submitted an official proposal to sign Harry Kane from Tottenham Hotspur. #FCBayern written offer to #THFC for 29yo striker worth €70m + add-ons. England captain has 1yr left of existing Spurs contract @TheAthleticFC

    https://twitter.com/David_Ornstein/status/1673636610942943232

    Very steep for 1 year left. I'd take the money if I was Spuds or extend his contract.
    He's not extending his contract at Spurs.
    Don't blame him. He wants to win things not play in a team of gallant losers. A gallant loser is.......a loser.
    He looks at Kyle Walker who moved on, he looks at Jordan Henderson who has won everything, he must ache at the missed opportunities.
    I can't be alone in thinking how funny it would be if Kane went to City and Spurs won the title.

    Ok, ok, it's not very likely, but still.
    Continuing the football chat there is a striking bar chart of the nationalities of Premier League managers at the Athletic.

    Aside from English two nationalities have reached 25% or more - Scottish and Spanish. The Scottish during Fergusons reign (and dropped off dramatically after his retirment) and the Spanish during Guardiolas.

    Ridiculous bias searching for the next Ferguson/Guardiola based on nationality and similarities yet we are supposed to believe that generally in the economy firms employ the best person for the job rather than the person whose characteristics fit our ideal type for the job.

    https://theathletic.com/4624932/2023/06/25/premier-league-managers-nations/
    A lot of clubs bring in managers on a "fit for the club", "familiar with the system" type basis, so you'll get clubs going for a few cycles of managers that have been through the Barcelona / Dortmund etc. system and if you have an ambition to play the City way, for example, you may also buy in to a "graduate of the system" type appointment.

    It's merely a modern equivalent of "The Boot Room" approach of old Liverpool.

    It tends to be an approach that gets diminishing returns as you appoint lower and lower on food chain.

    In summary, nationality is not necessarily the driver here, rather it is buying into a system that has origins in Spain, with a glut of
    Spanish managers being a side effect.
    There were seven managers from Glasgow at one point, including dross like McCleish and Billy Davies trying to play the dour but gritty Ferguson character.
    Correlation does not equal causation.

    In the past Scotland provided a lot of managerial potential. This didn't begin with Ferguson, before Fergie even made his name Liverpool had Dalglish and Souness.

    Of course Scotland provided a portion of non English managerial talent in the past. The reason is obvious why if you follow football.

    And of course Spain does now, when Spanish football is consistently either the best in Europe or second best only to English football. The reason is also obvious why if you follow football.

    There is no foul play or bad motives afoot here.
    It is human nature to search for the next "x" rather than consider people in the round. No suggestion of foul play or bad motives at all, quite the opposite, it is a neat example of people getting overpromoted because of their characteristics.
    Or despite their characteristics or their characteristics had nothing to do with it at all.

    Again, Spain has dominated the elite of European football all century long, Spain has never left the top-2 in UEFA Coefficient and was first for almost all of the previous decade. The only time Spain has ever not been topping the UEFA Coefficient is when England has.

    So given Spanish clubs are at the top of European football, and given English clubs want to hire the best, why would they not hire from Spain? Other than England, Spain is the most logical and sensible place to look for relevant experience.

    In prior decades before continental European football came to be so intermeshed with English football, it was Scotland.

    If you want to use the fact English clubs have hired from Spain to show evidence of people being hired because of characteristics, you need a reason why English clubs would not have hired from Spain if it were not for those characteristics. Do you have one?
    The peak of Spanish football was around 2008-2012 with a World Cup and 2 Euros. During that time the Premier League Spanish manager percentage was sub 10%.

    After Guardiolas success it has risen to over 25%.

    It is the image of Guardiola not the quality of Spanish football that is driving the recruitment.
  • Options

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Miklosvar said:

    FF43 said:

    Leon said:

    FF43 said:

    Miklosvar said:

    Nigelb said:

    kjh said:

    Miklosvar said:

    malcolmg said:

    ydoethur said:

    WTF? I think ‘awesome’ is way worse than ‘like.’ So twee.

    Just need a LEON button now
    Has Leon apologised for being wrong on the lab leak?

    U.S. Intelligence Report Finds No Clear Evidence of Covid Origins in Wuhan Lab.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/23/us/politics/covid-lab-leak-wuhan-report.html
    It says no clear evidence. AOEINEOA. What clear evidence could there be anyway? CCTV of avirus sneaking out of the back door?
    In my lifetime there have been two lab leaks in the UK that I am aware of, Smallpox and Foot and Mouth. Both were provable lab leaks. So to say there can't be any clear evidence of a lab leak is obviously not correct.

    It may well be a lab leak and there may not be any evidence that can be found, but that doesn't mean it is a lab leak. It may be, it may not be.

    However unlike @leon I don't jump to conclusions. If leon didn't come out with so much tosh all the time (Do we all remember the mass alien ships over Ukraine?) we might take him more seriously. I can think of two pieces of evidence he provided for absolute proof it came from a lab that were completely dismantled here (one was from Fox news ffs).
    There's also the likely, but not proven Russian influenza leak, of course.
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1977_Russian_flu
    Which is exactly the point: Likely but not proven is probably as good as we are going to get with an outbreak in China. They don't do openness there. So the claim of "no clear evidence" is still susceptible to the response: What clear evidence would you expect, given 1. China and 2. the catastrophic consequences of this leak?
    I would want to know why a lab leak is likely, beyond that someone had a notion. There is epidemiological evidence for the epidemic starting in a market, which is also how the previous SARS is known to have started.
    Aside from anything else “the nightmare of circumstantial evidence” - as was explicitly stated in the Fauci/Farrar emails at the beginning of the pandemic

    Problem is I then have to Google the claim to see if it really is evidence. This is the full quote from Ian Lipkin:

    It does not eliminate the possibility of inadvertent release following adaptation through selection in culture at the institute in Wuhan. Given the scale of the bat CoV research pursued there and the site of emergence of the first human cases we have a nightmare of circumstantial evidence to assess.

    So it seems not. The recent DNI report states

    Prior to the pandemic, we assess WIV scientists conducted extensive research on coronaviruses, which included animal sampling and genetic analysis. We continue to have no indication that the WIV’s pre-pandemic research holdings included SARSCoV-2 or a close progenitor, nor any direct evidence that a specific research-related incident occurred involving WIV personnel before the pandemic that could have caused the COVID pandemic.

    So Covid 19 doesn't match a virus the lab was known to be working on. We have to have some other reason to suspect a lab leak.
    "a virus the lab was known to be working on" is rather the point. Again, this is mere absence of evidence. Evidence of absence would require a complete, audited list from the lab of everything it was up to.
    Given that there is significant evidence China executed or otherwise silenced - forever - early covid whistleblowers, the idea they wouldn’t destroy evidence at the lab is fanciful. Indeed the opposite is true. They surely DID destroy evidence
    Indeed, and they also destroyed evidence at the market.
    I don't think we've ever argued that China behaved responsibly or openly with regard to what happened.
    Indeed.

    From what we know, I think we can say for certain that China behaved irresponsibly.

    I think the balance of probabilities is that it probably came from the Lab.

    I think the less likely, but still possible option, is that it came naturally to and from the market without any involvement of the Lab.

    But I don't think we will ever know for certain.
    Bart, you’ve been reading too many PB comments. The balance of probabilities is that it was a natural zoonotic event, as the new US intelligence document says. Read it here: https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/Report-on-Potential-Links-Between-the-Wuhan-Institute-of-Virology-and-the-Origins-of-COVID-19-20230623.pdf

    Sorry bondegezou but I'm not going based on evidence, but purely my gut, since the evidence is corrupted so we can't really know for certain.

    And my gut speaks like Jon Stewart here: https://youtu.be/sSfejgwbDQ8?t=172

    "Oh my God, there’s been an outbreak of chocolatey goodness near Hershey, Pennsylvania. What do you think happened? Oh I don’t know, maybe a steam shovel mated with a cocoa bean? Or it’s the f---ing chocolate factory! Maybe that’s it."
  • Options
    viewcodeviewcode Posts: 19,593
    eek said:

    As an aside did we lose the 'like' button after that debate the other day?

    I think it was more @rcs1000 got fed up Leon complaining about it yesterday.

    Leon may have disliked the Like button but I think everyone hates it disappearing and replacement with some random WFH option - that's only useful for responding to posts by Leon or HYUFD.
    I absolutely hate it. It makes the site unpleasant to use. Please bring the "like" button back.
  • Options
    ClippPClippP Posts: 1,781
    TimS said:

    Pulpstar said:

    Pulpstar said:

    Selby should be competitive, Labour haven't produced a swing in a BE to take the seat against the Tories that large since South East Staffs in 1996.
    It would be some achievement for Starmer to take the seat.

    If the polling is truly as good as it looks for Labour they should take the seat though.

    Uxbridge is gone but the demographics (Hindu population) will probably mean the Tory vote holds up a bit better than the national polling.

