The Puerto Rico fiasco is one of the rare things that *has* broken through. On the CNN/NYT/WaPo homepages, it's *the* #1 story.
All of that is dangerous for a candidate who still has a big favorables disadvantage with 1 week to go. Any change is marginal. But it's not helpful. https://x.com/lxeagle17/status/1851069139227746798
This new Doyle comms fellow can't arrive in No. 10 fast enough.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 15m Starmer and Reeves have spent a significant amount of public money protecting the public from the full impact of the Tory's decision to axe the bus-fare cap. But they've bungled the presentation, so it looks like a Labour fare hike. That doesn't bode well for tomorrow. https://x.com/DPJHodges/status/1851198838838600053
They have eaten up so much of the oxygen turning themselves inside redefining a working person every day, rather than just say, things much worse than realised, sorry, most people will have to pay much tax.
It feels like they are trying to Bad Al / Mandy playbook of going on the media round spinning some clever sounding BS will fall apart, the difference being 1997, no social media, newspapers a much bigger thing, so something else will come along before you are really challenged. Now the tw@tter machine eats up your nonsense by the end of breakfast and then the government are having to shift position by mid morning.
re reparations which are analagous to apologies for past deeds I am with Jonathan Sumption here. To apologise for a past deed because it is now deemed immoral, say, is wrong because to do so makes the assumption that values never change and, by implication, that our current values are right and "good" now and forever more. Which is pretty much how religions operate and it is no good thing for the State to operate as a religion.
That seems a rather tortured argument. So modern day Germany has no business apologising for the holocaust because it would be immoral to assume that the current view that the holocaust is a bad thing is not going to change? Maybe in the future we will think the holocaust was totally fine - and so we should shut up about it right now? Have I got this right? Sumption always seems to be one of those terribly clever people who always comes up with the wrong answer.
Explain to me what the German apology is actually for. Describe it to me. What is it saying.
We, the German people, our parents and grandparents, committed an unforgivable crime. The German state benefited from taking property and from unpaid labour. We have a duty to remember what happened and to ensure it never happens again... something like this is how I would hope Germany feels. Of course they have already apologized and made reparations. The alternative is, what exactly? This has nothing to do with us? We thought it was OK at the time and our current sense that it wasn't ok may only be temporary? Moral judgements are impossible?
It doesn't work in the case of Germany. It would give those being apologised to a feeling of superiority to those apologising which in the case of todays UK and Germany is undeserved. If it was Israel apologising to the Palestinians that would be a different matter. It's both deserved and might actually do some good.
Naughty, Roger.
Interestingly, there was huge resistance from many Israelis, to the idea of Germany paying them compensation, in the early fifties.
The other side of the coin to the GOP 'cannibalising' its vote with early voters.
Amazing story out of DeKalb County today. Hispanic woman comes into polling place after voting last week. Tells the polling worker that after hearing about the Madison Sq Garden event she needs to change her vote. (Needless to say, you can't do that.) https://x.com/joshtpm/status/1851065233739067435
The other side of the coin to the GOP 'cannibalising' its vote with early voters.
Amazing story out of DeKalb County today. Hispanic woman comes into polling place after voting last week. Tells the polling worker that after hearing about the Madison Sq Garden event she needs to change her vote. (Needless to say, you can't do that.) https://x.com/joshtpm/status/1851065233739067435
Budget: I get £2,750 a month in benefits and I'm freaking out over cuts.
Nicole Healing, 44, Unemployed.
"Nicole, who uses them and they pronoun, said they receive Employment and Support Allowance of £1,042, Personal Independent Payments of £798, and Housing Benefit of £917 per month.
Though they feel in a "fortunate position" currently, Nicole says: "I feel I am at the mercy of the DWP."
That's £33,000 a year in benefits for a single person.
I know a few people in a category possibly similar to the above. They are educated to a very high (ie postgraduate) level. They become unable to work, sometimes after a few unsuccessful attempts, due to health conditions that seem to be predominantly psychological disorders. Then they get benefit payments from the government that are equivalent to the wage you would get from a full time professional job.
In the end I can only really feel sorry for them. People don't take them seriously, they are viewed as a drain on the state - and they know it.
“I am fearful about the negative rhetoric in the media about disabled people in receipt of benefits."
She was in digital marketing in the civil service so hardly working down the mines.
Whilst I have sympathy for anyone who's not feeling OK those benefits are excessive. I doubt she's fundamentally disabled and unable to do any work.
We all feel awful and struggle from time to time. It doesn't mean we expect everyone else to pay for us.
Yes I think two separate sentiments clash here: 1. Someone who is ill and living off the state probably has a thoroughly unfulfilling life (ordering lots of crap off Temu is most likely a symptom of this) dependent on the considerable but capricious largesse of DWP which in many cases creates a spiral of negativity, not helped by DavidL's point that returning to the workforce is probably unaffordable without a big drop in money coming in; and, 2. Someone working has to pay for that £33k, which seems deeply unfair.
I think a few things definitely follow: 1. There is often a tinge of envy (cf Blanche's comment about having to work 55 hour weeks). I can relate to this sentiment but I think it is fundamentally misplaced - this is not someone to be envied. 2. There is often a further implication that the problem would be lessened if someone's life circumstances could only be made worse (cf the comment about a £1250pcm rent, one possible implication of which is that really this person should be in a £500pcm shithole with mould all over the walls). I think this is also fundamentally misplaced - some people, but very few, would choose this life, whether in a decent flat or not. Worsening their circumstances is a poor route out of this. 3. At a time when someone can be earning +/- £33k from full time employment but is unable to support a family, it is deeply wrong that this person's taxes need to rise in order to fund the £33k going to an unemployed person.
As a result solutions are hard to find - but I think must come from a deeper restructuring of the economy such that living costs are reduced relative to wages. Primarily this must come from a reduction in housing costs (and I say this as someone who hugely depends on a second income from a rental flat to support my own family).
I'm afraid I would do exactly that: reduce it to a room rent or flatshare allowance of £600pcm max and a meal allowance. They can then choose whether to live with friends or family or with others in a similar position. That might not be living in clover but, tough.
These are the choices ordinary working people have to make, who are often under immense pressure themselves, and their taxes shouldn't go to pay for this.
Yes, I can entirely understand that sentiment in the current system - especially in the context of a budget that is going to push taxes up.
I don't think it will help, without a much wider societal shift away from looking after the vulnerable and towards a more brutal/Stoic approach.
(I often find myself personally harking for a more stoic approach - you get out and work regardless - but I have come to reflect that I probably feel this way only because I have never had to work with a significant disability.)
Anecdote alert: one of my colleagues left teaching just this half term. She has worked with me for 8 years whilst having rheumatoid arthritis. She takes a day or two off every six weeks to have blood infusions, without which she cannot move her joints. She worked all through COVID teaching full time remotely despite having to shield. For context, she meets a group of six or seven other people with RA each time she has an infusion and none of them work at all, let alone full time in a school - she is a machine.
But she has finally quit largely because as the school takes on more sixth form students to try to keep itself afloat, she no longer has her own classroom and has to move around the school more, meaning that her joints flared up too much between infusions.
Part of the answer to this problem is to try to ensure employers can better accommodate individuals with disabilities. Telling this person she should now move house and live with family/friends would be deeply offensive and wrong headed on an individual level. Not to say that's the wrong policy because of an anecdote, but it's worth hearing the edge cases on the other side of the coin.
OK, but I don't much care if it's deeply offensive or not. It's not the duty of Government to make policy, nor the Treasury spending decisions, on what individuals may or may not find deeply offensive.
Spending on this is expected to rise to over £30bn a year by 2027/28, and we can't afford it. Almost all of us will suffer from health issues or disabilities at some point in our lives. What many of us object to is that the State should pay such people to live a more comfortable lifestyle than those working for a living and struggling to make ends meet.
I'd far rather this money was invested in defence, education and industrial strategy and lowering the tax burden on working people.
Everyone should do some form of work. And almost everyone can do some form of work.
It's why we're here.
I don't disagree with that broad sentiment Casino (some extreme cases excepted).
I became a paraplegic at 19 and was lucky enough to forge a career in IT and finance. But that was because, if I say so myself, I am reasonably bright and good at managing people and projects. Most manual jobs would be unsuitable for me - I am not going to forge a career on a building site. So if I was below average intellect, I would have struggled to find work.
Now I'm retired the issue with a lot of people I see at Citizens Advice, particularly those with mental problems, is that they are unemployable. I would not employ them, nor would you.
I have an allotment here in Flatland Central for various historic reasons.
The plotholders are a random mix of middle class types, retired folk, Polish families and a not insignificant number of dropouts and people on the margins of work/not work.
These people on the margins are probably unemployable for anything structured as they are rather chaotic and not terribly keen on authority. I don't ask but I expect some are signed off with mental issues and the like. Some of them do, however, keep quite a tidy plot and are clearly capable of some kind of work.
What they need is unstructured work which benefits society but doesn't require a daily 9-5. It would benefit them significantly.
The way welfare works this is more or less impossible without falling foul of any number of rules.
We need to get away from the stupid withdrawal rules and barriers to people doing piecemeal working.
In the case of the person on £33k benefits, I would guess that someone like that could manage 2-3 hours a day at a computer but not a full time job. But it just can't work that way. Why not?
There are a lot of large employers, in the public sector and in utilities, for whom someone able to work 2-3 hours a day should be able to seek ad-hoc remote employment in call centre or chat service work. Government should take the lead and encourage others to participate. There’s routinely long waits for calls and chat/email replies, so every additional man hour should lessen the workload and improve service. Yes there’s a training requirement, perhaps government should help to subsidise that bit.
Trump is a clear and present danger to American democracy, and quite possibly the freedom of the entire planet.
Idiot.
Complacent idiot.
What's the bet that if elected Trump does/does not overturn democracy. £100 from me at your odds to say that if elected by the end of his term the US will have an election.
Oh and what odds that we face a danger to "the freedom of the entire planet".
Budget: I get £2,750 a month in benefits and I'm freaking out over cuts.
Nicole Healing, 44, Unemployed.
"Nicole, who uses them and they pronoun, said they receive Employment and Support Allowance of £1,042, Personal Independent Payments of £798, and Housing Benefit of £917 per month.
Though they feel in a "fortunate position" currently, Nicole says: "I feel I am at the mercy of the DWP."
That's £33,000 a year in benefits for a single person.
I know a few people in a category possibly similar to the above. They are educated to a very high (ie postgraduate) level. They become unable to work, sometimes after a few unsuccessful attempts, due to health conditions that seem to be predominantly psychological disorders. Then they get benefit payments from the government that are equivalent to the wage you would get from a full time professional job.
In the end I can only really feel sorry for them. People don't take them seriously, they are viewed as a drain on the state - and they know it.
“I am fearful about the negative rhetoric in the media about disabled people in receipt of benefits."
She was in digital marketing in the civil service so hardly working down the mines.
Whilst I have sympathy for anyone who's not feeling OK those benefits are excessive. I doubt she's fundamentally disabled and unable to do any work.
We all feel awful and struggle from time to time. It doesn't mean we expect everyone else to pay for us.
Yes I think two separate sentiments clash here: 1. Someone who is ill and living off the state probably has a thoroughly unfulfilling life (ordering lots of crap off Temu is most likely a symptom of this) dependent on the considerable but capricious largesse of DWP which in many cases creates a spiral of negativity, not helped by DavidL's point that returning to the workforce is probably unaffordable without a big drop in money coming in; and, 2. Someone working has to pay for that £33k, which seems deeply unfair.
I think a few things definitely follow: 1. There is often a tinge of envy (cf Blanche's comment about having to work 55 hour weeks). I can relate to this sentiment but I think it is fundamentally misplaced - this is not someone to be envied. 2. There is often a further implication that the problem would be lessened if someone's life circumstances could only be made worse (cf the comment about a £1250pcm rent, one possible implication of which is that really this person should be in a £500pcm shithole with mould all over the walls). I think this is also fundamentally misplaced - some people, but very few, would choose this life, whether in a decent flat or not. Worsening their circumstances is a poor route out of this. 3. At a time when someone can be earning +/- £33k from full time employment but is unable to support a family, it is deeply wrong that this person's taxes need to rise in order to fund the £33k going to an unemployed person.
As a result solutions are hard to find - but I think must come from a deeper restructuring of the economy such that living costs are reduced relative to wages. Primarily this must come from a reduction in housing costs (and I say this as someone who hugely depends on a second income from a rental flat to support my own family).
I'm afraid I would do exactly that: reduce it to a room rent or flatshare allowance of £600pcm max and a meal allowance. They can then choose whether to live with friends or family or with others in a similar position. That might not be living in clover but, tough.
These are the choices ordinary working people have to make, who are often under immense pressure themselves, and their taxes shouldn't go to pay for this.
Yes, I can entirely understand that sentiment in the current system - especially in the context of a budget that is going to push taxes up.
I don't think it will help, without a much wider societal shift away from looking after the vulnerable and towards a more brutal/Stoic approach.
(I often find myself personally harking for a more stoic approach - you get out and work regardless - but I have come to reflect that I probably feel this way only because I have never had to work with a significant disability.)
Anecdote alert: one of my colleagues left teaching just this half term. She has worked with me for 8 years whilst having rheumatoid arthritis. She takes a day or two off every six weeks to have blood infusions, without which she cannot move her joints. She worked all through COVID teaching full time remotely despite having to shield. For context, she meets a group of six or seven other people with RA each time she has an infusion and none of them work at all, let alone full time in a school - she is a machine.
But she has finally quit largely because as the school takes on more sixth form students to try to keep itself afloat, she no longer has her own classroom and has to move around the school more, meaning that her joints flared up too much between infusions.
Part of the answer to this problem is to try to ensure employers can better accommodate individuals with disabilities. Telling this person she should now move house and live with family/friends would be deeply offensive and wrong headed on an individual level. Not to say that's the wrong policy because of an anecdote, but it's worth hearing the edge cases on the other side of the coin.
OK, but I don't much care if it's deeply offensive or not. It's not the duty of Government to make policy, nor the Treasury spending decisions, on what individuals may or may not find deeply offensive.
Spending on this is expected to rise to over £30bn a year by 2027/28, and we can't afford it. Almost all of us will suffer from health issues or disabilities at some point in our lives. What many of us object to is that the State should pay such people to live a more comfortable lifestyle than those working for a living and struggling to make ends meet.
I'd far rather this money was invested in defence, education and industrial strategy and lowering the tax burden on working people.
Everyone should do some form of work. And almost everyone can do some form of work.
It's why we're here.
I don't disagree with that broad sentiment Casino (some extreme cases excepted).
I became a paraplegic at 19 and was lucky enough to forge a career in IT and finance. But that was because, if I say so myself, I am reasonably bright and good at managing people and projects. Most manual jobs would be unsuitable for me - I am not going to forge a career on a building site. So if I was below average intellect, I would have struggled to find work.
Now I'm retired the issue with a lot of people I see at Citizens Advice, particularly those with mental problems, is that they are unemployable. I would not employ them, nor would you.
I have an allotment here in Flatland Central for various historic reasons.
The plotholders are a random mix of middle class types, retired folk, Polish families and a not insignificant number of dropouts and people on the margins of work/not work.
These people on the margins are probably unemployable for anything structured as they are rather chaotic and not terribly keen on authority. I don't ask but I expect some are signed off with mental issues and the like. Some of them do, however, keep quite a tidy plot and are clearly capable of some kind of work.
What they need is unstructured work which benefits society but doesn't require a daily 9-5. It would benefit them significantly.
The way welfare works this is more or less impossible without falling foul of any number of rules.
