Our vending machines have gone contactless yesterday. Fortunately there is still the cash option as well for people.
Not for much longer, I’d venture. The pool table in my local is now card only. I like to imagine certain PBers discovering this in horror as they furkle in their leather pouches for useless metal!
Our local milk vending machines (supply your own bottle, they supply the milk) are contactless only. A month ago my card got declined (reached its limit for contactless). I could not use it until I went somewhere that allowed me to enter a pin.
Does this happen at the pool table too? I guess you could go to the bar and enter the pin there but I had no way to buy the milk at any of the three milk vending stations I tried.
#Firstworldproblem
I have a card with an alt-bank and one can instantly reset the contactless limit using the app on the phone.
Great, but again this is a solution looking for a problem. Just pay with your phone/watch and leave the obsolete bits of plastic at home. And, while you are at it, the physical wallet. Declutter your life.
Question for you. Genuine question. A mate comes up to you in the pub tonight and says “Can I borrow £50 until next Thursday, I’ve not been paid yet but it’s my wife’s birthday tomorrow and I need to buy her something?”, how do you react?
I say yes. Wouldn't everyone?
Indeed, but everyone else usually has £50 in their wallet when in the pub on payday.
Nope. I'd guess that people carrying that amount of cash on any day are in the minority now. And it takes about 80 seconds to digitally transfer the £50 to the mate with the birthday-girl wife, so what is the point of lugging around daft pieces of plastic?
What’s the method of transfer? Genuinely interested in how this works, as I’m sitting in the pub with a wallet full of c**h.
Er, you are aware that you can make peer-to-peer instant transfers via your banking app and have been able to do so for....... years?
Does your friend’s phone kiss yours, or is my expat brain about to be totally fried?
(As someone who works in IT security, I go to the bank to make transfers, but do use Apple Pay becuase it’s way more secure than using the card especially online).
You are winding me up right*? You – this is going to blow your mind – you know, put their bank account number into your app and then press 'transfer'. Hey presto!
(*I mean you must be winding me up)
You know your bank account number, when not in possession of the card, with enough certainty to actually run a transfer? Yes I am genuine.
Yes, I do know my bank account number. And if said person is a mate I will likely have his saved on my app from a previous transfer. I genuinely cannot believe you were unaware this technology existed. If such ignorance is commonplace it rather explains a lot about PBers' weird obsession with cash – one of the most pointless relics in modern life.
Where does a chap keep his condoms in your wallet free world?
Thanks - had learnt it was a moat on my visits many years ago but never seen that.
I read an article in a local archaeology magazine last year postulating that Avebury circle was built when the water level was such that, due to the natural spring underneath it, the ditch would have been full of water, and that the same was true for Silbury
IN complete coincidence this has just come up on my email feed - free archaeological publications in re Wessex.
Sandpit - It isn't just London. Some years ago the NYT did a story on the effects high gas prices had on workers in Mississippi, many of whom had to drive 20 miles or more to find jobs. The newspaper seemed surprised by this -- but it wouldn't surprise anyone who had grown up in rural areas.
Our vending machines have gone contactless yesterday. Fortunately there is still the cash option as well for people.
Not for much longer, I’d venture. The pool table in my local is now card only. I like to imagine certain PBers discovering this in horror as they furkle in their leather pouches for useless metal!
Our local milk vending machines (supply your own bottle, they supply the milk) are contactless only. A month ago my card got declined (reached its limit for contactless). I could not use it until I went somewhere that allowed me to enter a pin.
Does this happen at the pool table too? I guess you could go to the bar and enter the pin there but I had no way to buy the milk at any of the three milk vending stations I tried.
#Firstworldproblem
I have a card with an alt-bank and one can instantly reset the contactless limit using the app on the phone.
Great, but again this is a solution looking for a problem. Just pay with your phone/watch and leave the obsolete bits of plastic at home. And, while you are at it, the physical wallet. Declutter your life.
Question for you. Genuine question. A mate comes up to you in the pub tonight and says “Can I borrow £50 until next Thursday, I’ve not been paid yet but it’s my wife’s birthday tomorrow and I need to buy her something?”, how do you react?
I say yes. Wouldn't everyone?
Indeed, but everyone else usually has £50 in their wallet when in the pub on payday.
Nope. I'd guess that people carrying that amount of cash on any day are in the minority now. And it takes about 80 seconds to digitally transfer the £50 to the mate with the birthday-girl wife, so what is the point of lugging around daft pieces of plastic?
What’s the method of transfer? Genuinely interested in how this works, as I’m sitting in the pub with a wallet full of c**h.
Er, you are aware that you can make peer-to-peer instant transfers via your banking app and have been able to do so for....... years?
Does your friend’s phone kiss yours, or is my expat brain about to be totally fried?
(As someone who works in IT security, I go to the bank to make transfers, but do use Apple Pay becuase it’s way more secure than using the card especially online).
Go to the bank? Where do you have a bank to go to?
Our vending machines have gone contactless yesterday. Fortunately there is still the cash option as well for people.
Not for much longer, I’d venture. The pool table in my local is now card only. I like to imagine certain PBers discovering this in horror as they furkle in their leather pouches for useless metal!
Our local milk vending machines (supply your own bottle, they supply the milk) are contactless only. A month ago my card got declined (reached its limit for contactless). I could not use it until I went somewhere that allowed me to enter a pin.
Does this happen at the pool table too? I guess you could go to the bar and enter the pin there but I had no way to buy the milk at any of the three milk vending stations I tried.
#Firstworldproblem
Just use your phone/watch to pay – there's no limit to contactless that I have ever encountered.
I don't have watch and don't use my phone to pay for anything.
Is there a reason why not? Its incredibly convenient and more secure and means I haven't had to carry my wallet with me for years.
Also helpful if you use loyalty cards (I know some do not) as you can keep them in the same wallet app so I can easily swipe between which cards I have to the one of the shop I'm in, and choose which card I'm paying with at the same time.
Have never yet migrated to paying by phone, but probably will at some point. I'm going to cite inertia.
Biggest risk is Single Point of Failure. When my phone was stolen last year it took me about a week to get everything back the way it should have been. As I never use my phone to pay anything and everything on it is also available online via the laptop it was an inconvenience.
If I used it for everything then I would not have been able to pay for my meal, or subsequent drinks, or get home. Card and cash in my wallet meant no problem.
Secondly I'm concerned about the security risk of having everything on my phone. I prefer to have payment methods scattered around and I have one card I never use online and one for online use only as a defence against fraud. I expect modern tech has improved a lot and I should no longer worry, but having said that my bank's security has recently changed and no longer requires 2FA on the phone.
(I did wonder why my phone was taken, it was a cheap Android and not even very new).
One of the pains of having a phone is that it goes out of date, sometimes surprisingly quickly in terms of security support updates, and no way will I use email etc on such a phone, never mind banking, once it is not being updated.