    Edit: Actually on current polling via UNS I make Selby a narrow hold (Con +11.4 -> -20) implying a general 15.7% swing which isn't enough) but Baxter has it in the red column for the next GE currently.
    Useful set of BEs to gauge the walls by comparing vs National swing. Especially nice to have them all at once.

    We’ve already had blue wall by-election losses so that’s already proven. Uxbridge is Brexity London-margins which are due a test as the last one was Bexley and a comfortable Tory hold. S&F is proper west country / farming land last tested in N Shropshire. S&A is sort of but not quite red wall.
    Or more exactly last tested in Tiverton & Honiton, almost next door to S&F, so an even better proxy.
  • Options
    SeaShantyIrish2SeaShantyIrish2 Posts: 16,133
    We are witnessing the bizarre, inexplicable, quite-possibly-deeply sinister hold that LEON has over the ALLEGED governators of PB!!!

    One poster airs his dislike of our beloved Like button and . . . poof! it's no more.

    Just like that fine bottle of claret you were saving for a very special occasion . . . until Leon stopped by to borrow a flint chisel or a stomach pump . . . spotted your prized plonk . . . and chugged it on the spot . . .

    WHAT is the source of LEON's malign power over OGH, TSE, RCS?????????
  • Options
    kle4kle4 Posts: 93,321

    I'm getting a Labour advert a lot in between YouTube videos. It's not great, just a picture of a bomb (an old school bomb that gets dropped out of a plane) with something about the Tories Mortgage Ticking Time bomb. Really basic, but at least they're trying.

    I keep getting ones about ill fitting bras.

    That sounds like it's a joke but it's not - given I mainly look at politics and history stuff I'm not sure how the algorithm went in this direction.
  • Options
    TimSTimS Posts: 10,594
    ClippP said:

    TimS said:

    Pulpstar said:

    Pulpstar said:

    Selby should be competitive, Labour haven't produced a swing in a BE to take the seat against the Tories that large since South East Staffs in 1996.
    It would be some achievement for Starmer to take the seat.

    If the polling is truly as good as it looks for Labour they should take the seat though.

    Uxbridge is gone but the demographics (Hindu population) will probably mean the Tory vote holds up a bit better than the national polling.

    Edit: Actually on current polling via UNS I make Selby a narrow hold (Con +11.4 -> -20) implying a general 15.7% swing which isn't enough) but Baxter has it in the red column for the next GE currently.
    Useful set of BEs to gauge the walls by comparing vs National swing. Especially nice to have them all at once.

    We’ve already had blue wall by-election losses so that’s already proven. Uxbridge is Brexity London-margins which are due a test as the last one was Bexley and a comfortable Tory hold. S&F is proper west country / farming land last tested in N Shropshire. S&A is sort of but not quite red wall.
    Or more exactly last tested in Tiverton & Honiton, almost next door to S&F, so an even better proxy.
    Good point, I forgot about that one.
  • Options
    WillGWillG Posts: 2,223
    kle4 said:

    WillG said:

    kle4 said:

    I thought @TheScreamingEagles said this wouldn't happen?

    @faisalislam
    NEW

    Chancellor Jeremy Hunt in Brussels to sign financial services cooperation Memorandum of Understanding with EU, one of the fruits of the Windsor Agreement over NI Brexit rules…


    https://twitter.com/faisalislam/status/1673621357345611779

    Try not to have a panic attack over the word cooperation, ERG.
    The EU has definitely won the messaging war, but the UK is getting everything that was said to be "cherry picking". No EU law, no FoM but an open border in Northern Ireland, an expansive free trade agreement and equivalence in banking.
    The no cherry picking stuff was always nonsense, yet people lapped it up to suggest asking for anything was unreasonable. If there were no cherries to be picked there'd be no point in negotiations at all since there'd be no points of contention.

    The issue was whether unrealistic cherries were being sought, and given the politics at the time that'd be yes.
    Given that we now have those cherries, they clearly weren't unrealistic. It was just the EU having a fit of spite, which they now seem to have gotten over.
  • Options
    noneoftheabovenoneoftheabove Posts: 21,371

    Pro_Rata said:

    Farooq said:

    Taz said:

    Pulpstar said:

    🚨 EXCLUSIVE: Bayern Munich have today submitted an official proposal to sign Harry Kane from Tottenham Hotspur. #FCBayern written offer to #THFC for 29yo striker worth €70m + add-ons. England captain has 1yr left of existing Spurs contract @TheAthleticFC

    https://twitter.com/David_Ornstein/status/1673636610942943232

    Very steep for 1 year left. I'd take the money if I was Spuds or extend his contract.
    He's not extending his contract at Spurs.
    Don't blame him. He wants to win things not play in a team of gallant losers. A gallant loser is.......a loser.
    He looks at Kyle Walker who moved on, he looks at Jordan Henderson who has won everything, he must ache at the missed opportunities.
    I can't be alone in thinking how funny it would be if Kane went to City and Spurs won the title.

    Ok, ok, it's not very likely, but still.
    Continuing the football chat there is a striking bar chart of the nationalities of Premier League managers at the Athletic.

    Aside from English two nationalities have reached 25% or more - Scottish and Spanish. The Scottish during Fergusons reign (and dropped off dramatically after his retirment) and the Spanish during Guardiolas.

    Ridiculous bias searching for the next Ferguson/Guardiola based on nationality and similarities yet we are supposed to believe that generally in the economy firms employ the best person for the job rather than the person whose characteristics fit our ideal type for the job.

    https://theathletic.com/4624932/2023/06/25/premier-league-managers-nations/
    A lot of clubs bring in managers on a "fit for the club", "familiar with the system" type basis, so you'll get clubs going for a few cycles of managers that have been through the Barcelona / Dortmund etc. system and if you have an ambition to play the City way, for example, you may also buy in to a "graduate of the system" type appointment.

    It's merely a modern equivalent of "The Boot Room" approach of old Liverpool.

    It tends to be an approach that gets diminishing returns as you appoint lower and lower on food chain.

    In summary, nationality is not necessarily the driver here, rather it is buying into a system that has origins in Spain, with a glut of
    Spanish managers being a side effect.
    There were seven managers from Glasgow at one point, including dross like McCleish and Billy Davies trying to play the dour but gritty Ferguson character.
    Correlation does not equal causation.

    In the past Scotland provided a lot of managerial potential. This didn't begin with Ferguson, before Fergie even made his name Liverpool had Dalglish and Souness.

    Of course Scotland provided a portion of non English managerial talent in the past. The reason is obvious why if you follow football.

    And of course Spain does now, when Spanish football is consistently either the best in Europe or second best only to English football. The reason is also obvious why if you follow football.

    There is no foul play or bad motives afoot here.
    It is human nature to search for the next "x" rather than consider people in the round. No suggestion of foul play or bad motives at all, quite the opposite, it is a neat example of people getting overpromoted because of their characteristics.
    Or despite their characteristics or their characteristics had nothing to do with it at all.

    Again, Spain has dominated the elite of European football all century long, Spain has never left the top-2 in UEFA Coefficient and was first for almost all of the previous decade. The only time Spain has ever not been topping the UEFA Coefficient is when England has.

    So given Spanish clubs are at the top of European football, and given English clubs want to hire the best, why would they not hire from Spain? Other than England, Spain is the most logical and sensible place to look for relevant experience.

    In prior decades before continental European football came to be so intermeshed with English football, it was Scotland.

    If you want to use the fact English clubs have hired from Spain to show evidence of people being hired because of characteristics, you need a reason why English clubs would not have hired from Spain if it were not for those characteristics. Do you have one?
    The peak of Spanish football was around 2008-2012 with a World Cup and 2 Euros. During that time the Premier League Spanish manager percentage was sub 10%.

    After Guardiolas success it has risen to over 25%.

    It is the image of Guardiola not the quality of Spanish football that is driving the recruitment.
    German managers peaked in the two seasons after Klopps title win dropping back as Liverpool have done another example.
  • Options

    Pro_Rata said:

    Farooq said:

    Taz said:

    Pulpstar said:

    🚨 EXCLUSIVE: Bayern Munich have today submitted an official proposal to sign Harry Kane from Tottenham Hotspur. #FCBayern written offer to #THFC for 29yo striker worth €70m + add-ons. England captain has 1yr left of existing Spurs contract @TheAthleticFC

    https://twitter.com/David_Ornstein/status/1673636610942943232

    Very steep for 1 year left. I'd take the money if I was Spuds or extend his contract.
    He's not extending his contract at Spurs.
    Don't blame him. He wants to win things not play in a team of gallant losers. A gallant loser is.......a loser.
    He looks at Kyle Walker who moved on, he looks at Jordan Henderson who has won everything, he must ache at the missed opportunities.
    I can't be alone in thinking how funny it would be if Kane went to City and Spurs won the title.