We need to get away from the stupid withdrawal rules and barriers to people doing piecemeal working.
In the case of the person on £33k benefits, I would guess that someone like that could manage 2-3 hours a day at a computer but not a full time job. But it just can't work that way. Why not?
There are a lot of large employers, in the public sector and in utilities, for whom someone able to work 2-3 hours a day should be able to seek ad-hoc remote employment in call centre or chat service work. Government should take the lead and encourage others to participate. There’s routinely long waits for calls and chat/email replies, so every additional man hour should lessen the workload and improve service. Yes there’s a training requirement, perhaps government should help to subsidise that bit.
The Puerto Rico fiasco is one of the rare things that *has* broken through. On the CNN/NYT/WaPo homepages, it's *the* #1 story.
All of that is dangerous for a candidate who still has a big favorables disadvantage with 1 week to go. Any change is marginal. But it's not helpful. https://x.com/lxeagle17/status/1851069139227746798
This is an election that could legitimately come down to a few hundred/thousand votes in the right places.
At this stage of the race, anything that looks like it could cut through and cause a shift in votes, no matter how small or marginal, is absolutely relevant.
"In LA, 70 per cent of people are telling me they’ll vote for Trump In 2016 I believed Hillary would triumph, and dressed up as her for Halloween. I won’t make the same mistake again Celia Walden"
California is the last place where Trump needs to do better.
If 70% of Californians are voting for him he's home and hosed. This notion of the shy Trump voter seems real.
We all owe (reluctantly) a debt of gratitude to @williamglenn who called it for Trump when the rest of us were on Harris to win the popular vote and the Electoral College.
England squad for Test series against New Zealand: Ben Stokes (captain), Rehan Ahmed, Gus Atkinson, Shoaib Bashir, Jacob Bethell, Harry Brook, Bryson Carse, Jordan Cox, Zak Crawley, Ben Duckett, Jack Leach, Ollie Pope, Matthew Potts, Joe Root, Olly Stone, Chris Woakes.
"In LA, 70 per cent of people are telling me they’ll vote for Trump In 2016 I believed Hillary would triumph, and dressed up as her for Halloween. I won’t make the same mistake again Celia Walden"
California is the last place where Trump needs to do better.
If 70% of Californians are voting for him he's home and hosed. This notion of the shy Trump voter seems real.
We all owe (reluctantly) a debt of gratitude to @williamglenn who called it for Trump when the rest of us were on Harris to win the popular vote and the Electoral College.
70% would be in a couple of bits of Orange County, where you get really some horrible rich people.
Budget: I get £2,750 a month in benefits and I'm freaking out over cuts.
Nicole Healing, 44, Unemployed.
"Nicole, who uses them and they pronoun, said they receive Employment and Support Allowance of £1,042, Personal Independent Payments of £798, and Housing Benefit of £917 per month.
Though they feel in a "fortunate position" currently, Nicole says: "I feel I am at the mercy of the DWP."
That's £33,000 a year in benefits for a single person.
I know a few people in a category possibly similar to the above. They are educated to a very high (ie postgraduate) level. They become unable to work, sometimes after a few unsuccessful attempts, due to health conditions that seem to be predominantly psychological disorders. Then they get benefit payments from the government that are equivalent to the wage you would get from a full time professional job.
In the end I can only really feel sorry for them. People don't take them seriously, they are viewed as a drain on the state - and they know it.
“I am fearful about the negative rhetoric in the media about disabled people in receipt of benefits."
She was in digital marketing in the civil service so hardly working down the mines.
Whilst I have sympathy for anyone who's not feeling OK those benefits are excessive. I doubt she's fundamentally disabled and unable to do any work.
We all feel awful and struggle from time to time. It doesn't mean we expect everyone else to pay for us.
Yes I think two separate sentiments clash here: 1. Someone who is ill and living off the state probably has a thoroughly unfulfilling life (ordering lots of crap off Temu is most likely a symptom of this) dependent on the considerable but capricious largesse of DWP which in many cases creates a spiral of negativity, not helped by DavidL's point that returning to the workforce is probably unaffordable without a big drop in money coming in; and, 2. Someone working has to pay for that £33k, which seems deeply unfair.
I think a few things definitely follow: 1. There is often a tinge of envy (cf Blanche's comment about having to work 55 hour weeks). I can relate to this sentiment but I think it is fundamentally misplaced - this is not someone to be envied. 2. There is often a further implication that the problem would be lessened if someone's life circumstances could only be made worse (cf the comment about a £1250pcm rent, one possible implication of which is that really this person should be in a £500pcm shithole with mould all over the walls). I think this is also fundamentally misplaced - some people, but very few, would choose this life, whether in a decent flat or not. Worsening their circumstances is a poor route out of this. 3. At a time when someone can be earning +/- £33k from full time employment but is unable to support a family, it is deeply wrong that this person's taxes need to rise in order to fund the £33k going to an unemployed person.
As a result solutions are hard to find - but I think must come from a deeper restructuring of the economy such that living costs are reduced relative to wages. Primarily this must come from a reduction in housing costs (and I say this as someone who hugely depends on a second income from a rental flat to support my own family).
I'm afraid I would do exactly that: reduce it to a room rent or flatshare allowance of £600pcm max and a meal allowance. They can then choose whether to live with friends or family or with others in a similar position. That might not be living in clover but, tough.
These are the choices ordinary working people have to make, who are often under immense pressure themselves, and their taxes shouldn't go to pay for this.
Yes, I can entirely understand that sentiment in the current system - especially in the context of a budget that is going to push taxes up.
I don't think it will help, without a much wider societal shift away from looking after the vulnerable and towards a more brutal/Stoic approach.
(I often find myself personally harking for a more stoic approach - you get out and work regardless - but I have come to reflect that I probably feel this way only because I have never had to work with a significant disability.)
Anecdote alert: one of my colleagues left teaching just this half term. She has worked with me for 8 years whilst having rheumatoid arthritis. She takes a day or two off every six weeks to have blood infusions, without which she cannot move her joints. She worked all through COVID teaching full time remotely despite having to shield. For context, she meets a group of six or seven other people with RA each time she has an infusion and none of them work at all, let alone full time in a school - she is a machine.
But she has finally quit largely because as the school takes on more sixth form students to try to keep itself afloat, she no longer has her own classroom and has to move around the school more, meaning that her joints flared up too much between infusions.
Part of the answer to this problem is to try to ensure employers can better accommodate individuals with disabilities. Telling this person she should now move house and live with family/friends would be deeply offensive and wrong headed on an individual level. Not to say that's the wrong policy because of an anecdote, but it's worth hearing the edge cases on the other side of the coin.
OK, but I don't much care if it's deeply offensive or not. It's not the duty of Government to make policy, nor the Treasury spending decisions, on what individuals may or may not find deeply offensive.
Spending on this is expected to rise to over £30bn a year by 2027/28, and we can't afford it. Almost all of us will suffer from health issues or disabilities at some point in our lives. What many of us object to is that the State should pay such people to live a more comfortable lifestyle than those working for a living and struggling to make ends meet.
I'd far rather this money was invested in defence, education and industrial strategy and lowering the tax burden on working people.
Everyone should do some form of work. And almost everyone can do some form of work.
It's why we're here.
I don't disagree with that broad sentiment Casino (some extreme cases excepted).
I became a paraplegic at 19 and was lucky enough to forge a career in IT and finance. But that was because, if I say so myself, I am reasonably bright and good at managing people and projects. Most manual jobs would be unsuitable for me - I am not going to forge a career on a building site. So if I was below average intellect, I would have struggled to find work.
Now I'm retired the issue with a lot of people I see at Citizens Advice, particularly those with mental problems, is that they are unemployable. I would not employ them, nor would you.
I have an allotment here in Flatland Central for various historic reasons.
The plotholders are a random mix of middle class types, retired folk, Polish families and a not insignificant number of dropouts and people on the margins of work/not work.
These people on the margins are probably unemployable for anything structured as they are rather chaotic and not terribly keen on authority. I don't ask but I expect some are signed off with mental issues and the like. Some of them do, however, keep quite a tidy plot and are clearly capable of some kind of work.
What they need is unstructured work which benefits society but doesn't require a daily 9-5. It would benefit them significantly.
The way welfare works this is more or less impossible without falling foul of any number of rules.
We need to get away from the stupid withdrawal rules and barriers to people doing piecemeal working.
In the case of the person on £33k benefits, I would guess that someone like that could manage 2-3 hours a day at a computer but not a full time job. But it just can't work that way. Why not?
There are a lot of large employers, in the public sector and in utilities, for whom someone able to work 2-3 hours a day should be able to seek ad-hoc remote employment in call centre or chat service work. Government should take the lead and encourage others to participate. There’s routinely long waits for calls and chat/email replies, so every additional man hour should lessen the workload and improve service. Yes there’s a training requirement, perhaps government should help to subsidise that bit.
Remploy….
That really was a disgusting and heartless call by New Labour.
"In LA, 70 per cent of people are telling me they’ll vote for Trump In 2016 I believed Hillary would triumph, and dressed up as her for Halloween. I won’t make the same mistake again Celia Walden"
California is the last place where Trump needs to do better.
If 70% of Californians are voting for him he's home and hosed. This notion of the shy Trump voter seems real.
We all owe (reluctantly) a debt of gratitude to @williamglenn who called it for Trump when the rest of us were on Harris to win the popular vote and the Electoral College.
If 70% of Californians are voting for Trump then every single poll is so far out they may as well not bother.
This is just a crap anecdote from someone who doesn't realise the people they talk to are not an accurate cross section of real world..
Trump is a clear and present danger to American democracy, and quite possibly the freedom of the entire planet.
Idiot.
Complacent idiot.
What's the bet that if elected Trump does/does not overturn democracy. £100 from me at your odds to say that if elected by the end of his term the US will have an election.
Oh and what odds that we face a danger to "the freedom of the entire planet".
LOL
Do we have a deal?
Do you regard Russia as a democracy?
Technically it genuinely is, but it has quirks. It's managed to distance its people from the concept of politics so well that it operates as if it wasn't. This is the characteristic of autocracies, separating the government from the people.
Budget: I get £2,750 a month in benefits and I'm freaking out over cuts.
Nicole Healing, 44, Unemployed.
"Nicole, who uses them and they pronoun, said they receive Employment and Support Allowance of £1,042, Personal Independent Payments of £798, and Housing Benefit of £917 per month.
Though they feel in a "fortunate position" currently, Nicole says: "I feel I am at the mercy of the DWP."
That's £33,000 a year in benefits for a single person.
I know a few people in a category possibly similar to the above. They are educated to a very high (ie postgraduate) level. They become unable to work, sometimes after a few unsuccessful attempts, due to health conditions that seem to be predominantly psychological disorders. Then they get benefit payments from the government that are equivalent to the wage you would get from a full time professional job.
In the end I can only really feel sorry for them. People don't take them seriously, they are viewed as a drain on the state - and they know it.
“I am fearful about the negative rhetoric in the media about disabled people in receipt of benefits."
She was in digital marketing in the civil service so hardly working down the mines.
Whilst I have sympathy for anyone who's not feeling OK those benefits are excessive. I doubt she's fundamentally disabled and unable to do any work.
We all feel awful and struggle from time to time. It doesn't mean we expect everyone else to pay for us.
Yes I think two separate sentiments clash here: 1. Someone who is ill and living off the state probably has a thoroughly unfulfilling life (ordering lots of crap off Temu is most likely a symptom of this) dependent on the considerable but capricious largesse of DWP which in many cases creates a spiral of negativity, not helped by DavidL's point that returning to the workforce is probably unaffordable without a big drop in money coming in; and, 2. Someone working has to pay for that £33k, which seems deeply unfair.
I think a few things definitely follow: 1. There is often a tinge of envy (cf Blanche's comment about having to work 55 hour weeks). I can relate to this sentiment but I think it is fundamentally misplaced - this is not someone to be envied. 2. There is often a further implication that the problem would be lessened if someone's life circumstances could only be made worse (cf the comment about a £1250pcm rent, one possible implication of which is that really this person should be in a £500pcm shithole with mould all over the walls). I think this is also fundamentally misplaced - some people, but very few, would choose this life, whether in a decent flat or not. Worsening their circumstances is a poor route out of this. 3. At a time when someone can be earning +/- £33k from full time employment but is unable to support a family, it is deeply wrong that this person's taxes need to rise in order to fund the £33k going to an unemployed person.
As a result solutions are hard to find - but I think must come from a deeper restructuring of the economy such that living costs are reduced relative to wages. Primarily this must come from a reduction in housing costs (and I say this as someone who hugely depends on a second income from a rental flat to support my own family).
I'm afraid I would do exactly that: reduce it to a room rent or flatshare allowance of £600pcm max and a meal allowance. They can then choose whether to live with friends or family or with others in a similar position. That might not be living in clover but, tough.
These are the choices ordinary working people have to make, who are often under immense pressure themselves, and their taxes shouldn't go to pay for this.
Yes, I can entirely understand that sentiment in the current system - especially in the context of a budget that is going to push taxes up.
I don't think it will help, without a much wider societal shift away from looking after the vulnerable and towards a more brutal/Stoic approach.
(I often find myself personally harking for a more stoic approach - you get out and work regardless - but I have come to reflect that I probably feel this way only because I have never had to work with a significant disability.)
Anecdote alert: one of my colleagues left teaching just this half term. She has worked with me for 8 years whilst having rheumatoid arthritis. She takes a day or two off every six weeks to have blood infusions, without which she cannot move her joints. She worked all through COVID teaching full time remotely despite having to shield. For context, she meets a group of six or seven other people with RA each time she has an infusion and none of them work at all, let alone full time in a school - she is a machine.
But she has finally quit largely because as the school takes on more sixth form students to try to keep itself afloat, she no longer has her own classroom and has to move around the school more, meaning that her joints flared up too much between infusions.
Part of the answer to this problem is to try to ensure employers can better accommodate individuals with disabilities. Telling this person she should now move house and live with family/friends would be deeply offensive and wrong headed on an individual level. Not to say that's the wrong policy because of an anecdote, but it's worth hearing the edge cases on the other side of the coin.
OK, but I don't much care if it's deeply offensive or not. It's not the duty of Government to make policy, nor the Treasury spending decisions, on what individuals may or may not find deeply offensive.
Spending on this is expected to rise to over £30bn a year by 2027/28, and we can't afford it. Almost all of us will suffer from health issues or disabilities at some point in our lives. What many of us object to is that the State should pay such people to live a more comfortable lifestyle than those working for a living and struggling to make ends meet.
I'd far rather this money was invested in defence, education and industrial strategy and lowering the tax burden on working people.
Everyone should do some form of work. And almost everyone can do some form of work.
It's why we're here.
I don't disagree with that broad sentiment Casino (some extreme cases excepted).
I became a paraplegic at 19 and was lucky enough to forge a career in IT and finance. But that was because, if I say so myself, I am reasonably bright and good at managing people and projects. Most manual jobs would be unsuitable for me - I am not going to forge a career on a building site. So if I was below average intellect, I would have struggled to find work.
Now I'm retired the issue with a lot of people I see at Citizens Advice, particularly those with mental problems, is that they are unemployable. I would not employ them, nor would you.
I have an allotment here in Flatland Central for various historic reasons.
The plotholders are a random mix of middle class types, retired folk, Polish families and a not insignificant number of dropouts and people on the margins of work/not work.
These people on the margins are probably unemployable for anything structured as they are rather chaotic and not terribly keen on authority. I don't ask but I expect some are signed off with mental issues and the like. Some of them do, however, keep quite a tidy plot and are clearly capable of some kind of work.