I'm getting a new phone and top criterion is how many years the makers will support it - though as batteries last only 2-3 years (?) that may make it academic for things like a Samsung S24 to have c. 6-7 years updates. I'm seriously considering the Fairphone as the battery isn't bloody glued in like too many other phones but is easily replaceable. (Already a key criterion for laptops for me these days agfter bitter experience with Microsoft Surface Book 1.)
I have a fairphone. Very happy with it.
Worst thing about it was that there was, for a while, a touchscreen bug with ghost touches - where the screen would register that you'd touch it when you hadn't. Best thing about it was that they developed a patch fixing the bug. Previous phone had a bug with the camera - using the camera would sometimes cause the phone to reboot - a known software bug that was never fixed.
One of the things that has been missed with no fuel duty increase this year, motorists are getting hammered elsewhere with doubling of VED on ICE cars and company car tax increases.
for the first year on new ICE cars - the changes don't impact cars that are already on the road..
That looks to me to be quite tightly targeted.
Heavy emission & larger ICE vehicles. Lighter hits on smaller ICE vehicles. And hybrids, especially hybrids bought to take advantage of business use tax regimens, which are then very little used on electric.
The nudge away from Tonkas is welcome. But it all seems to be year 1 tax only, rather than every year - which I would have preferred.
I don't get why billions of £££ of subsidies and tax breaks (I make it of the order of at least 5 to 7 billion or more) are being pushed at motor vehicles with no apparent consideration for the 25% of adults who do not have driving licenses, especially those who cannot get one.
The sweet spot will I think be grandfathered-in newish second hand vehicles.
If polls are out to the same degree (and in the same direction) as 2020, then your State-wide predictions are likely to be pretty accurate. Indeed, you might want to add Virginia to the list.
On the other hand, if the polls are out like in the 2022 Senate races, when Dr Oz was ahead of Fetterman in the Pennsylvania polling... but lost by 5 percentage points, then it's going to be a Harris sweep.
FWIW, I think Harris has definitely surprised on the upside as a candidate. Prior to being the candidate she ran 20 point negatives on the favorables. Now, she's basically flat. (Morning Consult today had her as +6!) That puts her in a very different category to Hillary Clinton.
To me, three questions are key in deciding which way to bet:
(1) Have the pollsters - through the introduction of past vote weighting - removed the anti-Trump bias? If so, then the election is likely to be a knife edge. If people under-remember voting for Biden, because he's so unpopular, then it could mean that it is Trump who is overrated in the polls.
(2) Will the abortion referenda make any difference to turnout? Some people say "no", but the group that is keenest on legal abortion (young women) is the most likely Democrat, and the least likely (historically) to make the trek to the polls. This could be absolutely crucial in a State that Trump should have walked, Arizona.
(3) Which way will Haley Republicans vote? I suspect they'll (mostly) return to the fold on election day, but don't forget that - long after she was eliminated from the race - Nikki Haley was getting 20% of the vote in Republican Presidential Primaries. That's a lot of Republicans taking the time to express their dislike of Trump.
In the last few days, the polls have swung (slightly) back towards Harris. I'm going out on a limb here, and am going to make her the (very) narrow favourite.
Our vending machines have gone contactless yesterday. Fortunately there is still the cash option as well for people.
Not for much longer, I’d venture. The pool table in my local is now card only. I like to imagine certain PBers discovering this in horror as they furkle in their leather pouches for useless metal!
Our local milk vending machines (supply your own bottle, they supply the milk) are contactless only. A month ago my card got declined (reached its limit for contactless). I could not use it until I went somewhere that allowed me to enter a pin.
Does this happen at the pool table too? I guess you could go to the bar and enter the pin there but I had no way to buy the milk at any of the three milk vending stations I tried.
#Firstworldproblem
I have a card with an alt-bank and one can instantly reset the contactless limit using the app on the phone.
Great, but again this is a solution looking for a problem. Just pay with your phone/watch and leave the obsolete bits of plastic at home. And, while you are at it, the physical wallet. Declutter your life.
Question for you. Genuine question. A mate comes up to you in the pub tonight and says “Can I borrow £50 until next Thursday, I’ve not been paid yet but it’s my wife’s birthday tomorrow and I need to buy her something?”, how do you react?
I say yes. Wouldn't everyone?
Indeed, but everyone else usually has £50 in their wallet when in the pub on payday.
Nope. I'd guess that people carrying that amount of cash on any day are in the minority now. And it takes about 80 seconds to digitally transfer the £50 to the mate with the birthday-girl wife, so what is the point of lugging around daft pieces of plastic?
What’s the method of transfer? Genuinely interested in how this works, as I’m sitting in the pub with a wallet full of c**h.
Er, you are aware that you can make peer-to-peer instant transfers via your banking app and have been able to do so for....... years?
Does your friend’s phone kiss yours, or is my expat brain about to be totally fried?
(As someone who works in IT security, I go to the bank to make transfers, but do use Apple Pay becuase it’s way more secure than using the card especially online).
Go to the bank? Where do you have a bank to go to?
There’s an ATM about 15m walk from home, and a branch about 15m drive. I’m lucky to live in the right place and have the right bank. Through working in security I have a distrust of online banking and ‘apps’.
Our vending machines have gone contactless yesterday. Fortunately there is still the cash option as well for people.
Not for much longer, I’d venture. The pool table in my local is now card only. I like to imagine certain PBers discovering this in horror as they furkle in their leather pouches for useless metal!
Our local milk vending machines (supply your own bottle, they supply the milk) are contactless only. A month ago my card got declined (reached its limit for contactless). I could not use it until I went somewhere that allowed me to enter a pin.
Does this happen at the pool table too? I guess you could go to the bar and enter the pin there but I had no way to buy the milk at any of the three milk vending stations I tried.
#Firstworldproblem
I have a card with an alt-bank and one can instantly reset the contactless limit using the app on the phone.
Great, but again this is a solution looking for a problem. Just pay with your phone/watch and leave the obsolete bits of plastic at home. And, while you are at it, the physical wallet. Declutter your life.
Question for you. Genuine question. A mate comes up to you in the pub tonight and says “Can I borrow £50 until next Thursday, I’ve not been paid yet but it’s my wife’s birthday tomorrow and I need to buy her something?”, how do you react?
I say yes. Wouldn't everyone?
Indeed, but everyone else usually has £50 in their wallet when in the pub on payday.
Nope. I'd guess that people carrying that amount of cash on any day are in the minority now. And it takes about 80 seconds to digitally transfer the £50 to the mate with the birthday-girl wife, so what is the point of lugging around daft pieces of plastic?
What’s the method of transfer? Genuinely interested in how this works, as I’m sitting in the pub with a wallet full of c**h.
Er, you are aware that you can make peer-to-peer instant transfers via your banking app and have been able to do so for....... years?