    Ok, ok, it's not very likely, but still.
    Continuing the football chat there is a striking bar chart of the nationalities of Premier League managers at the Athletic.

    Aside from English two nationalities have reached 25% or more - Scottish and Spanish. The Scottish during Fergusons reign (and dropped off dramatically after his retirment) and the Spanish during Guardiolas.

    Ridiculous bias searching for the next Ferguson/Guardiola based on nationality and similarities yet we are supposed to believe that generally in the economy firms employ the best person for the job rather than the person whose characteristics fit our ideal type for the job.

    https://theathletic.com/4624932/2023/06/25/premier-league-managers-nations/
    A lot of clubs bring in managers on a "fit for the club", "familiar with the system" type basis, so you'll get clubs going for a few cycles of managers that have been through the Barcelona / Dortmund etc. system and if you have an ambition to play the City way, for example, you may also buy in to a "graduate of the system" type appointment.

    It's merely a modern equivalent of "The Boot Room" approach of old Liverpool.

    It tends to be an approach that gets diminishing returns as you appoint lower and lower on food chain.

    In summary, nationality is not necessarily the driver here, rather it is buying into a system that has origins in Spain, with a glut of
    Spanish managers being a side effect.
    There were seven managers from Glasgow at one point, including dross like McCleish and Billy Davies trying to play the dour but gritty Ferguson character.
    Correlation does not equal causation.

    In the past Scotland provided a lot of managerial potential. This didn't begin with Ferguson, before Fergie even made his name Liverpool had Dalglish and Souness.

    Of course Scotland provided a portion of non English managerial talent in the past. The reason is obvious why if you follow football.

    And of course Spain does now, when Spanish football is consistently either the best in Europe or second best only to English football. The reason is also obvious why if you follow football.

    There is no foul play or bad motives afoot here.
    It is human nature to search for the next "x" rather than consider people in the round. No suggestion of foul play or bad motives at all, quite the opposite, it is a neat example of people getting overpromoted because of their characteristics.
    Or despite their characteristics or their characteristics had nothing to do with it at all.

    Again, Spain has dominated the elite of European football all century long, Spain has never left the top-2 in UEFA Coefficient and was first for almost all of the previous decade. The only time Spain has ever not been topping the UEFA Coefficient is when England has.

    So given Spanish clubs are at the top of European football, and given English clubs want to hire the best, why would they not hire from Spain? Other than England, Spain is the most logical and sensible place to look for relevant experience.

    In prior decades before continental European football came to be so intermeshed with English football, it was Scotland.

    If you want to use the fact English clubs have hired from Spain to show evidence of people being hired because of characteristics, you need a reason why English clubs would not have hired from Spain if it were not for those characteristics. Do you have one?
    The peak of Spanish football was around 2008-2012 with a World Cup and 2 Euros. During that time the Premier League Spanish manager percentage was sub 10%.

    After Guardiolas success it has risen to over 25%.

    It is the image of Guardiola not the quality of Spanish football that is driving the recruitment.
    The peak of Spanish club football was 2012 onwards and it took until 2020 before English clubs displaced Spanish ones again.

    If you think its just Guardiola and not the success of Real Madrid, Atletico Madrid, Barcelona etc driving recruitment then you've not been following European football at all.

    2013 the Champions League final was all-Spanish. Spanish clubs then won the competition every year for the next five seasons.
  • Options
    MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 26,023
    ...
    HYUFD said:

    Somerton and Frome will be a LD gain I think. Uxbridge I think could be a Tory hold due to a more local Tory candidate who is a Hillingdon councillor than the Camden councillor Labour candidate and the high Hindu vote.

    Selby could go either way, narrow Tory hold or narrow Labour gain

    Two holds is a pretty decent night for the Tories HY. Labour losing Hillingdon is a Labour disaster and bodes badly for them for the GE. Another five years of inch-perfect Tory Governments beckon.
  • Options
    noneoftheabovenoneoftheabove Posts: 21,371

    Pro_Rata said:

    Farooq said:

    Taz said:

    Pulpstar said:

    🚨 EXCLUSIVE: Bayern Munich have today submitted an official proposal to sign Harry Kane from Tottenham Hotspur. #FCBayern written offer to #THFC for 29yo striker worth €70m + add-ons. England captain has 1yr left of existing Spurs contract @TheAthleticFC

    https://twitter.com/David_Ornstein/status/1673636610942943232

    Very steep for 1 year left. I'd take the money if I was Spuds or extend his contract.
    He's not extending his contract at Spurs.
    Don't blame him. He wants to win things not play in a team of gallant losers. A gallant loser is.......a loser.
    He looks at Kyle Walker who moved on, he looks at Jordan Henderson who has won everything, he must ache at the missed opportunities.
    I can't be alone in thinking how funny it would be if Kane went to City and Spurs won the title.

    Ok, ok, it's not very likely, but still.
    Continuing the football chat there is a striking bar chart of the nationalities of Premier League managers at the Athletic.

    Aside from English two nationalities have reached 25% or more - Scottish and Spanish. The Scottish during Fergusons reign (and dropped off dramatically after his retirment) and the Spanish during Guardiolas.

    Ridiculous bias searching for the next Ferguson/Guardiola based on nationality and similarities yet we are supposed to believe that generally in the economy firms employ the best person for the job rather than the person whose characteristics fit our ideal type for the job.

    https://theathletic.com/4624932/2023/06/25/premier-league-managers-nations/
    A lot of clubs bring in managers on a "fit for the club", "familiar with the system" type basis, so you'll get clubs going for a few cycles of managers that have been through the Barcelona / Dortmund etc. system and if you have an ambition to play the City way, for example, you may also buy in to a "graduate of the system" type appointment.

    It's merely a modern equivalent of "The Boot Room" approach of old Liverpool.

    It tends to be an approach that gets diminishing returns as you appoint lower and lower on food chain.

    In summary, nationality is not necessarily the driver here, rather it is buying into a system that has origins in Spain, with a glut of
    Spanish managers being a side effect.
    There were seven managers from Glasgow at one point, including dross like McCleish and Billy Davies trying to play the dour but gritty Ferguson character.
    Correlation does not equal causation.

    In the past Scotland provided a lot of managerial potential. This didn't begin with Ferguson, before Fergie even made his name Liverpool had Dalglish and Souness.

    Of course Scotland provided a portion of non English managerial talent in the past. The reason is obvious why if you follow football.

    And of course Spain does now, when Spanish football is consistently either the best in Europe or second best only to English football. The reason is also obvious why if you follow football.

    There is no foul play or bad motives afoot here.
    It is human nature to search for the next "x" rather than consider people in the round. No suggestion of foul play or bad motives at all, quite the opposite, it is a neat example of people getting overpromoted because of their characteristics.
    Or despite their characteristics or their characteristics had nothing to do with it at all.

    Again, Spain has dominated the elite of European football all century long, Spain has never left the top-2 in UEFA Coefficient and was first for almost all of the previous decade. The only time Spain has ever not been topping the UEFA Coefficient is when England has.

    So given Spanish clubs are at the top of European football, and given English clubs want to hire the best, why would they not hire from Spain? Other than England, Spain is the most logical and sensible place to look for relevant experience.

    In prior decades before continental European football came to be so intermeshed with English football, it was Scotland.

    If you want to use the fact English clubs have hired from Spain to show evidence of people being hired because of characteristics, you need a reason why English clubs would not have hired from Spain if it were not for those characteristics. Do you have one?
    The peak of Spanish football was around 2008-2012 with a World Cup and 2 Euros. During that time the Premier League Spanish manager percentage was sub 10%.

    After Guardiolas success it has risen to over 25%.

    It is the image of Guardiola not the quality of Spanish football that is driving the recruitment.
    The peak of Spanish club football was 2012 onwards and it took until 2020 before English clubs displaced Spanish ones again.

    If you think its just Guardiola and not the success of Real Madrid, Atletico Madrid, Barcelona etc driving recruitment then you've not been following European football at all.

    2013 the Champions League final was all-Spanish. Spanish clubs then won the competition every year for the next five seasons.
    Ancelotti and Zidane winning Champions League finals does not convert into Spanish coaches being great.
  • Options
    FlatlanderFlatlander Posts: 4,073
    edited June 2023

    Pro_Rata said:

    Farooq said:

    Taz said:

    Pulpstar said:

    🚨 EXCLUSIVE: Bayern Munich have today submitted an official proposal to sign Harry Kane from Tottenham Hotspur. #FCBayern written offer to #THFC for 29yo striker worth €70m + add-ons. England captain has 1yr left of existing Spurs contract @TheAthleticFC

    https://twitter.com/David_Ornstein/status/1673636610942943232

    Very steep for 1 year left. I'd take the money if I was Spuds or extend his contract.
    He's not extending his contract at Spurs.
    Don't blame him. He wants to win things not play in a team of gallant losers. A gallant loser is.......a loser.
    He looks at Kyle Walker who moved on, he looks at Jordan Henderson who has won everything, he must ache at the missed opportunities.
    I can't be alone in thinking how funny it would be if Kane went to City and Spurs won the title.