What they need is unstructured work which benefits society but doesn't require a daily 9-5. It would benefit them significantly.
The way welfare works this is more or less impossible without falling foul of any number of rules.
We need to get away from the stupid withdrawal rules and barriers to people doing piecemeal working.
In the case of the person on £33k benefits, I would guess that someone like that could manage 2-3 hours a day at a computer but not a full time job. But it just can't work that way. Why not?
That article linked by @Casino_Royale is really interesting - a miscellany of cases. It's best to read all of it.
On the case quoted, I'd note that the Personal Independence Payment is a benefit which is not means tested, and is specifically to allow a disabled person to do the basic things we all take for grantd.- so should not really be in the category of "living off benefits".
She is on the higher rate, which is indicative of severe disability * (here: connective tissue disorder, which could be many things), and it is the way a lot of people pay for a car from Motability (for example). The assessment process can feel quite abusive I am told - other countries tend to be less administrative and more "the Doctor says", but OTOH the UK has a cut-to-the-bone attitude to welfare spending so the system is more cushioned by other aspects in peer countries.
That is £9.5k of the £33k, and she spends half of it to top up the rent for her one-bedroom flat.
The BBC should have split it into means tested and non-means tested.
I'd ask how that £23.5k compares to the benefits subsidising childcare for a couple on a household income of £40k or £60k?
The Puerto Rico fiasco is one of the rare things that *has* broken through. On the CNN/NYT/WaPo homepages, it's *the* #1 story.
All of that is dangerous for a candidate who still has a big favorables disadvantage with 1 week to go. Any change is marginal. But it's not helpful. https://x.com/lxeagle17/status/1851069139227746798
Sane washing sort of works with the usual Trump rants about illegals and immigrants, in that the right-leaning Latino voters can be persuaded to believe that "but he doesn't mean us."
Sane washing doesn't work with insults to all Puerto Ricans, as they are American as anyone else. When you insult Puerto Ricans any sound minded Latino should realise "he means us".
"In LA, 70 per cent of people are telling me they’ll vote for Trump In 2016 I believed Hillary would triumph, and dressed up as her for Halloween. I won’t make the same mistake again Celia Walden"
California is the last place where Trump needs to do better.
If 70% of Californians are voting for him he's home and hosed. This notion of the shy Trump voter seems real.
We all owe (reluctantly) a debt of gratitude to @williamglenn who called it for Trump when the rest of us were on Harris to win the popular vote and the Electoral College.
If 70% of Californians are voting for Trump then every single poll is so far out they may as well not bother.
This is just a crap anecdote from someone who doesn't realise the people they talk to are not an accurate cross section of real world..
I tend to follow a number of Trump-hostile Republican and Democrat YouTube channels. They still seems relatively optimistic. The PB evidence gives the head a wobble and brings me back to the reality that Trump has won this already.
"In LA, 70 per cent of people are telling me they’ll vote for Trump In 2016 I believed Hillary would triumph, and dressed up as her for Halloween. I won’t make the same mistake again Celia Walden"
California is the last place where Trump needs to do better.
If 70% of Californians are voting for him he's home and hosed. This notion of the shy Trump voter seems real.
We all owe (reluctantly) a debt of gratitude to @williamglenn who called it for Trump when the rest of us were on Harris to win the popular vote and the Electoral College.
If 70% of Californians are voting for Trump then every single poll is so far out they may as well not bother.
This is just a crap anecdote from someone who doesn't realise the people they talk to are not an accurate cross section of real world..
My 2020 final book was tilted very Biden, which was - how can I put this... unpleasent as the initial counts came in.
This time round I'm more balanced having been heavily pro Harris but I took some out and laid Harris at 2.58.
So across Smarkets and Betfair I'm now +495.89 Trump; +665.35 Harris (After Betfair Premium charge).
That feels about the right split to me - the heavier win should mathematically given the uncertainties and the fact it's greater than 6-4 be on Harris. But the early voting registration splits are definitely more pro Trump than in 2020 and 2022 (Nevada looks particularly bad for Harris and that was the most left swing state in 2020...) .
This election is very very difficult to call, and it might not be particularly close either for Trump or for Harris. I simply don't know and anyone who claims to is lieing.
"In LA, 70 per cent of people are telling me they’ll vote for Trump In 2016 I believed Hillary would triumph, and dressed up as her for Halloween. I won’t make the same mistake again Celia Walden"
California is the last place where Trump needs to do better.
If 70% of Californians are voting for him he's home and hosed. This notion of the shy Trump voter seems real.
We all owe (reluctantly) a debt of gratitude to @williamglenn who called it for Trump when the rest of us were on Harris to win the popular vote and the Electoral College.
If 70% of Californians are voting for Trump then every single poll is so far out they may as well not bother.
This is just a crap anecdote from someone who doesn't realise the people they talk to are not an accurate cross section of real world..
Trump is a clear and present danger to American democracy, and quite possibly the freedom of the entire planet.
Idiot.
Complacent idiot.
What's the bet that if elected Trump does/does not overturn democracy. £100 from me at your odds to say that if elected by the end of his term the US will have an election.
Oh and what odds that we face a danger to "the freedom of the entire planet".
LOL
Do we have a deal?
Do you regard Russia as a democracy?
Technically it genuinely is, but it has quirks. It's managed to distance its people from the concept of politics so well that it operates as if it wasn't. This is the characteristic of autocracies, separating the government from the people.
"In LA, 70 per cent of people are telling me they’ll vote for Trump In 2016 I believed Hillary would triumph, and dressed up as her for Halloween. I won’t make the same mistake again Celia Walden"
California is the last place where Trump needs to do better.
If 70% of Californians are voting for him he's home and hosed. This notion of the shy Trump voter seems real.
We all owe (reluctantly) a debt of gratitude to @williamglenn who called it for Trump when the rest of us were on Harris to win the popular vote and the Electoral College.
Come here on 6th November (maybe a few days later) if you are in need of shirt donations...
"In LA, 70 per cent of people are telling me they’ll vote for Trump In 2016 I believed Hillary would triumph, and dressed up as her for Halloween. I won’t make the same mistake again Celia Walden"
California is the last place where Trump needs to do better.
If 70% of Californians are voting for him he's home and hosed. This notion of the shy Trump voter seems real.
We all owe (reluctantly) a debt of gratitude to @williamglenn who called it for Trump when the rest of us were on Harris to win the popular vote and the Electoral College.
Come here on 6th November (maybe a few days later) if you are in need of shirt donations...
"In LA, 70 per cent of people are telling me they’ll vote for Trump In 2016 I believed Hillary would triumph, and dressed up as her for Halloween. I won’t make the same mistake again Celia Walden"
California is the last place where Trump needs to do better.
If 70% of Californians are voting for him he's home and hosed. This notion of the shy Trump voter seems real.
We all owe (reluctantly) a debt of gratitude to @williamglenn who called it for Trump when the rest of us were on Harris to win the popular vote and the Electoral College.
70% would be in a couple of bits of Orange County, where you get really some horrible rich people.
When looking at Trump supporters, they are not in the best shape mentally. They have lots of personal issues, and they’re bringing those issues to their politics. They’re bringing ignorance. They’re bringing stupidity. They’re racists and misogynists, xenophobes and bigots. And some, I assume, are good people.
"In LA, 70 per cent of people are telling me they’ll vote for Trump In 2016 I believed Hillary would triumph, and dressed up as her for Halloween. I won’t make the same mistake again Celia Walden"
California is the last place where Trump needs to do better.
If 70% of Californians are voting for him he's home and hosed. This notion of the shy Trump voter seems real.
We all owe (reluctantly) a debt of gratitude to @williamglenn who called it for Trump when the rest of us were on Harris to win the popular vote and the Electoral College.
70% would be in a couple of bits of Orange County, where you get really some horrible rich people.
Otherwise, I call bullshit.
As a meaningful anecodate of LA itself, it seems rather unlikely (I think the very reddest LA district is about 65% Democratic). But you're right that there are some heftily GOP districts not so far outside of LA.
The team discovered three sites in total, which are the size of Scotland's capital Edinburgh, “by accident” when one archaeologist browsed data on the internet.
“I was on something like page 16 of Google search and found a laser survey done by a Mexican organisation for environmental monitoring,” explains Luke Auld-Thomas, a PhD student at Tulane university in the US.
It was a Lidar survey, a remote sensing technique which fires thousands of laser pulses from a plane and maps objects below using the time the signal takes to return.
But when Mr Auld-Thomas processed the data with methods used by archaeologists, he saw what others had missed - a huge ancient city which may have been home to 30-50,000 people at its peak from 750 to 850 AD.
That is more than the number of people who live in the region today, the researchers say.
"In LA, 70 per cent of people are telling me they’ll vote for Trump In 2016 I believed Hillary would triumph, and dressed up as her for Halloween. I won’t make the same mistake again Celia Walden"
California is the last place where Trump needs to do better.
If 70% of Californians are voting for him he's home and hosed. This notion of the shy Trump voter seems real.
We all owe (reluctantly) a debt of gratitude to @williamglenn who called it for Trump when the rest of us were on Harris to win the popular vote and the Electoral College.
Come here on 6th November (maybe a few days later) if you are in need of shirt donations...
Trump is a clear and present danger to American democracy, and quite possibly the freedom of the entire planet.
Idiot.
Complacent idiot.
What's the bet that if elected Trump does/does not overturn democracy. £100 from me at your odds to say that if elected by the end of his term the US will have an election.
Oh and what odds that we face a danger to "the freedom of the entire planet".
LOL
Do we have a deal?
Venezuela and Russia have "elections". The bar for a functioning democracy is a bit higher than mere election theatre.
Federalism gives the US some protections, in that the assault on a free and fair electoral process will be more difficult (at least under a veneer of legality) in California and New York than in Alabama and Oklahoma, but there's no doubting the desires of an incoming Trump administration. Some of their actions would merely be a continuation of earlier GOP practices (gerrymandering, electoral roll stripping, court stacking), while others would have new theocratic/authoritarian vigour (turning the Supreme Court into a regime rubber stamp, round-ups of certain populations, regular calls for armed citizens to take to the streets, full repression of women, etc.). It's a process for sure, but the legal and constitutional impediments have been deliberately weakened for some time now, and retaking the presidency would be a key step in the process.
"In LA, 70 per cent of people are telling me they’ll vote for Trump In 2016 I believed Hillary would triumph, and dressed up as her for Halloween. I won’t make the same mistake again Celia Walden"
California is the last place where Trump needs to do better.
If 70% of Californians are voting for him he's home and hosed. This notion of the shy Trump voter seems real.
We all owe (reluctantly) a debt of gratitude to @williamglenn who called it for Trump when the rest of us were on Harris to win the popular vote and the Electoral College.
If 70% of Californians are voting for Trump then every single poll is so far out they may as well not bother.
This is just a crap anecdote from someone who doesn't realise the people they talk to are not an accurate cross section of real world..
This new Doyle comms fellow can't arrive in No. 10 fast enough.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 15m Starmer and Reeves have spent a significant amount of public money protecting the public from the full impact of the Tory's decision to axe the bus-fare cap. But they've bungled the presentation, so it looks like a Labour fare hike. That doesn't bode well for tomorrow. https://x.com/DPJHodges/status/1851198838838600053
They have eaten up so much of the oxygen turning themselves inside redefining a working person every day, rather than just say, things much worse than realised, sorry, most people will have to pay much tax.
It feels like they are trying to Bad Al / Mandy playbook of going on the media round spinning some clever sounding BS will fall apart, the difference being 1997, no social media, newspapers a much bigger thing, so something else will come along before you are really challenged. Now the tw@tter machine eats up your nonsense by the end of breakfast and then the government are having to shift position by mid morning.
It is a daily wonder how bad they are at all this.
Budget: I get £2,750 a month in benefits and I'm freaking out over cuts.
Nicole Healing, 44, Unemployed.
"Nicole, who uses them and they pronoun, said they receive Employment and Support Allowance of £1,042, Personal Independent Payments of £798, and Housing Benefit of £917 per month.
Though they feel in a "fortunate position" currently, Nicole says: "I feel I am at the mercy of the DWP."
That's £33,000 a year in benefits for a single person.
I know a few people in a category possibly similar to the above. They are educated to a very high (ie postgraduate) level. They become unable to work, sometimes after a few unsuccessful attempts, due to health conditions that seem to be predominantly psychological disorders. Then they get benefit payments from the government that are equivalent to the wage you would get from a full time professional job.
In the end I can only really feel sorry for them. People don't take them seriously, they are viewed as a drain on the state - and they know it.
“I am fearful about the negative rhetoric in the media about disabled people in receipt of benefits."
She was in digital marketing in the civil service so hardly working down the mines.
Whilst I have sympathy for anyone who's not feeling OK those benefits are excessive. I doubt she's fundamentally disabled and unable to do any work.
We all feel awful and struggle from time to time. It doesn't mean we expect everyone else to pay for us.
Yes I think two separate sentiments clash here: 1. Someone who is ill and living off the state probably has a thoroughly unfulfilling life (ordering lots of crap off Temu is most likely a symptom of this) dependent on the considerable but capricious largesse of DWP which in many cases creates a spiral of negativity, not helped by DavidL's point that returning to the workforce is probably unaffordable without a big drop in money coming in; and, 2. Someone working has to pay for that £33k, which seems deeply unfair.
I think a few things definitely follow: 1. There is often a tinge of envy (cf Blanche's comment about having to work 55 hour weeks). I can relate to this sentiment but I think it is fundamentally misplaced - this is not someone to be envied. 2. There is often a further implication that the problem would be lessened if someone's life circumstances could only be made worse (cf the comment about a £1250pcm rent, one possible implication of which is that really this person should be in a £500pcm shithole with mould all over the walls). I think this is also fundamentally misplaced - some people, but very few, would choose this life, whether in a decent flat or not. Worsening their circumstances is a poor route out of this. 3. At a time when someone can be earning +/- £33k from full time employment but is unable to support a family, it is deeply wrong that this person's taxes need to rise in order to fund the £33k going to an unemployed person.
As a result solutions are hard to find - but I think must come from a deeper restructuring of the economy such that living costs are reduced relative to wages. Primarily this must come from a reduction in housing costs (and I say this as someone who hugely depends on a second income from a rental flat to support my own family).
I'm afraid I would do exactly that: reduce it to a room rent or flatshare allowance of £600pcm max and a meal allowance. They can then choose whether to live with friends or family or with others in a similar position. That might not be living in clover but, tough.
These are the choices ordinary working people have to make, who are often under immense pressure themselves, and their taxes shouldn't go to pay for this.
Yes, I can entirely understand that sentiment in the current system - especially in the context of a budget that is going to push taxes up.
I don't think it will help, without a much wider societal shift away from looking after the vulnerable and towards a more brutal/Stoic approach.
(I often find myself personally harking for a more stoic approach - you get out and work regardless - but I have come to reflect that I probably feel this way only because I have never had to work with a significant disability.)
Anecdote alert: one of my colleagues left teaching just this half term. She has worked with me for 8 years whilst having rheumatoid arthritis. She takes a day or two off every six weeks to have blood infusions, without which she cannot move her joints. She worked all through COVID teaching full time remotely despite having to shield. For context, she meets a group of six or seven other people with RA each time she has an infusion and none of them work at all, let alone full time in a school - she is a machine.
But she has finally quit largely because as the school takes on more sixth form students to try to keep itself afloat, she no longer has her own classroom and has to move around the school more, meaning that her joints flared up too much between infusions.