Does your friend’s phone kiss yours, or is my expat brain about to be totally fried?
(As someone who works in IT security, I go to the bank to make transfers, but do use Apple Pay becuase it’s way more secure than using the card especially online).
You are winding me up right*? You – this is going to blow your mind – you know, put their bank account number into your app and then press 'transfer'. Hey presto!
(*I mean you must be winding me up)
You know your bank account number, when not in possession of the card, with enough certainty to actually run a transfer? Yes I am genuine.
There was (may still be) a scheme in the UK to do transfers by phone number - you had to register for it with your bank and then someone could transfer you money simply by using your phone number, rather than account details.
Otherwise, recipient fires up their banking app and reads out or messages the details across.
Our vending machines have gone contactless yesterday. Fortunately there is still the cash option as well for people.
Not for much longer, I’d venture. The pool table in my local is now card only. I like to imagine certain PBers discovering this in horror as they furkle in their leather pouches for useless metal!
Our local milk vending machines (supply your own bottle, they supply the milk) are contactless only. A month ago my card got declined (reached its limit for contactless). I could not use it until I went somewhere that allowed me to enter a pin.
Does this happen at the pool table too? I guess you could go to the bar and enter the pin there but I had no way to buy the milk at any of the three milk vending stations I tried.
#Firstworldproblem
I have a card with an alt-bank and one can instantly reset the contactless limit using the app on the phone.
Great, but again this is a solution looking for a problem. Just pay with your phone/watch and leave the obsolete bits of plastic at home. And, while you are at it, the physical wallet. Declutter your life.
Question for you. Genuine question. A mate comes up to you in the pub tonight and says “Can I borrow £50 until next Thursday, I’ve not been paid yet but it’s my wife’s birthday tomorrow and I need to buy her something?”, how do you react?
I say yes. Wouldn't everyone?
Indeed, but everyone else usually has £50 in their wallet when in the pub on payday.
Nope. I'd guess that people carrying that amount of cash on any day are in the minority now. And it takes about 80 seconds to digitally transfer the £50 to the mate with the birthday-girl wife, so what is the point of lugging around daft pieces of plastic?
What’s the method of transfer? Genuinely interested in how this works, as I’m sitting in the pub with a wallet full of c**h.
Er, you are aware that you can make peer-to-peer instant transfers via your banking app and have been able to do so for....... years?
Does your friend’s phone kiss yours, or is my expat brain about to be totally fried?
(As someone who works in IT security, I go to the bank to make transfers, but do use Apple Pay becuase it’s way more secure than using the card especially online).
You are winding me up right*? You – this is going to blow your mind – you know, put their bank account number into your app and then press 'transfer'. Hey presto!
(*I mean you must be winding me up)
You know your bank account number, when not in possession of the card, with enough certainty to actually run a transfer? Yes I am genuine.
Yes, I do know my bank account number. And if said person is a mate I will likely have his saved on my app from a previous transfer. I genuinely cannot believe you were unaware this technology existed. If such ignorance is commonplace it rather explains a lot about PBers' weird obsession with cash – one of the most pointless relics in modern life.
Where does a chap keep his condoms in your wallet free world?
Just lie and tell them you’ve had a vasectomy.
Not as concerned about the whole baby angle - more that I find the STI MOTs I subject myself to to be a little less than enjoyable - especially when as at my recent one the nurse looked like some clichéd milfy porn nurse - so don’t want to need to have checks more than necessary!
I also discovered recently that Herpes is for life and thought that would be a bit of an awks conversation in a new relationship “BTW, I’ve got herpes so you will likely get it too now”.
Interesting titbit from Resolution in their budget round-up:
"This [NI] change also increases the tax advantages of self-employment status, since there is then no Employer rate: already by last financial year, the total National Insurance due on self- employment was £6 billion less than it would have been on equivalent earnings. This disparity – and perhaps the temptation for bogus and unprotected forms of freelancing - will only grow."
The look on her face as the SNP got routed, priceless.
Are we STILL waiting on the decision over charges for certain Scottish politicians? Like the historic sex crimes investigations that had people in limbo for years, either charge or don't, but keeping it going like this is cruel.
Our vending machines have gone contactless yesterday. Fortunately there is still the cash option as well for people.
Not for much longer, I’d venture. The pool table in my local is now card only. I like to imagine certain PBers discovering this in horror as they furkle in their leather pouches for useless metal!
Our local milk vending machines (supply your own bottle, they supply the milk) are contactless only. A month ago my card got declined (reached its limit for contactless). I could not use it until I went somewhere that allowed me to enter a pin.
Does this happen at the pool table too? I guess you could go to the bar and enter the pin there but I had no way to buy the milk at any of the three milk vending stations I tried.
#Firstworldproblem
I have a card with an alt-bank and one can instantly reset the contactless limit using the app on the phone.
Great, but again this is a solution looking for a problem. Just pay with your phone/watch and leave the obsolete bits of plastic at home. And, while you are at it, the physical wallet. Declutter your life.
Question for you. Genuine question. A mate comes up to you in the pub tonight and says “Can I borrow £50 until next Thursday, I’ve not been paid yet but it’s my wife’s birthday tomorrow and I need to buy her something?”, how do you react?
I say yes. Wouldn't everyone?
Indeed, but everyone else usually has £50 in their wallet when in the pub on payday.
Nope. I'd guess that people carrying that amount of cash on any day are in the minority now. And it takes about 80 seconds to digitally transfer the £50 to the mate with the birthday-girl wife, so what is the point of lugging around daft pieces of plastic?
What’s the method of transfer? Genuinely interested in how this works, as I’m sitting in the pub with a wallet full of c**h.
Er, you are aware that you can make peer-to-peer instant transfers via your banking app and have been able to do so for....... years?
Does your friend’s phone kiss yours, or is my expat brain about to be totally fried?
(As someone who works in IT security, I go to the bank to make transfers, but do use Apple Pay becuase it’s way more secure than using the card especially online).
Go to the bank? Where do you have a bank to go to?
There’s an ATM about 15m walk from home, and a branch about 15m drive. I’m lucky to live in the right place and have the right bank. Through working in security I have a distrust of online banking and ‘apps’.
So do I (have that distrust) but there are no bank branches around here.
If polls are out to the same degree (and in the same direction) as 2020, then your State-wide predictions are likely to be pretty accurate. Indeed, you might want to add Virginia to the list.
On the other hand, if the polls are out like in the 2022 Senate races, when Dr Oz was ahead of Fetterman in the Pennsylvania polling... but lost by 5 percentage points, then it's going to be a Harris sweep.
FWIW, I think Harris has definitely surprised on the upside as a candidate. Prior to being the candidate she ran 20 point negatives on the favorables. Now, she's basically flat. (Morning Consult today had her as +6!) That puts her in a very different category to Hillary Clinton.