    Ok, ok, it's not very likely, but still.
    Continuing the football chat there is a striking bar chart of the nationalities of Premier League managers at the Athletic.

    Aside from English two nationalities have reached 25% or more - Scottish and Spanish. The Scottish during Fergusons reign (and dropped off dramatically after his retirment) and the Spanish during Guardiolas.

    Ridiculous bias searching for the next Ferguson/Guardiola based on nationality and similarities yet we are supposed to believe that generally in the economy firms employ the best person for the job rather than the person whose characteristics fit our ideal type for the job.

    https://theathletic.com/4624932/2023/06/25/premier-league-managers-nations/
    A lot of clubs bring in managers on a "fit for the club", "familiar with the system" type basis, so you'll get clubs going for a few cycles of managers that have been through the Barcelona / Dortmund etc. system and if you have an ambition to play the City way, for example, you may also buy in to a "graduate of the system" type appointment.

    It's merely a modern equivalent of "The Boot Room" approach of old Liverpool.

    It tends to be an approach that gets diminishing returns as you appoint lower and lower on food chain.

    In summary, nationality is not necessarily the driver here, rather it is buying into a system that has origins in Spain, with a glut of
    Spanish managers being a side effect.
    There were seven managers from Glasgow at one point, including dross like McCleish and Billy Davies trying to play the dour but gritty Ferguson character.
    Correlation does not equal causation.

    In the past Scotland provided a lot of managerial potential. This didn't begin with Ferguson, before Fergie even made his name Liverpool had Dalglish and Souness.

    Of course Scotland provided a portion of non English managerial talent in the past. The reason is obvious why if you follow football.

    And of course Spain does now, when Spanish football is consistently either the best in Europe or second best only to English football. The reason is also obvious why if you follow football.

    There is no foul play or bad motives afoot here.
    It is human nature to search for the next "x" rather than consider people in the round. No suggestion of foul play or bad motives at all, quite the opposite, it is a neat example of people getting overpromoted because of their characteristics.
    Or despite their characteristics or their characteristics had nothing to do with it at all.

    Again, Spain has dominated the elite of European football all century long, Spain has never left the top-2 in UEFA Coefficient and was first for almost all of the previous decade. The only time Spain has ever not been topping the UEFA Coefficient is when England has.

    So given Spanish clubs are at the top of European football, and given English clubs want to hire the best, why would they not hire from Spain? Other than England, Spain is the most logical and sensible place to look for relevant experience.

    In prior decades before continental European football came to be so intermeshed with English football, it was Scotland.

    If you want to use the fact English clubs have hired from Spain to show evidence of people being hired because of characteristics, you need a reason why English clubs would not have hired from Spain if it were not for those characteristics. Do you have one?
    The peak of Spanish football was around 2008-2012 with a World Cup and 2 Euros. During that time the Premier League Spanish manager percentage was sub 10%.

    After Guardiolas success it has risen to over 25%.

    It is the image of Guardiola not the quality of Spanish football that is driving the recruitment.
    The peak of Spanish club football was 2012 onwards and it took until 2020 before English clubs displaced Spanish ones again.

    If you think its just Guardiola and not the success of Real Madrid, Atletico Madrid, Barcelona etc driving recruitment then you've not been following European football at all.

    2013 the Champions League final was all-Spanish. Spanish clubs then won the competition every year for the next five seasons.
    There were a lot of ugly rumours about Spanish football.

    Though I suppose that applies to anyone who wins anything these days.
  • Options
    londonpubmanlondonpubman Posts: 3,417
    Lose all 3?! WTF! 😀

    Somerton - LD will be very disappointed if they don't win this one

    Selby - CON should hold on

    Uxbridge - could be a lot closer than indicated per the national polls. ULEZ very unpopular
  • Options
    DavidLDavidL Posts: 51,985

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Miklosvar said:

    FF43 said:

    Leon said:

    FF43 said:

    Miklosvar said:

    Nigelb said:

    kjh said:

    Miklosvar said:

    malcolmg said:

    ydoethur said:

    WTF? I think ‘awesome’ is way worse than ‘like.’ So twee.

    Just need a LEON button now
    Has Leon apologised for being wrong on the lab leak?

    U.S. Intelligence Report Finds No Clear Evidence of Covid Origins in Wuhan Lab.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/23/us/politics/covid-lab-leak-wuhan-report.html
    It says no clear evidence. AOEINEOA. What clear evidence could there be anyway? CCTV of avirus sneaking out of the back door?
    In my lifetime there have been two lab leaks in the UK that I am aware of, Smallpox and Foot and Mouth. Both were provable lab leaks. So to say there can't be any clear evidence of a lab leak is obviously not correct.

    It may well be a lab leak and there may not be any evidence that can be found, but that doesn't mean it is a lab leak. It may be, it may not be.

    However unlike @leon I don't jump to conclusions. If leon didn't come out with so much tosh all the time (Do we all remember the mass alien ships over Ukraine?) we might take him more seriously. I can think of two pieces of evidence he provided for absolute proof it came from a lab that were completely dismantled here (one was from Fox news ffs).
    There's also the likely, but not proven Russian influenza leak, of course.
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1977_Russian_flu
    Which is exactly the point: Likely but not proven is probably as good as we are going to get with an outbreak in China. They don't do openness there. So the claim of "no clear evidence" is still susceptible to the response: What clear evidence would you expect, given 1. China and 2. the catastrophic consequences of this leak?
    I would want to know why a lab leak is likely, beyond that someone had a notion. There is epidemiological evidence for the epidemic starting in a market, which is also how the previous SARS is known to have started.
    Aside from anything else “the nightmare of circumstantial evidence” - as was explicitly stated in the Fauci/Farrar emails at the beginning of the pandemic

    Problem is I then have to Google the claim to see if it really is evidence. This is the full quote from Ian Lipkin:

    It does not eliminate the possibility of inadvertent release following adaptation through selection in culture at the institute in Wuhan. Given the scale of the bat CoV research pursued there and the site of emergence of the first human cases we have a nightmare of circumstantial evidence to assess.

    So it seems not. The recent DNI report states

    Prior to the pandemic, we assess WIV scientists conducted extensive research on coronaviruses, which included animal sampling and genetic analysis. We continue to have no indication that the WIV’s pre-pandemic research holdings included SARSCoV-2 or a close progenitor, nor any direct evidence that a specific research-related incident occurred involving WIV personnel before the pandemic that could have caused the COVID pandemic.

    So Covid 19 doesn't match a virus the lab was known to be working on. We have to have some other reason to suspect a lab leak.
    "a virus the lab was known to be working on" is rather the point. Again, this is mere absence of evidence. Evidence of absence would require a complete, audited list from the lab of everything it was up to.
    Given that there is significant evidence China executed or otherwise silenced - forever - early covid whistleblowers, the idea they wouldn’t destroy evidence at the lab is fanciful. Indeed the opposite is true. They surely DID destroy evidence
    Indeed, and they also destroyed evidence at the market.
    I don't think we've ever argued that China behaved responsibly or openly with regard to what happened.
    Indeed.

    From what we know, I think we can say for certain that China behaved irresponsibly.

    I think the balance of probabilities is that it probably came from the Lab.

    I think the less likely, but still possible option, is that it came naturally to and from the market without any involvement of the Lab.

    But I don't think we will ever know for certain.
    Bart, you’ve been reading too many PB comments. The balance of probabilities is that it was a natural zoonotic event, as the new US intelligence document says. Read it here: https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/Report-on-Potential-Links-Between-the-Wuhan-Institute-of-Virology-and-the-Origins-of-COVID-19-20230623.pdf

    Sorry bondegezou but I'm not going based on evidence, but purely my gut, since the evidence is corrupted so we can't really know for certain.

    And my gut speaks like Jon Stewart here: https://youtu.be/sSfejgwbDQ8?t=172

    "Oh my God, there’s been an outbreak of chocolatey goodness near Hershey, Pennsylvania. What do you think happened? Oh I don’t know, maybe a steam shovel mated with a cocoa bean? Or it’s the f---ing chocolate factory! Maybe that’s it."
    Wait, you think @Leon is really Jon Stewart? Well, that would be a turn up for the books.
  • Options
    MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 26,023

    ClippP said:

    Tories to lose all three, and move to around 22 in the opinion polls; Putin to be deposed ; Trump to be arrested and jailed ; and aliens to arrive, and make their presence felt, on the White House lawn.

    All these to happen before August, but then I also would be worried about the impact on my holiday..

    Yes, these will all come to pass but not until TSE is in charge.
    Like
    Like your like.*


    *Robert, sort this nonsense out please.
    It was an edict from Leon.