Part of the answer to this problem is to try to ensure employers can better accommodate individuals with disabilities. Telling this person she should now move house and live with family/friends would be deeply offensive and wrong headed on an individual level. Not to say that's the wrong policy because of an anecdote, but it's worth hearing the edge cases on the other side of the coin.
OK, but I don't much care if it's deeply offensive or not. It's not the duty of Government to make policy, nor the Treasury spending decisions, on what individuals may or may not find deeply offensive.
Spending on this is expected to rise to over £30bn a year by 2027/28, and we can't afford it. Almost all of us will suffer from health issues or disabilities at some point in our lives. What many of us object to is that the State should pay such people to live a more comfortable lifestyle than those working for a living and struggling to make ends meet.
I'd far rather this money was invested in defence, education and industrial strategy and lowering the tax burden on working people.
Everyone should do some form of work. And almost everyone can do some form of work.
It's why we're here.
I don't disagree with that broad sentiment Casino (some extreme cases excepted).
I became a paraplegic at 19 and was lucky enough to forge a career in IT and finance. But that was because, if I say so myself, I am reasonably bright and good at managing people and projects. Most manual jobs would be unsuitable for me - I am not going to forge a career on a building site. So if I was below average intellect, I would have struggled to find work.
Now I'm retired the issue with a lot of people I see at Citizens Advice, particularly those with mental problems, is that they are unemployable. I would not employ them, nor would you.
I have an allotment here in Flatland Central for various historic reasons.
The plotholders are a random mix of middle class types, retired folk, Polish families and a not insignificant number of dropouts and people on the margins of work/not work.
These people on the margins are probably unemployable for anything structured as they are rather chaotic and not terribly keen on authority. I don't ask but I expect some are signed off with mental issues and the like. Some of them do, however, keep quite a tidy plot and are clearly capable of some kind of work.
What they need is unstructured work which benefits society but doesn't require a daily 9-5. It would benefit them significantly.
The way welfare works this is more or less impossible without falling foul of any number of rules.
We need to get away from the stupid withdrawal rules and barriers to people doing piecemeal working.
In the case of the person on £33k benefits, I would guess that someone like that could manage 2-3 hours a day at a computer but not a full time job. But it just can't work that way. Why not?
There are a lot of large employers, in the public sector and in utilities, for whom someone able to work 2-3 hours a day should be able to seek ad-hoc remote employment in call centre or chat service work. Government should take the lead and encourage others to participate. There’s routinely long waits for calls and chat/email replies, so every additional man hour should lessen the workload and improve service. Yes there’s a training requirement, perhaps government should help to subsidise that bit.
Remploy….
That really was a disgusting and heartless call by New Labour.
Was it New Labour, the Coalition, or both? So hard to keep track.
re reparations which are analagous to apologies for past deeds I am with Jonathan Sumption here. To apologise for a past deed because it is now deemed immoral, say, is wrong because to do so makes the assumption that values never change and, by implication, that our current values are right and "good" now and forever more. Which is pretty much how religions operate and it is no good thing for the State to operate as a religion.
That seems a rather tortured argument. So modern day Germany has no business apologising for the holocaust because it would be immoral to assume that the current view that the holocaust is a bad thing is not going to change? Maybe in the future we will think the holocaust was totally fine - and so we should shut up about it right now? Have I got this right? Sumption always seems to be one of those terribly clever people who always comes up with the wrong answer.
Explain to me what the German apology is actually for. Describe it to me. What is it saying.
We, the German people, our parents and grandparents, committed an unforgivable crime. The German state benefited from taking property and from unpaid labour. We have a duty to remember what happened and to ensure it never happens again... something like this is how I would hope Germany feels. Of course they have already apologized and made reparations. The alternative is, what exactly? This has nothing to do with us? We thought it was OK at the time and our current sense that it wasn't ok may only be temporary? Moral judgements are impossible?
My own view is that nobody in Germany today has anything to be guilty about. We can all agree that the Nazis (and their helpers), were a vile bunch.
I don't go with that last sentence. Most of the helpers of the Nazis were ordinary everyday people, groomed and manipulated into being beasts, or compliant. I do not know whether, when push comes to shove and the stormtrooper is on my doorstep, or the administrator demanding I tick off the identities of the Jews on the list on his clipboard subject to my children being banned from education, I would have it in me to be a hero. Debates around the first sentence are more complex / nuanced.
On the last sentence, "There but for the grace of God", or similar by anyone who wants to write a non-God-referencing version, is a true statement.
Morality and practical ethics are fragile, and can easily be shattered or undermined. Consider Guantanamo in the last 20 years, and the abuses in the 'war on terror', and waterboarding, and the efforts made to justify the values underlying those practices.
That is in large measure what the 'rules based order', and whether it will be preserved is about. It is a deeply inadequate structure, but will what emerges after any putative collapse be better?
That's fair too. Browning's Ordinary Men, makes your point, very well. So, too, the TV play, Conspiracy.
People were rarely placed in a position where they had to be heroes, in order to resist. Rather, those who were not strongly committed to Nazism, mainly acted mainly out of group loyalty.
And, I suppose, going back to the discussion about colonialism, if it's a choice between your family and community of European settlers, and the local Indian tribe, well that's a choice that's going to make itself (as it would, for members of the Indian tribe, in the opposite direction).
That's one reason there is an argument to treat Russians in some way as victims of a several systems treating them for 800 years as a raw material inputs into somebody else's empire, with no inherent value. A similar comment could be made wrt to Western societies up until the last several centuries, including for example the idea of child labour in cotton mills or Victorian chimneys being disposable human beings.
And the Russia-China-and-others axis wants to treat human life as disposable, which the "rules based system" has imperfectly mitigated to some extent.
That's my basis for critiquing practices we have collaborated with ourselves as a country - even as simply as the way we co-operated with China, whilst turning a blind eye to Tibet / Genocide etc. And I won't buy the "it's over there, and noting to do with us" BS.
That I think, is what Ukraine has brought to a head for many.
"In LA, 70 per cent of people are telling me they’ll vote for Trump In 2016 I believed Hillary would triumph, and dressed up as her for Halloween. I won’t make the same mistake again Celia Walden"
California is the last place where Trump needs to do better.
If 70% of Californians are voting for him he's home and hosed. This notion of the shy Trump voter seems real.
We all owe (reluctantly) a debt of gratitude to @williamglenn who called it for Trump when the rest of us were on Harris to win the popular vote and the Electoral College.
If 70% of Californians are voting for Trump then every single poll is so far out they may as well not bother.
This is just a crap anecdote from someone who doesn't realise the people they talk to are not an accurate cross section of real world..
So you genuinely believe that 70% of Californians might vote for Trump? Less likely than an invasion from Mars during the count.
No I don't believe that. Although Andy (when he isn't quoting Goodwin) is a reliable source. I have said Harris wins the popular vote, Trump wins the College, possibly at a canter.
Context; I did have Rishi down as a 20 seat majority winner.
Robin Culshaw, one of the few worthwhile Speccie hacks apart from Stephen Daldry and that travel fellow, has gone thru Penn and Ohio. Here's his piece. He thinks Trump will win.
The Puerto Rico fiasco is one of the rare things that *has* broken through. On the CNN/NYT/WaPo homepages, it's *the* #1 story.
All of that is dangerous for a candidate who still has a big favorables disadvantage with 1 week to go. Any change is marginal. But it's not helpful. https://x.com/lxeagle17/status/1851069139227746798
This new Doyle comms fellow can't arrive in No. 10 fast enough.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 15m Starmer and Reeves have spent a significant amount of public money protecting the public from the full impact of the Tory's decision to axe the bus-fare cap. But they've bungled the presentation, so it looks like a Labour fare hike. That doesn't bode well for tomorrow. https://x.com/DPJHodges/status/1851198838838600053
They have eaten up so much of the oxygen turning themselves inside redefining a working person every day, rather than just say, things much worse than realised, sorry, most people will have to pay much tax.
It feels like they are trying to Bad Al / Mandy playbook of going on the media round spinning some clever sounding BS will fall apart, the difference being 1997, no social media, newspapers a much bigger thing, so something else will come along before you are really challenged. Now the tw@tter machine eats up your nonsense by the end of breakfast and then the government are having to shift position by mid morning.
It is a daily wonder how bad they are at all this.
"Working people know exactly who they are."
Honestly you would be hard pressed to come up with a dafter answer. How the hell is someone who was a top lawyer incapable of answering such a question?
"In LA, 70 per cent of people are telling me they’ll vote for Trump In 2016 I believed Hillary would triumph, and dressed up as her for Halloween. I won’t make the same mistake again Celia Walden"
California is the last place where Trump needs to do better.
If 70% of Californians are voting for him he's home and hosed. This notion of the shy Trump voter seems real.
We all owe (reluctantly) a debt of gratitude to @williamglenn who called it for Trump when the rest of us were on Harris to win the popular vote and the Electoral College.
Come here on 6th November (maybe a few days later) if you are in need of shirt donations...
"In LA, 70 per cent of people are telling me they’ll vote for Trump In 2016 I believed Hillary would triumph, and dressed up as her for Halloween. I won’t make the same mistake again Celia Walden"
California is the last place where Trump needs to do better.
If 70% of Californians are voting for him he's home and hosed. This notion of the shy Trump voter seems real.
We all owe (reluctantly) a debt of gratitude to @williamglenn who called it for Trump when the rest of us were on Harris to win the popular vote and the Electoral College.
If 70% of Californians are voting for Trump then every single poll is so far out they may as well not bother.
This is just a crap anecdote from someone who doesn't realise the people they talk to are not an accurate cross section of real world..
So you genuinely believe that 70% of Californians might vote for Trump? Less likely than an invasion from Mars during the count.
No I don't believe that. Although Andy (when he isn't quoting Goodwin) is a reliable source. I have said Harris wins the popular vote, Trump wins the College, possibly at a canter.
That'd require PA, MI, WI to have a quite violent leftward shift relative to the rest of the nation. I know these things vary from election to election but it'd be quite something
The Puerto Rico fiasco is one of the rare things that *has* broken through. On the CNN/NYT/WaPo homepages, it's *the* #1 story.
All of that is dangerous for a candidate who still has a big favorables disadvantage with 1 week to go. Any change is marginal. But it's not helpful. https://x.com/lxeagle17/status/1851069139227746798
Sane washing sort of works with the usual Trump rants about illegals and immigrants, in that the right-leaning Latino voters can be persuaded to believe that "but he doesn't mean us."
Sane washing doesn't work with insults to all Puerto Ricans, as they are American as anyone else. When you insult Puerto Ricans any sound minded Latino should realise "he means us".
Puerto Ricans are a small minority in any particular state so rounding on them could add as many votes as it subtracts. Not all 'Hispanics' are the same and they don't necessarily see eye-to-eye. Puerto Ricans in the NE, Cubans in the SE, native Americans in the SW all speak Spanish and they all have individual issues. The customary Norteamericano slur for Spanish speakers relies for its potency on the the idea that they're all the same.
"In LA, 70 per cent of people are telling me they’ll vote for Trump In 2016 I believed Hillary would triumph, and dressed up as her for Halloween. I won’t make the same mistake again Celia Walden"
California is the last place where Trump needs to do better.
If 70% of Californians are voting for him he's home and hosed. This notion of the shy Trump voter seems real.
We all owe (reluctantly) a debt of gratitude to @williamglenn who called it for Trump when the rest of us were on Harris to win the popular vote and the Electoral College.
If 70% of Californians are voting for Trump then every single poll is so far out they may as well not bother.
This is just a crap anecdote from someone who doesn't realise the people they talk to are not an accurate cross section of real world..
You are somebody who skews pessimistic on this sort of thing, though, I think that's fair. Not liking the NV early voting data, I have to say, but I remain genuinely hopeful.
Robin Culshaw, one of the few worthwhile Speccie hacks apart from Stephen Daldry and that travel fellow, has gone thru Penn and Ohio. Here's his piece. He thinks Trump will win.
"In LA, 70 per cent of people are telling me they’ll vote for Trump In 2016 I believed Hillary would triumph, and dressed up as her for Halloween. I won’t make the same mistake again Celia Walden"
California is the last place where Trump needs to do better.
If 70% of Californians are voting for him he's home and hosed. This notion of the shy Trump voter seems real.
We all owe (reluctantly) a debt of gratitude to @williamglenn who called it for Trump when the rest of us were on Harris to win the popular vote and the Electoral College.
70% would be in a couple of bits of Orange County, where you get really some horrible rich people.
Otherwise, I call bullshit.
As a meaningful anecodate of LA itself, it seems rather unlikely (I think the very reddest LA district is about 65% Democratic). But you're right that there are some heftily GOP districts not so far outside of LA.
"In LA, 70 per cent of people are telling me they’ll vote for Trump In 2016 I believed Hillary would triumph, and dressed up as her for Halloween. I won’t make the same mistake again Celia Walden"
California is the last place where Trump needs to do better.
If 70% of Californians are voting for him he's home and hosed. This notion of the shy Trump voter seems real.
We all owe (reluctantly) a debt of gratitude to @williamglenn who called it for Trump when the rest of us were on Harris to win the popular vote and the Electoral College.
Come here on 6th November (maybe a few days later) if you are in need of shirt donations...
Don't you believe William has saved our shirts?
Nope. I still think Harris wins quite easily.
I hope you are right. Although you will be accused of wishcasting on here.
Trump is a clear and present danger to American democracy, and quite possibly the freedom of the entire planet.
Idiot.
Complacent idiot.
What's the bet that if elected Trump does/does not overturn democracy. £100 from me at your odds to say that if elected by the end of his term the US will have an election.
Oh and what odds that we face a danger to "the freedom of the entire planet".
LOL
Do we have a deal?
Do you regard Russia as a democracy?
Technically it genuinely is, but it has quirks. It's managed to distance its people from the concept of politics so well that it operates as if it wasn't. This is the characteristic of autocracies, separating the government from the people.
No. By any meaningful technical definition a democracy consists of a lot more than elections - which in any case need to be free and fair. A democracy requires the rule of law, freedom of the Press, freedom of assembly, etc.
Technically, Russia is very much not a democracy.
The tendency for people to identify democracy with elections, and only elections, is deeply mistaken.
Trump is a clear and present danger to American democracy, and quite possibly the freedom of the entire planet.
Idiot.
Complacent idiot.
What's the bet that if elected Trump does/does not overturn democracy. £100 from me at your odds to say that if elected by the end of his term the US will have an election.
Oh and what odds that we face a danger to "the freedom of the entire planet".
LOL
Do we have a deal?
Do you regard Russia as a democracy?
Technically it genuinely is, but it has quirks. It's managed to distance its people from the concept of politics so well that it operates as if it wasn't. This is the characteristic of autocracies, separating the government from the people.
A closer analogue might be Turkey or Hungary.
It's hard to say exactly what a second Trump presidency would do, as it depends a fair amount on whether he would have control of Congress. (Though there's quite a lot a President can do by executive order, given a Supreme Court extremely sympathetic to executive powers.) Or how long he lasted before being 25th Amendmented, as Vance might be a more organised version.
Neither of those two states have quite the built in protections of the US system, of course.
Robin Culshaw, one of the few worthwhile Speccie hacks apart from Stephen Daldry and that travel fellow, has gone thru Penn and Ohio. Here's his piece. He thinks Trump will win.
"In LA, 70 per cent of people are telling me they’ll vote for Trump In 2016 I believed Hillary would triumph, and dressed up as her for Halloween. I won’t make the same mistake again Celia Walden"
California is the last place where Trump needs to do better.
If 70% of Californians are voting for him he's home and hosed. This notion of the shy Trump voter seems real.
We all owe (reluctantly) a debt of gratitude to @williamglenn who called it for Trump when the rest of us were on Harris to win the popular vote and the Electoral College.