To me, three questions are key in deciding which way to bet:
(1) Have the pollsters - through the introduction of past vote weighting - removed the anti-Trump bias? If so, then the election is likely to be a knife edge. If people under-remember voting for Biden, because he's so unpopular, then it could mean that it is Trump who is overrated in the polls.
(2) Will the abortion referenda make any difference to turnout? Some people say "no", but the group that is keenest on legal abortion (young women) is the most likely Democrat, and the least likely (historically) to make the trek to the polls. This could be absolutely crucial in a State that Trump should have walked, Arizona.
(3) Which way will Haley Republicans vote? I suspect they'll (mostly) return to the fold on election day, but don't forget that - long after she was eliminated from the race - Nikki Haley was getting 20% of the vote in Republican Presidential Primaries. That's a lot of Republicans taking the time to express their dislike of Trump.
In the last few days, the polls have swung (slightly) back towards Harris. I'm going out on a limb here, and am going to make her the (very) narrow favourite.
Who if anybody do you think it helps if it's a very high turnout election?
Charlie Kirk is upset that Republican women may “undermine their husbands” and secretly vote for Harris while telling their husbands they voted for Trump, even though the husband “works his tail off to make sure that she can have a nice life.” https://x.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1851815354009342217
Seems to be a GOP thing. Here's the Fox News host who just married the researcher he had an affair with, while married to his first wife.
Jesse: if i found out my wife secretly voted for harris, "that's the same thing as having an affair... that violates the sanctity of our marriage... that would be D Day" https://x.com/cynicalzoomer/status/1851744214071332869
The United States really is just turning into Iran with more guns and worse food, isn't it.
Er, no.
What is it with previously respected posters that have turned to ludicrous hyperbole?
I can only assume that you've spent too much time on Twitter. Like Southam.
Actually, I've more-or-less come off Twitter because Musk has made it both unusable and awful.
You presumably didn't pick up on the deliberate exaggeration. No, indeed, the US isn't the same as Iran. But. The direction of travel is certainly away from liberty (and willingly so), away from an impartial justice system, away from universal rights (and it's always the less powerful groups that lose their rights first), with political power structures boosted and fluffed by claims of celestial righteousness, with a politicisation of much which would normally be outside or beyond politics, and a whole lot of other parallels that should be uncomfortable viewing.
Our vending machines have gone contactless yesterday. Fortunately there is still the cash option as well for people.
Not for much longer, I’d venture. The pool table in my local is now card only. I like to imagine certain PBers discovering this in horror as they furkle in their leather pouches for useless metal!
Our local milk vending machines (supply your own bottle, they supply the milk) are contactless only. A month ago my card got declined (reached its limit for contactless). I could not use it until I went somewhere that allowed me to enter a pin.
Does this happen at the pool table too? I guess you could go to the bar and enter the pin there but I had no way to buy the milk at any of the three milk vending stations I tried.
#Firstworldproblem
I have a card with an alt-bank and one can instantly reset the contactless limit using the app on the phone.
Great, but again this is a solution looking for a problem. Just pay with your phone/watch and leave the obsolete bits of plastic at home. And, while you are at it, the physical wallet. Declutter your life.
Question for you. Genuine question. A mate comes up to you in the pub tonight and says “Can I borrow £50 until next Thursday, I’ve not been paid yet but it’s my wife’s birthday tomorrow and I need to buy her something?”, how do you react?
I say yes. Wouldn't everyone?
Indeed, but everyone else usually has £50 in their wallet when in the pub on payday.
Nope. I'd guess that people carrying that amount of cash on any day are in the minority now. And it takes about 80 seconds to digitally transfer the £50 to the mate with the birthday-girl wife, so what is the point of lugging around daft pieces of plastic?
What’s the method of transfer? Genuinely interested in how this works, as I’m sitting in the pub with a wallet full of c**h.
Er, you are aware that you can make peer-to-peer instant transfers via your banking app and have been able to do so for....... years?
Does your friend’s phone kiss yours, or is my expat brain about to be totally fried?
(As someone who works in IT security, I go to the bank to make transfers, but do use Apple Pay becuase it’s way more secure than using the card especially online).
You are winding me up right*? You – this is going to blow your mind – you know, put their bank account number into your app and then press 'transfer'. Hey presto!
(*I mean you must be winding me up)
You know your bank account number, when not in possession of the card, with enough certainty to actually run a transfer? Yes I am genuine.
Yes, I do know my bank account number. And if said person is a mate I will likely have his saved on my app from a previous transfer. I genuinely cannot believe you were unaware this technology existed. If such ignorance is commonplace it rather explains a lot about PBers' weird obsession with cash – one of the most pointless relics in modern life.
Where does a chap keep his condoms in your wallet free world?
Just lie and tell them you’ve had a vasectomy.
Not as concerned about the whole baby angle - more that I find the STI MOTs I subject myself to to be a little less than enjoyable - especially when as at my recent one the nurse looked like some clichéd milfy porn nurse - so don’t want to need to have checks more than necessary!
I also discovered recently that Herpes is for life and thought that would be a bit of an awks conversation in a new relationship “BTW, I’ve got herpes so you will likely get it too now”.
Look there's a cure for chlamydia but there's no cure for regret.
The market is saying that Reeves won't be able to turn off the spending taps in 5 years basically.
Not even five years. Unprotected departments are to be squeezed in the last three years of this Parliament under the planned Reeves envelope. Mini-austerity? Will that happen?
Leon (who seems to have disappeared ?) is fond of talking about a "Korean style armistice". Nonsense, of course, for multiple reasons, but this demonstrates the biggest single one.
US Secretary of Defense confirmed that Washington would defend South Korea by using all available weapons, including nuclear weapons, if necessary. Any nuclear attack by the DPRK against the US or its allies and partners would lead to the end of the Kim Jong Un regime. https://x.com/Hromadske/status/1851922058030256371
Unless Ukraine is in NATO, the comparison is simply absurd.
It would require a nuclear guarantee from the UK and France. Not enough nukes to defeat Russia in an all out war, but enough for MAD.
But Europe definitely needs to get its act together, and part of that is by excluding, or threatening to exclude, bad actors like Hungary or Slovakia under Fico from NATO and the security apparatus of the EU as well as taking away their veto over economic sanctions. The US is going to become semi-detached from NATO even if Harris wins, and potentially actively hostile if Trump does - only mutual hostility to China would remain as common cause, and NATO is not the main geographical player in that theatre.
Any thoughts on simple investment strategies for a Trump win that could hedge against global trade wars?
Buy gold is the traditional one.
Though others are already doing so.
Physical gold and Bitcoin. And have a nice watch as you can use it to secure passage in difficult circumstances - need to get through a checkpoint, hand over the nice watch. I believe US special forces dropped behind enemy lines have been kitted out with rolexes for precisely that reason.