    I fear in order to satisfy our most notorious senior poster WTF is here to stay.
  • Options
    OnlyLivingBoyOnlyLivingBoy Posts: 15,401
    viewcode said:

    eek said:

    As an aside did we lose the 'like' button after that debate the other day?

    I think it was more @rcs1000 got fed up Leon complaining about it yesterday.

    Leon may have disliked the Like button but I think everyone hates it disappearing and replacement with some random WFH option - that's only useful for responding to posts by Leon or HYUFD.
    I absolutely hate it. It makes the site unpleasant to use. Please bring the "like" button back.
    I hope that this will be the first and last time that any sentient human being acts on a suggestion by Leon.
  • Options
    DavidLDavidL Posts: 51,985

    We are witnessing the bizarre, inexplicable, quite-possibly-deeply sinister hold that LEON has over the ALLEGED governators of PB!!!

    One poster airs his dislike of our beloved Like button and . . . poof! it's no more.

    Just like that fine bottle of claret you were saving for a very special occasion . . . until Leon stopped by to borrow a flint chisel or a stomach pump . . . spotted your prized plonk . . . and chugged it on the spot . . .

    WHAT is the source of LEON's malign power over OGH, TSE, RCS?????????

    I would so like to like that contribution, but alas.
  • Options
    rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 59,282

    Lose all 3?! WTF! 😀

    Somerton - LD will be very disappointed if they don't win this one

    Selby - CON should hold on

    Uxbridge - could be a lot closer than indicated per the national polls. ULEZ very unpopular

    The latter is why I took a wild swing at 12/1
  • Options
    DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 25,306

    I'm getting a Labour advert a lot in between YouTube videos. It's not great, just a picture of a bomb (an old school bomb that gets dropped out of a plane) with something about the Tories Mortgage Ticking Time bomb. Really basic, but at least they're trying.

    How good is the Youtube advert-placement algorithm? Are you facing a by-election?
  • Options
    TazTaz Posts: 12,022

    ClippP said:

    Tories to lose all three, and move to around 22 in the opinion polls; Putin to be deposed ; Trump to be arrested and jailed ; and aliens to arrive, and make their presence felt, on the White House lawn.

    All these to happen before August, but then I also would be worried about the impact on my holiday..

    Yes, these will all come to pass but not until TSE is in charge.
    Like
    Like your like.*


    *Robert, sort this nonsense out please.
    It was an edict from Leon.

    I fear in order to satisfy our most notorious senior poster WTF is here to stay.
    Is it senior in terms of the number of bans he has received ?
  • Options
    TazTaz Posts: 12,022

    We are witnessing the bizarre, inexplicable, quite-possibly-deeply sinister hold that LEON has over the ALLEGED governators of PB!!!

    One poster airs his dislike of our beloved Like button and . . . poof! it's no more.

    Just like that fine bottle of claret you were saving for a very special occasion . . . until Leon stopped by to borrow a flint chisel or a stomach pump . . . spotted your prized plonk . . . and chugged it on the spot . . .

    WHAT is the source of LEON's malign power over OGH, TSE, RCS?????????

    Love of Radiohead.
  • Options
    MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 26,023
    Taz said:

    ClippP said:

    Tories to lose all three, and move to around 22 in the opinion polls; Putin to be deposed ; Trump to be arrested and jailed ; and aliens to arrive, and make their presence felt, on the White House lawn.

    All these to happen before August, but then I also would be worried about the impact on my holiday..

    Yes, these will all come to pass but not until TSE is in charge.
    Like
    Like your like.*


    *Robert, sort this nonsense out please.
    It was an edict from Leon.

    I fear in order to satisfy our most notorious senior poster WTF is here to stay.
    Is it senior in terms of the number of bans he has received ?
    ...and identities!
  • Options
    DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 25,306

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Miklosvar said:

    FF43 said:

    Leon said:

    FF43 said:

    Miklosvar said:

    Nigelb said:

    kjh said:

    Miklosvar said:

    malcolmg said:

    ydoethur said:

    WTF? I think ‘awesome’ is way worse than ‘like.’ So twee.

    Just need a LEON button now
    Has Leon apologised for being wrong on the lab leak?

    U.S. Intelligence Report Finds No Clear Evidence of Covid Origins in Wuhan Lab.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/23/us/politics/covid-lab-leak-wuhan-report.html
    It says no clear evidence. AOEINEOA. What clear evidence could there be anyway? CCTV of avirus sneaking out of the back door?
    In my lifetime there have been two lab leaks in the UK that I am aware of, Smallpox and Foot and Mouth. Both were provable lab leaks. So to say there can't be any clear evidence of a lab leak is obviously not correct.

    It may well be a lab leak and there may not be any evidence that can be found, but that doesn't mean it is a lab leak. It may be, it may not be.

    However unlike @leon I don't jump to conclusions. If leon didn't come out with so much tosh all the time (Do we all remember the mass alien ships over Ukraine?) we might take him more seriously. I can think of two pieces of evidence he provided for absolute proof it came from a lab that were completely dismantled here (one was from Fox news ffs).
    There's also the likely, but not proven Russian influenza leak, of course.
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1977_Russian_flu
    Which is exactly the point: Likely but not proven is probably as good as we are going to get with an outbreak in China. They don't do openness there. So the claim of "no clear evidence" is still susceptible to the response: What clear evidence would you expect, given 1. China and 2. the catastrophic consequences of this leak?
    I would want to know why a lab leak is likely, beyond that someone had a notion. There is epidemiological evidence for the epidemic starting in a market, which is also how the previous SARS is known to have started.
    Aside from anything else “the nightmare of circumstantial evidence” - as was explicitly stated in the Fauci/Farrar emails at the beginning of the pandemic

    Problem is I then have to Google the claim to see if it really is evidence. This is the full quote from Ian Lipkin:

    It does not eliminate the possibility of inadvertent release following adaptation through selection in culture at the institute in Wuhan. Given the scale of the bat CoV research pursued there and the site of emergence of the first human cases we have a nightmare of circumstantial evidence to assess.

    So it seems not. The recent DNI report states

    Prior to the pandemic, we assess WIV scientists conducted extensive research on coronaviruses, which included animal sampling and genetic analysis. We continue to have no indication that the WIV’s pre-pandemic research holdings included SARSCoV-2 or a close progenitor, nor any direct evidence that a specific research-related incident occurred involving WIV personnel before the pandemic that could have caused the COVID pandemic.

    So Covid 19 doesn't match a virus the lab was known to be working on. We have to have some other reason to suspect a lab leak.
    "a virus the lab was known to be working on" is rather the point. Again, this is mere absence of evidence. Evidence of absence would require a complete, audited list from the lab of everything it was up to.
    Given that there is significant evidence China executed or otherwise silenced - forever - early covid whistleblowers, the idea they wouldn’t destroy evidence at the lab is fanciful. Indeed the opposite is true. They surely DID destroy evidence
    Indeed, and they also destroyed evidence at the market.
    I don't think we've ever argued that China behaved responsibly or openly with regard to what happened.
    Indeed.

    From what we know, I think we can say for certain that China behaved irresponsibly.

    I think the balance of probabilities is that it probably came from the Lab.

    I think the less likely, but still possible option, is that it came naturally to and from the market without any involvement of the Lab.

    But I don't think we will ever know for certain.
    Bart, you’ve been reading too many PB comments. The balance of probabilities is that it was a natural zoonotic event, as the new US intelligence document says. Read it here: https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/Report-on-Potential-Links-Between-the-Wuhan-Institute-of-Virology-and-the-Origins-of-COVID-19-20230623.pdf

    Sorry bondegezou but I'm not going based on evidence, but purely my gut, since the evidence is corrupted so we can't really know for certain.

    And my gut speaks like Jon Stewart here: https://youtu.be/sSfejgwbDQ8?t=172

    "Oh my God, there’s been an outbreak of chocolatey goodness near Hershey, Pennsylvania. What do you think happened? Oh I don’t know, maybe a steam shovel mated with a cocoa bean? Or it’s the f---ing chocolate factory! Maybe that’s it."
    That's not the choice, though. Forget the amorous steam shovel, we need to decide between the chocolate factory or the chocolate wholesaler's warehouse.
  • Options
    Pro_RataPro_Rata Posts: 4,975
    TimS said:

    Pulpstar said:

    Pulpstar said:

    Selby should be competitive, Labour haven't produced a swing in a BE to take the seat against the Tories that large since South East Staffs in 1996.
    It would be some achievement for Starmer to take the seat.

    If the polling is truly as good as it looks for Labour they should take the seat though.

    Uxbridge is gone but the demographics (Hindu population) will probably mean the Tory vote holds up a bit better than the national polling.

    Edit: Actually on current polling via UNS I make Selby a narrow hold (Con +11.4 -> -20) implying a general 15.7% swing which isn't enough) but Baxter has it in the red column for the next GE currently.
    Useful set of BEs to gauge the walls by comparing vs National swing. Especially nice to have them all at once.

