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Bridget Phillipson: To do list. – politicalbetting.com

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  • moonshinemoonshine Posts: 5,507

    moonshine said:

    Quite a few videos doing the rounds on TikTok/X from impressively credentialed snipers, special forces and vip protection types. Basic position is that it’s “inconceivable” that a “dungeons and dragons playing 20yr old” could have got to that roof and made the shot without assistance. Whether it’s local law enforcement or a mole in the secret service they cannot say.

    Now, cockup vs conspiracy and all that. But when you have heroes of red blooded Americans saying this to millions, such as the guy with the world record longest sniper kill, we might assume a societal reaction of some sort.

    Funny when a post full of conspiracy theory rubbish gets the only verifiable fact in the whole thing wrong.

    The "guy with the world record longest sniper kill" is not American, red blooded or otherwise. In fact no US sniper is in the top 5 of the longest verified sniper kills. The first American comes in at number 8. The number 1 spot is held by a Ukrainian

    I assume the guy you are talking about is the one quoted in the Daily Mail (not exactly a recommendation in itself) .

    Except he is not American, he is Canadian and he does not hold the record for the longets sniper kill. He was simply part of the team that assisted the sniper who made the shot. Nor is that shot now the world record, having been superceded by the Ukrainian sniper last year.

    So as I say, the only 'verifiable' fact in your posting turns out to be wrong.
    That’s a remarkably rude post to be honest. Apologies for not having my Sniper’s World Record Book to hand, I merely went by how one of the guys in these videos was referred to by others.

    You have also spectacularly missed my point. Which is that while you sit here being a clever dick, social media is busily amplifying to millions of Americans the narrative that this gunman had help. Which may be factually true or factually false. But it doesn’t particularly matter, it’s the perception that will matter.

    We shall have to wait and see which route Trump chooses to follow, but this is a guy who basically applauded when Pelosi’s husband was hit with a hammer and egged on a mob to seize Congress. If he wants to play into fear and grievance, things are suddenly much more combustible than many like to admit.

  • FeersumEnjineeyaFeersumEnjineeya Posts: 4,310

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    nico679 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    In about a week the deranged Democrats will go back to calling Trump “Hitler” - they can’t help themselves. A couple on TwiX are nearly there already

    There’s a reasonable chance, with this rhetoric, that someone will take ANOTHER pot shot at the Donald

    How will a whacko get another chance? Security is going to be presumably off the scale now for both candidates until polling day.
    Yes. It will be MUCH harder. I’m just saying I wouldn’t be surprised if someone tries

    The way the Dems have gone from saying “Trump is worse than Hitler” to “everyone must dial down the rhetoric” is painfully comic. And transparently hypocritical

    Of course, it would have been better if they’d not gone hysterical a year ago. Then they wouldn’t be in this pickle. Likewise, it would have been better if they’d acknowledged Biden’s senility a year ago. But no
    How quickly we forget.

    Donald Trump Says President Biden a Threat to Democracy
    https://www.c-span.org/video/?c5098436/donald-trump-president-biden-threat-democracy-quotes-putin-orban
    There seems to have been a collective amnesia from some who are now painting Trump as the poor victim who has spent the last 8 years promoting peace and unity !

    Just say "it's a shame he missed". It's what you're thinking. I imagine a decent chunk of PB is thinking this. Thousands of American lefties are straight out saying it on TwiX. There's no shame in it if you REALLY think he is as bad as Hitler, because political violence, in that context, is arguably justified
    Remember we are looking at Hitler in hindsight. We know what he, and the regime he led, evolved into.

    There’s the debate in academia about how much Hitler pushed the increasing radicalisation (probably a lot but any paperwork, if there indeed was any authorising the increasing ferocity of the Holocaust, etc, etc is missing, presumably destroyed) and how much it was driven by enthusiastic acolytes ‘working towards the Fuhrer’, as the saying goes, meaning the idea that people in the hierarchy interpreted Hitler’s broad rhetoric and devised ever increasingly radical solutions promoted by his rhetoric and rantings. It seems there was never an overarching plan for the Holocaust - it evolved and radicalised over time and as Germany captured more territory full of Jews in the East, and needed a ‘Final Solution’.

    So what scares me is that the iconography of Trump - the flags and stirring music when he came out of hospital after Covid, for example, is very Leni Riefenstahl. There’s a similar ‘Fuhrerpricip’ - whatever Trump says is inviolate and infallible. There seem to be millions of Americans who would willingly ‘work towards’ Trump, driving increasing radicalisation down the hierarchy.

    That’s what scares me. To my eyes, it all looks similar to 1933 currently, with the potential to evolve and escalate to something much, much worse.
    So, be honest. I really won't jump on you. I am genuinely interested

    If you think Trump is potentially, perhaps probably, a Hitler in the making, is it justifiable to assassinate him?

    @Dura_Ace is the only PB-er who has openly admitted it, but I am sure several other PB-ers believe this, but won't say it

    And I can follow the logic. If you think he is an American Hitler, then killing him - if all else fails, and it has - is not just the only option, it is the moral option
    I think this is a Whereof we cannot speak situation. You can't advocate assassination; you just can't, no matter how much you tell yourself this is a unique situation and you would never advocate it for anyone else. But you can have a private view on the matter.
    It's rather reminiscent of Stephen King's The Dead Zone.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 77,440

    Interesting polling data on why the Tories lost.

    https://x.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1812767682959147307

    image

    Was "external factors - e.g. covid and Ukraine" an option?
    Not explicitly but if that's your view I'd imagine most of those would be "Don't know", particularly the 34% Tory don't know will be mainly this.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 53,240

    Leon said:

    Sandpit said:

    Pulpstar said:

    boulay said:

    Barnesian said:

    Trump has had a very close brush with death. He's just said "!'m supposed to be dead". This must have a profound effect on him, surely?

    He says he's radically changing his speech at the Convention. This could be the pivotal moment - much more than the debate.

    Can he change his rhetoric? Blunt the Democrat charge of a danger to democracy? Be a reasonable chap?

    Mmm. We'll soon see.

    I was wondering the same. He could go messianic “I survived death so god must want me to be the big man” or he could have a bit of a post-traumatic downer when the adrenaline wears off and be much more conciliatory.

    If there is anyone wise with his ear they could make it clear that he could romp home to victory if he suddenly becomes the “unifying president” and he wants to end the splits in the country, tones down the rhetoric and says he wants to build a broad church and be a president for the democrats as well as republicans.
    He's apparently torn up his old speech and will go full on unifying middle ground with his big speech at the RNC.

    "I will unite our country, not with words, but with action."....

    Of course he'll revert to type once he's in office but the spell of "Middle ground Trump" will probably last till November allowing him to beat Biden in enough swing states to get the presidency.
    Perhaps the only thing that’s going to calm everyone down now, is if Trump and Biden appear together somewhere, to unequivocally tell all of their supporters to dial back the language.

    Trump re-writing his Conference speech, presumably from something that would have been the usual bombast and triumphalism, into something a lot calmer and more collected, could be a good starting point. His recent debate performance was actually pretty good in this regard, so he can on occasion turn things down himself.
    Check out the evangelical nutter who predicted a bullet grazing Trump's ear


    🚨🇺🇸TRUMP ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT PREDICTED 3 MONTHS AGO

    Brandon Biggs made an unbelievably accurate prediction about the attack on Trump’s life in an interview several months ago.

    “I saw Trump rising up, and then I saw an attempt on his life.

    This bullet flew by his ear, and it came so close to his head that it busted his drum eardrum.

    And I saw he fell to his knees during this timeframe, and he started worshiping the Lord.

    He got radically born again during this timeframe.”

    Source: Steve Cioccolanti & Discover Ministries on YouTube


    https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/1812386960985477177


    That's bizarrely accurate. But note, the same guy says Trump will now be born again. And in his latest social media messages Trump is referencing God a lot. People who are somehow miraculously saved often get religious - eg the guy who wrote Amazing Grace

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazing_Grace
    Jules, Pulp Fiction

    Paul the apostle

    Etc
    Yep. I seriously believe Trump is gonna come out and get all religious, He is The Man. He was saved by God, for a Divine Destiny

    A religious Trump might actually be a lot better than greedy ugly lying pussygrabbing Trump
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 41,467
    Leon said:

    Sandpit said:

    Leon said:

    Pulpstar said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    In about a week the deranged Democrats will go back to calling Trump “Hitler” - they can’t help themselves. A couple on TwiX are nearly there already

    There’s a reasonable chance, with this rhetoric, that someone will take ANOTHER pot shot at the Donald

    How will a whacko get another chance? Security is going to be presumably off the scale now for both candidates until polling day.
    Yes. It will be MUCH harder. I’m just saying I wouldn’t be surprised if someone tries

    The way the Dems have gone from saying “Trump is worse than Hitler” to “everyone must dial down the rhetoric” is painfully comic. And transparently hypocritical

    Of course, it would have been better if they’d not gone hysterical a year ago. Then they wouldn’t be in this pickle. Likewise, it would have been better if they’d acknowledged Biden’s senility a year ago. But no
    How quickly we forget.

    Donald Trump Says President Biden a Threat to Democracy
    https://www.c-span.org/video/?c5098436/donald-trump-president-biden-threat-democracy-quotes-putin-orban
    You could also stop spreading disinformation. The "69 year old alternative Thomas Crooks who apparently made the donation to the Dems" was a load of bull. It was the shooter who made the donation. Read the New York Times, they're doing the most in-depth stuff


    "Investigators were scouring his online presence and working to gain access to his phone, but so far had not found indications of strongly held political beliefs. In fact, the clues he left behind were confusing: He was a registered Republican but had also donated to a progressive cause in 2021; his parents were registered as a Democrat and Libertarian."

    https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/14/us/politics/trump-gunman-thomas-crooks.html
    He registered republican specifically to vote for Nikki Hayley against Trump. I do not think he was a "genuine republican".
    IIUC the idea that he registered Republican to vote for Nicki Haley doesn't work because:

    1. He registered in 2021, before he knew that Trump or Haley was running
    2. He didn't vote in the primaries
    He apparently made the donation to the Dem cause after J6, which sounds quite anti-Trumpy

    But it's not much. He really DOESN'T seem to be especially political, unless he has some incredibly well-hidden online life

    I'm going to start a conspiracy theory, sorry, connytheers, all of my own, that takes into account what we know

    Here's my insane connytheer

    It's the Ukrainians

    They want Trump gone for very very obvious reasons. There are plenty of Ukrainians in America, some of them quite rich, I imagine. There is also a significant Ukrainian presence in Pennsylvania

    https://www.ukrhomestead.com/

    https://pennlivearts.org/event/ukrainiancommunityday

    The can't do it themselves, obs, so they find come cleanskin who likes guns, and who hates Trump - convinced he really is Hitler. Crooks is recruited. They also have some sympathetic local cops who agree to "not notice" the ladder and "not check" the roof. Because this is outside the official perimeter the Seekyservs don't surveil this, the cops do (or don't)

    Crooks is allowed to set his ladder, climb on the roof, the cops strenuously ignore it all and the Seekyservs are inept and useless at first (look at the vids, they are). Crooks has been falsely told that he will be allowed to escape, but of course the cops can't control the Seekyservs, who slot Crooks in a trice

    I think this is a pretty good theory, and I recommend it to the House

    Don’t be even more of a fuckwit than usual. The Ukranians have more than enough of their own problems right now.
    Er, what? We're not allowed to speculate on who tried to kill Trump, and why? Because of some rules about taste? This is PB, we speculate

    If you have a better theory that explains all the many curious anomalies in this instance, do tell us. I am happy to be persuaded. I won't, however, be told to shut up just because something makes you uncomfortable. There is no law - of the land, or on PB, that I know of - which says you cannot hypothesise around political events. Indeed, this is basically what the site is about. You hypothesise, and from that you can make predictions about the future, and thereby make bets
    I've got a theory that makes just as much sense. It was you, Leon. You arranged the hit with Crooks.

    It's just that the sniper was resting on one of your soiled socks, and the stench caused him to lose his aim.

    It was Leon everyone! Leon! He's responsible!!!!!
  • LeonLeon Posts: 53,240

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Pulpstar said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    In about a week the deranged Democrats will go back to calling Trump “Hitler” - they can’t help themselves. A couple on TwiX are nearly there already

    There’s a reasonable chance, with this rhetoric, that someone will take ANOTHER pot shot at the Donald

    How will a whacko get another chance? Security is going to be presumably off the scale now for both candidates until polling day.
    Yes. It will be MUCH harder. I’m just saying I wouldn’t be surprised if someone tries

    The way the Dems have gone from saying “Trump is worse than Hitler” to “everyone must dial down the rhetoric” is painfully comic. And transparently hypocritical

    Of course, it would have been better if they’d not gone hysterical a year ago. Then they wouldn’t be in this pickle. Likewise, it would have been better if they’d acknowledged Biden’s senility a year ago. But no
    How quickly we forget.

    Donald Trump Says President Biden a Threat to Democracy
    https://www.c-span.org/video/?c5098436/donald-trump-president-biden-threat-democracy-quotes-putin-orban
    You could also stop spreading disinformation. The "69 year old alternative Thomas Crooks who apparently made the donation to the Dems" was a load of bull. It was the shooter who made the donation. Read the New York Times, they're doing the most in-depth stuff


    "Investigators were scouring his online presence and working to gain access to his phone, but so far had not found indications of strongly held political beliefs. In fact, the clues he left behind were confusing: He was a registered Republican but had also donated to a progressive cause in 2021; his parents were registered as a Democrat and Libertarian."

    https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/14/us/politics/trump-gunman-thomas-crooks.html
    He registered republican specifically to vote for Nikki Hayley against Trump. I do not think he was a "genuine republican".
    IIUC the idea that he registered Republican to vote for Nicki Haley doesn't work because:

    1. He registered in 2021, before he knew that Trump or Haley was running
    2. He didn't vote in the primaries
    He apparently made the donation to the Dem cause after J6, which sounds quite anti-Trumpy

    But it's not much. He really DOESN'T seem to be especially political, unless he has some incredibly well-hidden online life

    [fiction writer stuff snipped]
    Right so the donation is on the inauguration date which is kind of a weird time to be donating, then he registers GOP like 6 months later. So the simple way to read it is either that he supports Biden over Trump at age 17 then goes the full youtube gun nut after that which wouldn't be particularly weird. Alternatively the donation could be something else (donation to settle a bet, someone made it in his name to annoy him etc.)
    Why have you snipped my brilliant connytheer?

    It's the best one out there, that I've seen

    Ukrainians, cleanskin, bang
    I would put in a sexy foreign agent who leads him astray. Just pick any attractive-looking eastern-European woman in the greater Pittsburgh area, the retweeters won't care.
    Fictionally, that certainly works

    In reality, it ALSO works. Especially for some horny 20 year old guy not especially gifted with looks
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 42,507
    Despite what The Guardian and some of the lefty loons on here might say I really don't think it is sensible or relevant to make comparisons between Trump and Hitler.

    The bigger question is whether this advances the gun control debate one way or another.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 16,910

    Leon said:

    nico679 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    In about a week the deranged Democrats will go back to calling Trump “Hitler” - they can’t help themselves. A couple on TwiX are nearly there already

    There’s a reasonable chance, with this rhetoric, that someone will take ANOTHER pot shot at the Donald

    How will a whacko get another chance? Security is going to be presumably off the scale now for both candidates until polling day.
    Yes. It will be MUCH harder. I’m just saying I wouldn’t be surprised if someone tries

    The way the Dems have gone from saying “Trump is worse than Hitler” to “everyone must dial down the rhetoric” is painfully comic. And transparently hypocritical

    Of course, it would have been better if they’d not gone hysterical a year ago. Then they wouldn’t be in this pickle. Likewise, it would have been better if they’d acknowledged Biden’s senility a year ago. But no
    How quickly we forget.

    Donald Trump Says President Biden a Threat to Democracy
    https://www.c-span.org/video/?c5098436/donald-trump-president-biden-threat-democracy-quotes-putin-orban
    There seems to have been a collective amnesia from some who are now painting Trump as the poor victim who has spent the last 8 years promoting peace and unity !

    Just say "it's a shame he missed". It's what you're thinking. I imagine a decent chunk of PB is thinking this. Thousands of American lefties are straight out saying it on TwiX. There's no shame in it if you REALLY think he is as bad as Hitler, because political violence, in that context, is arguably justified
    Remember we are looking at Hitler in hindsight. We know what he, and the regime he led, evolved into.

    There’s the debate in academia about how much Hitler pushed the increasing radicalisation (probably a lot but any paperwork, if there indeed was any authorising the increasing ferocity of the Holocaust, etc, etc is missing, presumably destroyed) and how much it was driven by enthusiastic acolytes ‘working towards the Fuhrer’, as the saying goes, meaning the idea that people in the hierarchy interpreted Hitler’s broad rhetoric and devised ever increasingly radical solutions promoted by his rhetoric and rantings. It seems there was never an overarching plan for the Holocaust - it evolved and radicalised over time and as Germany captured more territory full of Jews in the East, and needed a ‘Final Solution’.

    So what scares me is that the iconography of Trump - the flags and stirring music when he came out of hospital after Covid, for example, is very Leni Riefenstahl. There’s a similar ‘Fuhrerpricip’ - whatever Trump says is inviolate and infallible. There seem to be millions of Americans who would willingly ‘work towards’ Trump, driving increasing radicalisation down the hierarchy.