I know you're not a fan of bitcoin, but it's a heck of a lot easier to transfer your wealth out of a country fast on a USB stick or even using a brain wallet than it is to walk across a border with a suitcase full of gold bars. Many Ukrainians arriving in the UK couldn't access their banks but brought crypto with them on memory sticks. Worth keeping a few grand that way, just in case.
Gold is of course a better hedge, but less fungible.
Oh wait, OP said *trade* wars.
Well, if history repeats itself, the real wars will be following soon after.
I consider my real wealth to be what I can get out of the country fast, carrying nothing more than a duffel bag. Everything else is just numbers on a page.
History has proven time and time again that in hard times, everything else can and will be confiscated. Anyone investing in gold would do well to remember Executive Order 6102.
If polls are out to the same degree (and in the same direction) as 2020, then your State-wide predictions are likely to be pretty accurate. Indeed, you might want to add Virginia to the list.
On the other hand, if the polls are out like in the 2022 Senate races, when Dr Oz was ahead of Fetterman in the Pennsylvania polling... but lost by 5 percentage points, then it's going to be a Harris sweep.
FWIW, I think Harris has definitely surprised on the upside as a candidate. Prior to being the candidate she ran 20 point negatives on the favorables. Now, she's basically flat. (Morning Consult today had her as +6!) That puts her in a very different category to Hillary Clinton.
To me, three questions are key in deciding which way to bet:
(1) Have the pollsters - through the introduction of past vote weighting - removed the anti-Trump bias? If so, then the election is likely to be a knife edge. If people under-remember voting for Biden, because he's so unpopular, then it could mean that it is Trump who is overrated in the polls.
(2) Will the abortion referenda make any difference to turnout? Some people say "no", but the group that is keenest on legal abortion (young women) is the most likely Democrat, and the least likely (historically) to make the trek to the polls. This could be absolutely crucial in a State that Trump should have walked, Arizona.
(3) Which way will Haley Republicans vote? I suspect they'll (mostly) return to the fold on election day, but don't forget that - long after she was eliminated from the race - Nikki Haley was getting 20% of the vote in Republican Presidential Primaries. That's a lot of Republicans taking the time to express their dislike of Trump.
In the last few days, the polls have swung (slightly) back towards Harris. I'm going out on a limb here, and am going to make her the (very) narrow favourite.
Who if anybody do you think it helps if it's a very high turnout election?
Bit of a paradox this one. We know the mail in vote that's already in is broadly Democrat (Well maybe not Nevada but generally in the rust belt the mix is much more favourable to the Dems).
So if ABSOLUTELY noone voted on election day, Harris would win by an enormous margin.
But we know the election day mix is likely to be heavily R (Even in scenarios where Harris wins). So the republicans do need to get their election day vote out but in order to win Harris also needs to get lower propensity voters out on election day.
Leon (who seems to have disappeared ?) is fond of talking about a "Korean style armistice". Nonsense, of course, for multiple reasons, but this demonstrates the biggest single one.
US Secretary of Defense confirmed that Washington would defend South Korea by using all available weapons, including nuclear weapons, if necessary. Any nuclear attack by the DPRK against the US or its allies and partners would lead to the end of the Kim Jong Un regime. https://x.com/Hromadske/status/1851922058030256371
Unless Ukraine is in NATO, the comparison is simply absurd.
Leon has received the ban hammer a few nights back.
Don't know if it is Temp or not. It was all somewhat tetchy here at the time.
He went the full racist; Britain for the white British.
Good riddance IMO. He's entertaining, but I don't think that excuses his views.
I don't think he was saying that and, even if he was, I don't think such views should lead to a banning unless it was accompanied by incitement to violence or raw hate.
But, I have a higher spectrum of tolerance for speech (admittedly I can respond very aggressively and rudely to them but I only advocate banning where they are consistently personally abusive or nasty)
He literally said that the UK should promote/increase the number of "white babies".
Great Replacement and "14 words" are all that's left from there....
But, that's your extrapolation of what you thought he might subsequently say and mean and not what he actually said.
Just saying we should increase the number of white babies isn't an intrinsically and fundamentally unreasonable thing to say.
The implication is "increase the proportion of white babies", which is.
I have to say I am with @Casino_Royale on this (twice in one day, might have to lie down). See my earlier post.
I was one of the people arguing with @leon. He was putting a point of view that I totally disagreed with and we argued, but it was civilised. There was no abuse. He put an argument. He didn't just come out with racist abuse. His argument to my mind is racist but you have to argue against it not ban it. It is not as if he was chanting racist stuff. He was just putting an argument forward.
Now my only reservation was after the fact when @TheScreamingEagles commented upon the effect it had on him when thinking of his daughter. Something I hadn't considered being white.
Leon's comment is stupid for a whole host of reasons. Stupid, and racist.
As I asked @Andy_JS when he said the comment wasn't racist: my wife is olive-skinned. Is she 'white'? My son is pasty in winter, but tans olive in summer. Is he 'white'? My wife is a joint Turkish/British citizen. Is she 'British'? My son only has a UK passport. Is he 'British'?
People who throw around this sort of stuff are either totally thick, racist, or both.
For many of us, this sort of talk matters, as it means loved ones are not seen as being equal, for dint of skin colour or whatever.
I agree, which is why I argued with him and I wanted the right to argue with him.
What I hadn't appreciated, as you can see from my comment about @TheScreamingEagles, was the difference between me arguing with him, but not being hurt because I am white, and others that are hurt by the comments.
If we can step back from the race element then the question of culture is, to me, more important. Do the inhabitants of a village, town, city, county, country have a right to want to maintain their culture? (If that is a reasonable thing, and of course will mean different things to different people). We see when you have immigration from cultures similar to the 'host' country that there are fewer problems with integration etc. What are the rights of the existing population?
This is - as always - an interesting question, because it throws up so many interesting questions.
So: if a white British person in a village decides to become a Muslim, and to adopt all the garb, etc., that is presumably OK? Or should the village be able to decide they can't do that, because that changes the culture of the village?
It is also worth remembering that there have been parts of the UK, particularly in East London, that have seen waves of immigration (from Eastern European and Russian Jews to Bangladeshis in the last 100 years). How do we deal with that? Or Pinner's extremely orthodox Jewish community? (Which, again, has been around for a long time.)
Charlie Kirk is upset that Republican women may “undermine their husbands” and secretly vote for Harris while telling their husbands they voted for Trump, even though the husband “works his tail off to make sure that she can have a nice life.” https://x.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1851815354009342217
Seems to be a GOP thing. Here's the Fox News host who just married the researcher he had an affair with, while married to his first wife.
Jesse: if i found out my wife secretly voted for harris, "that's the same thing as having an affair... that violates the sanctity of our marriage... that would be D Day" https://x.com/cynicalzoomer/status/1851744214071332869
The United States really is just turning into Iran with more guns and worse food, isn't it.