Come here on 6th November (maybe a few days later) if you are in need of shirt donations...
Budget: I get £2,750 a month in benefits and I'm freaking out over cuts.
Nicole Healing, 44, Unemployed.
"Nicole, who uses them and they pronoun, said they receive Employment and Support Allowance of £1,042, Personal Independent Payments of £798, and Housing Benefit of £917 per month.
Though they feel in a "fortunate position" currently, Nicole says: "I feel I am at the mercy of the DWP."
That's £33,000 a year in benefits for a single person.
I know a few people in a category possibly similar to the above. They are educated to a very high (ie postgraduate) level. They become unable to work, sometimes after a few unsuccessful attempts, due to health conditions that seem to be predominantly psychological disorders. Then they get benefit payments from the government that are equivalent to the wage you would get from a full time professional job.
In the end I can only really feel sorry for them. People don't take them seriously, they are viewed as a drain on the state - and they know it.
“I am fearful about the negative rhetoric in the media about disabled people in receipt of benefits."
She was in digital marketing in the civil service so hardly working down the mines.
Whilst I have sympathy for anyone who's not feeling OK those benefits are excessive. I doubt she's fundamentally disabled and unable to do any work.
We all feel awful and struggle from time to time. It doesn't mean we expect everyone else to pay for us.
Yes I think two separate sentiments clash here: 1. Someone who is ill and living off the state probably has a thoroughly unfulfilling life (ordering lots of crap off Temu is most likely a symptom of this) dependent on the considerable but capricious largesse of DWP which in many cases creates a spiral of negativity, not helped by DavidL's point that returning to the workforce is probably unaffordable without a big drop in money coming in; and, 2. Someone working has to pay for that £33k, which seems deeply unfair.
I think a few things definitely follow: 1. There is often a tinge of envy (cf Blanche's comment about having to work 55 hour weeks). I can relate to this sentiment but I think it is fundamentally misplaced - this is not someone to be envied. 2. There is often a further implication that the problem would be lessened if someone's life circumstances could only be made worse (cf the comment about a £1250pcm rent, one possible implication of which is that really this person should be in a £500pcm shithole with mould all over the walls). I think this is also fundamentally misplaced - some people, but very few, would choose this life, whether in a decent flat or not. Worsening their circumstances is a poor route out of this. 3. At a time when someone can be earning +/- £33k from full time employment but is unable to support a family, it is deeply wrong that this person's taxes need to rise in order to fund the £33k going to an unemployed person.
As a result solutions are hard to find - but I think must come from a deeper restructuring of the economy such that living costs are reduced relative to wages. Primarily this must come from a reduction in housing costs (and I say this as someone who hugely depends on a second income from a rental flat to support my own family).
I'm afraid I would do exactly that: reduce it to a room rent or flatshare allowance of £600pcm max and a meal allowance. They can then choose whether to live with friends or family or with others in a similar position. That might not be living in clover but, tough.
These are the choices ordinary working people have to make, who are often under immense pressure themselves, and their taxes shouldn't go to pay for this.
Yes, I can entirely understand that sentiment in the current system - especially in the context of a budget that is going to push taxes up.
I don't think it will help, without a much wider societal shift away from looking after the vulnerable and towards a more brutal/Stoic approach.
(I often find myself personally harking for a more stoic approach - you get out and work regardless - but I have come to reflect that I probably feel this way only because I have never had to work with a significant disability.)
Anecdote alert: one of my colleagues left teaching just this half term. She has worked with me for 8 years whilst having rheumatoid arthritis. She takes a day or two off every six weeks to have blood infusions, without which she cannot move her joints. She worked all through COVID teaching full time remotely despite having to shield. For context, she meets a group of six or seven other people with RA each time she has an infusion and none of them work at all, let alone full time in a school - she is a machine.
But she has finally quit largely because as the school takes on more sixth form students to try to keep itself afloat, she no longer has her own classroom and has to move around the school more, meaning that her joints flared up too much between infusions.
Part of the answer to this problem is to try to ensure employers can better accommodate individuals with disabilities. Telling this person she should now move house and live with family/friends would be deeply offensive and wrong headed on an individual level. Not to say that's the wrong policy because of an anecdote, but it's worth hearing the edge cases on the other side of the coin.
OK, but I don't much care if it's deeply offensive or not. It's not the duty of Government to make policy, nor the Treasury spending decisions, on what individuals may or may not find deeply offensive.
Spending on this is expected to rise to over £30bn a year by 2027/28, and we can't afford it. Almost all of us will suffer from health issues or disabilities at some point in our lives. What many of us object to is that the State should pay such people to live a more comfortable lifestyle than those working for a living and struggling to make ends meet.
I'd far rather this money was invested in defence, education and industrial strategy and lowering the tax burden on working people.
Everyone should do some form of work. And almost everyone can do some form of work.
It's why we're here.
I don't disagree with that broad sentiment Casino (some extreme cases excepted).
I became a paraplegic at 19 and was lucky enough to forge a career in IT and finance. But that was because, if I say so myself, I am reasonably bright and good at managing people and projects. Most manual jobs would be unsuitable for me - I am not going to forge a career on a building site. So if I was below average intellect, I would have struggled to find work.
Now I'm retired the issue with a lot of people I see at Citizens Advice, particularly those with mental problems, is that they are unemployable. I would not employ them, nor would you.
I have an allotment here in Flatland Central for various historic reasons.
The plotholders are a random mix of middle class types, retired folk, Polish families and a not insignificant number of dropouts and people on the margins of work/not work.
These people on the margins are probably unemployable for anything structured as they are rather chaotic and not terribly keen on authority. I don't ask but I expect some are signed off with mental issues and the like. Some of them do, however, keep quite a tidy plot and are clearly capable of some kind of work.
What they need is unstructured work which benefits society but doesn't require a daily 9-5. It would benefit them significantly.
The way welfare works this is more or less impossible without falling foul of any number of rules.
We need to get away from the stupid withdrawal rules and barriers to people doing piecemeal working.
In the case of the person on £33k benefits, I would guess that someone like that could manage 2-3 hours a day at a computer but not a full time job. But it just can't work that way. Why not?
There are a lot of large employers, in the public sector and in utilities, for whom someone able to work 2-3 hours a day should be able to seek ad-hoc remote employment in call centre or chat service work. Government should take the lead and encourage others to participate. There’s routinely long waits for calls and chat/email replies, so every additional man hour should lessen the workload and improve service. Yes there’s a training requirement, perhaps government should help to subsidise that bit.
Remploy….
That really was a disgusting and heartless call by New Labour.
Was it New Labour, the Coalition, or both? So hard to keep track.
New Labour. It was a shocking revelation at the time.
Trump is a clear and present danger to American democracy, and quite possibly the freedom of the entire planet.
Idiot.
Complacent idiot.
What's the bet that if elected Trump does/does not overturn democracy. £100 from me at your odds to say that if elected by the end of his term the US will have an election.
Oh and what odds that we face a danger to "the freedom of the entire planet".
LOL
Do we have a deal?
Do you regard Russia as a democracy?
Technically it genuinely is, but it has quirks. It's managed to distance its people from the concept of politics so well that it operates as if it wasn't. This is the characteristic of autocracies, separating the government from the people.
No. By any meaningful technical definition a democracy consists of a lot more than elections - which in any case need to be free and fair. A democracy requires the rule of law, freedom of the Press, freedom of assembly, etc.
Technically, Russia is very much not a democracy.
The tendency for people to identify democracy with elections, and only elections, is deeply mistaken.
The old Soviet bloc talked about "People's Democracies".
Franco talked about an "organic democracy".
It's pretty easy to keep the ornamentation of democracy while cutting all the effective connections behind the scenes.
The Puerto Rico fiasco is one of the rare things that *has* broken through. On the CNN/NYT/WaPo homepages, it's *the* #1 story.
All of that is dangerous for a candidate who still has a big favorables disadvantage with 1 week to go. Any change is marginal. But it's not helpful. https://x.com/lxeagle17/status/1851069139227746798
Sane washing sort of works with the usual Trump rants about illegals and immigrants, in that the right-leaning Latino voters can be persuaded to believe that "but he doesn't mean us."
Sane washing doesn't work with insults to all Puerto Ricans, as they are American as anyone else. When you insult Puerto Ricans any sound minded Latino should realise "he means us".
Puerto Ricans are a small minority in any particular state so rounding on them could add as many votes as it subtracts. Not all 'Hispanics' are the same and they don't necessarily see eye-to-eye. Puerto Ricans in the NE, Cubans in the SE, native Americans in the SW all speak Spanish and they all have individual issues. The customary Norteamericano slur for Spanish speakers relies for its potency on the the idea that they're all the same.
The point about attacking Puerto Ricans is not the size of the group but the fact that they are Americans. They aren't immigrants from Central or South America, they aren't in the US illegally, they are being attacked despite being Americans. If a Puetro Rican isn't in the in-group then no migrant, and no one with roots outside of the US, is ever going to be accepted as an equal by MAGA-GOP.
"In LA, 70 per cent of people are telling me they’ll vote for Trump In 2016 I believed Hillary would triumph, and dressed up as her for Halloween. I won’t make the same mistake again Celia Walden"
California is the last place where Trump needs to do better.
If 70% of Californians are voting for him he's home and hosed. This notion of the shy Trump voter seems real.
We all owe (reluctantly) a debt of gratitude to @williamglenn who called it for Trump when the rest of us were on Harris to win the popular vote and the Electoral College.
If 70% of Californians are voting for Trump then every single poll is so far out they may as well not bother.
This is just a crap anecdote from someone who doesn't realise the people they talk to are not an accurate cross section of real world..
You are somebody who skews pessimistic on this sort of thing, though, I think that's fair. Not liking the NV early voting data, I have to say, but I remain genuinely hopeful.
My betting book is still very long Harris, short Trump but I do have some hedges on in the state betting and the vote % bands.
I'm pretty hopeful. But I agree with Robert (rather than william) that the polling could very easily turn out to have erred several points in either direction.
At the cost of significant blunting my dividend from a Harris win, I'm also now very slightly green on Trump, too.
Trump is a clear and present danger to American democracy, and quite possibly the freedom of the entire planet.
Idiot.
Complacent idiot.
What's the bet that if elected Trump does/does not overturn democracy. £100 from me at your odds to say that if elected by the end of his term the US will have an election.
Oh and what odds that we face a danger to "the freedom of the entire planet".
LOL
Do we have a deal?
You might actually want to watch the Programme, or read Project 2025 before you sound off.
Authoritarian is the most polite way I can say it, but Fascist is also an objective description, not an opinion.
If you do not understand that, you do not understand anything.
"You might actually want to watch the Programme..."
LOL
Do we have a bet? You too if you fancy it what odds are you giving.
Trump at 63/64% against what I see as a 50/50 election.
So the value is to bet on Harris.
However, another factor in the odds is that if Trump wins the bets are settled fast whereas if Harris wins the chance of a legal fight from the Republicans may mean that bet settlement is delayed, perhaps considerably.
This is acting as a disincentive for bettors to back Harris and may go some way to explain the strange odds.
Regardless, I’ve increased my exposure today by backing Harris again though I’ve not bet big on this election as I’m finding it hard to form a confident view.
"In LA, 70 per cent of people are telling me they’ll vote for Trump In 2016 I believed Hillary would triumph, and dressed up as her for Halloween. I won’t make the same mistake again Celia Walden"
California is the last place where Trump needs to do better.
If 70% of Californians are voting for him he's home and hosed. This notion of the shy Trump voter seems real.
We all owe (reluctantly) a debt of gratitude to @williamglenn who called it for Trump when the rest of us were on Harris to win the popular vote and the Electoral College.
Come here on 6th November (maybe a few days later) if you are in need of shirt donations...
The Puerto Rico fiasco is one of the rare things that *has* broken through. On the CNN/NYT/WaPo homepages, it's *the* #1 story.
All of that is dangerous for a candidate who still has a big favorables disadvantage with 1 week to go. Any change is marginal. But it's not helpful. https://x.com/lxeagle17/status/1851069139227746798
Sane washing sort of works with the usual Trump rants about illegals and immigrants, in that the right-leaning Latino voters can be persuaded to believe that "but he doesn't mean us."
Sane washing doesn't work with insults to all Puerto Ricans, as they are American as anyone else. When you insult Puerto Ricans any sound minded Latino should realise "he means us".
Puerto Ricans are a small minority in any particular state so rounding on them could add as many votes as it subtracts. Not all 'Hispanics' are the same and they don't necessarily see eye-to-eye. Puerto Ricans in the NE, Cubans in the SE, native Americans in the SW all speak Spanish and they all have individual issues. The customary Norteamericano slur for Spanish speakers relies for its potency on the the idea that they're all the same.
The point about attacking Puerto Ricans is not the size of the group but the fact that they are Americans. They aren't immigrants from Central or South America, they aren't in the US illegally, they are being attacked despite being Americans. If a Puetro Rican isn't in the in-group then no migrant, and no one with roots outside of the US, is ever going to be accepted as an equal by MAGA-GOP.
In US, Puerto Ricans they have long been looked down on by everybody else / butt of casual racism, from white's, blacks, latinos. I don't fully understand why.
"In LA, 70 per cent of people are telling me they’ll vote for Trump In 2016 I believed Hillary would triumph, and dressed up as her for Halloween. I won’t make the same mistake again Celia Walden"
California is the last place where Trump needs to do better.
If 70% of Californians are voting for him he's home and hosed. This notion of the shy Trump voter seems real.
We all owe (reluctantly) a debt of gratitude to @williamglenn who called it for Trump when the rest of us were on Harris to win the popular vote and the Electoral College.
Come here on 6th November (maybe a few days later) if you are in need of shirt donations...
Don't you believe William has saved our shirts?
Nope. I still think Harris wins quite easily.
I hope you are right. Although you will be accused of wishcasting on here.
Which kinda ignores the very deep dive I do into the polling and related podcasts...
This new Doyle comms fellow can't arrive in No. 10 fast enough.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 15m Starmer and Reeves have spent a significant amount of public money protecting the public from the full impact of the Tory's decision to axe the bus-fare cap. But they've bungled the presentation, so it looks like a Labour fare hike. That doesn't bode well for tomorrow. https://x.com/DPJHodges/status/1851198838838600053
They have eaten up so much of the oxygen turning themselves inside redefining a working person every day, rather than just say, things much worse than realised, sorry, most people will have to pay much tax.
It feels like they are trying to Bad Al / Mandy playbook of going on the media round spinning some clever sounding BS will fall apart, the difference being 1997, no social media, newspapers a much bigger thing, so something else will come along before you are really challenged. Now the tw@tter machine eats up your nonsense by the end of breakfast and then the government are having to shift position by mid morning.
It is a daily wonder how bad they are at all this.
"Working people know exactly who they are."
Honestly you would be hard pressed to come up with a dafter answer. How the hell is someone who was a top lawyer incapable of answering such a question?
As usual Wes Streeting has made the best effort at digging them out of another comms mess.
"In LA, 70 per cent of people are telling me they’ll vote for Trump In 2016 I believed Hillary would triumph, and dressed up as her for Halloween. I won’t make the same mistake again Celia Walden"
California is the last place where Trump needs to do better.
If 70% of Californians are voting for him he's home and hosed. This notion of the shy Trump voter seems real.
We all owe (reluctantly) a debt of gratitude to @williamglenn who called it for Trump when the rest of us were on Harris to win the popular vote and the Electoral College.
Come here on 6th November (maybe a few days later) if you are in need of shirt donations...
Don't you believe William has saved our shirts?