    That’s what scares me. To my eyes, it all looks similar to 1933 currently, with the potential to evolve and escalate to something much, much worse.
    I thought that “working towards the Fuhrer” was explicitly part of the Nazi ideology?

    Hitler was overtly in favour of incrementalism - take what you can now, then push for more. It was one of his big differences with the Stasserites, who wanted instant revolution. Rather than steadily Nazifying existing institutions over time.
    I think Hitler was the worlds greatest opportunist. He was also a high stakes gambler with no plan B.
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 13,677
    Leon said:


    Crooks is allowed to set his ladder, climb on the roof, the cops strenuously ignore it all and the Seekyservs are inept and useless at first (look at the vids, they are). Crooks has been falsely told that he will be allowed to escape, but of course the cops can't control the Seekyservs, who slot Crooks in a trice

    If they did then he was never going to get away, no matter what they told him. Just like the disposable asset who drove the Kerch Bridge truck bomb.
  • northern_monkeynorthern_monkey Posts: 1,639

    Leon said:

    nico679 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    In about a week the deranged Democrats will go back to calling Trump “Hitler” - they can’t help themselves. A couple on TwiX are nearly there already

    There’s a reasonable chance, with this rhetoric, that someone will take ANOTHER pot shot at the Donald

    How will a whacko get another chance? Security is going to be presumably off the scale now for both candidates until polling day.
    Yes. It will be MUCH harder. I’m just saying I wouldn’t be surprised if someone tries

    The way the Dems have gone from saying “Trump is worse than Hitler” to “everyone must dial down the rhetoric” is painfully comic. And transparently hypocritical

    Of course, it would have been better if they’d not gone hysterical a year ago. Then they wouldn’t be in this pickle. Likewise, it would have been better if they’d acknowledged Biden’s senility a year ago. But no
    How quickly we forget.

    Donald Trump Says President Biden a Threat to Democracy
    https://www.c-span.org/video/?c5098436/donald-trump-president-biden-threat-democracy-quotes-putin-orban
    There seems to have been a collective amnesia from some who are now painting Trump as the poor victim who has spent the last 8 years promoting peace and unity !

    Just say "it's a shame he missed". It's what you're thinking. I imagine a decent chunk of PB is thinking this. Thousands of American lefties are straight out saying it on TwiX. There's no shame in it if you REALLY think he is as bad as Hitler, because political violence, in that context, is arguably justified
    Remember we are looking at Hitler in hindsight. We know what he, and the regime he led, evolved into.

    There’s the debate in academia about how much Hitler pushed the increasing radicalisation (probably a lot but any paperwork, if there indeed was any authorising the increasing ferocity of the Holocaust, etc, etc is missing, presumably destroyed) and how much it was driven by enthusiastic acolytes ‘working towards the Fuhrer’, as the saying goes, meaning the idea that people in the hierarchy interpreted Hitler’s broad rhetoric and devised ever increasingly radical solutions promoted by his rhetoric and rantings. It seems there was never an overarching plan for the Holocaust - it evolved and radicalised over time and as Germany captured more territory full of Jews in the East, and needed a ‘Final Solution’.

    So what scares me is that the iconography of Trump - the flags and stirring music when he came out of hospital after Covid, for example, is very Leni Riefenstahl. There’s a similar ‘Fuhrerpricip’ - whatever Trump says is inviolate and infallible. There seem to be millions of Americans who would willingly ‘work towards’ Trump, driving increasing radicalisation down the hierarchy.

    That’s what scares me. To my eyes, it all looks similar to 1933 currently, with the potential to evolve and escalate to something much, much worse.
    Do you think there are millions of Americans who would herd 20,000 Jews into a ravine and calmly put a bullet in each and every head? Do you think America under Trump would be expansionist (so presumably invading first Canada and then move south?

    I'd steer clear of the Hitler comparisons. It does no favours. Hitler came to power in a state that lost a world war 15 years before where millions of Germans were seething with fury about the loss. A surrender when German armies where still on foreign soil. That many believed the army had been stabbed in the back.
    An era where political violence was the norm, not the horrific exception.

    People have compared the Jan 6th Riots to the the beer hall putsch. But it was nothing like the same. There was no coherent plan to seize control of the arms of the state, just a bunch of deluded and dangerous idiots.
    No I’m not saying that. What I’m saying is that I think it is possible that there are the seeds there for a regime to emerge that could go to some very dark places. How that manifests itself will be in a uniquely American way.
  • StillWatersStillWaters Posts: 7,849
    Nigelb said:

    Some Academy chains do work.

    Look at STAR, for example. It’s a fantastic organisation that is having a massive impact on the lives of hundreds on underprivileged children

    Some LEAs were brilliant; some were awful.
    Point is that academisation hasn't really improved anything overall, and has in some cases made things worse.
    And has been a huge distraction from doing anything useful.
    I disagree. Some have worked really well, others not so much. The trick is to understand what works and why, not to dismiss everything.

    Diversity achieves the best outcomes. What works for one cohort may not be optimal for another
  • Richard_TyndallRichard_Tyndall Posts: 32,089
    moonshine said:

    moonshine said:

    Quite a few videos doing the rounds on TikTok/X from impressively credentialed snipers, special forces and vip protection types. Basic position is that it’s “inconceivable” that a “dungeons and dragons playing 20yr old” could have got to that roof and made the shot without assistance. Whether it’s local law enforcement or a mole in the secret service they cannot say.

    Now, cockup vs conspiracy and all that. But when you have heroes of red blooded Americans saying this to millions, such as the guy with the world record longest sniper kill, we might assume a societal reaction of some sort.

    Funny when a post full of conspiracy theory rubbish gets the only verifiable fact in the whole thing wrong.

    The "guy with the world record longest sniper kill" is not American, red blooded or otherwise. In fact no US sniper is in the top 5 of the longest verified sniper kills. The first American comes in at number 8. The number 1 spot is held by a Ukrainian

    I assume the guy you are talking about is the one quoted in the Daily Mail (not exactly a recommendation in itself) .

    Except he is not American, he is Canadian and he does not hold the record for the longets sniper kill. He was simply part of the team that assisted the sniper who made the shot. Nor is that shot now the world record, having been superceded by the Ukrainian sniper last year.

    So as I say, the only 'verifiable' fact in your posting turns out to be wrong.
    That’s a remarkably rude post to be honest. Apologies for not having my Sniper’s World Record Book to hand, I merely went by how one of the guys in these videos was referred to by others.

    You have also spectacularly missed my point. Which is that while you sit here being a clever dick, social media is busily amplifying to millions of Americans the narrative that this gunman had help. Which may be factually true or factually false. But it doesn’t particularly matter, it’s the perception that will matter.

    We shall have to wait and see which route Trump chooses to follow, but this is a guy who basically applauded when Pelosi’s husband was hit with a hammer and egged on a mob to seize Congress. If he wants to play into fear and grievance, things are suddenly much more combustible than many like to admit.

    No I got your point. You buy inuo conspiracy theories based on no evidence at all and then try and use appeal to authority to justify your idiocy.

    What makes it funny is that, even if appealing to authority were not a logical fallacy, it turns out that you can't even get the basics of that right either.

    So your point is pointless.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 53,240
    Dura_Ace said:

    Leon said:


    Crooks is allowed to set his ladder, climb on the roof, the cops strenuously ignore it all and the Seekyservs are inept and useless at first (look at the vids, they are). Crooks has been falsely told that he will be allowed to escape, but of course the cops can't control the Seekyservs, who slot Crooks in a trice

    If they did then he was never going to get away, no matter what they told him. Just like the disposable asset who drove the Kerch Bridge truck bomb.
    Yes, if my connytheer is right, then the Ukes had to choose someone quite dim, OR easily persuaded of a nonsense by some hot Ukrainian woman from Pittsburgh (as @edmundintokyo suggests)
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 61,470
    Definitely moving towards Burgum being veep according to BF.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 53,314

    Were the videos of Trump casually arriving for his usual Sunday morning tee time yesterday genuine?

    It all goes back to one Reddit post claiming to be from someone who worked at the course, saying that Trump was making a joke about not missing when he sunk a putt, and one seven-second video that could be from any time. Call it plausible but unlikely.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 41,467
    Leon said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Leon said:


    Crooks is allowed to set his ladder, climb on the roof, the cops strenuously ignore it all and the Seekyservs are inept and useless at first (look at the vids, they are). Crooks has been falsely told that he will be allowed to escape, but of course the cops can't control the Seekyservs, who slot Crooks in a trice

    If they did then he was never going to get away, no matter what they told him. Just like the disposable asset who drove the Kerch Bridge truck bomb.
    Yes, if my connytheer is right, then the Ukes had to choose someone quite dim, OR easily persuaded of a nonsense by some hot Ukrainian woman from Pittsburgh (as @edmundintokyo suggests)
    Nah, it was you. You arranged it.
  • TweedledeeTweedledee Posts: 1,405
    TOPPING said:

    Despite what The Guardian and some of the lefty loons on here might say I really don't think it is sensible or relevant to make comparisons between Trump and Hitler.

    The bigger question is whether this advances the gun control debate one way or another.

    The question is whether 1933 Topping would have said the same about that Mr Hitler

    Gun control wise wont make a scrap of difference any more than Trump surviving a car crash would affect driving laws
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 16,910
    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    SATs should be retained as a means of measuring educational attainment. Free schools and academies offer choice to parents and also should be retained

    The main issue I have with SATS is that they measure how well a kid does in SATS, which is not the same as measuring attainment.

    I can't recall who it was, but I remember reading about someone who became obsessed with IQ tests as a kid, did loads, got very good at them to the point that his school thought he was a genius and moved him into a high flyers programme.
    He wasn't a high flier - he had just learned how to do IQ.
    I worry that the same is true of SATS.
    In terms of Maths and verbal reasoning skills SATs do largely measure attainment
    I teach students across all years at Uni. One of the things we find is that schools prepare them for exams by doing past papers. Lots of past papers. You could imagine its just about learning the question style, but it goes a bit deeper than that. Hence my students constantly want past papers (which we provide one, as an example, only).
    I have no doubt that schools prepare kids for SATS by doing SATS questions and papers and they are thus, doing exactly what I suggest happens.

    We do need an idea of how our kids are getting on. But there are many ways of doing this. Good teachers will know where kids are in their progression. Measurement distorts. It always does.
  • StillWatersStillWaters Posts: 7,849

    Radio 4 really pissed me off this morning

    Biden stumbled over “ballot” and it’s came out as halfway between “ballot” and “battle”. It didn’t interrupt the flow of his speech and was understandable given context

    Radio 4 reported it as a “major gaffe” that will renew “doubt” about his candidacy

    The man has a stutter FFS. What other disability would it be ok to mock?

    Its an odd stutter that names Putin as president of Ukraine, and Donald Trump as your own vice-President.
    Those were mistakes.

    This was not.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 77,440

    Definitely moving towards Burgum being veep according to BF.

    He's at 890.0 for the presidency. Given bla bla bla bla bla... well I think it's worth two shiny english pounds.
  • StillWatersStillWaters Posts: 7,849
    Leon said:

    Radio 4 really pissed me off this morning

    Biden stumbled over “ballot” and it’s came out as halfway between “ballot” and “battle”. It didn’t interrupt the flow of his speech and was understandable given context

    Radio 4 reported it as a “major gaffe” that will renew “doubt” about his candidacy

    The man has a stutter FFS. What other disability would it be ok to mock?

    It’s somehow pleasing to see “it’s just a stutter” still doing the rounds. Like seeing some genial old neighbour, long presumed dead, still shuffling to the corner shop
    A mangled version of “ballot” and “battle” - it came out as “battot” - is.


  • LeonLeon Posts: 53,240

    Leon said:

    Radio 4 really pissed me off this morning

    Biden stumbled over “ballot” and it’s came out as halfway between “ballot” and “battle”. It didn’t interrupt the flow of his speech and was understandable given context

    Radio 4 reported it as a “major gaffe” that will renew “doubt” about his candidacy

    The man has a stutter FFS. What other disability would it be ok to mock?

    It’s somehow pleasing to see “it’s just a stutter” still doing the rounds. Like seeing some genial old neighbour, long presumed dead, still shuffling to the corner shop
    A mangled version of “ballot” and “battle” - it came out as “battot” - is.


    He also called former-president Trump "former Trump", which has nothing to do with a stutter and is also darkly funny, in the circs
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 53,327
    Good piece by Joe Klein about the dilemma of Biden: https://josephklein.substack.com/p/the-agony-and-the-agony

    Sums up the argument and the sadness better than most pieces I have read.
  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 16,544
    edited July 15
    HYUFD said:

    Interesting polling data on why the Tories lost.

    https://x.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1812767682959147307

    image

    So competence was more an issue than ideology.
    But also the Conservative determination to superserve pensioners:

    The swing to the dead is something in this table...

    Votes won from 'first-time voters' in 2024:
    + 0.1m for Con
    +0.1m for Con
    +0.7m for Labour

    Previous voters who died since 2019:
    -1.4m for Con
    -0.4m for Labour

    Demographic growth (youth - dead):
    -1.3m for Con
    +0.3m for Lab


    https://twitter.com/theobertram/status/1812773263598129602

    There's always been a bit of actuarial drift for the Conservatives to fight, but they have chosen to make that factor much stronger in the last decade.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 41,467

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    SATs should be retained as a means of measuring educational attainment. Free schools and academies offer choice to parents and also should be retained

    The main issue I have with SATS is that they measure how well a kid does in SATS, which is not the same as measuring attainment.

    I can't recall who it was, but I remember reading about someone who became obsessed with IQ tests as a kid, did loads, got very good at them to the point that his school thought he was a genius and moved him into a high flyers programme.
    He wasn't a high flier - he had just learned how to do IQ.
    I worry that the same is true of SATS.
    In terms of Maths and verbal reasoning skills SATs do largely measure attainment
    I teach students across all years at Uni. One of the things we find is that schools prepare them for exams by doing past papers. Lots of past papers. You could imagine its just about learning the question style, but it goes a bit deeper than that. Hence my students constantly want past papers (which we provide one, as an example, only).
    I have no doubt that schools prepare kids for SATS by doing SATS questions and papers and they are thus, doing exactly what I suggest happens.

    We do need an idea of how our kids are getting on. But there are many ways of doing this. Good teachers will know where kids are in their progression. Measurement distorts. It always does.
    Heh. I've written some stuff that produces questions automatically. Sheet upon sheet of lovely maths questions. ;)

    But I think you're right; there's more depth to it than that. It's the same thing people say about IQ tests: training for them, or regularly doing them, distorts the results. You need a deeper understanding of what is going on in a subject than test papers might highlight, and teachers might well see that in a pupil. But it's also hard to reliably get that knowledge down on paper - especially as teachers can be biased, as is natural.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 53,240
    edited July 15

    Radio 4 really pissed me off this morning

    Biden stumbled over “ballot” and it’s came out as halfway between “ballot” and “battle”. It didn’t interrupt the flow of his speech and was understandable given context

    Radio 4 reported it as a “major gaffe” that will renew “doubt” about his candidacy

    The man has a stutter FFS. What other disability would it be ok to mock?

    Its an odd stutter that names Putin as president of Ukraine, and Donald Trump as your own vice-President.
    Those were mistakes.

    This was not.
    Biden's stutter is so bad he thinks President Mitterand is still alive, and Europe is in fact Asia

    It must be the worst stutter in the history of idiolalia
  • Nunu5Nunu5 Posts: 954
    Essential chart from the new mega report on the general election by
    @Moreincommon_


    The vast majority of people — including Reform voters — said the Tories lost because they were incompetent, not because they were too left or right wing.

    This is what I've been saying.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 16,910

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    SATs should be retained as a means of measuring educational attainment. Free schools and academies offer choice to parents and also should be retained

    The main issue I have with SATS is that they measure how well a kid does in SATS, which is not the same as measuring attainment.

    I can't recall who it was, but I remember reading about someone who became obsessed with IQ tests as a kid, did loads, got very good at them to the point that his school thought he was a genius and moved him into a high flyers programme.
    He wasn't a high flier - he had just learned how to do IQ.
    I worry that the same is true of SATS.
    In terms of Maths and verbal reasoning skills SATs do largely measure attainment
    I teach students across all years at Uni. One of the things we find is that schools prepare them for exams by doing past papers. Lots of past papers. You could imagine its just about learning the question style, but it goes a bit deeper than that. Hence my students constantly want past papers (which we provide one, as an example, only).
    I have no doubt that schools prepare kids for SATS by doing SATS questions and papers and they are thus, doing exactly what I suggest happens.

    We do need an idea of how our kids are getting on. But there are many ways of doing this. Good teachers will know where kids are in their progression. Measurement distorts. It always does.
    Heh. I've written some stuff that produces questions automatically. Sheet upon sheet of lovely maths questions. ;)

    But I think you're right; there's more depth to it than that. It's the same thing people say about IQ tests: training for them, or regularly doing them, distorts the results. You need a deeper understanding of what is going on in a subject than test papers might highlight, and teachers might well see that in a pupil. But it's also hard to reliably get that knowledge down on paper - especially as teachers can be biased, as is natural.
    One of the things we've looked at is randomised exam papers. So you have a bank of questions (sat 3 or4 x the number needed) and every student gets a random selection. We had issues with collusion when we had to switch to online exams in 2020 (covid) and students were completing exams in the same house. we saw this as a potential way round.