    We’ve already had blue wall by-election losses so that’s already proven. Uxbridge is Brexity London-margins which are due a test as the last one was Bexley and a comfortable Tory hold. S&F is proper west country / farming land last tested in N Shropshire. S&A is sort of but not quite red wall.

    Labour's overswing in Bexley was decent though.

    National polling swing at the time was 5.6% and Labour achieved 10.3% in the by-election.

    The last registered Conservative poll.lead was a Redfield &Wilton just 4 days after that by-election.
  • Options
    viewcodeviewcode Posts: 19,593

    viewcode said:

    eek said:

    As an aside did we lose the 'like' button after that debate the other day?

    I think it was more @rcs1000 got fed up Leon complaining about it yesterday.

    Leon may have disliked the Like button but I think everyone hates it disappearing and replacement with some random WFH option - that's only useful for responding to posts by Leon or HYUFD.
    I absolutely hate it. It makes the site unpleasant to use. Please bring the "like" button back.
    I hope that this will be the first and last time that any sentient human being acts on a suggestion by Leon.
    I like this post and wish to recommend it to others.
  • Options
    kle4kle4 Posts: 93,321
    Raabs bill of rights is dead I see. From sounds of it whatever positives it was aimed for was lost in a terribly drafted mess.
  • Options
    HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 118,021
    edited June 2023

    ...

    HYUFD said:

    Somerton and Frome will be a LD gain I think. Uxbridge I think could be a Tory hold due to a more local Tory candidate who is a Hillingdon councillor than the Camden councillor Labour candidate and the high Hindu vote.

    Selby could go either way, narrow Tory hold or narrow Labour gain

    Two holds is a pretty decent night for the Tories HY. Labour losing Hillingdon is a Labour disaster and bodes badly for them for the GE. Another five years of inch-perfect Tory Governments beckon.
    Remember too Hillingdon is Tory controlled still, 1 of just 5 Tory controlled councils left in London along with Bexley, Bromley and Kensington and Chelsea and Harrow
  • Options
    FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 77,750
    edited June 2023
    Fans at next summer's Paris Olympics will not be able to buy alcohol inside stadiums after organisers decided not to seek an exemption to 'Evin's Law'. VIP guests in hospitality areas will be served with alcoholic drinks.

    https://www.bbc.com/sport/olympics/66030110

    Let them eat cake drink Coke Cola.
  • Options
    bondegezoubondegezou Posts: 8,658

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Miklosvar said:

    FF43 said:

    Leon said:

    FF43 said:

    Miklosvar said:

    Nigelb said:

    kjh said:

    Miklosvar said:

    malcolmg said:

    ydoethur said:

    WTF? I think ‘awesome’ is way worse than ‘like.’ So twee.

    Just need a LEON button now
    Has Leon apologised for being wrong on the lab leak?

    U.S. Intelligence Report Finds No Clear Evidence of Covid Origins in Wuhan Lab.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/23/us/politics/covid-lab-leak-wuhan-report.html
    It says no clear evidence. AOEINEOA. What clear evidence could there be anyway? CCTV of avirus sneaking out of the back door?
    In my lifetime there have been two lab leaks in the UK that I am aware of, Smallpox and Foot and Mouth. Both were provable lab leaks. So to say there can't be any clear evidence of a lab leak is obviously not correct.

    It may well be a lab leak and there may not be any evidence that can be found, but that doesn't mean it is a lab leak. It may be, it may not be.

    However unlike @leon I don't jump to conclusions. If leon didn't come out with so much tosh all the time (Do we all remember the mass alien ships over Ukraine?) we might take him more seriously. I can think of two pieces of evidence he provided for absolute proof it came from a lab that were completely dismantled here (one was from Fox news ffs).
    There's also the likely, but not proven Russian influenza leak, of course.
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1977_Russian_flu
    Which is exactly the point: Likely but not proven is probably as good as we are going to get with an outbreak in China. They don't do openness there. So the claim of "no clear evidence" is still susceptible to the response: What clear evidence would you expect, given 1. China and 2. the catastrophic consequences of this leak?
    I would want to know why a lab leak is likely, beyond that someone had a notion. There is epidemiological evidence for the epidemic starting in a market, which is also how the previous SARS is known to have started.
    Aside from anything else “the nightmare of circumstantial evidence” - as was explicitly stated in the Fauci/Farrar emails at the beginning of the pandemic

    Problem is I then have to Google the claim to see if it really is evidence. This is the full quote from Ian Lipkin:

    It does not eliminate the possibility of inadvertent release following adaptation through selection in culture at the institute in Wuhan. Given the scale of the bat CoV research pursued there and the site of emergence of the first human cases we have a nightmare of circumstantial evidence to assess.

    So it seems not. The recent DNI report states

    Prior to the pandemic, we assess WIV scientists conducted extensive research on coronaviruses, which included animal sampling and genetic analysis. We continue to have no indication that the WIV’s pre-pandemic research holdings included SARSCoV-2 or a close progenitor, nor any direct evidence that a specific research-related incident occurred involving WIV personnel before the pandemic that could have caused the COVID pandemic.

    So Covid 19 doesn't match a virus the lab was known to be working on. We have to have some other reason to suspect a lab leak.
    "a virus the lab was known to be working on" is rather the point. Again, this is mere absence of evidence. Evidence of absence would require a complete, audited list from the lab of everything it was up to.
    Given that there is significant evidence China executed or otherwise silenced - forever - early covid whistleblowers, the idea they wouldn’t destroy evidence at the lab is fanciful. Indeed the opposite is true. They surely DID destroy evidence
    Indeed, and they also destroyed evidence at the market.
    I don't think we've ever argued that China behaved responsibly or openly with regard to what happened.
    Indeed.

    From what we know, I think we can say for certain that China behaved irresponsibly.

    I think the balance of probabilities is that it probably came from the Lab.

    I think the less likely, but still possible option, is that it came naturally to and from the market without any involvement of the Lab.

    But I don't think we will ever know for certain.
    Bart, you’ve been reading too many PB comments. The balance of probabilities is that it was a natural zoonotic event, as the new US intelligence document says. Read it here: https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/Report-on-Potential-Links-Between-the-Wuhan-Institute-of-Virology-and-the-Origins-of-COVID-19-20230623.pdf

    Sorry bondegezou but I'm not going based on evidence, but purely my gut, since the evidence is corrupted so we can't really know for certain.

    And my gut speaks like Jon Stewart here: https://youtu.be/sSfejgwbDQ8?t=172

    "Oh my God, there’s been an outbreak of chocolatey goodness near Hershey, Pennsylvania. What do you think happened? Oh I don’t know, maybe a steam shovel mated with a cocoa bean? Or it’s the f---ing chocolate factory! Maybe that’s it."
    Nearly all pandemics come from zoonotic events. Eating “bush meat” or wild animals is a common origin. There was a “wet market” in Wuhan. The early cases were clustered around the market. Environmental analyses found the virus in the market. There were two initial strains of SARS-COV-2, which would be consistent with a source of a group of animals in the market, but not with other theories of the virus’s origin.

    In other words, the chocolate factory is the wet market. That’s exactly the sort of place people expected a new pandemic to appear.
  • Options
    viewcodeviewcode Posts: 19,593

    ClippP said:

    Tories to lose all three, and move to around 22 in the opinion polls; Putin to be deposed ; Trump to be arrested and jailed ; and aliens to arrive, and make their presence felt, on the White House lawn.

    All these to happen before August, but then I also would be worried about the impact on my holiday..

    Yes, these will all come to pass but not until TSE is in charge.
    Like
    Like your like.*


    *Robert, sort this nonsense out please.
    It was an edict from Leon.

    I fear in order to satisfy our most notorious senior poster WTF is here to stay.
    @Leon has only been here for a short time. You may be thinking of @SeanT, who was here for quite a while but has disappeared, never to return. I sometime wonder what happened to him.
  • Options
    MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 26,023
    HYUFD said:

    ...

    HYUFD said:

    Somerton and Frome will be a LD gain I think. Uxbridge I think could be a Tory hold due to a more local Tory candidate who is a Hillingdon councillor than the Camden councillor Labour candidate and the high Hindu vote.

    Selby could go either way, narrow Tory hold or narrow Labour gain

    Two holds is a pretty decent night for the Tories HY. Labour losing Hillingdon is a Labour disaster and bodes badly for them for the GE. Another five years of inch-perfect Tory Governments beckon.
    Remember too Hillingdon is Tory controlled still, 1 of just 5 Tory controlled councils left in London along with Bexley, Bromley and Kensington and Chelsea and Harrow
    The Government's crushing of the RCN might help too.

    The fightback is on.
  • Options
    twistedfirestopper3twistedfirestopper3 Posts: 2,193
    edited June 2023

    I'm getting a Labour advert a lot in between YouTube videos. It's not great, just a picture of a bomb (an old school bomb that gets dropped out of a plane) with something about the Tories Mortgage Ticking Time bomb. Really basic, but at least they're trying.