Nope. I still think Harris wins quite easily.
I hope you are right. Although you will be accused of wishcasting on here.
Which kinda ignores the very deep dive I do into the polling and related podcasts...
So do I. Dollemore, Pakman, Wilsonetc. But the evidence on here by our experts is compelling.
OT Japan: Looking like an LDP-led minority government, probably supported by the People's Democratic Party. This is the right-wing faction of the main opposition Democratic Party that ended up schismed into a very minor party in 2017 after a serious of hilarious miscalculations.
This time they ran mainly on tax cuts which they're pretending will pay for themselves with extra growth, so I expect Ishiba will borrow some extra money and let then take credit for some tax cuts.
Trump is a clear and present danger to American democracy, and quite possibly the freedom of the entire planet.
Idiot.
Complacent idiot.
What's the bet that if elected Trump does/does not overturn democracy. £100 from me at your odds to say that if elected by the end of his term the US will have an election.
Oh and what odds that we face a danger to "the freedom of the entire planet".
Trump is a clear and present danger to American democracy, and quite possibly the freedom of the entire planet.
Idiot.
Complacent idiot.
What's the bet that if elected Trump does/does not overturn democracy. £100 from me at your odds to say that if elected by the end of his term the US will have an election.
Oh and what odds that we face a danger to "the freedom of the entire planet".
LOL
Do we have a deal?
Venezuela and Russia have "elections". The bar for a functioning democracy is a bit higher than mere election theatre.
Federalism gives the US some protections, in that the assault on a free and fair electoral process will be more difficult (at least under a veneer of legality) in California and New York than in Alabama and Oklahoma, but there's no doubting the desires of an incoming Trump administration. Some of their actions would merely be a continuation of earlier GOP practices (gerrymandering, electoral roll stripping, court stacking), while others would have new theocratic/authoritarian vigour (turning the Supreme Court into a regime rubber stamp, round-ups of certain populations, regular calls for armed citizens to take to the streets, full repression of women, etc.). It's a process for sure, but the legal and constitutional impediments have been deliberately weakened for some time now, and retaking the presidency would be a key step in the process.
So you think that after four years of Trump there will just be "election theatre" in the US.
Budget: I get £2,750 a month in benefits and I'm freaking out over cuts.
Nicole Healing, 44, Unemployed.
"Nicole, who uses them and they pronoun, said they receive Employment and Support Allowance of £1,042, Personal Independent Payments of £798, and Housing Benefit of £917 per month.
Though they feel in a "fortunate position" currently, Nicole says: "I feel I am at the mercy of the DWP."
That's £33,000 a year in benefits for a single person.
I know a few people in a category possibly similar to the above. They are educated to a very high (ie postgraduate) level. They become unable to work, sometimes after a few unsuccessful attempts, due to health conditions that seem to be predominantly psychological disorders. Then they get benefit payments from the government that are equivalent to the wage you would get from a full time professional job.
In the end I can only really feel sorry for them. People don't take them seriously, they are viewed as a drain on the state - and they know it.
“I am fearful about the negative rhetoric in the media about disabled people in receipt of benefits."
She was in digital marketing in the civil service so hardly working down the mines.
Whilst I have sympathy for anyone who's not feeling OK those benefits are excessive. I doubt she's fundamentally disabled and unable to do any work.
We all feel awful and struggle from time to time. It doesn't mean we expect everyone else to pay for us.
Yes I think two separate sentiments clash here: 1. Someone who is ill and living off the state probably has a thoroughly unfulfilling life (ordering lots of crap off Temu is most likely a symptom of this) dependent on the considerable but capricious largesse of DWP which in many cases creates a spiral of negativity, not helped by DavidL's point that returning to the workforce is probably unaffordable without a big drop in money coming in; and, 2. Someone working has to pay for that £33k, which seems deeply unfair.
I think a few things definitely follow: 1. There is often a tinge of envy (cf Blanche's comment about having to work 55 hour weeks). I can relate to this sentiment but I think it is fundamentally misplaced - this is not someone to be envied. 2. There is often a further implication that the problem would be lessened if someone's life circumstances could only be made worse (cf the comment about a £1250pcm rent, one possible implication of which is that really this person should be in a £500pcm shithole with mould all over the walls). I think this is also fundamentally misplaced - some people, but very few, would choose this life, whether in a decent flat or not. Worsening their circumstances is a poor route out of this. 3. At a time when someone can be earning +/- £33k from full time employment but is unable to support a family, it is deeply wrong that this person's taxes need to rise in order to fund the £33k going to an unemployed person.
As a result solutions are hard to find - but I think must come from a deeper restructuring of the economy such that living costs are reduced relative to wages. Primarily this must come from a reduction in housing costs (and I say this as someone who hugely depends on a second income from a rental flat to support my own family).
I'm afraid I would do exactly that: reduce it to a room rent or flatshare allowance of £600pcm max and a meal allowance. They can then choose whether to live with friends or family or with others in a similar position. That might not be living in clover but, tough.
These are the choices ordinary working people have to make, who are often under immense pressure themselves, and their taxes shouldn't go to pay for this.
Yes, I can entirely understand that sentiment in the current system - especially in the context of a budget that is going to push taxes up.
I don't think it will help, without a much wider societal shift away from looking after the vulnerable and towards a more brutal/Stoic approach.
(I often find myself personally harking for a more stoic approach - you get out and work regardless - but I have come to reflect that I probably feel this way only because I have never had to work with a significant disability.)
Anecdote alert: one of my colleagues left teaching just this half term. She has worked with me for 8 years whilst having rheumatoid arthritis. She takes a day or two off every six weeks to have blood infusions, without which she cannot move her joints. She worked all through COVID teaching full time remotely despite having to shield. For context, she meets a group of six or seven other people with RA each time she has an infusion and none of them work at all, let alone full time in a school - she is a machine.
But she has finally quit largely because as the school takes on more sixth form students to try to keep itself afloat, she no longer has her own classroom and has to move around the school more, meaning that her joints flared up too much between infusions.
Part of the answer to this problem is to try to ensure employers can better accommodate individuals with disabilities. Telling this person she should now move house and live with family/friends would be deeply offensive and wrong headed on an individual level. Not to say that's the wrong policy because of an anecdote, but it's worth hearing the edge cases on the other side of the coin.
OK, but I don't much care if it's deeply offensive or not. It's not the duty of Government to make policy, nor the Treasury spending decisions, on what individuals may or may not find deeply offensive.
Spending on this is expected to rise to over £30bn a year by 2027/28, and we can't afford it. Almost all of us will suffer from health issues or disabilities at some point in our lives. What many of us object to is that the State should pay such people to live a more comfortable lifestyle than those working for a living and struggling to make ends meet.
I'd far rather this money was invested in defence, education and industrial strategy and lowering the tax burden on working people.
Everyone should do some form of work. And almost everyone can do some form of work.
It's why we're here.
I don't disagree with that broad sentiment Casino (some extreme cases excepted).
I became a paraplegic at 19 and was lucky enough to forge a career in IT and finance. But that was because, if I say so myself, I am reasonably bright and good at managing people and projects. Most manual jobs would be unsuitable for me - I am not going to forge a career on a building site. So if I was below average intellect, I would have struggled to find work.
Now I'm retired the issue with a lot of people I see at Citizens Advice, particularly those with mental problems, is that they are unemployable. I would not employ them, nor would you.
I have an allotment here in Flatland Central for various historic reasons.
The plotholders are a random mix of middle class types, retired folk, Polish families and a not insignificant number of dropouts and people on the margins of work/not work.
These people on the margins are probably unemployable for anything structured as they are rather chaotic and not terribly keen on authority. I don't ask but I expect some are signed off with mental issues and the like. Some of them do, however, keep quite a tidy plot and are clearly capable of some kind of work.
What they need is unstructured work which benefits society but doesn't require a daily 9-5. It would benefit them significantly.
The way welfare works this is more or less impossible without falling foul of any number of rules.
We need to get away from the stupid withdrawal rules and barriers to people doing piecemeal working.
In the case of the person on £33k benefits, I would guess that someone like that could manage 2-3 hours a day at a computer but not a full time job. But it just can't work that way. Why not?
Even if someone is signed off into the ESA support group (i.e. can't work nor expected to even do work-related back to work activities at jobcentre) on mental health in theory they can still do a few hours of "permitted work" a week.
The problem is that very few are willing to do because they don't trust that it will not be used as a reason to take them off ESA at next review ("look, you can do a few hours at the computer at home, therefore you are no longer ill" etc). This is entirely rational response by people on ESA.
The system is hellbent on finding reasons to throw people off the benefit.
A similar one to that is I know people who won't tell the Department (whatever it is called) that they can cycle, because an officer or box-ticker of some sort may then assume "Oh you must be able to walk fine", so they will lose a chunk of the money they need to make their life bearable. I know of people who can barely walk, or with significant pain (eg one lady with fibromyalgia), but who can cycle 5, or 15, or 25 miles - sometimes with a EAPC.
It is a political issue I have with the current version of the Conservatives. There is a rhetoric around "help people back into work", but the underlying motivation is a kneejerk "how can we FORCE these SCROUNGERS to get off benefits" - an animated version of the Daily Mail, which is imo poisonous.
We saw that in the lack of consultation before the announcement that Ticket Offices would be closed, and the attempt to ram it through, whilst passing it off as due to the industry not a political policy.
As far as I can see, Reform take a generally more extreme version of a similar position, from a more knuckle-dragging set of values.
I think there are questions around the current setup, but these approaches are not how to address it.
Robin Culshaw, one of the few worthwhile Speccie hacks apart from Stephen Daldry and that travel fellow, has gone thru Penn and Ohio. Here's his piece. He thinks Trump will win.
Trump is a clear and present danger to American democracy, and quite possibly the freedom of the entire planet.
Idiot.
Complacent idiot.
What's the bet that if elected Trump does/does not overturn democracy. £100 from me at your odds to say that if elected by the end of his term the US will have an election.
Oh and what odds that we face a danger to "the freedom of the entire planet".
LOL
Do we have a deal?
Do you regard Russia as a democracy?
Technically it genuinely is, but it has quirks. It's managed to distance its people from the concept of politics so well that it operates as if it wasn't. This is the characteristic of autocracies, separating the government from the people.
No. By any meaningful technical definition a democracy consists of a lot more than elections - which in any case need to be free and fair. A democracy requires the rule of law, freedom of the Press, freedom of assembly, etc.
Technically, Russia is very much not a democracy.
The tendency for people to identify democracy with elections, and only elections, is deeply mistaken.
The old Soviet bloc talked about "People's Democracies".
Franco talked about an "organic democracy".
It's pretty easy to keep the ornamentation of democracy while cutting all the effective connections behind the scenes.
As someone noted on here during the Olympics, all the countries with the word “Democratic” in their formal name are anything but democratic in practice.
I suppose that, even for his strongest haters, there is one positive to take from a Trump win: he can't run again. So after four years that is him done. However, if Harris wins Trump could come back to haunt American politics again in four years time.
I wonder if the Israeli attack on Iran was partly about punishing Russia? An enfeebled Iran is not helpful to Putin and obviously it reduces the opportunity to provide him with missiles. Netanyahu does a good impression of Michael Corleone settling all the family business though Gazan civilians have paid a high price for it.
re reparations which are analagous to apologies for past deeds I am with Jonathan Sumption here. To apologise for a past deed because it is now deemed immoral, say, is wrong because to do so makes the assumption that values never change and, by implication, that our current values are right and "good" now and forever more. Which is pretty much how religions operate and it is no good thing for the State to operate as a religion.
That seems a rather tortured argument. So modern day Germany has no business apologising for the holocaust because it would be immoral to assume that the current view that the holocaust is a bad thing is not going to change? Maybe in the future we will think the holocaust was totally fine - and so we should shut up about it right now? Have I got this right? Sumption always seems to be one of those terribly clever people who always comes up with the wrong answer.
Explain to me what the German apology is actually for. Describe it to me. What is it saying.
We, the German people, our parents and grandparents, committed an unforgivable crime. The German state benefited from taking property and from unpaid labour. We have a duty to remember what happened and to ensure it never happens again... something like this is how I would hope Germany feels. Of course they have already apologized and made reparations. The alternative is, what exactly? This has nothing to do with us? We thought it was OK at the time and our current sense that it wasn't ok may only be temporary? Moral judgements are impossible?
It doesn't work in the case of Germany. It would give those being apologised to a feeling of superiority to those apologising which in the case of todays UK and Germany is undeserved. If it was Israel apologising to the Palestinians that would be a different matter. It's both deserved and might actually do some good.
Was it Dayan or Meir who said Israel will never forgive Palestinians for forcing us to kill their children? Perhaps the Palestinians should be offering an apology to Israel.
Someone wrote on here yesterday how indifferent we all are to what's going on in Gaza. 'It's as though we've forgotten'. Gaza has a population the size of Birmingham and are losing lives at a rate of several hundresd a day yet no one is talking about it. Israel are our allies. We are inextricably entwined with them yet those on here are more interested in Leon's study of Japanese toilets
Even BJO an early Israeli critic has now turned his attention to the pressing cause of bus fares capped at £3 instead of £2.
We live in an Alice in Wonderland world and there's precious little any of us can do about it
Budget: I get £2,750 a month in benefits and I'm freaking out over cuts.
Nicole Healing, 44, Unemployed.
"Nicole, who uses them and they pronoun, said they receive Employment and Support Allowance of £1,042, Personal Independent Payments of £798, and Housing Benefit of £917 per month.
Though they feel in a "fortunate position" currently, Nicole says: "I feel I am at the mercy of the DWP."
That's £33,000 a year in benefits for a single person.
I know a few people in a category possibly similar to the above. They are educated to a very high (ie postgraduate) level. They become unable to work, sometimes after a few unsuccessful attempts, due to health conditions that seem to be predominantly psychological disorders. Then they get benefit payments from the government that are equivalent to the wage you would get from a full time professional job.
In the end I can only really feel sorry for them. People don't take them seriously, they are viewed as a drain on the state - and they know it.
“I am fearful about the negative rhetoric in the media about disabled people in receipt of benefits."
She was in digital marketing in the civil service so hardly working down the mines.
Whilst I have sympathy for anyone who's not feeling OK those benefits are excessive. I doubt she's fundamentally disabled and unable to do any work.
We all feel awful and struggle from time to time. It doesn't mean we expect everyone else to pay for us.
Yes I think two separate sentiments clash here: 1. Someone who is ill and living off the state probably has a thoroughly unfulfilling life (ordering lots of crap off Temu is most likely a symptom of this) dependent on the considerable but capricious largesse of DWP which in many cases creates a spiral of negativity, not helped by DavidL's point that returning to the workforce is probably unaffordable without a big drop in money coming in; and, 2. Someone working has to pay for that £33k, which seems deeply unfair.
I think a few things definitely follow: 1. There is often a tinge of envy (cf Blanche's comment about having to work 55 hour weeks). I can relate to this sentiment but I think it is fundamentally misplaced - this is not someone to be envied. 2. There is often a further implication that the problem would be lessened if someone's life circumstances could only be made worse (cf the comment about a £1250pcm rent, one possible implication of which is that really this person should be in a £500pcm shithole with mould all over the walls). I think this is also fundamentally misplaced - some people, but very few, would choose this life, whether in a decent flat or not. Worsening their circumstances is a poor route out of this. 3. At a time when someone can be earning +/- £33k from full time employment but is unable to support a family, it is deeply wrong that this person's taxes need to rise in order to fund the £33k going to an unemployed person.