    Part of the problem is government and part is parents. Both want to see schools ranked so that little Euphorbia goes to the 'best' one she can. Ultimately I want my son to be happy and well adjusted. I also would prefer that to happen at the nearest school. Fingers crossed...
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 41,258

    Leon said:

    nico679 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    In about a week the deranged Democrats will go back to calling Trump “Hitler” - they can’t help themselves. A couple on TwiX are nearly there already

    There’s a reasonable chance, with this rhetoric, that someone will take ANOTHER pot shot at the Donald

    How will a whacko get another chance? Security is going to be presumably off the scale now for both candidates until polling day.
    Yes. It will be MUCH harder. I’m just saying I wouldn’t be surprised if someone tries

    The way the Dems have gone from saying “Trump is worse than Hitler” to “everyone must dial down the rhetoric” is painfully comic. And transparently hypocritical

    Of course, it would have been better if they’d not gone hysterical a year ago. Then they wouldn’t be in this pickle. Likewise, it would have been better if they’d acknowledged Biden’s senility a year ago. But no
    How quickly we forget.

    Donald Trump Says President Biden a Threat to Democracy
    https://www.c-span.org/video/?c5098436/donald-trump-president-biden-threat-democracy-quotes-putin-orban
    There seems to have been a collective amnesia from some who are now painting Trump as the poor victim who has spent the last 8 years promoting peace and unity !

    Just say "it's a shame he missed". It's what you're thinking. I imagine a decent chunk of PB is thinking this. Thousands of American lefties are straight out saying it on TwiX. There's no shame in it if you REALLY think he is as bad as Hitler, because political violence, in that context, is arguably justified
    Remember we are looking at Hitler in hindsight. We know what he, and the regime he led, evolved into.

    There’s the debate in academia about how much Hitler pushed the increasing radicalisation (probably a lot but any paperwork, if there indeed was any authorising the increasing ferocity of the Holocaust, etc, etc is missing, presumably destroyed) and how much it was driven by enthusiastic acolytes ‘working towards the Fuhrer’, as the saying goes, meaning the idea that people in the hierarchy interpreted Hitler’s broad rhetoric and devised ever increasingly radical solutions promoted by his rhetoric and rantings. It seems there was never an overarching plan for the Holocaust - it evolved and radicalised over time and as Germany captured more territory full of Jews in the East, and needed a ‘Final Solution’.

    So what scares me is that the iconography of Trump - the flags and stirring music when he came out of hospital after Covid, for example, is very Leni Riefenstahl. There’s a similar ‘Fuhrerpricip’ - whatever Trump says is inviolate and infallible. There seem to be millions of Americans who would willingly ‘work towards’ Trump, driving increasing radicalisation down the hierarchy.

    That’s what scares me. To my eyes, it all looks similar to 1933 currently, with the potential to evolve and escalate to something much, much worse.
    Do you think there are millions of Americans who would herd 20,000 Jews into a ravine and calmly put a bullet in each and every head? Do you think America under Trump would be expansionist (so presumably invading first Canada and then move south?

    I'd steer clear of the Hitler comparisons. It does no favours. Hitler came to power in a state that lost a world war 15 years before where millions of Germans were seething with fury about the loss. A surrender when German armies where still on foreign soil. That many believed the army had been stabbed in the back.
    An era where political violence was the norm, not the horrific exception.

    People have compared the Jan 6th Riots to the the beer hall putsch. But it was nothing like the same. There was no coherent plan to seize control of the arms of the state, just a bunch of deluded and dangerous idiots.
    A Hitler comparison is OTT but Trump is evil. This is an assessment backed by evidence and reason. I have no doubt about that and no problem saying it.
  • Nunu5Nunu5 Posts: 954

    Definitely moving towards Burgum being veep according to BF.

    I'll be surprised.
    The guy is moderate (well as moderate as you can be in the modern GOP and wins primary). And he's not the type to call a free and fair election rigged just because his candidate lost.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 77,440
    edited July 15

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    SATs should be retained as a means of measuring educational attainment. Free schools and academies offer choice to parents and also should be retained

    The main issue I have with SATS is that they measure how well a kid does in SATS, which is not the same as measuring attainment.

    I can't recall who it was, but I remember reading about someone who became obsessed with IQ tests as a kid, did loads, got very good at them to the point that his school thought he was a genius and moved him into a high flyers programme.
    He wasn't a high flier - he had just learned how to do IQ.
    I worry that the same is true of SATS.
    In terms of Maths and verbal reasoning skills SATs do largely measure attainment
    I teach students across all years at Uni. One of the things we find is that schools prepare them for exams by doing past papers. Lots of past papers. You could imagine its just about learning the question style, but it goes a bit deeper than that. Hence my students constantly want past papers (which we provide one, as an example, only).
    I have no doubt that schools prepare kids for SATS by doing SATS questions and papers and they are thus, doing exactly what I suggest happens.

    We do need an idea of how our kids are getting on. But there are many ways of doing this. Good teachers will know where kids are in their progression. Measurement distorts. It always does.
    Heh. I've written some stuff that produces questions automatically. Sheet upon sheet of lovely maths questions. ;)

    But I think you're right; there's more depth to it than that. It's the same thing people say about IQ tests: training for them, or regularly doing them, distorts the results. You need a deeper understanding of what is going on in a subject than test papers might highlight, and teachers might well see that in a pupil. But it's also hard to reliably get that knowledge down on paper - especially as teachers can be biased, as is natural.
    One of the things we've looked at is randomised exam papers. So you have a bank of questions (sat 3 or4 x the number needed) and every student gets a random selection. We had issues with collusion when we had to switch to online exams in 2020 (covid) and students were completing exams in the same house. we saw this as a potential way round.

    Part of the problem is government and part is parents. Both want to see schools ranked so that little Euphorbia goes to the 'best' one she can. Ultimately I want my son to be happy and well adjusted. I also would prefer that to happen at the nearest school. Fingers crossed...
    Are my circumstances unusual in that I'll have only one primary and one secondary within "catchment" ?
  • LeonLeon Posts: 53,240
    Nunu5 said:

    Essential chart from the new mega report on the general election by
    @Moreincommon_


    The vast majority of people — including Reform voters — said the Tories lost because they were incompetent, not because they were too left or right wing.

    This is what I've been saying.

    Well, I think they were incompetent, and deserved to go. Because they kept saying rightwing things but then doing really leftwing things

    So the "incompetence" judgement might merely be hiding other concerns about their political beliefs. Indeed I am sure it is
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 121,003
    edited July 15
    Nunu5 said:

    Definitely moving towards Burgum being veep according to BF.

    I'll be surprised.
    The guy is moderate (well as moderate as you can be in the modern GOP and wins primary). And he's not the type to call a free and fair election rigged just because his candidate lost.
    He is a moderate on foreign policy and free trade but on abortion Burgum is hardline anti abortion and pro life.

    Burgum signed a total ban on abortion after 6 weeks of pregnancy in North Dakota where he is governor and before 6 weeks only with a rape and incest exemption.

    If he picks Burgum Trump is clearly trying to throw a bone to the evangelical right while getting a competent and experienced governor as VP
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 16,910
    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    nico679 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    In about a week the deranged Democrats will go back to calling Trump “Hitler” - they can’t help themselves. A couple on TwiX are nearly there already

    There’s a reasonable chance, with this rhetoric, that someone will take ANOTHER pot shot at the Donald

    How will a whacko get another chance? Security is going to be presumably off the scale now for both candidates until polling day.
    Yes. It will be MUCH harder. I’m just saying I wouldn’t be surprised if someone tries

    The way the Dems have gone from saying “Trump is worse than Hitler” to “everyone must dial down the rhetoric” is painfully comic. And transparently hypocritical

    Of course, it would have been better if they’d not gone hysterical a year ago. Then they wouldn’t be in this pickle. Likewise, it would have been better if they’d acknowledged Biden’s senility a year ago. But no
    How quickly we forget.

    Donald Trump Says President Biden a Threat to Democracy
    https://www.c-span.org/video/?c5098436/donald-trump-president-biden-threat-democracy-quotes-putin-orban
    There seems to have been a collective amnesia from some who are now painting Trump as the poor victim who has spent the last 8 years promoting peace and unity !

    Just say "it's a shame he missed". It's what you're thinking. I imagine a decent chunk of PB is thinking this. Thousands of American lefties are straight out saying it on TwiX. There's no shame in it if you REALLY think he is as bad as Hitler, because political violence, in that context, is arguably justified
    Remember we are looking at Hitler in hindsight. We know what he, and the regime he led, evolved into.

    There’s the debate in academia about how much Hitler pushed the increasing radicalisation (probably a lot but any paperwork, if there indeed was any authorising the increasing ferocity of the Holocaust, etc, etc is missing, presumably destroyed) and how much it was driven by enthusiastic acolytes ‘working towards the Fuhrer’, as the saying goes, meaning the idea that people in the hierarchy interpreted Hitler’s broad rhetoric and devised ever increasingly radical solutions promoted by his rhetoric and rantings. It seems there was never an overarching plan for the Holocaust - it evolved and radicalised over time and as Germany captured more territory full of Jews in the East, and needed a ‘Final Solution’.

    So what scares me is that the iconography of Trump - the flags and stirring music when he came out of hospital after Covid, for example, is very Leni Riefenstahl. There’s a similar ‘Fuhrerpricip’ - whatever Trump says is inviolate and infallible. There seem to be millions of Americans who would willingly ‘work towards’ Trump, driving increasing radicalisation down the hierarchy.

    That’s what scares me. To my eyes, it all looks similar to 1933 currently, with the potential to evolve and escalate to something much, much worse.
    Do you think there are millions of Americans who would herd 20,000 Jews into a ravine and calmly put a bullet in each and every head? Do you think America under Trump would be expansionist (so presumably invading first Canada and then move south?

    I'd steer clear of the Hitler comparisons. It does no favours. Hitler came to power in a state that lost a world war 15 years before where millions of Germans were seething with fury about the loss. A surrender when German armies where still on foreign soil. That many believed the army had been stabbed in the back.
    An era where political violence was the norm, not the horrific exception.

    People have compared the Jan 6th Riots to the the beer hall putsch. But it was nothing like the same. There was no coherent plan to seize control of the arms of the state, just a bunch of deluded and dangerous idiots.
    A Hitler comparison is OTT but Trump is evil. This is an assessment backed by evidence and reason. I have no doubt about that and no problem saying it.
    I don't think Trump is a very nice person. He's arrogant, a misogynist, a liar, really only cares about himself. I don't think he is evil, at least not in the sense that Hitler was evil.
  • TweedledeeTweedledee Posts: 1,405
    Nunu5 said:

    Essential chart from the new mega report on the general election by
    @Moreincommon_


    The vast majority of people — including Reform voters — said the Tories lost because they were incompetent, not because they were too left or right wing.

    This is what I've been saying.

    The incompetence was driven by right wingery though. Braverman had sunaks balls in a vice as the price of letting him in unopposed. Which was why he had to waste time and money and political capital on carrying on with Rwanda. Shoulda reneged and scrapped Rwanda and launched a housebuilding program
  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 16,544
    Nunu5 said:

    Essential chart from the new mega report on the general election by
    @Moreincommon_


    The vast majority of people — including Reform voters — said the Tories lost because they were incompetent, not because they were too left or right wing.

    This is what I've been saying.

    There is a link though, given the fever running through the Conservatives right now.

    A lot of people on the centre-right and right are looking at the succession process as being about picking someone who is sound, who says the right things, rather than someone who is competent, capable of doing the right things.

    Or anything at all.
  • Nunu5Nunu5 Posts: 954

    Nunu5 said:

    Essential chart from the new mega report on the general election by
    @Moreincommon_


    The vast majority of people — including Reform voters — said the Tories lost because they were incompetent, not because they were too left or right wing.

    This is what I've been saying.

    The incompetence was driven by right wingery though. Braverman had sunaks balls in a vice as the price of letting him in unopposed. Which was why he had to waste time and money and political capital on carrying on with Rwanda. Shoulda reneged and scrapped Rwanda and launched a housebuilding program
    Not necessarily. The Migration Committee for example told them that relaxing the rules around commonwealth countries would lead to a surge in on EU migrants. They had time to fix it but didn't.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 53,240
    Sensible centrist dad Rory Stewart suggests Britain should take 350,000 asylum seekers a year. On top of legal migrants

    Are these people insane? The supposed grown ups are insane

    https://x.com/maxtempers/status/1812762525492027688
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 16,910
    Pulpstar said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    SATs should be retained as a means of measuring educational attainment. Free schools and academies offer choice to parents and also should be retained

    The main issue I have with SATS is that they measure how well a kid does in SATS, which is not the same as measuring attainment.

    I can't recall who it was, but I remember reading about someone who became obsessed with IQ tests as a kid, did loads, got very good at them to the point that his school thought he was a genius and moved him into a high flyers programme.
    He wasn't a high flier - he had just learned how to do IQ.
    I worry that the same is true of SATS.
    In terms of Maths and verbal reasoning skills SATs do largely measure attainment
    I teach students across all years at Uni. One of the things we find is that schools prepare them for exams by doing past papers. Lots of past papers. You could imagine its just about learning the question style, but it goes a bit deeper than that. Hence my students constantly want past papers (which we provide one, as an example, only).
    I have no doubt that schools prepare kids for SATS by doing SATS questions and papers and they are thus, doing exactly what I suggest happens.

    We do need an idea of how our kids are getting on. But there are many ways of doing this. Good teachers will know where kids are in their progression. Measurement distorts. It always does.
    Heh. I've written some stuff that produces questions automatically. Sheet upon sheet of lovely maths questions. ;)

    But I think you're right; there's more depth to it than that. It's the same thing people say about IQ tests: training for them, or regularly doing them, distorts the results. You need a deeper understanding of what is going on in a subject than test papers might highlight, and teachers might well see that in a pupil. But it's also hard to reliably get that knowledge down on paper - especially as teachers can be biased, as is natural.
    One of the things we've looked at is randomised exam papers. So you have a bank of questions (sat 3 or4 x the number needed) and every student gets a random selection. We had issues with collusion when we had to switch to online exams in 2020 (covid) and students were completing exams in the same house. we saw this as a potential way round.

    Part of the problem is government and part is parents. Both want to see schools ranked so that little Euphorbia goes to the 'best' one she can. Ultimately I want my son to be happy and well adjusted. I also would prefer that to happen at the nearest school. Fingers crossed...
    Are my circumstances unusual in that I'll have only one primary and one secondary within "catchment" ?
    Presumably you are rural? I'm in a smallish Wilts town and there is a bit of choice, but ideally one main primary and one mains secondary.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 121,003

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    SATs should be retained as a means of measuring educational attainment. Free schools and academies offer choice to parents and also should be retained

    The main issue I have with SATS is that they measure how well a kid does in SATS, which is not the same as measuring attainment.

    I can't recall who it was, but I remember reading about someone who became obsessed with IQ tests as a kid, did loads, got very good at them to the point that his school thought he was a genius and moved him into a high flyers programme.
    He wasn't a high flier - he had just learned how to do IQ.
    I worry that the same is true of SATS.
    In terms of Maths and verbal reasoning skills SATs do largely measure attainment
    I teach students across all years at Uni. One of the things we find is that schools prepare them for exams by doing past papers. Lots of past papers. You could imagine its just about learning the question style, but it goes a bit deeper than that. Hence my students constantly want past papers (which we provide one, as an example, only).
    I have no doubt that schools prepare kids for SATS by doing SATS questions and papers and they are thus, doing exactly what I suggest happens.

    We do need an idea of how our kids are getting on. But there are many ways of doing this. Good teachers will know where kids are in their progression. Measurement distorts. It always does.
    'Measurement distorts.' 'Exams distort' Why not just let every teacher give every pupil an A grade and be done with it!
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 48,420

    Leon said:

    nico679 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    In about a week the deranged Democrats will go back to calling Trump “Hitler” - they can’t help themselves. A couple on TwiX are nearly there already

    There’s a reasonable chance, with this rhetoric, that someone will take ANOTHER pot shot at the Donald

    How will a whacko get another chance? Security is going to be presumably off the scale now for both candidates until polling day.
    Yes. It will be MUCH harder. I’m just saying I wouldn’t be surprised if someone tries

    The way the Dems have gone from saying “Trump is worse than Hitler” to “everyone must dial down the rhetoric” is painfully comic. And transparently hypocritical

    Of course, it would have been better if they’d not gone hysterical a year ago. Then they wouldn’t be in this pickle. Likewise, it would have been better if they’d acknowledged Biden’s senility a year ago. But no
    How quickly we forget.

    Donald Trump Says President Biden a Threat to Democracy
    https://www.c-span.org/video/?c5098436/donald-trump-president-biden-threat-democracy-quotes-putin-orban
    There seems to have been a collective amnesia from some who are now painting Trump as the poor victim who has spent the last 8 years promoting peace and unity !

    Just say "it's a shame he missed". It's what you're thinking. I imagine a decent chunk of PB is thinking this. Thousands of American lefties are straight out saying it on TwiX. There's no shame in it if you REALLY think he is as bad as Hitler, because political violence, in that context, is arguably justified
    Remember we are looking at Hitler in hindsight. We know what he, and the regime he led, evolved into.