    How good is the Youtube advert-placement algorithm? Are you facing a by-election?
    No, I follow a few politics channels, but mostly follow mountain biking, woodworking, building and van life channels. I don't often get targeted adverts usually just generic stuff.
  • Options
    CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 60,101
    Fen-Poly Union election rigging by a Lib-Dem:

    https://www.varsity.co.uk/news/25810
  • Options
    viewcodeviewcode Posts: 19,593
    Taz said:

    ClippP said:

    Tories to lose all three, and move to around 22 in the opinion polls; Putin to be deposed ; Trump to be arrested and jailed ; and aliens to arrive, and make their presence felt, on the White House lawn.

    All these to happen before August, but then I also would be worried about the impact on my holiday..

    Yes, these will all come to pass but not until TSE is in charge.
    Like
    Like your like.*


    *Robert, sort this nonsense out please.
    It was an edict from Leon.

    I fear in order to satisfy our most notorious senior poster WTF is here to stay.
    Is it senior in terms of the number of bans he has received ?
    Moments. Senior moments.
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    WhisperingOracleWhisperingOracle Posts: 8,705
    edited June 2023
    Just to reassure everyone again, contrary to Cicero's worries of Leon and I both posting on UFO-type subjects, that Leon and I are rather different individuals.

    But, but back on the earlier topic, here's another example of that earlier story, from this morning also at last coming through to more mainstream outlets, again.

    https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/4067865-congress-doubles-down-on-explosive-claims-of-illegal-ufo-retrieval-programs/

    "Asked June 26 about allegations of secret UFO retrieval and reverse-engineering programs, Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) made several stunning statements.

    In an exclusive interview, Rubio told NewsNation Washington correspondent Joe Khalil that multiple individuals with “very high clearances and high positions within our government” “have come forward to share” “first-hand” UFO-related claims “beyond the realm of what [the Senate Intelligence Committee] has ever dealt with.”

    Rubio’s comments provide context for a bipartisan provision adopted unanimously by the Senate Intelligence Committee, which would immediately halt funding for any secret government or contractor efforts to retrieve and reverse-engineer craft of “non-earth” or “exotic” origin.

    This extraordinary language added to the Senate version of the Intelligence authorization bill mirrors and adds significant credibility to a whistleblower’s recent, stunning allegations that a clandestine, decades-long effort to recover, analyze and exploit objects of non-human origin without government oversight."

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    MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 26,023
    I am warming to WTF. It can serve both incredulity and positivity.
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    148grss148grss Posts: 3,919
    https://twitter.com/meadwaj/status/1673620654497701888?s=20

    Do we think that the Conservative government will a) accept that this is true and b) therefore restrict profiteering (why do we need the new word "greedflation" when a good word already exists) and also c) therefore stop their fight to restrict wage rises or will they d) keep crying about the concerns of a wage inflation spiral and do nothing about corporate greed...

    Do we need betting odds for this one?
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    CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 60,101
    Good thread on COVID origins:

    I remain largely agnostic about the origin of SARS-CoV-2. Based on all the evidence available to me at this stage, none of the following scenarios: a lab-leak, a field-collection accident, or a standard zoonotic spillover can be formally ruled out.
    1/


    https://twitter.com/BallouxFrancois/status/1673060263157702656?s=20
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    kle4kle4 Posts: 93,321
    edited June 2023

    HYUFD said:

    ...

    HYUFD said:

    Somerton and Frome will be a LD gain I think. Uxbridge I think could be a Tory hold due to a more local Tory candidate who is a Hillingdon councillor than the Camden councillor Labour candidate and the high Hindu vote.

    Selby could go either way, narrow Tory hold or narrow Labour gain

    Two holds is a pretty decent night for the Tories HY. Labour losing Hillingdon is a Labour disaster and bodes badly for them for the GE. Another five years of inch-perfect Tory Governments beckon.
    Remember too Hillingdon is Tory controlled still, 1 of just 5 Tory controlled councils left in London along with Bexley, Bromley and Kensington and Chelsea and Harrow
    The Government's crushing of the RCN might help too.

    The fightback is on.
    Thought that was rcs for a second. Figured that explained recent decisions.
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    logical_songlogical_song Posts: 9,753

    I am warming to WTF. It can serve both incredulity and positivity.

    Nah, it's rubbish
  • Options
    SelebianSelebian Posts: 7,825
    Pulpstar said:

    Pulpstar said:

    Selby should be competitive, Labour haven't produced a swing in a BE to take the seat against the Tories that large since South East Staffs in 1996.
    It would be some achievement for Starmer to take the seat.

    If the polling is truly as good as it looks for Labour they should take the seat though.

    Uxbridge is gone but the demographics (Hindu population) will probably mean the Tory vote holds up a bit better than the national polling.

    Edit: Actually on current polling via UNS I make Selby a narrow hold (Con +11.4 -> -20) implying a general 15.7% swing which isn't enough) but Baxter has it in the red column for the next GE currently.
    For next GE, on the new boundaries, I guess? Which I think will make it naturally a little more Lab leaning
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    DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 25,306
    edited June 2023
    Former club cricketer and Labour partisan Gary Neville joins Dragons Den.
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/66028343
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    SelebianSelebian Posts: 7,825
    edited June 2023
    TimS said:

    Pulpstar said:

    Pulpstar said:

    Selby should be competitive, Labour haven't produced a swing in a BE to take the seat against the Tories that large since South East Staffs in 1996.
    It would be some achievement for Starmer to take the seat.

    If the polling is truly as good as it looks for Labour they should take the seat though.

    Uxbridge is gone but the demographics (Hindu population) will probably mean the Tory vote holds up a bit better than the national polling.

    Edit: Actually on current polling via UNS I make Selby a narrow hold (Con +11.4 -> -20) implying a general 15.7% swing which isn't enough) but Baxter has it in the red column for the next GE currently.
    Useful set of BEs to gauge the walls by comparing vs National swing. Especially nice to have them all at once.

    We’ve already had blue wall by-election losses so that’s already proven. Uxbridge is Brexity London-margins which are due a test as the last one was Bexley and a comfortable Tory hold. S&F is proper west country / farming land last tested in N Shropshire. S&A is sort of but not quite red wall.

    Not really red wall. The town could be considered that way, for sure, but the town is not a huge part of the constituency and much of the rest of it is, like much of N Yorks, donkey in a blue rosette rural stronghold.

    ETA: per wikipedia, Selby town population 19.8k in 2021 census; S&A electorate 77.7k in 2019
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    ClippPClippP Posts: 1,781

    Fen-Poly Union election rigging by a Lib-Dem:

    https://www.varsity.co.uk/news/25810

    Very useful to have that on his CV when he joinsthe Conservative Party.

    Could he rise as high as Mrs Bravermann?
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    CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 60,101
    Another failure for “Stonewall Law”

    Gender critical beliefs are protected by law. Another victory for women and for common sense.

    didlaw Partner Elizabeth McGlone was delighted to work alongside Anya Palmer Counsel of Old Square Chambers to support Denise Fahmy in her harassment claim against Arts Council England (ACE).

    In a unanimous judgment of the Leeds Employment Tribunal Ms Fahmy succeeds in her case that she was subjected to harassment for her gender critical beliefs…..

    Arts Council England is a publicly funded body and is responsible for awarding grants to artistic projects across the country. It is unfortunate that in this case it chose to make an award and then withdraw it for reasons that were based on bias, hostility and mis-information, namely that LGB Alliance was a transphobic organisation.


    https://didlaw.com/denise-fahmy-v-arts-council-england
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    GhedebravGhedebrav Posts: 3,483

    I am warming to WTF. It can serve both incredulity and positivity.

    Nah, it's rubbish
    Yes, it is.
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    CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 60,101
    ClippP said:

    Fen-Poly Union election rigging by a Lib-Dem:

    https://www.varsity.co.uk/news/25810

    Very useful to have that on his CV when he joinsthe Conservative Party.

    Could he rise as high as Mrs Bravermann?
    Ghose….. previously served as the….vice-chair of the Cambridge University Liberal Association.
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    FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 77,750

    Former club cricketer and Labour partisan Gary Neville joins Dragons Den.
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/66028343

    I see Dragon's Den is suffering the same as football with presenter inflation. Now 7 Dragons.
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    GhedebravGhedebrav Posts: 3,483

    I'm getting a Labour advert a lot in between YouTube videos. It's not great, just a picture of a bomb (an old school bomb that gets dropped out of a plane) with something about the Tories Mortgage Ticking Time bomb. Really basic, but at least they're trying.