Er, no.
What is it with previously respected posters that have turned to ludicrous hyperbole?
I can only assume that you've spent too much time on Twitter. Like Southam.
Actually, I've more-or-less come off Twitter because Musk has made it both unusable and awful.
.
Twitter was corrosive and toxic well before Musk bought it.
I'm glad you've come off it though. It wasn't good for me or my mental health at all.
We can look forward to a private sector wage squeeze combined with public sector strikes.
The increased cost of employing a worker trends from a 6.83% increase for low paid part time workers down to 1.2% in the limit for Google's best paid employees.
If polls are out to the same degree (and in the same direction) as 2020, then your State-wide predictions are likely to be pretty accurate. Indeed, you might want to add Virginia to the list.
On the other hand, if the polls are out like in the 2022 Senate races, when Dr Oz was ahead of Fetterman in the Pennsylvania polling... but lost by 5 percentage points, then it's going to be a Harris sweep.
FWIW, I think Harris has definitely surprised on the upside as a candidate. Prior to being the candidate she ran 20 point negatives on the favorables. Now, she's basically flat. (Morning Consult today had her as +6!) That puts her in a very different category to Hillary Clinton.
To me, three questions are key in deciding which way to bet:
(1) Have the pollsters - through the introduction of past vote weighting - removed the anti-Trump bias? If so, then the election is likely to be a knife edge. If people under-remember voting for Biden, because he's so unpopular, then it could mean that it is Trump who is overrated in the polls.
(2) Will the abortion referenda make any difference to turnout? Some people say "no", but the group that is keenest on legal abortion (young women) is the most likely Democrat, and the least likely (historically) to make the trek to the polls. This could be absolutely crucial in a State that Trump should have walked, Arizona.
(3) Which way will Haley Republicans vote? I suspect they'll (mostly) return to the fold on election day, but don't forget that - long after she was eliminated from the race - Nikki Haley was getting 20% of the vote in Republican Presidential Primaries. That's a lot of Republicans taking the time to express their dislike of Trump.
In the last few days, the polls have swung (slightly) back towards Harris. I'm going out on a limb here, and am going to make her the (very) narrow favourite.
Who if anybody do you think it helps if it's a very high turnout election?
Bit of a paradox this one. We know the mail in vote that's already in is broadly Democrat (Well maybe not Nevada but generally in the rust belt the mix is much more favourable to the Dems).
So if ABSOLUTELY noone voted on election day, Harris would win by an enormous margin.
But we know the election day mix is likely to be heavily R (Even in scenarios where Harris wins). So the republicans do need to get their election day vote out but in order to win Harris also needs to get lower propensity voters out on election day.
The gender divide could be even bigger than it was in 2016.
Usually the turnout is higher among women than men, which should give Harris an advantage, but perhaps subsections of the male demographic that would usually vote for the Democrats are less likely to turn out to vote for her.
If polls are out to the same degree (and in the same direction) as 2020, then your State-wide predictions are likely to be pretty accurate. Indeed, you might want to add Virginia to the list.
On the other hand, if the polls are out like in the 2022 Senate races, when Dr Oz was ahead of Fetterman in the Pennsylvania polling... but lost by 5 percentage points, then it's going to be a Harris sweep.
FWIW, I think Harris has definitely surprised on the upside as a candidate. Prior to being the candidate she ran 20 point negatives on the favorables. Now, she's basically flat. (Morning Consult today had her as +6!) That puts her in a very different category to Hillary Clinton.
To me, three questions are key in deciding which way to bet:
(1) Have the pollsters - through the introduction of past vote weighting - removed the anti-Trump bias? If so, then the election is likely to be a knife edge. If people under-remember voting for Biden, because he's so unpopular, then it could mean that it is Trump who is overrated in the polls.
(2) Will the abortion referenda make any difference to turnout? Some people say "no", but the group that is keenest on legal abortion (young women) is the most likely Democrat, and the least likely (historically) to make the trek to the polls. This could be absolutely crucial in a State that Trump should have walked, Arizona.
(3) Which way will Haley Republicans vote? I suspect they'll (mostly) return to the fold on election day, but don't forget that - long after she was eliminated from the race - Nikki Haley was getting 20% of the vote in Republican Presidential Primaries. That's a lot of Republicans taking the time to express their dislike of Trump.
In the last few days, the polls have swung (slightly) back towards Harris. I'm going out on a limb here, and am going to make her the (very) narrow favourite.
Who if anybody do you think it helps if it's a very high turnout election?
It depends on where the high turnout comes from.
If it comes from young women, then Trump is in terrible trouble.
If it comes from poorer people in left behind communities who see Trump as the answer to a failed political system, then it is Harris who should be panicked.
For a couple of years now, we've had these little white robot delivery vehicles in our village. Anyway, someone has put halloween stickers/masks on some of them for Halloween.
A lovely little idea. Annoyingly I was driving so I couldn't take a piccie.
Mortgage deals are going to start getting pulled tomorrow morning.
The Pound down too.
At exactly the same point in the timeline of Truss mini budget, the day after and the day after that too, Truss and Kwarteng were still being chaired around the room by Conservative media and great many PB posters. The market crash is happening much quicker after Reeves budget.
First budget of the new Labour government - the biggest tax and spend budget of all time - has properly Trussed the British economy.
Twitter was corrosive and toxic well before Musk bought it.
I'm glad you've come off it though. It wasn't good for me or my mental health at all.
I don't miss it.
Twitter's moderation wasn't great before, now it is terrible by all accounts. I got rid of mine not long after Musk took over. I don't miss it at all, anything interesting seems to surface somewhere else.
Our vending machines have gone contactless yesterday. Fortunately there is still the cash option as well for people.
Not for much longer, I’d venture. The pool table in my local is now card only. I like to imagine certain PBers discovering this in horror as they furkle in their leather pouches for useless metal!
Our local milk vending machines (supply your own bottle, they supply the milk) are contactless only. A month ago my card got declined (reached its limit for contactless). I could not use it until I went somewhere that allowed me to enter a pin.
Does this happen at the pool table too? I guess you could go to the bar and enter the pin there but I had no way to buy the milk at any of the three milk vending stations I tried.
#Firstworldproblem
I have a card with an alt-bank and one can instantly reset the contactless limit using the app on the phone.
Great, but again this is a solution looking for a problem. Just pay with your phone/watch and leave the obsolete bits of plastic at home. And, while you are at it, the physical wallet. Declutter your life.
Question for you. Genuine question. A mate comes up to you in the pub tonight and says “Can I borrow £50 until next Thursday, I’ve not been paid yet but it’s my wife’s birthday tomorrow and I need to buy her something?”, how do you react?
I say yes. Wouldn't everyone?