    There’s the debate in academia about how much Hitler pushed the increasing radicalisation (probably a lot but any paperwork, if there indeed was any authorising the increasing ferocity of the Holocaust, etc, etc is missing, presumably destroyed) and how much it was driven by enthusiastic acolytes ‘working towards the Fuhrer’, as the saying goes, meaning the idea that people in the hierarchy interpreted Hitler’s broad rhetoric and devised ever increasingly radical solutions promoted by his rhetoric and rantings. It seems there was never an overarching plan for the Holocaust - it evolved and radicalised over time and as Germany captured more territory full of Jews in the East, and needed a ‘Final Solution’.

    So what scares me is that the iconography of Trump - the flags and stirring music when he came out of hospital after Covid, for example, is very Leni Riefenstahl. There’s a similar ‘Fuhrerpricip’ - whatever Trump says is inviolate and infallible. There seem to be millions of Americans who would willingly ‘work towards’ Trump, driving increasing radicalisation down the hierarchy.

    That’s what scares me. To my eyes, it all looks similar to 1933 currently, with the potential to evolve and escalate to something much, much worse.
    I thought that “working towards the Fuhrer” was explicitly part of the Nazi ideology?

    Hitler was overtly in favour of incrementalism - take what you can now, then push for more. It was one of his big differences with the Stasserites, who wanted instant revolution. Rather than steadily Nazifying existing institutions over time.
    You could well be right, I'm remembering it in the context of academic debate but now you've said that I think it was explicit. The Strasserites wanted more - but IIRC with more emphasis on the socialist part of National Socialism? - and Rohm and parts of the SA leadership were also pushing for more, so they were eliminated.

    And there's also the thing whereby Hitler gave the same or very similar tasks to different people, to encourage that rivalry and competition so a winner, with the strongest will, would emerge victorious.
    Hitler explicitly followed the idea of rivalry and stated that it was a form of Social Darwinism.

    Rohm & Co. were different from the Strasserites, though they shared some goals and ideas. Rohm’s big thing was replacing/absorbing the German Army with the SA, as a prelude to a revolutionary, instant takeover of German institutions.

    Hitler saw this as a threat to himself and allied with the Army to put down the SA and Rohm. Hitler seems to have regarded the Army favourably - as an institution. The military men who then backed him didn’t realise that this affection didn’t extend to the Generals themselves. Unless they were very enthusiastic Nazis…
  • Nunu5Nunu5 Posts: 954
    HYUFD said:

    Nunu5 said:

    Definitely moving towards Burgum being veep according to BF.

    I'll be surprised.
    The guy is moderate (well as moderate as you can be in the modern GOP and wins primary). And he's not the type to call a free and fair election rigged just because his candidate lost.
    He is a moderate on foreign policy and free trade but on abortion Burgum is hardline anti abortion and pro life
    It's relative. But in terms of the GOP caucus he is one of the ones who would probably say "yeah we lost the election we can't just overturn it". And seemingly Trump wants utter loyalty unlike Pence who dared to follow the laws and didn't call for a overturning of the results.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 121,003
    edited July 15
    Nunu5 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Nunu5 said:

    Definitely moving towards Burgum being veep according to BF.

    I'll be surprised.
    The guy is moderate (well as moderate as you can be in the modern GOP and wins primary). And he's not the type to call a free and fair election rigged just because his candidate lost.
    He is a moderate on foreign policy and free trade but on abortion Burgum is hardline anti abortion and pro life
    It's relative. But in terms of the GOP caucus he is one of the ones who would probably say "yeah we lost the election we can't just overturn it". And seemingly Trump wants utter loyalty unlike Pence who dared to follow the laws and didn't call for a overturning of the results.
    Yes but this time it won't be an issue as much as Harris is VP and will call out who won the EC, whereas in 2020 it was Pence VP who did it
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 121,003

    Nunu5 said:

    Essential chart from the new mega report on the general election by
    @Moreincommon_


    The vast majority of people — including Reform voters — said the Tories lost because they were incompetent, not because they were too left or right wing.

    This is what I've been saying.

    There is a link though, given the fever running through the Conservatives right now.

    A lot of people on the centre-right and right are looking at the succession process as being about picking someone who is sound, who says the right things, rather than someone who is competent, capable of doing the right things.

    Or anything at all.
    In opposition competence doesn't matter so much if the government is incompetent, getting your core vote out and then reaching out to swing voters is
  • Nunu5Nunu5 Posts: 954
    Leon said:

    Sensible centrist dad Rory Stewart suggests Britain should take 350,000 asylum seekers a year. On top of legal migrants

    Are these people insane? The supposed grown ups are insane

    https://x.com/maxtempers/status/1812762525492027688

    To contend with the rise of populism. Lol.

    That would mean a Farage government!

    Or he is saying something much more sinister: he wants to change the demographics of the country so much over tim that it is unrecognisable and is unable to vote for as he sees it populists.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 16,910
    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    SATs should be retained as a means of measuring educational attainment. Free schools and academies offer choice to parents and also should be retained

    The main issue I have with SATS is that they measure how well a kid does in SATS, which is not the same as measuring attainment.

    I can't recall who it was, but I remember reading about someone who became obsessed with IQ tests as a kid, did loads, got very good at them to the point that his school thought he was a genius and moved him into a high flyers programme.
    He wasn't a high flier - he had just learned how to do IQ.
    I worry that the same is true of SATS.
    In terms of Maths and verbal reasoning skills SATs do largely measure attainment
    I teach students across all years at Uni. One of the things we find is that schools prepare them for exams by doing past papers. Lots of past papers. You could imagine its just about learning the question style, but it goes a bit deeper than that. Hence my students constantly want past papers (which we provide one, as an example, only).
    I have no doubt that schools prepare kids for SATS by doing SATS questions and papers and they are thus, doing exactly what I suggest happens.

    We do need an idea of how our kids are getting on. But there are many ways of doing this. Good teachers will know where kids are in their progression. Measurement distorts. It always does.
    'Measurement distorts.' 'Exams distort' Why not just let every teacher give every pupil an A grade and be done with it!
    Nowhere have I suggested giving all students A grades. We kind of had that in 2020 when covid hit, no exams were sat and teachers provided marks (sadly all too often a grade or too on the high side). We are still dealing with students admitted to Uni with grades that are not a reflection of their ability.

    But a teacher will have set work over a year or more and seen the ability of all the kids. They will have a good idea of where they sit.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 42,507
    edited July 15

    TOPPING said:

    Despite what The Guardian and some of the lefty loons on here might say I really don't think it is sensible or relevant to make comparisons between Trump and Hitler.

    The bigger question is whether this advances the gun control debate one way or another.

    The question is whether 1933 Topping would have said the same about that Mr Hitler

    Gun control wise wont make a scrap of difference any more than Trump surviving a car crash would affect driving laws
    You have a lot less faith in the US democratic process than is warranted.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 48,420
    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    SATs should be retained as a means of measuring educational attainment. Free schools and academies offer choice to parents and also should be retained

    The main issue I have with SATS is that they measure how well a kid does in SATS, which is not the same as measuring attainment.

    I can't recall who it was, but I remember reading about someone who became obsessed with IQ tests as a kid, did loads, got very good at them to the point that his school thought he was a genius and moved him into a high flyers programme.
    He wasn't a high flier - he had just learned how to do IQ.
    I worry that the same is true of SATS.
    In terms of Maths and verbal reasoning skills SATs do largely measure attainment
    I teach students across all years at Uni. One of the things we find is that schools prepare them for exams by doing past papers. Lots of past papers. You could imagine its just about learning the question style, but it goes a bit deeper than that. Hence my students constantly want past papers (which we provide one, as an example, only).
    I have no doubt that schools prepare kids for SATS by doing SATS questions and papers and they are thus, doing exactly what I suggest happens.

    We do need an idea of how our kids are getting on. But there are many ways of doing this. Good teachers will know where kids are in their progression. Measurement distorts. It always does.
    'Measurement distorts.' 'Exams distort' Why not just let every teacher give every pupil an A grade and be done with it!
    Measurement distorts in social situations. Realising this happens is important for understanding what is actually happening - removing the bias in the data.

    Past papers work - among other things, the questions are nearly always recycled, though modified. I can still recall that in my A level maths exams, all the questions were ones whose.., cousins? I had done in my revision. So fire up the same methods to solve them.

    The same happened with my university exams. In fact, I remember going back in the spare time I had left at the end of one exam to recheck 2 answers. Because the questions and answers were identical to ones in past papers. I was worried that I hadn’t seen some small change….
  • LeonLeon Posts: 53,240
    Nunu5 said:

    Leon said:

    Sensible centrist dad Rory Stewart suggests Britain should take 350,000 asylum seekers a year. On top of legal migrants

    Are these people insane? The supposed grown ups are insane

    https://x.com/maxtempers/status/1812762525492027688

    To contend with the rise of populism. Lol.

    That would mean a Farage government!

    Or he is saying something much more sinister: he wants to change the demographics of the country so much over tim that it is unrecognisable and is unable to vote for as he sees it populists.
    It's the ideology of cranks, and it is incredibly dangerous. It would definitely mean PM Farage, or something much much worse

    Someone needs to write a book about how the supposed sensible centre of politics became this crazy and unmoored from reality
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 77,440
    Burgum at 900-1 for the presidency, Hillary Clinton at 140-1 is an interesting juxtaposition !
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 16,910

    Leon said:

    nico679 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    In about a week the deranged Democrats will go back to calling Trump “Hitler” - they can’t help themselves. A couple on TwiX are nearly there already

    There’s a reasonable chance, with this rhetoric, that someone will take ANOTHER pot shot at the Donald

    How will a whacko get another chance? Security is going to be presumably off the scale now for both candidates until polling day.
    Yes. It will be MUCH harder. I’m just saying I wouldn’t be surprised if someone tries

    The way the Dems have gone from saying “Trump is worse than Hitler” to “everyone must dial down the rhetoric” is painfully comic. And transparently hypocritical

    Of course, it would have been better if they’d not gone hysterical a year ago. Then they wouldn’t be in this pickle. Likewise, it would have been better if they’d acknowledged Biden’s senility a year ago. But no
    How quickly we forget.

    Donald Trump Says President Biden a Threat to Democracy
    https://www.c-span.org/video/?c5098436/donald-trump-president-biden-threat-democracy-quotes-putin-orban
    There seems to have been a collective amnesia from some who are now painting Trump as the poor victim who has spent the last 8 years promoting peace and unity !

    Just say "it's a shame he missed". It's what you're thinking. I imagine a decent chunk of PB is thinking this. Thousands of American lefties are straight out saying it on TwiX. There's no shame in it if you REALLY think he is as bad as Hitler, because political violence, in that context, is arguably justified
    Remember we are looking at Hitler in hindsight. We know what he, and the regime he led, evolved into.

    There’s the debate in academia about how much Hitler pushed the increasing radicalisation (probably a lot but any paperwork, if there indeed was any authorising the increasing ferocity of the Holocaust, etc, etc is missing, presumably destroyed) and how much it was driven by enthusiastic acolytes ‘working towards the Fuhrer’, as the saying goes, meaning the idea that people in the hierarchy interpreted Hitler’s broad rhetoric and devised ever increasingly radical solutions promoted by his rhetoric and rantings. It seems there was never an overarching plan for the Holocaust - it evolved and radicalised over time and as Germany captured more territory full of Jews in the East, and needed a ‘Final Solution’.

    So what scares me is that the iconography of Trump - the flags and stirring music when he came out of hospital after Covid, for example, is very Leni Riefenstahl. There’s a similar ‘Fuhrerpricip’ - whatever Trump says is inviolate and infallible. There seem to be millions of Americans who would willingly ‘work towards’ Trump, driving increasing radicalisation down the hierarchy.

    That’s what scares me. To my eyes, it all looks similar to 1933 currently, with the potential to evolve and escalate to something much, much worse.
    I thought that “working towards the Fuhrer” was explicitly part of the Nazi ideology?

    Hitler was overtly in favour of incrementalism - take what you can now, then push for more. It was one of his big differences with the Stasserites, who wanted instant revolution. Rather than steadily Nazifying existing institutions over time.
    You could well be right, I'm remembering it in the context of academic debate but now you've said that I think it was explicit. The Strasserites wanted more - but IIRC with more emphasis on the socialist part of National Socialism? - and Rohm and parts of the SA leadership were also pushing for more, so they were eliminated.

    And there's also the thing whereby Hitler gave the same or very similar tasks to different people, to encourage that rivalry and competition so a winner, with the strongest will, would emerge victorious.
    Hitler explicitly followed the idea of rivalry and stated that it was a form of Social Darwinism.

    Rohm & Co. were different from the Strasserites, though they shared some goals and ideas. Rohm’s big thing was replacing/absorbing the German Army with the SA, as a prelude to a revolutionary, instant takeover of German institutions.

    Hitler saw this as a threat to himself and allied with the Army to put down the SA and Rohm. Hitler seems to have regarded the Army favourably - as an institution. The military men who then backed him didn’t realise that this affection didn’t extend to the Generals themselves. Unless they were very enthusiastic Nazis…
    This is true, but Hitler, unlike Stalin, was never personally vindictive to his sacked generals. They tended to be pensioned off, and frequently made a return. Fail for Stalin and its a bullet. Fail for Hitler and its a pension and a house in the country.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 77,440
    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    Despite what The Guardian and some of the lefty loons on here might say I really don't think it is sensible or relevant to make comparisons between Trump and Hitler.

    The bigger question is whether this advances the gun control debate one way or another.

    The question is whether 1933 Topping would have said the same about that Mr Hitler

    Gun control wise wont make a scrap of difference any more than Trump surviving a car crash would affect driving laws
    You have a lot less faith in the US democratic process than is warranted.
    Nah I think Tweedledee is right, this won't make a scrap of difference to US gun control laws if Trump wins.
  • Nunu5Nunu5 Posts: 954
    Leon said:

    Nunu5 said:

    Leon said:

    Sensible centrist dad Rory Stewart suggests Britain should take 350,000 asylum seekers a year. On top of legal migrants

    Are these people insane? The supposed grown ups are insane

    https://x.com/maxtempers/status/1812762525492027688

    To contend with the rise of populism. Lol.

    That would mean a Farage government!

    Or he is saying something much more sinister: he wants to change the demographics of the country so much over tim that it is unrecognisable and is unable to vote for as he sees it populists.
    It's the ideology of cranks, and it is incredibly dangerous. It would definitely mean PM Farage, or something much much worse

    Someone needs to write a book about how the supposed sensible centre of politics became this crazy and unmoored from reality
    He's getting eerily close to admitting to a "great replacement" conspiracy.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 16,910

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    SATs should be retained as a means of measuring educational attainment. Free schools and academies offer choice to parents and also should be retained

    The main issue I have with SATS is that they measure how well a kid does in SATS, which is not the same as measuring attainment.

    I can't recall who it was, but I remember reading about someone who became obsessed with IQ tests as a kid, did loads, got very good at them to the point that his school thought he was a genius and moved him into a high flyers programme.
    He wasn't a high flier - he had just learned how to do IQ.
    I worry that the same is true of SATS.
    In terms of Maths and verbal reasoning skills SATs do largely measure attainment
    I teach students across all years at Uni. One of the things we find is that schools prepare them for exams by doing past papers. Lots of past papers. You could imagine its just about learning the question style, but it goes a bit deeper than that. Hence my students constantly want past papers (which we provide one, as an example, only).
    I have no doubt that schools prepare kids for SATS by doing SATS questions and papers and they are thus, doing exactly what I suggest happens.

    We do need an idea of how our kids are getting on. But there are many ways of doing this. Good teachers will know where kids are in their progression. Measurement distorts. It always does.
    'Measurement distorts.' 'Exams distort' Why not just let every teacher give every pupil an A grade and be done with it!
    Measurement distorts in social situations. Realising this happens is important for understanding what is actually happening - removing the bias in the data.

    Past papers work - among other things, the questions are nearly always recycled, though modified. I can still recall that in my A level maths exams, all the questions were ones whose.., cousins? I had done in my revision. So fire up the same methods to solve them.

    The same happened with my university exams. In fact, I remember going back in the spare time I had left at the end of one exam to recheck 2 answers. Because the questions and answers were identical to ones in past papers. I was worried that I hadn’t seen some small change….
    As someone who sets Uni exams, we try very hard not to set the same questions again, but as an example, in one of my units I give four lectures on how small molecule cancer drugs work in a chemical sense. Its really hard to keep generating fresh questions about this, as really each lecture has 1-2 good questions in it.

    No question that doing past papers works, which is why the schools do it. It aggravates my students no-end that we only give them one example paper (to see the style of questions). We do this because if we gave more we would run into the repeat questions issues...
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 68,757
    Leon said:

    Sandpit said:

    Leon said:

    Pulpstar said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    In about a week the deranged Democrats will go back to calling Trump “Hitler” - they can’t help themselves. A couple on TwiX are nearly there already

    There’s a reasonable chance, with this rhetoric, that someone will take ANOTHER pot shot at the Donald

    How will a whacko get another chance? Security is going to be presumably off the scale now for both candidates until polling day.
    Yes. It will be MUCH harder. I’m just saying I wouldn’t be surprised if someone tries

    The way the Dems have gone from saying “Trump is worse than Hitler” to “everyone must dial down the rhetoric” is painfully comic. And transparently hypocritical

    Of course, it would have been better if they’d not gone hysterical a year ago. Then they wouldn’t be in this pickle. Likewise, it would have been better if they’d acknowledged Biden’s senility a year ago. But no
    How quickly we forget.