As a result solutions are hard to find - but I think must come from a deeper restructuring of the economy such that living costs are reduced relative to wages. Primarily this must come from a reduction in housing costs (and I say this as someone who hugely depends on a second income from a rental flat to support my own family).
I'm afraid I would do exactly that: reduce it to a room rent or flatshare allowance of £600pcm max and a meal allowance. They can then choose whether to live with friends or family or with others in a similar position. That might not be living in clover but, tough.
These are the choices ordinary working people have to make, who are often under immense pressure themselves, and their taxes shouldn't go to pay for this.
Yes, I can entirely understand that sentiment in the current system - especially in the context of a budget that is going to push taxes up.
I don't think it will help, without a much wider societal shift away from looking after the vulnerable and towards a more brutal/Stoic approach.
(I often find myself personally harking for a more stoic approach - you get out and work regardless - but I have come to reflect that I probably feel this way only because I have never had to work with a significant disability.)
Anecdote alert: one of my colleagues left teaching just this half term. She has worked with me for 8 years whilst having rheumatoid arthritis. She takes a day or two off every six weeks to have blood infusions, without which she cannot move her joints. She worked all through COVID teaching full time remotely despite having to shield. For context, she meets a group of six or seven other people with RA each time she has an infusion and none of them work at all, let alone full time in a school - she is a machine.
But she has finally quit largely because as the school takes on more sixth form students to try to keep itself afloat, she no longer has her own classroom and has to move around the school more, meaning that her joints flared up too much between infusions.
Part of the answer to this problem is to try to ensure employers can better accommodate individuals with disabilities. Telling this person she should now move house and live with family/friends would be deeply offensive and wrong headed on an individual level. Not to say that's the wrong policy because of an anecdote, but it's worth hearing the edge cases on the other side of the coin.
OK, but I don't much care if it's deeply offensive or not. It's not the duty of Government to make policy, nor the Treasury spending decisions, on what individuals may or may not find deeply offensive.
Spending on this is expected to rise to over £30bn a year by 2027/28, and we can't afford it. Almost all of us will suffer from health issues or disabilities at some point in our lives. What many of us object to is that the State should pay such people to live a more comfortable lifestyle than those working for a living and struggling to make ends meet.
I'd far rather this money was invested in defence, education and industrial strategy and lowering the tax burden on working people.
Everyone should do some form of work. And almost everyone can do some form of work.
It's why we're here.
I don't disagree with that broad sentiment Casino (some extreme cases excepted).
I became a paraplegic at 19 and was lucky enough to forge a career in IT and finance. But that was because, if I say so myself, I am reasonably bright and good at managing people and projects. Most manual jobs would be unsuitable for me - I am not going to forge a career on a building site. So if I was below average intellect, I would have struggled to find work.
Now I'm retired the issue with a lot of people I see at Citizens Advice, particularly those with mental problems, is that they are unemployable. I would not employ them, nor would you.
I have an allotment here in Flatland Central for various historic reasons.
The plotholders are a random mix of middle class types, retired folk, Polish families and a not insignificant number of dropouts and people on the margins of work/not work.
These people on the margins are probably unemployable for anything structured as they are rather chaotic and not terribly keen on authority. I don't ask but I expect some are signed off with mental issues and the like. Some of them do, however, keep quite a tidy plot and are clearly capable of some kind of work.
What they need is unstructured work which benefits society but doesn't require a daily 9-5. It would benefit them significantly.
The way welfare works this is more or less impossible without falling foul of any number of rules.
We need to get away from the stupid withdrawal rules and barriers to people doing piecemeal working.
In the case of the person on £33k benefits, I would guess that someone like that could manage 2-3 hours a day at a computer but not a full time job. But it just can't work that way. Why not?
Even if someone is signed off into the ESA support group (i.e. can't work nor expected to even do work-related back to work activities at jobcentre) on mental health in theory they can still do a few hours of "permitted work" a week.
The problem is that very few are willing to do because they don't trust that it will not be used as a reason to take them off ESA at next review ("look, you can do a few hours at the computer at home, therefore you are no longer ill" etc). This is entirely rational response by people on ESA.
The system is hellbent on finding reasons to throw people off the benefit.
A similar one to that is I know people who won't tell the Department (whatever it is called) that they can cycle, because an officer or box-ticker of some sort may then assume "Oh you must be able to walk fine", so they will lose a chunk of the money they need to make their life bearable. I know of people who can barely walk, or with significant pain (eg one lady with fibromyalgia), but who can cycle 5, or 15, or 25 miles - sometimes with a EAPC.
It is a political issue I have with the current version of the Conservatives. There is a rhetoric around "help people back into work", but the underlying motivation is a kneejerk "how can we FORCE these SCROUNGERS to get off benefits" - an animated version of the Daily Mail, which is imo poisonous.
We saw that in the lack of consultation before the announcement that Ticket Offices would be closed, and the attempt to ram it through, whilst passing it off as due to the industry not a political policy.
As far as I can see, Reform take a generally more extreme version of a similar position, from a more knuckle-dragging set of values.
I think there are questions around the current setup, but these approaches are not how to address it.
Reform can do that up to the point they get elected and their voters discover that the people Reform were talking about "punishing / attacking" are not just the similar people they dislike but themselves as well..
OT Japan: Looking like an LDP-led minority government, probably supported by the People's Democratic Party. This is the right-wing faction of the main opposition Democratic Party that ended up schismed into a very minor party in 2017 after a serious of hilarious miscalculations.
This time they ran mainly on tax cuts which they're pretending will pay for themselves with extra growth, so I expect Ishiba will borrow some extra money and let then take credit for some tax cuts.
Looks like Liz's legacy lives on in Japan even if not here
I suppose that, even for his strongest haters, there is one positive to take from a Trump win: he can't run again. So after four years that is him done. However, if Harris wins Trump could come back to haunt American politics again in four years time.
If he wins he has said there will not be a vote in 4 years time
I am not sure I place much weight in what Michael Moore thinks these days. I think he is pretty detached from reality, what does he even do these days? Years since he made a documentary. Isn't one of the that locked themselves in the basement for COVID and still doesn't really leave it?
10 years ago, I think yes, he probably did have a better feel for things that blue collar America were thinking.
Trump is a clear and present danger to American democracy, and quite possibly the freedom of the entire planet.
Idiot.
Complacent idiot.
What's the bet that if elected Trump does/does not overturn democracy. £100 from me at your odds to say that if elected by the end of his term the US will have an election.
Oh and what odds that we face a danger to "the freedom of the entire planet".
LOL
Do we have a deal?
Venezuela and Russia have "elections". The bar for a functioning democracy is a bit higher than mere election theatre.
Federalism gives the US some protections, in that the assault on a free and fair electoral process will be more difficult (at least under a veneer of legality) in California and New York than in Alabama and Oklahoma, but there's no doubting the desires of an incoming Trump administration. Some of their actions would merely be a continuation of earlier GOP practices (gerrymandering, electoral roll stripping, court stacking), while others would have new theocratic/authoritarian vigour (turning the Supreme Court into a regime rubber stamp, round-ups of certain populations, regular calls for armed citizens to take to the streets, full repression of women, etc.). It's a process for sure, but the legal and constitutional impediments have been deliberately weakened for some time now, and retaking the presidency would be a key step in the process.
So you think that after four years of Trump there will just be "election theatre" in the US.
You people are deranged.
I don't think there 'will' just be election theatre in the US.
I do think that there is a small possibility that there might be, and a much larger possibility that the GOP under Trump/Vance have started down that road. Some of their rhetoric, e.g. the deportations, are worrying indications.
It's silly to say there *will* be. But it's also silly to say there won't; and idiotic to say there is not a good chance that American democracy after four years of Trump/Vance will be worse than even at present.
"In LA, 70 per cent of people are telling me they’ll vote for Trump In 2016 I believed Hillary would triumph, and dressed up as her for Halloween. I won’t make the same mistake again Celia Walden"
California is the last place where Trump needs to do better.
If 70% of Californians are voting for him he's home and hosed. This notion of the shy Trump voter seems real.
We all owe (reluctantly) a debt of gratitude to @williamglenn who called it for Trump when the rest of us were on Harris to win the popular vote and the Electoral College.
Come here on 6th November (maybe a few days later) if you are in need of shirt donations...
I suppose that, even for his strongest haters, there is one positive to take from a Trump win: he can't run again. So after four years that is him done. However, if Harris wins Trump could come back to haunt American politics again in four years time.
Trump will be 82, older than Biden is now, in four years’ time. He’s already said he’s done after this election no matter what the result, and he’s certainly not going to be able to remove the term limits specificed in the Constitution in order to run again as incumbent.
That racist comedian’s jokes were so disgustingly racist and vile that the #swifties haven’t caught wind about the fact that he made a joke about Travis Kelce being the next OJ Simpson, implying he will k*ll Taylor Swift, and everyone laughed.
Trump at 63/64% against what I see as a 50/50 election.
So the value is to bet on Harris.
However, another factor in the odds is that if Trump wins the bets are settled fast whereas if Harris wins the chance of a legal fight from the Republicans may mean that bet settlement is delayed, perhaps considerably.
This is acting as a disincentive for bettors to back Harris and may go some way to explain the strange odds.
Regardless, I’ve increased my exposure today by backing Harris again though I’ve not bet big on this election as I’m finding it hard to form a confident view.
Budget: I get £2,750 a month in benefits and I'm freaking out over cuts.
Nicole Healing, 44, Unemployed.
"Nicole, who uses them and they pronoun, said they receive Employment and Support Allowance of £1,042, Personal Independent Payments of £798, and Housing Benefit of £917 per month.
Though they feel in a "fortunate position" currently, Nicole says: "I feel I am at the mercy of the DWP."
That's £33,000 a year in benefits for a single person.
I know a few people in a category possibly similar to the above. They are educated to a very high (ie postgraduate) level. They become unable to work, sometimes after a few unsuccessful attempts, due to health conditions that seem to be predominantly psychological disorders. Then they get benefit payments from the government that are equivalent to the wage you would get from a full time professional job.
In the end I can only really feel sorry for them. People don't take them seriously, they are viewed as a drain on the state - and they know it.
“I am fearful about the negative rhetoric in the media about disabled people in receipt of benefits."
She was in digital marketing in the civil service so hardly working down the mines.
Whilst I have sympathy for anyone who's not feeling OK those benefits are excessive. I doubt she's fundamentally disabled and unable to do any work.
We all feel awful and struggle from time to time. It doesn't mean we expect everyone else to pay for us.
Yes I think two separate sentiments clash here: 1. Someone who is ill and living off the state probably has a thoroughly unfulfilling life (ordering lots of crap off Temu is most likely a symptom of this) dependent on the considerable but capricious largesse of DWP which in many cases creates a spiral of negativity, not helped by DavidL's point that returning to the workforce is probably unaffordable without a big drop in money coming in; and, 2. Someone working has to pay for that £33k, which seems deeply unfair.
I think a few things definitely follow: 1. There is often a tinge of envy (cf Blanche's comment about having to work 55 hour weeks). I can relate to this sentiment but I think it is fundamentally misplaced - this is not someone to be envied. 2. There is often a further implication that the problem would be lessened if someone's life circumstances could only be made worse (cf the comment about a £1250pcm rent, one possible implication of which is that really this person should be in a £500pcm shithole with mould all over the walls). I think this is also fundamentally misplaced - some people, but very few, would choose this life, whether in a decent flat or not. Worsening their circumstances is a poor route out of this. 3. At a time when someone can be earning +/- £33k from full time employment but is unable to support a family, it is deeply wrong that this person's taxes need to rise in order to fund the £33k going to an unemployed person.
As a result solutions are hard to find - but I think must come from a deeper restructuring of the economy such that living costs are reduced relative to wages. Primarily this must come from a reduction in housing costs (and I say this as someone who hugely depends on a second income from a rental flat to support my own family).
I'm afraid I would do exactly that: reduce it to a room rent or flatshare allowance of £600pcm max and a meal allowance. They can then choose whether to live with friends or family or with others in a similar position. That might not be living in clover but, tough.
These are the choices ordinary working people have to make, who are often under immense pressure themselves, and their taxes shouldn't go to pay for this.
Yes, I can entirely understand that sentiment in the current system - especially in the context of a budget that is going to push taxes up.
I don't think it will help, without a much wider societal shift away from looking after the vulnerable and towards a more brutal/Stoic approach.
(I often find myself personally harking for a more stoic approach - you get out and work regardless - but I have come to reflect that I probably feel this way only because I have never had to work with a significant disability.)
Anecdote alert: one of my colleagues left teaching just this half term. She has worked with me for 8 years whilst having rheumatoid arthritis. She takes a day or two off every six weeks to have blood infusions, without which she cannot move her joints. She worked all through COVID teaching full time remotely despite having to shield. For context, she meets a group of six or seven other people with RA each time she has an infusion and none of them work at all, let alone full time in a school - she is a machine.
But she has finally quit largely because as the school takes on more sixth form students to try to keep itself afloat, she no longer has her own classroom and has to move around the school more, meaning that her joints flared up too much between infusions.
Part of the answer to this problem is to try to ensure employers can better accommodate individuals with disabilities. Telling this person she should now move house and live with family/friends would be deeply offensive and wrong headed on an individual level. Not to say that's the wrong policy because of an anecdote, but it's worth hearing the edge cases on the other side of the coin.
OK, but I don't much care if it's deeply offensive or not. It's not the duty of Government to make policy, nor the Treasury spending decisions, on what individuals may or may not find deeply offensive.
Spending on this is expected to rise to over £30bn a year by 2027/28, and we can't afford it. Almost all of us will suffer from health issues or disabilities at some point in our lives. What many of us object to is that the State should pay such people to live a more comfortable lifestyle than those working for a living and struggling to make ends meet.
I'd far rather this money was invested in defence, education and industrial strategy and lowering the tax burden on working people.
Everyone should do some form of work. And almost everyone can do some form of work.
It's why we're here.
I don't disagree with that broad sentiment Casino (some extreme cases excepted).
I became a paraplegic at 19 and was lucky enough to forge a career in IT and finance. But that was because, if I say so myself, I am reasonably bright and good at managing people and projects. Most manual jobs would be unsuitable for me - I am not going to forge a career on a building site. So if I was below average intellect, I would have struggled to find work.
Now I'm retired the issue with a lot of people I see at Citizens Advice, particularly those with mental problems, is that they are unemployable. I would not employ them, nor would you.
I have an allotment here in Flatland Central for various historic reasons.
The plotholders are a random mix of middle class types, retired folk, Polish families and a not insignificant number of dropouts and people on the margins of work/not work.
These people on the margins are probably unemployable for anything structured as they are rather chaotic and not terribly keen on authority. I don't ask but I expect some are signed off with mental issues and the like. Some of them do, however, keep quite a tidy plot and are clearly capable of some kind of work.
What they need is unstructured work which benefits society but doesn't require a daily 9-5. It would benefit them significantly.
The way welfare works this is more or less impossible without falling foul of any number of rules.
We need to get away from the stupid withdrawal rules and barriers to people doing piecemeal working.
In the case of the person on £33k benefits, I would guess that someone like that could manage 2-3 hours a day at a computer but not a full time job. But it just can't work that way. Why not?
There are a lot of large employers, in the public sector and in utilities, for whom someone able to work 2-3 hours a day should be able to seek ad-hoc remote employment in call centre or chat service work. Government should take the lead and encourage others to participate. There’s routinely long waits for calls and chat/email replies, so every additional man hour should lessen the workload and improve service. Yes there’s a training requirement, perhaps government should help to subsidise that bit.
Remploy….
That really was a disgusting and heartless call by New Labour.
Was it New Labour, the Coalition, or both? So hard to keep track.