Indeed, but everyone else usually has £50 in their wallet when in the pub on payday.
Nope. I'd guess that people carrying that amount of cash on any day are in the minority now. And it takes about 80 seconds to digitally transfer the £50 to the mate with the birthday-girl wife, so what is the point of lugging around daft pieces of plastic?
What’s the method of transfer? Genuinely interested in how this works, as I’m sitting in the pub with a wallet full of c**h.
Er, you are aware that you can make peer-to-peer instant transfers via your banking app and have been able to do so for....... years?
Does your friend’s phone kiss yours, or is my expat brain about to be totally fried?
(As someone who works in IT security, I go to the bank to make transfers, but do use Apple Pay becuase it’s way more secure than using the card especially online).
You are winding me up right*? You – this is going to blow your mind – you know, put their bank account number into your app and then press 'transfer'. Hey presto!
(*I mean you must be winding me up)
You know your bank account number, when not in possession of the card, with enough certainty to actually run a transfer? Yes I am genuine.
Yes, I do know my bank account number. And if said person is a mate I will likely have his saved on my app from a previous transfer. I genuinely cannot believe you were unaware this technology existed. If such ignorance is commonplace it rather explains a lot about PBers' weird obsession with cash – one of the most pointless relics in modern life.
Where does a chap keep his condoms in your wallet free world?
Just lie and tell them you’ve had a vasectomy.
Not as concerned about the whole baby angle - more that I find the STI MOTs I subject myself to to be a little less than enjoyable - especially when as at my recent one the nurse looked like some clichéd milfy porn nurse - so don’t want to need to have checks more than necessary!
I also discovered recently that Herpes is for life and thought that would be a bit of an awks conversation in a new relationship “BTW, I’ve got herpes so you will likely get it too now”.
The one that amuses me is that I still occasionally see "Carry on Doctor" type nurse icons on call buttons in hospitals.
Twitter was corrosive and toxic well before Musk bought it.
I'm glad you've come off it though. It wasn't good for me or my mental health at all.
I don't miss it.
Twitter's moderation wasn't great before, now it is terrible by all accounts. I got rid of mine not long after Musk took over. I don't miss it at all, anything interesting seems to surface somewhere else.
I still use it but mostly avoid the 'for you' and with a well curated following list you can still make it work. (mostly by curating it yourself)
If polls are out to the same degree (and in the same direction) as 2020, then your State-wide predictions are likely to be pretty accurate. Indeed, you might want to add Virginia to the list.
On the other hand, if the polls are out like in the 2022 Senate races, when Dr Oz was ahead of Fetterman in the Pennsylvania polling... but lost by 5 percentage points, then it's going to be a Harris sweep.
FWIW, I think Harris has definitely surprised on the upside as a candidate. Prior to being the candidate she ran 20 point negatives on the favorables. Now, she's basically flat. (Morning Consult today had her as +6!) That puts her in a very different category to Hillary Clinton.
To me, three questions are key in deciding which way to bet:
(1) Have the pollsters - through the introduction of past vote weighting - removed the anti-Trump bias? If so, then the election is likely to be a knife edge. If people under-remember voting for Biden, because he's so unpopular, then it could mean that it is Trump who is overrated in the polls.
(2) Will the abortion referenda make any difference to turnout? Some people say "no", but the group that is keenest on legal abortion (young women) is the most likely Democrat, and the least likely (historically) to make the trek to the polls. This could be absolutely crucial in a State that Trump should have walked, Arizona.
(3) Which way will Haley Republicans vote? I suspect they'll (mostly) return to the fold on election day, but don't forget that - long after she was eliminated from the race - Nikki Haley was getting 20% of the vote in Republican Presidential Primaries. That's a lot of Republicans taking the time to express their dislike of Trump.
In the last few days, the polls have swung (slightly) back towards Harris. I'm going out on a limb here, and am going to make her the (very) narrow favourite.
Who if anybody do you think it helps if it's a very high turnout election?
Bit of a paradox this one. We know the mail in vote that's already in is broadly Democrat (Well maybe not Nevada but generally in the rust belt the mix is much more favourable to the Dems).
So if ABSOLUTELY noone voted on election day, Harris would win by an enormous margin.
But we know the election day mix is likely to be heavily R (Even in scenarios where Harris wins). So the republicans do need to get their election day vote out but in order to win Harris also needs to get lower propensity voters out on election day.
The gender divide could be even bigger than it was in 2016.
Usually the turnout is higher among women than men, which should give Harris an advantage, but perhaps subsections of the male demographic that would usually vote for the Democrats are less likely to turn out to vote for her.
There’s a lot of evidence of both turnout being higher among women than men, and of sex-based polarisation in the past few years, with women trending more left and men more right.
Our vending machines have gone contactless yesterday. Fortunately there is still the cash option as well for people.
Not for much longer, I’d venture. The pool table in my local is now card only. I like to imagine certain PBers discovering this in horror as they furkle in their leather pouches for useless metal!
Our local milk vending machines (supply your own bottle, they supply the milk) are contactless only. A month ago my card got declined (reached its limit for contactless). I could not use it until I went somewhere that allowed me to enter a pin.
Does this happen at the pool table too? I guess you could go to the bar and enter the pin there but I had no way to buy the milk at any of the three milk vending stations I tried.
#Firstworldproblem
Just use your phone/watch to pay – there's no limit to contactless that I have ever encountered.
I don't have watch and don't use my phone to pay for anything.
Is there a reason why not? Its incredibly convenient and more secure and means I haven't had to carry my wallet with me for years.
Also helpful if you use loyalty cards (I know some do not) as you can keep them in the same wallet app so I can easily swipe between which cards I have to the one of the shop I'm in, and choose which card I'm paying with at the same time.
Have never yet migrated to paying by phone, but probably will at some point. I'm going to cite inertia.
Biggest risk is Single Point of Failure. When my phone was stolen last year it took me about a week to get everything back the way it should have been. As I never use my phone to pay anything and everything on it is also available online via the laptop it was an inconvenience.
If I used it for everything then I would not have been able to pay for my meal, or subsequent drinks, or get home. Card and cash in my wallet meant no problem.
Secondly I'm concerned about the security risk of having everything on my phone. I prefer to have payment methods scattered around and I have one card I never use online and one for online use only as a defence against fraud. I expect modern tech has improved a lot and I should no longer worry, but having said that my bank's security has recently changed and no longer requires 2FA on the phone.
(I did wonder why my phone was taken, it was a cheap Android and not even very new).
One of the pains of having a phone is that it goes out of date, sometimes surprisingly quickly in terms of security support updates, and no way will I use email etc on such a phone, never mind banking, once it is not being updated.