    Donald Trump Says President Biden a Threat to Democracy
    https://www.c-span.org/video/?c5098436/donald-trump-president-biden-threat-democracy-quotes-putin-orban
    You could also stop spreading disinformation. The "69 year old alternative Thomas Crooks who apparently made the donation to the Dems" was a load of bull. It was the shooter who made the donation. Read the New York Times, they're doing the most in-depth stuff


    "Investigators were scouring his online presence and working to gain access to his phone, but so far had not found indications of strongly held political beliefs. In fact, the clues he left behind were confusing: He was a registered Republican but had also donated to a progressive cause in 2021; his parents were registered as a Democrat and Libertarian."

    https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/14/us/politics/trump-gunman-thomas-crooks.html
    He registered republican specifically to vote for Nikki Hayley against Trump. I do not think he was a "genuine republican".
    IIUC the idea that he registered Republican to vote for Nicki Haley doesn't work because:

    1. He registered in 2021, before he knew that Trump or Haley was running
    2. He didn't vote in the primaries
    He apparently made the donation to the Dem cause after J6, which sounds quite anti-Trumpy

    But it's not much. He really DOESN'T seem to be especially political, unless he has some incredibly well-hidden online life

    I'm going to start a conspiracy theory, sorry, connytheers, all of my own, that takes into account what we know

    Here's my insane connytheer

    It's the Ukrainians

    They want Trump gone for very very obvious reasons. There are plenty of Ukrainians in America, some of them quite rich, I imagine. There is also a significant Ukrainian presence in Pennsylvania

    https://www.ukrhomestead.com/

    https://pennlivearts.org/event/ukrainiancommunityday

    The can't do it themselves, obs, so they find come cleanskin who likes guns, and who hates Trump - convinced he really is Hitler. Crooks is recruited. They also have some sympathetic local cops who agree to "not notice" the ladder and "not check" the roof. Because this is outside the official perimeter the Seekyservs don't surveil this, the cops do (or don't)

    Crooks is allowed to set his ladder, climb on the roof, the cops strenuously ignore it all and the Seekyservs are inept and useless at first (look at the vids, they are). Crooks has been falsely told that he will be allowed to escape, but of course the cops can't control the Seekyservs, who slot Crooks in a trice

    I think this is a pretty good theory, and I recommend it to the House

    Don’t be even more of a fuckwit than usual. The Ukranians have more than enough of their own problems right now.
    Er, what? We're not allowed to speculate on who tried to kill Trump, and why? Because of some rules about taste? This is PB, we speculate

    If you have a better theory that explains all the many curious anomalies in this instance, do tell us. I am happy to be persuaded. I won't, however, be told to shut up just because something makes you uncomfortable. There is no law - of the land, or on PB, that I know of - which says you cannot hypothesise around political events. Indeed, this is basically what the site is about. You hypothesise, and from that you can make predictions about the future, and thereby make bets
    Er, what ?
    So we're not allowed to call you a fuckwit ?
  • LeonLeon Posts: 53,240
    edited July 15
    Nunu5 said:

    Leon said:

    Nunu5 said:

    Leon said:

    Sensible centrist dad Rory Stewart suggests Britain should take 350,000 asylum seekers a year. On top of legal migrants

    Are these people insane? The supposed grown ups are insane

    https://x.com/maxtempers/status/1812762525492027688

    To contend with the rise of populism. Lol.

    That would mean a Farage government!

    Or he is saying something much more sinister: he wants to change the demographics of the country so much over tim that it is unrecognisable and is unable to vote for as he sees it populists.
    It's the ideology of cranks, and it is incredibly dangerous. It would definitely mean PM Farage, or something much much worse

    Someone needs to write a book about how the supposed sensible centre of politics became this crazy and unmoored from reality
    He's getting eerily close to admitting to a "great replacement" conspiracy.
    It's really quite depressing

    This is also the same Rory Stewart who reacted with amazement at the fact 2.4m migrants arrived in the last 3 years. Like it was some enormous and shocking surprise. And he's meant to be expert at politics???? Had he not noticed this before? I am increasingly convinced he's an overrated idiot
  • kyf_100kyf_100 Posts: 4,689
    Leon said:

    Sensible centrist dad Rory Stewart suggests Britain should take 350,000 asylum seekers a year. On top of legal migrants

    Are these people insane? The supposed grown ups are insane

    https://x.com/maxtempers/status/1812762525492027688

    That's nearly twice the number of average number houses built in the UK per year over the last decade...
  • TweedledeeTweedledee Posts: 1,405
    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    Despite what The Guardian and some of the lefty loons on here might say I really don't think it is sensible or relevant to make comparisons between Trump and Hitler.

    The bigger question is whether this advances the gun control debate one way or another.

    The question is whether 1933 Topping would have said the same about that Mr Hitler

    Gun control wise wont make a scrap of difference any more than Trump surviving a car crash would affect driving laws
    You have a lot less faith in the US democratic process than is warranted.
    It's even money that trump expressly says in the next 48 hours that gun laws are fine as they are. After hundreds of school shootings who is going to care about an orange man's earlobe?

    On a recent 5 day trip to the states I shot a Glock, a .32 sns and a 308 carbine (not on a gun-specific expedition). Guns are just an immutable fact of life there.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 21,869
    theProle said:

    .

    Nigelb said:

    Nigelb said:

    Nigelb said:

    DuraAce, FPT, misses a point.

    ...The character of the weapon isn't really germane because there are plenty of other less scary rifles that will kill somebody if you shoot them in the head at 120m...

    If, as Democrats have long campaigned for, automatic weapons like the AR15 were banned, the shooter would likely have gotten off maybe a couple of shots, rather than half a dozen.

    I don’t think that the Democrats, as a party, have argued for the banning on semi-automatic weapons as a class. Or even long barrelled semi-automatic weapons. Those are the things that might make a difference.

    Full auto weapons are regulated, already, to an almost sensible level.

    What they have argued for, is a ban on “assault weapons”. Which is a bit futile, since the same barrel and action can be packaged in a nice, safe looking wood.

    Regulating firearms by what they look like is silly. It’s what they do that is the issue.
    It's a pretty wide category as defined in their legislation.
    https://www.legis.state.pa.us/CFDOCS/Legis/PN/Public/btCheck.cfm?txtType=PDF&sessYr=2023&sessInd=0&billBody=S&billTyp=B&billNbr=0200&pn=0723
    That legislation wouldn’t stop the sale of an AR-15 action, dressed up in some nice wood.

    Confronting the actual problem is politically too expensive in the US. Hence stuff like legislation against bayonet lugs…
    Had it been able to be passed, the weapon in question could nt have been sold, or would have been confiscated.
    As it stands, the SC will strike down any such legislation anyway.
    Isn't the real issue that the best gun control can possibly do is restrict the further sale of guns?

    Trying to get literally millions of guns, out of the hands of hundreds of thousands of people who don't want to give them up, is a total non-starter - more people would die in the resultant civil war than have been shot since the USA formed.
    Are you sure on that last stat (being a touch provocative)?

    Usonians have killed around 1.25 million people with their guns since just 1990.
    https://www.statista.com/statistics/258913/number-of-firearm-deaths-in-the-united-states/
  • LeonLeon Posts: 53,240
    kyf_100 said:

    Leon said:

    Sensible centrist dad Rory Stewart suggests Britain should take 350,000 asylum seekers a year. On top of legal migrants

    Are these people insane? The supposed grown ups are insane

    https://x.com/maxtempers/status/1812762525492027688

    That's nearly twice the number of average number houses built in the UK per year over the last decade...
    Yes, and remember, this is just asylum seekers. So we'd have normal migration on top of that, which is at present around 600-700,000. So clever old Rory is suggesting we take 1m people a year, in eight years a city the size of LONDON
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 48,420
    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Sandpit said:

    Leon said:

    Pulpstar said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    In about a week the deranged Democrats will go back to calling Trump “Hitler” - they can’t help themselves. A couple on TwiX are nearly there already

    There’s a reasonable chance, with this rhetoric, that someone will take ANOTHER pot shot at the Donald

    How will a whacko get another chance? Security is going to be presumably off the scale now for both candidates until polling day.
    Yes. It will be MUCH harder. I’m just saying I wouldn’t be surprised if someone tries

    The way the Dems have gone from saying “Trump is worse than Hitler” to “everyone must dial down the rhetoric” is painfully comic. And transparently hypocritical

    Of course, it would have been better if they’d not gone hysterical a year ago. Then they wouldn’t be in this pickle. Likewise, it would have been better if they’d acknowledged Biden’s senility a year ago. But no
    How quickly we forget.

    Donald Trump Says President Biden a Threat to Democracy
    https://www.c-span.org/video/?c5098436/donald-trump-president-biden-threat-democracy-quotes-putin-orban
    You could also stop spreading disinformation. The "69 year old alternative Thomas Crooks who apparently made the donation to the Dems" was a load of bull. It was the shooter who made the donation. Read the New York Times, they're doing the most in-depth stuff


    "Investigators were scouring his online presence and working to gain access to his phone, but so far had not found indications of strongly held political beliefs. In fact, the clues he left behind were confusing: He was a registered Republican but had also donated to a progressive cause in 2021; his parents were registered as a Democrat and Libertarian."

    https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/14/us/politics/trump-gunman-thomas-crooks.html
    He registered republican specifically to vote for Nikki Hayley against Trump. I do not think he was a "genuine republican".
    IIUC the idea that he registered Republican to vote for Nicki Haley doesn't work because:

    1. He registered in 2021, before he knew that Trump or Haley was running
    2. He didn't vote in the primaries
    He apparently made the donation to the Dem cause after J6, which sounds quite anti-Trumpy

    But it's not much. He really DOESN'T seem to be especially political, unless he has some incredibly well-hidden online life

    I'm going to start a conspiracy theory, sorry, connytheers, all of my own, that takes into account what we know

    Here's my insane connytheer

    It's the Ukrainians

    They want Trump gone for very very obvious reasons. There are plenty of Ukrainians in America, some of them quite rich, I imagine. There is also a significant Ukrainian presence in Pennsylvania

    https://www.ukrhomestead.com/

    https://pennlivearts.org/event/ukrainiancommunityday

    The can't do it themselves, obs, so they find come cleanskin who likes guns, and who hates Trump - convinced he really is Hitler. Crooks is recruited. They also have some sympathetic local cops who agree to "not notice" the ladder and "not check" the roof. Because this is outside the official perimeter the Seekyservs don't surveil this, the cops do (or don't)

    Crooks is allowed to set his ladder, climb on the roof, the cops strenuously ignore it all and the Seekyservs are inept and useless at first (look at the vids, they are). Crooks has been falsely told that he will be allowed to escape, but of course the cops can't control the Seekyservs, who slot Crooks in a trice

    I think this is a pretty good theory, and I recommend it to the House

    Don’t be even more of a fuckwit than usual. The Ukranians have more than enough of their own problems right now.
    Er, what? We're not allowed to speculate on who tried to kill Trump, and why? Because of some rules about taste? This is PB, we speculate

    If you have a better theory that explains all the many curious anomalies in this instance, do tell us. I am happy to be persuaded. I won't, however, be told to shut up just because something makes you uncomfortable. There is no law - of the land, or on PB, that I know of - which says you cannot hypothesise around political events. Indeed, this is basically what the site is about. You hypothesise, and from that you can make predictions about the future, and thereby make bets
    Er, what ?
    So we're not allowed to call you a fuckwit ?
    My theory on the Trump shooting.

    Such an incompetent plan, using an unskilled shooter was only something that a drunk B-list thriller writer would have come up with.

    Yes, it was @SeanT
  • LeonLeon Posts: 53,240
    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Sandpit said:

    Leon said:

    Pulpstar said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    In about a week the deranged Democrats will go back to calling Trump “Hitler” - they can’t help themselves. A couple on TwiX are nearly there already

    There’s a reasonable chance, with this rhetoric, that someone will take ANOTHER pot shot at the Donald

    How will a whacko get another chance? Security is going to be presumably off the scale now for both candidates until polling day.
    Yes. It will be MUCH harder. I’m just saying I wouldn’t be surprised if someone tries

    The way the Dems have gone from saying “Trump is worse than Hitler” to “everyone must dial down the rhetoric” is painfully comic. And transparently hypocritical

    Of course, it would have been better if they’d not gone hysterical a year ago. Then they wouldn’t be in this pickle. Likewise, it would have been better if they’d acknowledged Biden’s senility a year ago. But no
    How quickly we forget.

    Donald Trump Says President Biden a Threat to Democracy
    https://www.c-span.org/video/?c5098436/donald-trump-president-biden-threat-democracy-quotes-putin-orban
    You could also stop spreading disinformation. The "69 year old alternative Thomas Crooks who apparently made the donation to the Dems" was a load of bull. It was the shooter who made the donation. Read the New York Times, they're doing the most in-depth stuff


    "Investigators were scouring his online presence and working to gain access to his phone, but so far had not found indications of strongly held political beliefs. In fact, the clues he left behind were confusing: He was a registered Republican but had also donated to a progressive cause in 2021; his parents were registered as a Democrat and Libertarian."

    https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/14/us/politics/trump-gunman-thomas-crooks.html
    He registered republican specifically to vote for Nikki Hayley against Trump. I do not think he was a "genuine republican".
    IIUC the idea that he registered Republican to vote for Nicki Haley doesn't work because:

    1. He registered in 2021, before he knew that Trump or Haley was running
    2. He didn't vote in the primaries
    He apparently made the donation to the Dem cause after J6, which sounds quite anti-Trumpy

    But it's not much. He really DOESN'T seem to be especially political, unless he has some incredibly well-hidden online life

    I'm going to start a conspiracy theory, sorry, connytheers, all of my own, that takes into account what we know

    Here's my insane connytheer

    It's the Ukrainians

    They want Trump gone for very very obvious reasons. There are plenty of Ukrainians in America, some of them quite rich, I imagine. There is also a significant Ukrainian presence in Pennsylvania

    https://www.ukrhomestead.com/

    https://pennlivearts.org/event/ukrainiancommunityday

    The can't do it themselves, obs, so they find come cleanskin who likes guns, and who hates Trump - convinced he really is Hitler. Crooks is recruited. They also have some sympathetic local cops who agree to "not notice" the ladder and "not check" the roof. Because this is outside the official perimeter the Seekyservs don't surveil this, the cops do (or don't)

    Crooks is allowed to set his ladder, climb on the roof, the cops strenuously ignore it all and the Seekyservs are inept and useless at first (look at the vids, they are). Crooks has been falsely told that he will be allowed to escape, but of course the cops can't control the Seekyservs, who slot Crooks in a trice

    I think this is a pretty good theory, and I recommend it to the House

    Don’t be even more of a fuckwit than usual. The Ukranians have more than enough of their own problems right now.
    Er, what? We're not allowed to speculate on who tried to kill Trump, and why? Because of some rules about taste? This is PB, we speculate

    If you have a better theory that explains all the many curious anomalies in this instance, do tell us. I am happy to be persuaded. I won't, however, be told to shut up just because something makes you uncomfortable. There is no law - of the land, or on PB, that I know of - which says you cannot hypothesise around political events. Indeed, this is basically what the site is about. You hypothesise, and from that you can make predictions about the future, and thereby make bets
    Er, what ?
    So we're not allowed to call you a fuckwit ?
    You are absolutely allowed to call me a fuckwit, not least because - quite often - I am a fuckwit. As are most people, including you
  • viewcodeviewcode Posts: 21,057
    Nunu5 said:

    Essential chart from the new mega report on the general election by
    @Moreincommon_


    The vast majority of people — including Reform voters — said the Tories lost because they were incompetent, not because they were too left or right wing.

    This is what I've been saying.

    Do you know what would be really good here? A link :)
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 68,757
    TOPPING said:

    Despite what The Guardian and some of the lefty loons on here might say I really don't think it is sensible or relevant to make comparisons between Trump and Hitler.

    The bigger question is whether this advances the gun control debate one way or another.

    Bit harsh calling Leon a lefty loon.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 121,003
    Leon said:

    kyf_100 said:

    Leon said:

    Sensible centrist dad Rory Stewart suggests Britain should take 350,000 asylum seekers a year. On top of legal migrants

    Are these people insane? The supposed grown ups are insane

    https://x.com/maxtempers/status/1812762525492027688

    That's nearly twice the number of average number houses built in the UK per year over the last decade...
    Yes, and remember, this is just asylum seekers. So we'd have normal migration on top of that, which is at present around 600-700,000. So clever old Rory is suggesting we take 1m people a year, in eight years a city the size of LONDON
    The only reason Rory was ever in the Tories was because he was too posh to be Labour. Ideologically he is a LD or even a Green, indeed he said before the GE he would likely vote LD or Green

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jun/23/rory-stewart-rest-is-politics-on-the-edge
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 48,420

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    SATs should be retained as a means of measuring educational attainment. Free schools and academies offer choice to parents and also should be retained

    The main issue I have with SATS is that they measure how well a kid does in SATS, which is not the same as measuring attainment.

    I can't recall who it was, but I remember reading about someone who became obsessed with IQ tests as a kid, did loads, got very good at them to the point that his school thought he was a genius and moved him into a high flyers programme.
    He wasn't a high flier - he had just learned how to do IQ.
    I worry that the same is true of SATS.
    In terms of Maths and verbal reasoning skills SATs do largely measure attainment
    I teach students across all years at Uni. One of the things we find is that schools prepare them for exams by doing past papers. Lots of past papers. You could imagine its just about learning the question style, but it goes a bit deeper than that. Hence my students constantly want past papers (which we provide one, as an example, only).
    I have no doubt that schools prepare kids for SATS by doing SATS questions and papers and they are thus, doing exactly what I suggest happens.