It was a bit like with the family dog today. She is being taken to the vet this afternoon to be euthanased, but the real damage was done by the cancer.
New Labour did a lot of the damage and the Coalition euthanased what little was left.
"In LA, 70 per cent of people are telling me they’ll vote for Trump In 2016 I believed Hillary would triumph, and dressed up as her for Halloween. I won’t make the same mistake again Celia Walden"
California is the last place where Trump needs to do better.
If 70% of Californians are voting for him he's home and hosed. This notion of the shy Trump voter seems real.
We all owe (reluctantly) a debt of gratitude to @williamglenn who called it for Trump when the rest of us were on Harris to win the popular vote and the Electoral College.
Not 70% but in 2004 George W Bush got 44% of the vote in California and won the national popular vote with 50.7%.
"In LA, 70 per cent of people are telling me they’ll vote for Trump In 2016 I believed Hillary would triumph, and dressed up as her for Halloween. I won’t make the same mistake again Celia Walden"
California is the last place where Trump needs to do better.
If 70% of Californians are voting for him he's home and hosed. This notion of the shy Trump voter seems real.
We all owe (reluctantly) a debt of gratitude to @williamglenn who called it for Trump when the rest of us were on Harris to win the popular vote and the Electoral College.
Come here on 6th November (maybe a few days later) if you are in need of shirt donations...
I admire (genuinely) your confidence and that it is based on research rather than hope. If correct (Harris wins and it isn't down to chance/tiny leads in each swing state) you will deserve the sort of applause AndyJS rightly got for his GE predictions earlier in the year.
BREAKING: Ex-Tory MP in case of 'brazen and drunken' sexual misconduct and 'abuse of power'
Parliament's standards watchdog has ruled that Aaron Bell, who stood down suddenly before the election, could've been suspended for a "significant period" as an MP
BREAKING: Ex-Tory MP in case of 'brazen and drunken' sexual misconduct and 'abuse of power'
Parliament's standards watchdog has ruled that Aaron Bell, who stood down suddenly before the election, could've been suspended for a "significant period" as an MP
"In LA, 70 per cent of people are telling me they’ll vote for Trump In 2016 I believed Hillary would triumph, and dressed up as her for Halloween. I won’t make the same mistake again Celia Walden"
California is the last place where Trump needs to do better.
If 70% of Californians are voting for him he's home and hosed. This notion of the shy Trump voter seems real.
We all owe (reluctantly) a debt of gratitude to @williamglenn who called it for Trump when the rest of us were on Harris to win the popular vote and the Electoral College.
If 70% of Californians are voting for Trump then every single poll is so far out they may as well not bother.
This is just a crap anecdote from someone who doesn't realise the people they talk to are not an accurate cross section of real world..
So you genuinely believe that 70% of Californians might vote for Trump? Less likely than an invasion from Mars during the count.
No I don't believe that. Although Andy (when he isn't quoting Goodwin) is a reliable source. I have said Harris wins the popular vote, Trump wins the College, possibly at a canter.
Well if Harris wins the popular vote, then either she wins the EC too, or Trump wins it but narrowlyk
"In LA, 70 per cent of people are telling me they’ll vote for Trump In 2016 I believed Hillary would triumph, and dressed up as her for Halloween. I won’t make the same mistake again Celia Walden"
California is the last place where Trump needs to do better.
If 70% of Californians are voting for him he's home and hosed. This notion of the shy Trump voter seems real.
We all owe (reluctantly) a debt of gratitude to @williamglenn who called it for Trump when the rest of us were on Harris to win the popular vote and the Electoral College.
Come here on 6th November (maybe a few days later) if you are in need of shirt donations...
Similar to the Clinton Trump gap in 2016, and worse than the Biden Trump gap 2020.
Which means.....................it's going to be close.
The Dem vote seems more efficient in EC terms than in 2020, and probably than in 2016. But I still make anything less than 1% Harris popular vote win = Trump favorite to win EC. Anything more than 2% Harris popular vote win then she is favorite to win EC. Current polling averages are between the two.
I had a nearly 4 figures loss when I called Theresa May the wrong way, and did not manage to back out in time.
So I'm staying clear .
You’re not the only one who lost well into three figures on Theresa May.
Don’t do spread bets kids.
I lost a lot spread betting (on financial markets) 20 years ago and haven't touched them since. I knew I was in trouble when Sporting Index sent me a rather nice Christmas gift.
BREAKING: Ex-Tory MP in case of 'brazen and drunken' sexual misconduct and 'abuse of power'
Parliament's standards watchdog has ruled that Aaron Bell, who stood down suddenly before the election, could've been suspended for a "significant period" as an MP
"In LA, 70 per cent of people are telling me they’ll vote for Trump In 2016 I believed Hillary would triumph, and dressed up as her for Halloween. I won’t make the same mistake again Celia Walden"
California is the last place where Trump needs to do better.
If 70% of Californians are voting for him he's home and hosed. This notion of the shy Trump voter seems real.
We all owe (reluctantly) a debt of gratitude to @williamglenn who called it for Trump when the rest of us were on Harris to win the popular vote and the Electoral College.
Come here on 6th November (maybe a few days later) if you are in need of shirt donations...
I admire (genuinely) your confidence and that it is based on research rather than hope. If correct (Harris wins and it isn't down to chance/tiny leads in each swing state) you will deserve the sort of applause AndyJS rightly got for his GE predictions earlier in the year.
And if not it can just be memory holed - who hasn't spent weeks in the run up to an election convincing themselves sub-samples and sub-questions reveal the REAL answer being obscured in the headline.
Comments
The Puerto Rico fiasco is one of the rare things that *has* broken through. On the CNN/NYT/WaPo homepages, it's *the* #1 story.
All of that is dangerous for a candidate who still has a big favorables disadvantage with 1 week to go. Any change is marginal. But it's not helpful.
https://x.com/lxeagle17/status/1851069139227746798
It feels like they are trying to Bad Al / Mandy playbook of going on the media round spinning some clever sounding BS will fall apart, the difference being 1997, no social media, newspapers a much bigger thing, so something else will come along before you are really challenged. Now the tw@tter machine eats up your nonsense by the end of breakfast and then the government are having to shift position by mid morning.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4N9nc7hJcb0
“Bohemian Trumpsody”
https://x.com/krassenstein/status/1851074707388346775
At this stage of the race, anything that looks like it could cut through and cause a shift in votes, no matter how small or marginal, is absolutely relevant.
We all owe (reluctantly) a debt of gratitude to @williamglenn who called it for Trump when the rest of us were on Harris to win the popular vote and the Electoral College.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/articles/c1e7ln7qxdvo
Interesting choices and non-choices, definitely don't bat deep....
Otherwise, I call bullshit.
Harris 48% (=0)
Trump 47% (-1)
This is just a crap anecdote from someone who doesn't realise the people they talk to are not an accurate cross section of real world..
On the case quoted, I'd note that the Personal Independence Payment is a benefit which is not means tested, and is specifically to allow a disabled person to do the basic things we all take for grantd.- so should not really be in the category of "living off benefits".
She is on the higher rate, which is indicative of severe disability * (here: connective tissue disorder, which could be many things), and it is the way a lot of people pay for a car from Motability (for example). The assessment process can feel quite abusive I am told - other countries tend to be less administrative and more "the Doctor says", but OTOH the UK has a cut-to-the-bone attitude to welfare spending so the system is more cushioned by other aspects in peer countries.
That is £9.5k of the £33k, and she spends half of it to top up the rent for her one-bedroom flat.
The BBC should have split it into means tested and non-means tested.
I'd ask how that £23.5k compares to the benefits subsidising childcare for a couple on a household income of £40k or £60k?
* Here is more info about PIP. The application form is 50 pages long.
https://www.turn2us.org.uk/get-support/information-for-your-situation/personal-independence-payment/what-is-personal-independence-payment-(pip)
Sane washing doesn't work with insults to all Puerto Ricans, as they are American as anyone else. When you insult Puerto Ricans any sound minded Latino should realise "he means us".
We’ll see.
This time round I'm more balanced having been heavily pro Harris but I took some out and laid Harris at 2.58.
So across Smarkets and Betfair I'm now +495.89 Trump; +665.35 Harris (After Betfair Premium charge).
That feels about the right split to me - the heavier win should mathematically given the uncertainties and the fact it's greater than 6-4 be on Harris. But the early voting registration splits are definitely more pro Trump than in 2020 and 2022 (Nevada looks particularly bad for Harris and that was the most left swing state in 2020...) .
This election is very very difficult to call, and it might not be particularly close either for Trump or for Harris. I simply don't know and anyone who claims to is lieing.
She is apparently known for her "imagination".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celia_Walden#Career
“I was on something like page 16 of Google search and found a laser survey done by a Mexican organisation for environmental monitoring,” explains Luke Auld-Thomas, a PhD student at Tulane university in the US.
It was a Lidar survey, a remote sensing technique which fires thousands of laser pulses from a plane and maps objects below using the time the signal takes to return.
But when Mr Auld-Thomas processed the data with methods used by archaeologists, he saw what others had missed - a huge ancient city which may have been home to 30-50,000 people at its peak from 750 to 850 AD.
That is more than the number of people who live in the region today, the researchers say.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crmznzkly3go
Doom scrolling can have its benefits.
Federalism gives the US some protections, in that the assault on a free and fair electoral process will be more difficult (at least under a veneer of legality) in California and New York than in Alabama and Oklahoma, but there's no doubting the desires of an incoming Trump administration. Some of their actions would merely be a continuation of earlier GOP practices (gerrymandering, electoral roll stripping, court stacking), while others would have new theocratic/authoritarian vigour (turning the Supreme Court into a regime rubber stamp, round-ups of certain populations, regular calls for armed citizens to take to the streets, full repression of women, etc.). It's a process for sure, but the legal and constitutional impediments have been deliberately weakened for some time now, and retaking the presidency would be a key step in the process.
And the Russia-China-and-others axis wants to treat human life as disposable, which the "rules based system" has imperfectly mitigated to some extent.
That's my basis for critiquing practices we have collaborated with ourselves as a country - even as simply as the way we co-operated with China, whilst turning a blind eye to Tibet / Genocide etc. And I won't buy the "it's over there, and noting to do with us" BS.
That I think, is what Ukraine has brought to a head for many.
Essentially, do we back our values, or not?
Context; I did have Rishi down as a 20 seat majority winner.
https://archive.is/Rd6Oa
Honestly you would be hard pressed to come up with a dafter answer. How the hell is someone who was a top lawyer incapable of answering such a question?
https://x.com/tmlbk/status/1851188861508194304?s=46
This tells me he wins, comfortably. It also tells me American public opinion needs to give its head a wobble.
Loudly confident
Quietly confident
Cautiously optimistic
Genuinely hopeful
That's my progression over the last 4 weeks.
My betting book is still very long Harris, short Trump but I do have some hedges on in the state betting and the vote % bands.
Might just be a truth/reality interface issue in that household.
Technically, Russia is very much not a democracy.
The tendency for people to identify democracy with elections, and only elections, is deeply mistaken.
It's hard to say exactly what a second Trump presidency would do, as it depends a fair amount on whether he would have control of Congress.
(Though there's quite a lot a President can do by executive order, given a Supreme Court extremely sympathetic to executive powers.)
Or how long he lasted before being 25th Amendmented, as Vance might be a more organised version.
Neither of those two states have quite the built in protections of the US system, of course.
Franco talked about an "organic democracy".
It's pretty easy to keep the ornamentation of democracy while cutting all the effective connections behind the scenes.
But I agree with Robert (rather than william) that the polling could very easily turn out to have erred several points in either direction.
At the cost of significant blunting my dividend from a Harris win, I'm also now very slightly green on Trump, too.
LOL
Do we have a bet? You too if you fancy it what odds are you giving.
So the value is to bet on Harris.
However, another factor in the odds is that if Trump wins the bets are settled fast whereas if Harris wins the chance of a legal fight from the Republicans may mean that bet settlement is delayed, perhaps considerably.
This is acting as a disincentive for bettors to back Harris and may go some way to explain the strange odds.
Regardless, I’ve increased my exposure today by backing Harris again though I’ve not bet big on this election as I’m finding it hard to form a confident view.
However "everything that been thrown at him" to those of us who believe in the rule of law, is justified.
This time they ran mainly on tax cuts which they're pretending will pay for themselves with extra growth, so I expect Ishiba will borrow some extra money and let then take credit for some tax cuts.
As imperilling the "freedom of the entire planet" you really don't see how such rhetoric undermines your case and hardens support for him.
You people are deranged.
It is a political issue I have with the current version of the Conservatives. There is a rhetoric around "help people back into work", but the underlying motivation is a kneejerk "how can we FORCE these SCROUNGERS to get off benefits" - an animated version of the Daily Mail, which is imo poisonous.
We saw that in the lack of consultation before the announcement that Ticket Offices would be closed, and the attempt to ram it through, whilst passing it off as due to the industry not a political policy.
As far as I can see, Reform take a generally more extreme version of a similar position, from a more knuckle-dragging set of values.
I think there are questions around the current setup, but these approaches are not how to address it.
Even BJO an early Israeli critic has now turned his attention to the pressing cause of bus fares capped at £3 instead of £2.
We live in an Alice in Wonderland world and there's precious little any of us can do about it
10 years ago, I think yes, he probably did have a better feel for things that blue collar America were thinking.
I do think that there is a small possibility that there might be, and a much larger possibility that the GOP under Trump/Vance have started down that road. Some of their rhetoric, e.g. the deportations, are worrying indications.
It's silly to say there *will* be. But it's also silly to say there won't; and idiotic to say there is not a good chance that American democracy after four years of Trump/Vance will be worse than even at present.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/favorability/donald-trump/
versus this: Harris unfavourable by 1.3 points:
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/favorability/kamala-harris/
A 7.3 point gap in favour of Harris.
That racist comedian’s jokes were so disgustingly racist and vile that the #swifties haven’t caught wind about the fact that he made a joke about Travis Kelce being the next OJ Simpson, implying he will k*ll Taylor Swift, and everyone laughed.
https://x.com/susielujano/status/1850997285699637382
https://www.betfair.com/exchange/plus/politics/market/1.178165812
https://www.betfair.com/exchange/plus/politics/market/1.176878927
I had a nearly 4 figures loss when I called Theresa May the wrong way, and did not manage to back out in time.
So I'm staying clear
New Labour did a lot of the damage and the Coalition euthanased what little was left.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_United_States_presidential_election_in_California
Yet Kerry still won Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania
Don’t do spread bets kids.
BREAKING: Ex-Tory MP in case of 'brazen and drunken' sexual misconduct and 'abuse of power'
Parliament's standards watchdog has ruled that Aaron Bell, who stood down suddenly before the election, could've been suspended for a "significant period" as an MP
https://x.com/soph_husk/status/1851222212071563531
Any other state bets catch the eye at current odds?
Which means.....................it's going to be close.
The Dem vote seems more efficient in EC terms than in 2020, and probably than in 2016. But I still make anything less than 1% Harris popular vote win = Trump favorite to win EC. Anything more than 2% Harris popular vote win then she is favorite to win EC. Current polling averages are between the two.
https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/01/cormac-mccarthys-ex-wife-pulled-gun-out-her-vagina-while-arguing-about-aliens/356822/
For a minute I thought that was referring to the former Archbishop of Westminster, Cormac Murphy-O'Connor.
It's a headline worth my photo quote:
https://www.parliament.uk/globalassets/mps-lords--offices/standards-and-financial-interests/independent-expert-panel/hc-317---the-conduct-of-aaron-bell.pdf