    How good is the Youtube advert-placement algorithm? Are you facing a by-election?
    No, I follow a few politics channels, but mostly follow mountain biking, woodworking, building and van life channels. I don't often get targeted adverts usually just generic stuff.
    You can find out why a given ad has targeted you by checking the ad centre bit. Though I'd guess you've been lumped in with 'British Politics' as a category, plus maybe your age (given the mortgage theme). Also remember that YouTube will likely know what you've searched for on google and history of website visits.
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    LeonLeon Posts: 49,129
    eek said:

    As an aside did we lose the 'like' button after that debate the other day?

    I think it was more @rcs1000 got fed up Leon complaining about it yesterday.

    Leon may have disliked the Like button but I think everyone hates it disappearing and replacement with some random WFH option - that's only useful for responding to posts by Leon or HYUFD.
    Er, what? I made one critique of the Like button!

    My powers are mighty but not that mighty
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    MiklosvarMiklosvar Posts: 1,855

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Miklosvar said:

    FF43 said:

    Leon said:

    FF43 said:

    Miklosvar said:

    Nigelb said:

    kjh said:

    Miklosvar said:

    malcolmg said:

    ydoethur said:

    WTF? I think ‘awesome’ is way worse than ‘like.’ So twee.

    Just need a LEON button now
    Has Leon apologised for being wrong on the lab leak?

    U.S. Intelligence Report Finds No Clear Evidence of Covid Origins in Wuhan Lab.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/23/us/politics/covid-lab-leak-wuhan-report.html
    It says no clear evidence. AOEINEOA. What clear evidence could there be anyway? CCTV of avirus sneaking out of the back door?
    In my lifetime there have been two lab leaks in the UK that I am aware of, Smallpox and Foot and Mouth. Both were provable lab leaks. So to say there can't be any clear evidence of a lab leak is obviously not correct.

    It may well be a lab leak and there may not be any evidence that can be found, but that doesn't mean it is a lab leak. It may be, it may not be.

    However unlike @leon I don't jump to conclusions. If leon didn't come out with so much tosh all the time (Do we all remember the mass alien ships over Ukraine?) we might take him more seriously. I can think of two pieces of evidence he provided for absolute proof it came from a lab that were completely dismantled here (one was from Fox news ffs).
    There's also the likely, but not proven Russian influenza leak, of course.
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1977_Russian_flu
    Which is exactly the point: Likely but not proven is probably as good as we are going to get with an outbreak in China. They don't do openness there. So the claim of "no clear evidence" is still susceptible to the response: What clear evidence would you expect, given 1. China and 2. the catastrophic consequences of this leak?
    I would want to know why a lab leak is likely, beyond that someone had a notion. There is epidemiological evidence for the epidemic starting in a market, which is also how the previous SARS is known to have started.
    Aside from anything else “the nightmare of circumstantial evidence” - as was explicitly stated in the Fauci/Farrar emails at the beginning of the pandemic

    Problem is I then have to Google the claim to see if it really is evidence. This is the full quote from Ian Lipkin:

    It does not eliminate the possibility of inadvertent release following adaptation through selection in culture at the institute in Wuhan. Given the scale of the bat CoV research pursued there and the site of emergence of the first human cases we have a nightmare of circumstantial evidence to assess.

    So it seems not. The recent DNI report states

    Prior to the pandemic, we assess WIV scientists conducted extensive research on coronaviruses, which included animal sampling and genetic analysis. We continue to have no indication that the WIV’s pre-pandemic research holdings included SARSCoV-2 or a close progenitor, nor any direct evidence that a specific research-related incident occurred involving WIV personnel before the pandemic that could have caused the COVID pandemic.

    So Covid 19 doesn't match a virus the lab was known to be working on. We have to have some other reason to suspect a lab leak.
    "a virus the lab was known to be working on" is rather the point. Again, this is mere absence of evidence. Evidence of absence would require a complete, audited list from the lab of everything it was up to.
    Given that there is significant evidence China executed or otherwise silenced - forever - early covid whistleblowers, the idea they wouldn’t destroy evidence at the lab is fanciful. Indeed the opposite is true. They surely DID destroy evidence
    Indeed, and they also destroyed evidence at the market.
    I don't think we've ever argued that China behaved responsibly or openly with regard to what happened.
    Indeed.

    From what we know, I think we can say for certain that China behaved irresponsibly.

    I think the balance of probabilities is that it probably came from the Lab.

    I think the less likely, but still possible option, is that it came naturally to and from the market without any involvement of the Lab.

    But I don't think we will ever know for certain.
    Bart, you’ve been reading too many PB comments. The balance of probabilities is that it was a natural zoonotic event, as the new US intelligence document says. Read it here: https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/Report-on-Potential-Links-Between-the-Wuhan-Institute-of-Virology-and-the-Origins-of-COVID-19-20230623.pdf

    Sorry bondegezou but I'm not going based on evidence, but purely my gut, since the evidence is corrupted so we can't really know for certain.

    And my gut speaks like Jon Stewart here: https://youtu.be/sSfejgwbDQ8?t=172

    "Oh my God, there’s been an outbreak of chocolatey goodness near Hershey, Pennsylvania. What do you think happened? Oh I don’t know, maybe a steam shovel mated with a cocoa bean? Or it’s the f---ing chocolate factory! Maybe that’s it."
    Nearly all pandemics come from zoonotic events. Eating “bush meat” or wild animals is a common origin. There was a “wet market” in Wuhan. The early cases were clustered around the market. Environmental analyses found the virus in the market. There were two initial strains of SARS-COV-2, which would be consistent with a source of a group of animals in the market, but not with other theories of the virus’s origin.

    In other words, the chocolate factory is the wet market. That’s exactly the sort of place people expected a new pandemic to appear.
    My first WTF. I am astonished to find so many naive frequentists on a betting site. Does anyone here make any money from it?

    Nearly all people are not called Zebedee - probably only 1 in 250,000 at most. If someone comes up to you and says Hi, I am Zebedee, do you discount the possibility of that being true because it is a 250,000/1 shot?
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    TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 115,412
    I will be making representations to Robert about returning the like button.

    In the meantime list your favourite Radiohead track.

    I’m going for Creep.
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    Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 26,052
    Recent electoral form would suggest the Tories doing expectations management by being pessimistic about the outcome, and the real outcome being worse. Not sure how that would work - they predict losing all 3 and somehow end up losing 4?
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    GhedebravGhedebrav Posts: 3,483
    Selebian said:

    TimS said:

    Pulpstar said:

    Pulpstar said:

    Selby should be competitive, Labour haven't produced a swing in a BE to take the seat against the Tories that large since South East Staffs in 1996.
    It would be some achievement for Starmer to take the seat.

    If the polling is truly as good as it looks for Labour they should take the seat though.

    Uxbridge is gone but the demographics (Hindu population) will probably mean the Tory vote holds up a bit better than the national polling.

    Edit: Actually on current polling via UNS I make Selby a narrow hold (Con +11.4 -> -20) implying a general 15.7% swing which isn't enough) but Baxter has it in the red column for the next GE currently.
    Useful set of BEs to gauge the walls by comparing vs National swing. Especially nice to have them all at once.

    We’ve already had blue wall by-election losses so that’s already proven. Uxbridge is Brexity London-margins which are due a test as the last one was Bexley and a comfortable Tory hold. S&F is proper west country / farming land last tested in N Shropshire. S&A is sort of but not quite red wall.

    Not really red wall. The town could be considered that way, for sure, but the town is not a huge part of the constituency and much of the rest of it is, like much of N Yorks, donkey in a blue rosette rural stronghold.

    ETA: per wikipedia, Selby town population 19.8k in 2021 census; S&A electorate 77.7k in 2019
    The whole 'red wall' concept is lazy and misleading.
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    FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 77,750

    I will be making representations to Robert about returning the like button.

    In the meantime list your favourite Radiohead track.

    I’m going for Creep.

    All that was missing from terrible mumbling live performances at Glastonbury was Radiohead....
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    WhisperingOracleWhisperingOracle Posts: 8,705
    edited June 2023
    I wonder if Cyclefree is around. As a seasoned investigator, I wonder what this sounds like, from the most recent article below.

    Apart from today's new allegations, the article seems to deal, spcifically, with how governments or large organisations deal with whistleblowers, and information release, when others are already under investigation for malpractice related to the topic of the whistleblower's claims.


    'Recently, the U.S. government denied in full five FOIA requests encompassing a broad range of UFO-related topics. In a striking departure from previous practice, the government denied the requests on the grounds that release of the information may interfere with “enforcement proceedings” and “law enforcement investigations or prosecutions.”


    The application of such novel justifications for withholding government UFO information may constitute circumstantial evidence that a law enforcement entity, such as the Department of Defense Office of Inspector General, is engaged in a broad, and possibly criminal, investigation of the U.S. government’s involvement with UFOs."





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    GhedebravGhedebrav Posts: 3,483

    I will be making representations to Robert about returning the like button.

    In the meantime list your favourite Radiohead track.

    I’m going for Creep.

    Yes please. And my (serious) answer is Fake Plastic Trees.
This discussion has been closed.