    We do need an idea of how our kids are getting on. But there are many ways of doing this. Good teachers will know where kids are in their progression. Measurement distorts. It always does.
    'Measurement distorts.' 'Exams distort' Why not just let every teacher give every pupil an A grade and be done with it!
    Measurement distorts in social situations. Realising this happens is important for understanding what is actually happening - removing the bias in the data.

    Past papers work - among other things, the questions are nearly always recycled, though modified. I can still recall that in my A level maths exams, all the questions were ones whose.., cousins? I had done in my revision. So fire up the same methods to solve them.

    The same happened with my university exams. In fact, I remember going back in the spare time I had left at the end of one exam to recheck 2 answers. Because the questions and answers were identical to ones in past papers. I was worried that I hadn’t seen some small change….
    As someone who sets Uni exams, we try very hard not to set the same questions again, but as an example, in one of my units I give four lectures on how small molecule cancer drugs work in a chemical sense. Its really hard to keep generating fresh questions about this, as really each lecture has 1-2 good questions in it.

    No question that doing past papers works, which is why the schools do it. It aggravates my students no-end that we only give them one example paper (to see the style of questions). We do this because if we gave more we would run into the repeat questions issues...
    “Well, I suppose there is nothing for it but to change the plans,” said Sir Walter ruefully.
    …,.,
    “No? Well, I can’t speak with absolute assurance, but I’m nearly certain we can’t make any serious change unless we alter the geography of England.”
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 68,757
    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    SATs should be retained as a means of measuring educational attainment. Free schools and academies offer choice to parents and also should be retained

    The main issue I have with SATS is that they measure how well a kid does in SATS, which is not the same as measuring attainment.

    I can't recall who it was, but I remember reading about someone who became obsessed with IQ tests as a kid, did loads, got very good at them to the point that his school thought he was a genius and moved him into a high flyers programme.
    He wasn't a high flier - he had just learned how to do IQ.
    I worry that the same is true of SATS.
    In terms of Maths and verbal reasoning skills SATs do largely measure attainment
    I teach students across all years at Uni. One of the things we find is that schools prepare them for exams by doing past papers. Lots of past papers. You could imagine its just about learning the question style, but it goes a bit deeper than that. Hence my students constantly want past papers (which we provide one, as an example, only).
    I have no doubt that schools prepare kids for SATS by doing SATS questions and papers and they are thus, doing exactly what I suggest happens.

    We do need an idea of how our kids are getting on. But there are many ways of doing this. Good teachers will know where kids are in their progression. Measurement distorts. It always does.
    'Measurement distorts.' 'Exams distort' Why not just let every teacher give every pupil an A grade and be done with it!
    Exams have a purpose; SATS don't have any good reason to exist.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 77,440
    Here's a link to the RNC direct : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9d3Z8WP8ib0

    Gets going in 5 hours apparently.

    Here's the themes:

    Monday will start with "Make America Wealthy Once Again," focusing on economic policies, regulation cuts and reworked trade deals, according to the GOP.

    Tuesday will be "Make America Safe Once Again," with Trump's proposals to bolster law enforcement and combat drug and human trafficking.

    Wednesday's theme is "Make America Strong Once Again," focusing on foreign policy initiatives championed by Trump's campaign.

    Thursday's theme will be "Make America Great Once Again," culminating with Trump's remarks to the convention's delegates.

    Who is expected to speak during the convention?
    All four (Editor: five ?*) of the potential VP candidates will be given speaking slots during the convention, with everything culminating when Trump addresses the convention on Thursday.

    Trump’s sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump will both speak, as will his daughter-in-law Lara Trump, currently co-chair of the Republican National Committee.

    Trump’s former presidential rivals are all expected to speak, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy.

    House Speaker Mike Johnson, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson have also secured speaking slots.

    *
    Who will Trump’s running mate be?
    With the convention set to begin Monday, it’s still unclear who Trump’s running mate will be on the ticket, and it’s also not known when that announcement will be made.

    It’s largely believed that there are four leading candidates for the role, including Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott.

    North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum is also believed to be in the running to be the vice presidential nominee.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 21,869

    Leon said:

    Sandpit said:

    Leon said:

    Pulpstar said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    In about a week the deranged Democrats will go back to calling Trump “Hitler” - they can’t help themselves. A couple on TwiX are nearly there already

    There’s a reasonable chance, with this rhetoric, that someone will take ANOTHER pot shot at the Donald

    How will a whacko get another chance? Security is going to be presumably off the scale now for both candidates until polling day.
    Yes. It will be MUCH harder. I’m just saying I wouldn’t be surprised if someone tries

    The way the Dems have gone from saying “Trump is worse than Hitler” to “everyone must dial down the rhetoric” is painfully comic. And transparently hypocritical

    Of course, it would have been better if they’d not gone hysterical a year ago. Then they wouldn’t be in this pickle. Likewise, it would have been better if they’d acknowledged Biden’s senility a year ago. But no
    How quickly we forget.

    Donald Trump Says President Biden a Threat to Democracy
    https://www.c-span.org/video/?c5098436/donald-trump-president-biden-threat-democracy-quotes-putin-orban
    You could also stop spreading disinformation. The "69 year old alternative Thomas Crooks who apparently made the donation to the Dems" was a load of bull. It was the shooter who made the donation. Read the New York Times, they're doing the most in-depth stuff


    "Investigators were scouring his online presence and working to gain access to his phone, but so far had not found indications of strongly held political beliefs. In fact, the clues he left behind were confusing: He was a registered Republican but had also donated to a progressive cause in 2021; his parents were registered as a Democrat and Libertarian."

    https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/14/us/politics/trump-gunman-thomas-crooks.html
    He registered republican specifically to vote for Nikki Hayley against Trump. I do not think he was a "genuine republican".
    IIUC the idea that he registered Republican to vote for Nicki Haley doesn't work because:

    1. He registered in 2021, before he knew that Trump or Haley was running
    2. He didn't vote in the primaries
    He apparently made the donation to the Dem cause after J6, which sounds quite anti-Trumpy

    But it's not much. He really DOESN'T seem to be especially political, unless he has some incredibly well-hidden online life

    I'm going to start a conspiracy theory, sorry, connytheers, all of my own, that takes into account what we know

    Here's my insane connytheer

    It's the Ukrainians

    They want Trump gone for very very obvious reasons. There are plenty of Ukrainians in America, some of them quite rich, I imagine. There is also a significant Ukrainian presence in Pennsylvania

    https://www.ukrhomestead.com/

    https://pennlivearts.org/event/ukrainiancommunityday

    The can't do it themselves, obs, so they find come cleanskin who likes guns, and who hates Trump - convinced he really is Hitler. Crooks is recruited. They also have some sympathetic local cops who agree to "not notice" the ladder and "not check" the roof. Because this is outside the official perimeter the Seekyservs don't surveil this, the cops do (or don't)

    Crooks is allowed to set his ladder, climb on the roof, the cops strenuously ignore it all and the Seekyservs are inept and useless at first (look at the vids, they are). Crooks has been falsely told that he will be allowed to escape, but of course the cops can't control the Seekyservs, who slot Crooks in a trice

    I think this is a pretty good theory, and I recommend it to the House

    Don’t be even more of a fuckwit than usual. The Ukranians have more than enough of their own problems right now.
    Er, what? We're not allowed to speculate on who tried to kill Trump, and why? Because of some rules about taste? This is PB, we speculate

    If you have a better theory that explains all the many curious anomalies in this instance, do tell us. I am happy to be persuaded. I won't, however, be told to shut up just because something makes you uncomfortable. There is no law - of the land, or on PB, that I know of - which says you cannot hypothesise around political events. Indeed, this is basically what the site is about. You hypothesise, and from that you can make predictions about the future, and thereby make bets
    I've got a theory that makes just as much sense. It was you, Leon. You arranged the hit with Crooks.

    It's just that the sniper was resting on one of your soiled socks, and the stench caused him to lose his aim.

    It was Leon everyone! Leon! He's responsible!!!!!
    Hmmm.

    Conspiraleon !
  • LeonLeon Posts: 53,240
    HYUFD said:

    Leon said:

    kyf_100 said:

    Leon said:

    Sensible centrist dad Rory Stewart suggests Britain should take 350,000 asylum seekers a year. On top of legal migrants

    Are these people insane? The supposed grown ups are insane

    https://x.com/maxtempers/status/1812762525492027688

    That's nearly twice the number of average number houses built in the UK per year over the last decade...
    Yes, and remember, this is just asylum seekers. So we'd have normal migration on top of that, which is at present around 600-700,000. So clever old Rory is suggesting we take 1m people a year, in eight years a city the size of LONDON
    The only reason Rory was ever in the Tories was because he was too posh to be Labour. Ideologically he is a LD or even a Green, indeed he said before the GE he would likely vote LD or Green

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jun/23/rory-stewart-rest-is-politics-on-the-edge
    But even that is fucking nuts. How can a Green want an extra 1m people a year in Britain. Our island is already crowded and denatured by overpopulation, another 1m people a year for ten years and you'd basically have to concrete the entire south of England

    They are crazy and they are wilfully stupid, its like a cult has possessed them
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 68,757
    Pulpstar said:

    Here's a link to the RNC direct : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9d3Z8WP8ib0

    Gets going in 5 hours apparently.

    Here's the themes:

    Monday will start with "Make America Wealthy Once Again," focusing on economic policies, regulation cuts and reworked trade deals, according to the GOP.

    Tuesday will be "Make America Safe Once Again," with Trump's proposals to bolster law enforcement and combat drug and human trafficking.

    Wednesday's theme is "Make America Strong Once Again," focusing on foreign policy initiatives championed by Trump's campaign.

    Thursday's theme will be "Make America Great Once Again," culminating with Trump's remarks to the convention's delegates.

    Who is expected to speak during the convention?
    All four (Editor: five ?*) of the potential VP candidates will be given speaking slots during the convention, with everything culminating when Trump addresses the convention on Thursday.

    Trump’s sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump will both speak, as will his daughter-in-law Lara Trump, currently co-chair of the Republican National Committee.

    Trump’s former presidential rivals are all expected to speak, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy.

    House Speaker Mike Johnson, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson have also secured speaking slots.

    *
    Who will Trump’s running mate be?
    ...

    Apart from those of us betting on it, and the list of possibles, does anyone (including Trump supporters) really care ?
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 68,757
    PSY gets online abuse for losing weight.
    https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/art/2024/07/682_378663.html
  • LeonLeon Posts: 53,240
    Nigelb said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    SATs should be retained as a means of measuring educational attainment. Free schools and academies offer choice to parents and also should be retained

    The main issue I have with SATS is that they measure how well a kid does in SATS, which is not the same as measuring attainment.

    I can't recall who it was, but I remember reading about someone who became obsessed with IQ tests as a kid, did loads, got very good at them to the point that his school thought he was a genius and moved him into a high flyers programme.
    He wasn't a high flier - he had just learned how to do IQ.
    I worry that the same is true of SATS.
    In terms of Maths and verbal reasoning skills SATs do largely measure attainment
    I teach students across all years at Uni. One of the things we find is that schools prepare them for exams by doing past papers. Lots of past papers. You could imagine its just about learning the question style, but it goes a bit deeper than that. Hence my students constantly want past papers (which we provide one, as an example, only).
    I have no doubt that schools prepare kids for SATS by doing SATS questions and papers and they are thus, doing exactly what I suggest happens.

    We do need an idea of how our kids are getting on. But there are many ways of doing this. Good teachers will know where kids are in their progression. Measurement distorts. It always does.
    'Measurement distorts.' 'Exams distort' Why not just let every teacher give every pupil an A grade and be done with it!
    Exams have a purpose; SATS don't have any good reason to exist.
    They really really do. It's been shown time and again that SATS are a good way to spot talent in hard-to-reach demographics - poor people, working class people, ethnic minority people. SATS are GOOD for bright kids from tougher backgrounds

    Some educationalists argue FOR them for precisely this reason
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 53,314
    Nigelb said:

    Pulpstar said:

    Here's a link to the RNC direct : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9d3Z8WP8ib0

    Gets going in 5 hours apparently.

    Here's the themes:

    Monday will start with "Make America Wealthy Once Again," focusing on economic policies, regulation cuts and reworked trade deals, according to the GOP.

    Tuesday will be "Make America Safe Once Again," with Trump's proposals to bolster law enforcement and combat drug and human trafficking.

    Wednesday's theme is "Make America Strong Once Again," focusing on foreign policy initiatives championed by Trump's campaign.

    Thursday's theme will be "Make America Great Once Again," culminating with Trump's remarks to the convention's delegates.

    Who is expected to speak during the convention?
    All four (Editor: five ?*) of the potential VP candidates will be given speaking slots during the convention, with everything culminating when Trump addresses the convention on Thursday.

    Trump’s sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump will both speak, as will his daughter-in-law Lara Trump, currently co-chair of the Republican National Committee.

    Trump’s former presidential rivals are all expected to speak, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy.

    House Speaker Mike Johnson, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson have also secured speaking slots.

    *
    Who will Trump’s running mate be?
    ...

    Apart from those of us betting on it, and the list of possibles, does anyone (including Trump supporters) really care ?
    The suggestion on Republican Twitter, is that Trump now needs an insurance policy, so should go with a more right-wing candidate as VP such as Vance or Ramaswarmy.

    That said, the decision was allegedly made some weeks ago according to Trump himself, which is dangerous with any betting market unless you’re party to the insider information.
  • FlatlanderFlatlander Posts: 4,437
    edited July 15

    glw said:

    Nigelb said:

    Only a year or two down the road, some of the many millions of weaponised FV drones produced annually and used in Ukraine are going to start showing up in the US - and quite possibly here, too. It's not a nice prospect.

    And the drone operators are getting very good at evading countermeasures.

    I'm not worried about current FPV drones, you can jam the command and navigation signals. It's autonomous drones using computer vision and INS that are going to be a nightmare. There's nothing to jam, you need to destroy or intercept them.
    It would also perhaps be a good idea to develop alternatives to just buying DJI....

    Apparently Ukraine have been starting to do this more and more, their drones are kita and using more and more home grown parts.
    DJI is likely to be banned in the US. There's a bill going through. Along with Autel as well I think.

    That's potentially going to leave a lot of people with expensive kit that they can't use and exclude a lot of people from the industry. Good or bad? You decide.

    US made drones tend to aim at high end use and are very expensive for not much more function.

    No idea if that is coming here. I'll be annoyed as I use a cheap DJI (£500) to do orthographic mapping and vegetation monitoring. I could build my own using open source kit (I did about 12 years ago) but if such a law came in they'd no doubt require everything that moves to be CAA approved.

    I think the US bill is more to do with protectionism than security, though.
  • viewcodeviewcode Posts: 21,057
    Leon said:

    Someone needs to write a book about how the supposed sensible centre of politics became this crazy and unmoored from reality

    Goodwin: "Values, Voice and Virtue", 2023. Although I disagree with Goodwin that this is a left-only phenomenon (more precisely, he acknowledges it affects the Right-wing also but spends more time and words on the Left)

    Would you like me to review it for PB? I take requests and have already committed to a syntactic review of the Cass Report by Xmas (although that's going to slip I think)
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 29,272
    Nigelb said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    SATs should be retained as a means of measuring educational attainment. Free schools and academies offer choice to parents and also should be retained

    The main issue I have with SATS is that they measure how well a kid does in SATS, which is not the same as measuring attainment.

    I can't recall who it was, but I remember reading about someone who became obsessed with IQ tests as a kid, did loads, got very good at them to the point that his school thought he was a genius and moved him into a high flyers programme.
    He wasn't a high flier - he had just learned how to do IQ.
    I worry that the same is true of SATS.
    In terms of Maths and verbal reasoning skills SATs do largely measure attainment
    I teach students across all years at Uni. One of the things we find is that schools prepare them for exams by doing past papers. Lots of past papers. You could imagine its just about learning the question style, but it goes a bit deeper than that. Hence my students constantly want past papers (which we provide one, as an example, only).
    I have no doubt that schools prepare kids for SATS by doing SATS questions and papers and they are thus, doing exactly what I suggest happens.

    We do need an idea of how our kids are getting on. But there are many ways of doing this. Good teachers will know where kids are in their progression. Measurement distorts. It always does.
    'Measurement distorts.' 'Exams distort' Why not just let every teacher give every pupil an A grade and be done with it!
    Exams have a purpose; SATS don't have any good reason to exist.
    There are plenty assessment tools which exist which aren't incredibly stressful, lengthy and don't require endless prepping for.
    CAT 4 for example.
  • moonshinemoonshine Posts: 5,507

    moonshine said:

    moonshine said:

    Quite a few videos doing the rounds on TikTok/X from impressively credentialed snipers, special forces and vip protection types. Basic position is that it’s “inconceivable” that a “dungeons and dragons playing 20yr old” could have got to that roof and made the shot without assistance. Whether it’s local law enforcement or a mole in the secret service they cannot say.

    Now, cockup vs conspiracy and all that. But when you have heroes of red blooded Americans saying this to millions, such as the guy with the world record longest sniper kill, we might assume a societal reaction of some sort.

    Funny when a post full of conspiracy theory rubbish gets the only verifiable fact in the whole thing wrong.

    The "guy with the world record longest sniper kill" is not American, red blooded or otherwise. In fact no US sniper is in the top 5 of the longest verified sniper kills. The first American comes in at number 8. The number 1 spot is held by a Ukrainian

    I assume the guy you are talking about is the one quoted in the Daily Mail (not exactly a recommendation in itself) .

    Except he is not American, he is Canadian and he does not hold the record for the longets sniper kill. He was simply part of the team that assisted the sniper who made the shot. Nor is that shot now the world record, having been superceded by the Ukrainian sniper last year.

    So as I say, the only 'verifiable' fact in your posting turns out to be wrong.
    That’s a remarkably rude post to be honest. Apologies for not having my Sniper’s World Record Book to hand, I merely went by how one of the guys in these videos was referred to by others.

    You have also spectacularly missed my point. Which is that while you sit here being a clever dick, social media is busily amplifying to millions of Americans the narrative that this gunman had help. Which may be factually true or factually false. But it doesn’t particularly matter, it’s the perception that will matter.

    We shall have to wait and see which route Trump chooses to follow, but this is a guy who basically applauded when Pelosi’s husband was hit with a hammer and egged on a mob to seize Congress. If he wants to play into fear and grievance, things are suddenly much more combustible than many like to admit.

    No I got your point. You buy inuo conspiracy theories based on no evidence at all and then try and use appeal to authority to justify your idiocy.

    What makes it funny is that, even if appealing to authority were not a logical fallacy, it turns out that you can't even get the basics of that right either.

    So your point is pointless.
    You really are inferring something from nothing and being quite strangely antagonistic. I shall forgive you, since it’s a wet Monday and we just lost the football.

    Politics these days is social media. And social media this morning is awash with Americans convinced of a conspiracy. Cockup is always the more persuasive answer but the ineptitude in this case does make it easier for infuriated MAGA to believe in the conspiracy answer. Thank god the bullet missed I say, it’s going to be hard enough to calm down this whirlwind as it is. Fascinated to see how trump plays it.

    I am unconvinced by Leon’s prophet saying Trump will walk the Road to Damascus. But that would be proper showtime. “I am standing down my candidacy to spend more time with God”.

  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 61,470
    Leon said:

    HYUFD said:

    Leon said:

    kyf_100 said:

    Leon said:

    Sensible centrist dad Rory Stewart suggests Britain should take 350,000 asylum seekers a year. On top of legal migrants

    Are these people insane? The supposed grown ups are insane

    https://x.com/maxtempers/status/1812762525492027688

    That's nearly twice the number of average number houses built in the UK per year over the last decade...
    Yes, and remember, this is just asylum seekers. So we'd have normal migration on top of that, which is at present around 600-700,000. So clever old Rory is suggesting we take 1m people a year, in eight years a city the size of LONDON
    The only reason Rory was ever in the Tories was because he was too posh to be Labour. Ideologically he is a LD or even a Green, indeed he said before the GE he would likely vote LD or Green

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jun/23/rory-stewart-rest-is-politics-on-the-edge
    But even that is fucking nuts. How can a Green want an extra 1m people a year in Britain. Our island is already crowded and denatured by overpopulation, another 1m people a year for ten years and you'd basically have to concrete the entire south of England

    They are crazy and they are wilfully stupid, its like a cult has possessed them
    Like all the other parties the Greens are potentially deeply split. In their case between Deep Greens/fundamentalists who think about 'carrying capacity' and population issues and would have no truck with more people like this and what used to be called the Realos - more centrist greens. But these days you can throw in the complication that most of Corbyn's army of left radicals have jumped into the green party.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 53,240
    Apparently the Labour Cabinet went to the euro final..... by private jet

    That is stupefying. OK take a private jet to the G7 if it is in some remote location, but London-Berlin????

    Private jet??

    Pig to man, man to pig. Labour are going to be just as bad as the Tories, but with extra Woke hypocrisy
  • northern_monkeynorthern_monkey Posts: 1,639

    Leon said:

    nico679 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    In about a week the deranged Democrats will go back to calling Trump “Hitler” - they can’t help themselves. A couple on TwiX are nearly there already

    There’s a reasonable chance, with this rhetoric, that someone will take ANOTHER pot shot at the Donald

    How will a whacko get another chance? Security is going to be presumably off the scale now for both candidates until polling day.
    Yes. It will be MUCH harder. I’m just saying I wouldn’t be surprised if someone tries

    The way the Dems have gone from saying “Trump is worse than Hitler” to “everyone must dial down the rhetoric” is painfully comic. And transparently hypocritical

    Of course, it would have been better if they’d not gone hysterical a year ago. Then they wouldn’t be in this pickle. Likewise, it would have been better if they’d acknowledged Biden’s senility a year ago. But no
    How quickly we forget.

    Donald Trump Says President Biden a Threat to Democracy
    https://www.c-span.org/video/?c5098436/donald-trump-president-biden-threat-democracy-quotes-putin-orban
    There seems to have been a collective amnesia from some who are now painting Trump as the poor victim who has spent the last 8 years promoting peace and unity !

    Just say "it's a shame he missed". It's what you're thinking. I imagine a decent chunk of PB is thinking this. Thousands of American lefties are straight out saying it on TwiX. There's no shame in it if you REALLY think he is as bad as Hitler, because political violence, in that context, is arguably justified
    Remember we are looking at Hitler in hindsight. We know what he, and the regime he led, evolved into.

    There’s the debate in academia about how much Hitler pushed the increasing radicalisation (probably a lot but any paperwork, if there indeed was any authorising the increasing ferocity of the Holocaust, etc, etc is missing, presumably destroyed) and how much it was driven by enthusiastic acolytes ‘working towards the Fuhrer’, as the saying goes, meaning the idea that people in the hierarchy interpreted Hitler’s broad rhetoric and devised ever increasingly radical solutions promoted by his rhetoric and rantings. It seems there was never an overarching plan for the Holocaust - it evolved and radicalised over time and as Germany captured more territory full of Jews in the East, and needed a ‘Final Solution’.

    So what scares me is that the iconography of Trump - the flags and stirring music when he came out of hospital after Covid, for example, is very Leni Riefenstahl. There’s a similar ‘Fuhrerpricip’ - whatever Trump says is inviolate and infallible. There seem to be millions of Americans who would willingly ‘work towards’ Trump, driving increasing radicalisation down the hierarchy.

    That’s what scares me. To my eyes, it all looks similar to 1933 currently, with the potential to evolve and escalate to something much, much worse.
    I thought that “working towards the Fuhrer” was explicitly part of the Nazi ideology?

    Hitler was overtly in favour of incrementalism - take what you can now, then push for more. It was one of his big differences with the Stasserites, who wanted instant revolution. Rather than steadily Nazifying existing institutions over time.
    You could well be right, I'm remembering it in the context of academic debate but now you've said that I think it was explicit. The Strasserites wanted more - but IIRC with more emphasis on the socialist part of National Socialism? - and Rohm and parts of the SA leadership were also pushing for more, so they were eliminated.

    And there's also the thing whereby Hitler gave the same or very similar tasks to different people, to encourage that rivalry and competition so a winner, with the strongest will, would emerge victorious.
    Hitler explicitly followed the idea of rivalry and stated that it was a form of Social Darwinism.

    Rohm & Co. were different from the Strasserites, though they shared some goals and ideas. Rohm’s big thing was replacing/absorbing the German Army with the SA, as a prelude to a revolutionary, instant takeover of German institutions.

    Hitler saw this as a threat to himself and allied with the Army to put down the SA and Rohm. Hitler seems to have regarded the Army favourably - as an institution. The military men who then backed him didn’t realise that this affection didn’t extend to the Generals themselves. Unless they were very enthusiastic Nazis…
    And it seems to be the settled view that this Social Darwinism was ultimately counter-productive - wasting time, competing, similar, projects scrabbling for the same scarce resources, too much time empire building and internal squabbling rather than directing all their energies to actually fighting the war.

    I guess how this is relevant to Trump is (and I don't know the answer but human nature being what it is I guess there would be) would there be competing factions under Trump? Those pushing for Project 2025, those not so keen on the idea, for example. How would Trump manage this? What direction would it push a Trump regime in? How radical and uncompromising would it dare to be?
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 118,517
    Bloody civil service, denying hard working Wall Street financiers their money.

    We need to stop bailing out every hard luck story.

    Businesses fail, suck it up.

    Rachel Reeves has been warned against rescuing the struggling shipyard that built the Titanic amid concerns that taxpayer cash risks ending up in the hands of Wall Street financiers.

    The Chancellor is weighing up whether to approve support for Belfast-based Harland & Wolff, which otherwise risks being unable to deliver a £1.6bn Navy contract.

    Harland, which operates four UK yards and employs more than 1,000 workers, is seeking a £200m loan guarantee that would allow it to restructure a crippling debt pile.

    But in a fresh blow to the company, Whitehall sources confirmed Treasury officials have advised Ms Reeves that a bailout would be fraught with risk for the Government.

    They have warned the support risks falling foul of post-Brexit state aid rules, risking a clash with the European Union, while there are also concerns about taxpayer cash being used to pay off the company’s Wall Street lenders.

    Harland & Wolff is based in Northern Ireland where businesses fall under the Windsor Framework, meaning ministers could be forced to seek permission from Brussels for a subsidy deal.

    Experts have also warned that such rules become stricter when dealing with a struggling company, potentially making attempts to intervene even more sensitive.

    It means Ms Reeves will be forced to overrule civil servants if she wants to push through the rescue of Harland & Wolff, leaving the decision vulnerable to a legal challenge.


    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/07/15/reeves-civil-servants-bailing-out-titanic-shipbuilder/
  • edmundintokyoedmundintokyo Posts: 17,550
    Nigelb said:

    Pulpstar said:

    Here's a link to the RNC direct : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9d3Z8WP8ib0

    Gets going in 5 hours apparently.

    Here's the themes:

    Monday will start with "Make America Wealthy Once Again," focusing on economic policies, regulation cuts and reworked trade deals, according to the GOP.

    Tuesday will be "Make America Safe Once Again," with Trump's proposals to bolster law enforcement and combat drug and human trafficking.

    Wednesday's theme is "Make America Strong Once Again," focusing on foreign policy initiatives championed by Trump's campaign.

    Thursday's theme will be "Make America Great Once Again," culminating with Trump's remarks to the convention's delegates.

    Who is expected to speak during the convention?
    All four (Editor: five ?*) of the potential VP candidates will be given speaking slots during the convention, with everything culminating when Trump addresses the convention on Thursday.

    Trump’s sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump will both speak, as will his daughter-in-law Lara Trump, currently co-chair of the Republican National Committee.

    Trump’s former presidential rivals are all expected to speak, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy.

    House Speaker Mike Johnson, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson have also secured speaking slots.

    *
    Who will Trump’s running mate be?
    ...

    Apart from those of us betting on it, and the list of possibles, does anyone (including Trump supporters) really care ?
    Yes! The ticket has >71% chance of winning. Trump is 78 years old, in a high-stress job, poor diet, lack of exercise, ignores his doctors and prone to quack medicine. And the different candidates would have *wildly* different foreign policies.
  • TimSTimS Posts: 12,112
    Leon said:

    HYUFD said:

    Leon said:

    kyf_100 said:

    Leon said:

    Sensible centrist dad Rory Stewart suggests Britain should take 350,000 asylum seekers a year. On top of legal migrants

    Are these people insane? The supposed grown ups are insane

    https://x.com/maxtempers/status/1812762525492027688

    That's nearly twice the number of average number houses built in the UK per year over the last decade...
    Yes, and remember, this is just asylum seekers. So we'd have normal migration on top of that, which is at present around 600-700,000. So clever old Rory is suggesting we take 1m people a year, in eight years a city the size of LONDON
    The only reason Rory was ever in the Tories was because he was too posh to be Labour. Ideologically he is a LD or even a Green, indeed he said before the GE he would likely vote LD or Green

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jun/23/rory-stewart-rest-is-politics-on-the-edge
    But even that is fucking nuts. How can a Green want an extra 1m people a year in Britain. Our island is already crowded and denatured by overpopulation, another 1m people a year for ten years and you'd basically have to concrete the entire south of England

    They are crazy and they are wilfully stupid, its like a cult has possessed them
    There is a green logic, if you put aside domestic social/cultural questions and look at things globally.

    The greenest arrangement of the global population would be as follows: the vast majority living in a string of vast megacities, in high rise towers, serviced by public transport and located in the maritime temperate zones of the world where there is the least combined demand for heating and air conditioning, and good water availability.

    Highly intensive agriculture covering the minimum possible geographical footprint, potentially also with a vertical element.

    The rest of the world a sparsely populated wilderness covered in vast untouched forests.

    It's a sort of macrocosm of how, say, Japan is already. I doubt that vision is going to win the Greens or any other party many votes, not least in the likes of Waveney Valley or North Herefordshire, but if you were an alien empire running the earth as a SIM ecosystem that's how you would organise things.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 53,240
    moonshine said:

    moonshine said:

    moonshine said:

    Quite a few videos doing the rounds on TikTok/X from impressively credentialed snipers, special forces and vip protection types. Basic position is that it’s “inconceivable” that a “dungeons and dragons playing 20yr old” could have got to that roof and made the shot without assistance. Whether it’s local law enforcement or a mole in the secret service they cannot say.

    Now, cockup vs conspiracy and all that. But when you have heroes of red blooded Americans saying this to millions, such as the guy with the world record longest sniper kill, we might assume a societal reaction of some sort.

    Funny when a post full of conspiracy theory rubbish gets the only verifiable fact in the whole thing wrong.

    The "guy with the world record longest sniper kill" is not American, red blooded or otherwise. In fact no US sniper is in the top 5 of the longest verified sniper kills. The first American comes in at number 8. The number 1 spot is held by a Ukrainian

    I assume the guy you are talking about is the one quoted in the Daily Mail (not exactly a recommendation in itself) .

    Except he is not American, he is Canadian and he does not hold the record for the longets sniper kill. He was simply part of the team that assisted the sniper who made the shot. Nor is that shot now the world record, having been superceded by the Ukrainian sniper last year.

    So as I say, the only 'verifiable' fact in your posting turns out to be wrong.
    That’s a remarkably rude post to be honest. Apologies for not having my Sniper’s World Record Book to hand, I merely went by how one of the guys in these videos was referred to by others.

    You have also spectacularly missed my point. Which is that while you sit here being a clever dick, social media is busily amplifying to millions of Americans the narrative that this gunman had help. Which may be factually true or factually false. But it doesn’t particularly matter, it’s the perception that will matter.

    We shall have to wait and see which route Trump chooses to follow, but this is a guy who basically applauded when Pelosi’s husband was hit with a hammer and egged on a mob to seize Congress. If he wants to play into fear and grievance, things are suddenly much more combustible than many like to admit.

    No I got your point. You buy inuo conspiracy theories based on no evidence at all and then try and use appeal to authority to justify your idiocy.

    What makes it funny is that, even if appealing to authority were not a logical fallacy, it turns out that you can't even get the basics of that right either.

    So your point is pointless.
    You really are inferring something from nothing and being quite strangely antagonistic. I shall forgive you, since it’s a wet Monday and we just lost the football.

    Politics these days is social media. And social media this morning is awash with Americans convinced of a conspiracy. Cockup is always the more persuasive answer but the ineptitude in this case does make it easier for infuriated MAGA to believe in the conspiracy answer. Thank god the bullet missed I say, it’s going to be hard enough to calm down this whirlwind as it is. Fascinated to see how trump plays it.

    I am unconvinced by Leon’s prophet saying Trump will walk the Road to Damascus. But that would be proper showtime. “I am standing down my candidacy to spend more time with God”.

    No, he won't stand down for Jesus

    I predict, however, that Trump WILL invoke God and use a lot of religious imagery in his convention speech. He's already doing it on Truth Social
  • RobDRobD Posts: 59,574
    Leon said:

    Apparently the Labour Cabinet went to the euro final..... by private jet

    That is stupefying. OK take a private jet to the G7 if it is in some remote location, but London-Berlin????

    Private jet??

    Pig to man, man to pig. Labour are going to be just as bad as the Tories, but with extra Woke hypocrisy

    Interesting lack of commentary on that given the reaction when Sunak was seen within a mile of a private jet.
  • TimSTimS Posts: 12,112
    moonshine said:

    moonshine said:

    moonshine said:

    Quite a few videos doing the rounds on TikTok/X from impressively credentialed snipers, special forces and vip protection types. Basic position is that it’s “inconceivable” that a “dungeons and dragons playing 20yr old” could have got to that roof and made the shot without assistance. Whether it’s local law enforcement or a mole in the secret service they cannot say.

    Now, cockup vs conspiracy and all that. But when you have heroes of red blooded Americans saying this to millions, such as the guy with the world record longest sniper kill, we might assume a societal reaction of some sort.

    Funny when a post full of conspiracy theory rubbish gets the only verifiable fact in the whole thing wrong.

    The "guy with the world record longest sniper kill" is not American, red blooded or otherwise. In fact no US sniper is in the top 5 of the longest verified sniper kills. The first American comes in at number 8. The number 1 spot is held by a Ukrainian

    I assume the guy you are talking about is the one quoted in the Daily Mail (not exactly a recommendation in itself) .

    Except he is not American, he is Canadian and he does not hold the record for the longets sniper kill. He was simply part of the team that assisted the sniper who made the shot. Nor is that shot now the world record, having been superceded by the Ukrainian sniper last year.

    So as I say, the only 'verifiable' fact in your posting turns out to be wrong.
    That’s a remarkably rude post to be honest. Apologies for not having my Sniper’s World Record Book to hand, I merely went by how one of the guys in these videos was referred to by others.

    You have also spectacularly missed my point. Which is that while you sit here being a clever dick, social media is busily amplifying to millions of Americans the narrative that this gunman had help. Which may be factually true or factually false. But it doesn’t particularly matter, it’s the perception that will matter.

    We shall have to wait and see which route Trump chooses to follow, but this is a guy who basically applauded when Pelosi’s husband was hit with a hammer and egged on a mob to seize Congress. If he wants to play into fear and grievance, things are suddenly much more combustible than many like to admit.

    No I got your point. You buy inuo conspiracy theories based on no evidence at all and then try and use appeal to authority to justify your idiocy.

    What makes it funny is that, even if appealing to authority were not a logical fallacy, it turns out that you can't even get the basics of that right either.

    So your point is pointless.
    You really are inferring something from nothing and being quite strangely antagonistic. I shall forgive you, since it’s a wet Monday and we just lost the football.

    Politics these days is social media. And social media this morning is awash with Americans convinced of a conspiracy. Cockup is always the more persuasive answer but the ineptitude in this case does make it easier for infuriated MAGA to believe in the conspiracy answer. Thank god the bullet missed I say, it’s going to be hard enough to calm down this whirlwind as it is. Fascinated to see how trump plays it.

    I am unconvinced by Leon’s prophet saying Trump will walk the Road to Damascus. But that would be proper showtime. “I am standing down my candidacy to spend more time with God”.

    Ooh, Trump as Saul/Paul. That would be a fascinating plot twist.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 53,240
    Did Starmer and Nandy check with Ed Miliband before they got on a private jet to Berlin??

    I am genuinely staggered
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 68,757
    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    SATs should be retained as a means of measuring educational attainment. Free schools and academies offer choice to parents and also should be retained

    The main issue I have with SATS is that they measure how well a kid does in SATS, which is not the same as measuring attainment.

    I can't recall who it was, but I remember reading about someone who became obsessed with IQ tests as a kid, did loads, got very good at them to the point that his school thought he was a genius and moved him into a high flyers programme.
    He wasn't a high flier - he had just learned how to do IQ.
    I worry that the same is true of SATS.
    In terms of Maths and verbal reasoning skills SATs do largely measure attainment
    I teach students across all years at Uni. One of the things we find is that schools prepare them for exams by doing past papers. Lots of past papers. You could imagine its just about learning the question style, but it goes a bit deeper than that. Hence my students constantly want past papers (which we provide one, as an example, only).
    I have no doubt that schools prepare kids for SATS by doing SATS questions and papers and they are thus, doing exactly what I suggest happens.

    We do need an idea of how our kids are getting on. But there are many ways of doing this. Good teachers will know where kids are in their progression. Measurement distorts. It always does.
    'Measurement distorts.' 'Exams distort' Why not just let every teacher give every pupil an A grade and be done with it!
    Exams have a purpose; SATS don't have any good reason to exist.
    They really really do. It's been shown time and again that SATS are a good way to spot talent in hard-to-reach demographics - poor people, working class people, ethnic minority people. SATS are GOOD for bright kids from tougher backgrounds

    Some educationalists argue FOR them for precisely this reason
    There's decent evidence for that, for the SAT in the US.
    In the UK, for KS2 SATS ?
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 118,517
    Leon said:

    Apparently the Labour Cabinet went to the euro final..... by private jet

    That is stupefying. OK take a private jet to the G7 if it is in some remote location, but London-Berlin????

    Private jet??

    Pig to man, man to pig. Labour are going to be just as bad as the Tories, but with extra Woke hypocrisy

    Do you have a link?
  • kyf_100 said:

    Leon said:

    Sensible centrist dad Rory Stewart suggests Britain should take 350,000 asylum seekers a year. On top of legal migrants

    Are these people insane? The supposed grown ups are insane

    https://x.com/maxtempers/status/1812762525492027688

    That's nearly twice the number of average number houses built in the UK per year over the last decade...
    But nutrient neutrality, the environment, innit.

    When are the powers that be going to get it into their thick heads that importing people in large numbers into one of the most densely populated countries in the world is a recipe for misery and instability in return for an artificial boost to gdp due to population rise and a get out of jail for failing to train enough people for critical roles and making long term benefits unattractive enough that those on them (other than genuinely sick and disabled) prefer to do jobs like fruit picking than exist on benefits long term.

  • viewcodeviewcode Posts: 21,057
    Leon said:

    Pig to man, man to pig. Labour are going to be just as bad as the Tories, but with extra Woke hypocrisy

    I was telling PB this, rather loudly, before the election

  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 68,757
    Sandpit said:

    Nigelb said:

    Pulpstar said:

    Here's a link to the RNC direct : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9d3Z8WP8ib0

    Gets going in 5 hours apparently.

    Here's the themes:

    Monday will start with "Make America Wealthy Once Again," focusing on economic policies, regulation cuts and reworked trade deals, according to the GOP.

    Tuesday will be "Make America Safe Once Again," with Trump's proposals to bolster law enforcement and combat drug and human trafficking.

    Wednesday's theme is "Make America Strong Once Again," focusing on foreign policy initiatives championed by Trump's campaign.

    Thursday's theme will be "Make America Great Once Again," culminating with Trump's remarks to the convention's delegates.

    Who is expected to speak during the convention?
    All four (Editor: five ?*) of the potential VP candidates will be given speaking slots during the convention, with everything culminating when Trump addresses the convention on Thursday.

    Trump’s sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump will both speak, as will his daughter-in-law Lara Trump, currently co-chair of the Republican National Committee.

    Trump’s former presidential rivals are all expected to speak, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy.

    House Speaker Mike Johnson, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson have also secured speaking slots.

    *
    Who will Trump’s running mate be?
    ...

    Apart from those of us betting on it, and the list of possibles, does anyone (including Trump supporters) really care ?
    The suggestion on Republican Twitter, is that Trump now needs an insurance policy, so should go with a more right-wing candidate as VP such as Vance or Ramaswarmy.

    That said, the decision was allegedly made some weeks ago according to Trump himself, which is dangerous with any betting market unless you’re party to the insider information.
    I tipped Vance a while back vs Burgum, but I closed out the position when the odds generated a profit, as I came to much the same conclusion as you.
  • eekeek Posts: 27,481
    Nigelb said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    SATs should be retained as a means of measuring educational attainment. Free schools and academies offer choice to parents and also should be retained

    The main issue I have with SATS is that they measure how well a kid does in SATS, which is not the same as measuring attainment.

    I can't recall who it was, but I remember reading about someone who became obsessed with IQ tests as a kid, did loads, got very good at them to the point that his school thought he was a genius and moved him into a high flyers programme.
    He wasn't a high flier - he had just learned how to do IQ.
    I worry that the same is true of SATS.
    In terms of Maths and verbal reasoning skills SATs do largely measure attainment
    I teach students across all years at Uni. One of the things we find is that schools prepare them for exams by doing past papers. Lots of past papers. You could imagine its just about learning the question style, but it goes a bit deeper than that. Hence my students constantly want past papers (which we provide one, as an example, only).
    I have no doubt that schools prepare kids for SATS by doing SATS questions and papers and they are thus, doing exactly what I suggest happens.

    We do need an idea of how our kids are getting on. But there are many ways of doing this. Good teachers will know where kids are in their progression. Measurement distorts. It always does.
    'Measurement distorts.' 'Exams distort' Why not just let every teacher give every pupil an A grade and be done with it!
    Exams have a purpose; SATS don't have any good reason to exist.
    The purpose of SATS is to gauge how well a school is doing - as you say they don't help the individual pupil and by forcing to teach to an exam doesn't give schools any flexibility in what they focus teaching on.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 16,910

    Leon said:

    nico679 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    In about a week the deranged Democrats will go back to calling Trump “Hitler” - they can’t help themselves. A couple on TwiX are nearly there already

    There’s a reasonable chance, with this rhetoric, that someone will take ANOTHER pot shot at the Donald

    How will a whacko get another chance? Security is going to be presumably off the scale now for both candidates until polling day.
    Yes. It will be MUCH harder. I’m just saying I wouldn’t be surprised if someone tries

    The way the Dems have gone from saying “Trump is worse than Hitler” to “everyone must dial down the rhetoric” is painfully comic. And transparently hypocritical

    Of course, it would have been better if they’d not gone hysterical a year ago. Then they wouldn’t be in this pickle. Likewise, it would have been better if they’d acknowledged Biden’s senility a year ago. But no
    How quickly we forget.

    Donald Trump Says President Biden a Threat to Democracy
    https://www.c-span.org/video/?c5098436/donald-trump-president-biden-threat-democracy-quotes-putin-orban
    There seems to have been a collective amnesia from some who are now painting Trump as the poor victim who has spent the last 8 years promoting peace and unity !

    Just say "it's a shame he missed". It's what you're thinking. I imagine a decent chunk of PB is thinking this. Thousands of American lefties are straight out saying it on TwiX. There's no shame in it if you REALLY think he is as bad as Hitler, because political violence, in that context, is arguably justified
    Remember we are looking at Hitler in hindsight. We know what he, and the regime he led, evolved into.

    There’s the debate in academia about how much Hitler pushed the increasing radicalisation (probably a lot but any paperwork, if there indeed was any authorising the increasing ferocity of the Holocaust, etc, etc is missing, presumably destroyed) and how much it was driven by enthusiastic acolytes ‘working towards the Fuhrer’, as the saying goes, meaning the idea that people in the hierarchy interpreted Hitler’s broad rhetoric and devised ever increasingly radical solutions promoted by his rhetoric and rantings. It seems there was never an overarching plan for the Holocaust - it evolved and radicalised over time and as Germany captured more territory full of Jews in the East, and needed a ‘Final Solution’.

    So what scares me is that the iconography of Trump - the flags and stirring music when he came out of hospital after Covid, for example, is very Leni Riefenstahl. There’s a similar ‘Fuhrerpricip’ - whatever Trump says is inviolate and infallible. There seem to be millions of Americans who would willingly ‘work towards’ Trump, driving increasing radicalisation down the hierarchy.

    That’s what scares me. To my eyes, it all looks similar to 1933 currently, with the potential to evolve and escalate to something much, much worse.
    I thought that “working towards the Fuhrer” was explicitly part of the Nazi ideology?

    Hitler was overtly in favour of incrementalism - take what you can now, then push for more. It was one of his big differences with the Stasserites, who wanted instant revolution. Rather than steadily Nazifying existing institutions over time.
    You could well be right, I'm remembering it in the context of academic debate but now you've said that I think it was explicit. The Strasserites wanted more - but IIRC with more emphasis on the socialist part of National Socialism? - and Rohm and parts of the SA leadership were also pushing for more, so they were eliminated.

    And there's also the thing whereby Hitler gave the same or very similar tasks to different people, to encourage that rivalry and competition so a winner, with the strongest will, would emerge victorious.
    Hitler explicitly followed the idea of rivalry and stated that it was a form of Social Darwinism.

    Rohm & Co. were different from the Strasserites, though they shared some goals and ideas. Rohm’s big thing was replacing/absorbing the German Army with the SA, as a prelude to a revolutionary, instant takeover of German institutions.

    Hitler saw this as a threat to himself and allied with the Army to put down the SA and Rohm. Hitler seems to have regarded the Army favourably - as an institution. The military men who then backed him didn’t realise that this affection didn’t extend to the Generals themselves. Unless they were very enthusiastic Nazis…
    And it seems to be the settled view that this Social Darwinism was ultimately counter-productive - wasting time, competing, similar, projects scrabbling for the same scarce resources, too much time empire building and internal squabbling rather than directing all their energies to actually fighting the war.

    I guess how this is relevant to Trump is (and I don't know the answer but human nature being what it is I guess there would be) would there be competing factions under Trump? Those pushing for Project 2025, those not so keen on the idea, for example. How would Trump manage this? What direction would it push a Trump regime in? How radical and uncompromising would it dare to be?
    Hitler never really understood the industrial power of the US (and the UK to an extent) and the USSR. He rubbished tank production numbers for the USSR, yet they were accurate. No question that the Tiger and Panther were superb tanks for 1944-45. But would you rather have 10 Tigers, and be unable to service/repair them in the field, or 100 Shermans that can often be returned to combat after a few days?
  • viewcodeviewcode Posts: 21,057
    TimS said:

    Leon said:

    HYUFD said:

    Leon said:

    kyf_100 said:

    Leon said:

    Sensible centrist dad Rory Stewart suggests Britain should take 350,000 asylum seekers a year. On top of legal migrants

    Are these people insane? The supposed grown ups are insane

    https://x.com/maxtempers/status/1812762525492027688

    That's nearly twice the number of average number houses built in the UK per year over the last decade...
    Yes, and remember, this is just asylum seekers. So we'd have normal migration on top of that, which is at present around 600-700,000. So clever old Rory is suggesting we take 1m people a year, in eight years a city the size of LONDON
    The only reason Rory was ever in the Tories was because he was too posh to be Labour. Ideologically he is a LD or even a Green, indeed he said before the GE he would likely vote LD or Green

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jun/23/rory-stewart-rest-is-politics-on-the-edge
    But even that is fucking nuts. How can a Green want an extra 1m people a year in Britain. Our island is already crowded and denatured by overpopulation, another 1m people a year for ten years and you'd basically have to concrete the entire south of England

    They are crazy and they are wilfully stupid, its like a cult has possessed them
    There is a green logic, if you put aside domestic social/cultural questions and look at things globally.

    The greenest arrangement of the global population would be as follows: the vast majority living in a string of vast megacities, in high rise towers, serviced by public transport and located in the maritime temperate zones of the world where there is the least combined demand for heating and air conditioning, and good water availability.

    Highly intensive agriculture covering the minimum possible geographical footprint, potentially also with a vertical element.

    The rest of the world a sparsely populated wilderness covered in vast untouched forests.

    It's a sort of macrocosm of how, say, Japan is already. I doubt that vision is going to win the Greens or any other party many votes, not least in the likes of Waveney Valley or North Herefordshire, but if you were an alien empire running the earth as a SIM ecosystem that's how you would organise things.
    The Greens disagree with you on how the world looks in a Green world: https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2024/05/12/solarpunk/

    However, the comments for the article gave me enough info for its intermediary stage, which is much like you describe. It is the only time I have been effectively asked to do a prequel... :)
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 16,910
    Leon said:

    Did Starmer and Nandy check with Ed Miliband before they got on a private jet to Berlin??

    I am genuinely staggered

    Are you though? I thought it would be pretty obvious that all the shrieking about Sunak using his helicoptor would be totally different now that Labour is in power.
  • TazTaz Posts: 13,605
    viewcode said:

    Leon said:

    Pig to man, man to pig. Labour are going to be just as bad as the Tories, but with extra Woke hypocrisy

    I was telling PB this, rather loudly, before the election

    True, as did I (albeit not as loud as you) when I was saying "meet the new boss, same as the old boss".

    I voted for them, although a lifelong labour voter, with very little enthusiasm.

    I think Rachel Reeves, Wes Streeting and Bridget Phillipson are okay. The rest are meh. Some bright sparks will come through.
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 41,503
    Dura_Ace said:

    Pulpstar said:

    Nigelb said:

    Nigelb said:

    Nigelb said:

    DuraAce, FPT, misses a point.

    ...The character of the weapon isn't really germane because there are plenty of other less scary rifles that will kill somebody if you shoot them in the head at 120m...

    If, as Democrats have long campaigned for, automatic weapons like the AR15 were banned, the shooter would likely have gotten off maybe a couple of shots, rather than half a dozen.

    I don’t think that the Democrats, as a party, have argued for the banning on semi-automatic weapons as a class. Or even long barrelled semi-automatic weapons. Those are the things that might make a difference.

    Full auto weapons are regulated, already, to an almost sensible level.

    What they have argued for, is a ban on “assault weapons”. Which is a bit futile, since the same barrel and action can be packaged in a nice, safe looking wood.

    Regulating firearms by what they look like is silly. It’s what they do that is the issue.
    It's a pretty wide category as defined in their legislation.
    https://www.legis.state.pa.us/CFDOCS/Legis/PN/Public/btCheck.cfm?txtType=PDF&sessYr=2023&sessInd=0&billBody=S&billTyp=B&billNbr=0200&pn=0723
    That legislation wouldn’t stop the sale of an AR-15 action, dressed up in some nice wood.

    Confronting the actual problem is politically too expensive in the US. Hence stuff like legislation against bayonet lugs…
    Had it been able to be passed, the weapon in question could nt have been sold, or would have been confiscated.
    As it stands, the SC will strike down any such legislation anyway.
    My point is that the gun manufacturers would simply put the same action in a different looking package. This is what they did previously for such “assault weapon” bans.

    The resulting weapons would have identical capability.

    Think about this -



    Is that a nasty assault weapon?
    Can just imagine Dura with that.
    M1 Garand. That 7.62x51 will knock you right out of your trainers at 500m.
    Recalling my CoD patter, ‘the greatest battle implement ever devised’ according to old blood and guts Patton.
This discussion has been closed.