I'm getting a new phone and top criterion is how many years the makers will support it - though as batteries last only 2-3 years (?) that may make it academic for things like a Samsung S24 to have c. 6-7 years updates. I'm seriously considering the Fairphone as the battery isn't bloody glued in like too many other phones but is easily replaceable. (Already a key criterion for laptops for me these days agfter bitter experience with Microsoft Surface Book 1.)
I have a fairphone. Very happy with it.
Worst thing about it was that there was, for a while, a touchscreen bug with ghost touches - where the screen would register that you'd touch it when you hadn't. Best thing about it was that they developed a patch fixing the bug. Previous phone had a bug with the camera - using the camera would sometimes cause the phone to reboot - a known software bug that was never fixed.
Charlie Kirk is upset that Republican women may “undermine their husbands” and secretly vote for Harris while telling their husbands they voted for Trump, even though the husband “works his tail off to make sure that she can have a nice life.” https://x.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1851815354009342217
Seems to be a GOP thing. Here's the Fox News host who just married the researcher he had an affair with, while married to his first wife.
Jesse: if i found out my wife secretly voted for harris, "that's the same thing as having an affair... that violates the sanctity of our marriage... that would be D Day" https://x.com/cynicalzoomer/status/1851744214071332869
The United States really is just turning into Iran with more guns and worse food, isn't it.
Er, no.
What is it with previously respected posters that have turned to ludicrous hyperbole?
I can only assume that you've spent too much time on Twitter. Like Southam.
Actually, I've more-or-less come off Twitter because Musk has made it both unusable and awful.
.
Twitter was corrosive and toxic well before Musk bought it.
I'm glad you've come off it though. It wasn't good for me or my mental health at all.
I don't miss it.
It still remains marginally useful for info from reliable sources, when you can find them and when they're not hidden in your feed. Legacy media still feel the need to tweet there and that's helpful. But as a window on the world, it's gone. Likewise, the useful communities and networks are breaking down as people come off and/or migrate elsewhere.
Our vending machines have gone contactless yesterday. Fortunately there is still the cash option as well for people.
Not for much longer, I’d venture. The pool table in my local is now card only. I like to imagine certain PBers discovering this in horror as they furkle in their leather pouches for useless metal!
Our local milk vending machines (supply your own bottle, they supply the milk) are contactless only. A month ago my card got declined (reached its limit for contactless). I could not use it until I went somewhere that allowed me to enter a pin.
Does this happen at the pool table too? I guess you could go to the bar and enter the pin there but I had no way to buy the milk at any of the three milk vending stations I tried.
#Firstworldproblem
I have a card with an alt-bank and one can instantly reset the contactless limit using the app on the phone.
Great, but again this is a solution looking for a problem. Just pay with your phone/watch and leave the obsolete bits of plastic at home. And, while you are at it, the physical wallet. Declutter your life.
Question for you. Genuine question. A mate comes up to you in the pub tonight and says “Can I borrow £50 until next Thursday, I’ve not been paid yet but it’s my wife’s birthday tomorrow and I need to buy her something?”, how do you react?
I say yes. Wouldn't everyone?
Indeed, but everyone else usually has £50 in their wallet when in the pub on payday.
Nope. I'd guess that people carrying that amount of cash on any day are in the minority now. And it takes about 80 seconds to digitally transfer the £50 to the mate with the birthday-girl wife, so what is the point of lugging around daft pieces of plastic?
What’s the method of transfer? Genuinely interested in how this works, as I’m sitting in the pub with a wallet full of c**h.
Er, you are aware that you can make peer-to-peer instant transfers via your banking app and have been able to do so for....... years?
Does your friend’s phone kiss yours, or is my expat brain about to be totally fried?
(As someone who works in IT security, I go to the bank to make transfers, but do use Apple Pay becuase it’s way more secure than using the card especially online).
You are winding me up right*? You – this is going to blow your mind – you know, put their bank account number into your app and then press 'transfer'. Hey presto!
(*I mean you must be winding me up)
You know your bank account number, when not in possession of the card, with enough certainty to actually run a transfer? Yes I am genuine.
Yes, I do know my bank account number. And if said person is a mate I will likely have his saved on my app from a previous transfer. I genuinely cannot believe you were unaware this technology existed. If such ignorance is commonplace it rather explains a lot about PBers' weird obsession with cash – one of the most pointless relics in modern life.
Where does a chap keep his condoms in your wallet free world?
Just lie and tell them you’ve had a vasectomy.
That's walking the line.
He only got the rape conviction overturned on Appeal.
Our vending machines have gone contactless yesterday. Fortunately there is still the cash option as well for people.
Not for much longer, I’d venture. The pool table in my local is now card only. I like to imagine certain PBers discovering this in horror as they furkle in their leather pouches for useless metal!
Our local milk vending machines (supply your own bottle, they supply the milk) are contactless only. A month ago my card got declined (reached its limit for contactless). I could not use it until I went somewhere that allowed me to enter a pin.
Does this happen at the pool table too? I guess you could go to the bar and enter the pin there but I had no way to buy the milk at any of the three milk vending stations I tried.
#Firstworldproblem
I have a card with an alt-bank and one can instantly reset the contactless limit using the app on the phone.
Great, but again this is a solution looking for a problem. Just pay with your phone/watch and leave the obsolete bits of plastic at home. And, while you are at it, the physical wallet. Declutter your life.
Question for you. Genuine question. A mate comes up to you in the pub tonight and says “Can I borrow £50 until next Thursday, I’ve not been paid yet but it’s my wife’s birthday tomorrow and I need to buy her something?”, how do you react?
You're making them a gift of £50. If you're happy on that basis, do it.
They'll probably pay you back, but you don't want to be chasing them.
Just realised this wasn't really your question. Chinese payment systems Wepay and Alipay work off barcodes. Recipient phone shows barcode. Payment phone scans it. Both parties check their accounts that the transaction goes through. Not sure why Western payment systems don't do that.
If polls are out to the same degree (and in the same direction) as 2020, then your State-wide predictions are likely to be pretty accurate. Indeed, you might want to add Virginia to the list.
On the other hand, if the polls are out like in the 2022 Senate races, when Dr Oz was ahead of Fetterman in the Pennsylvania polling... but lost by 5 percentage points, then it's going to be a Harris sweep.
FWIW, I think Harris has definitely surprised on the upside as a candidate. Prior to being the candidate she ran 20 point negatives on the favorables. Now, she's basically flat. (Morning Consult today had her as +6!) That puts her in a very different category to Hillary Clinton.
To me, three questions are key in deciding which way to bet:
(1) Have the pollsters - through the introduction of past vote weighting - removed the anti-Trump bias? If so, then the election is likely to be a knife edge. If people under-remember voting for Biden, because he's so unpopular, then it could mean that it is Trump who is overrated in the polls.
(2) Will the abortion referenda make any difference to turnout? Some people say "no", but the group that is keenest on legal abortion (young women) is the most likely Democrat, and the least likely (historically) to make the trek to the polls. This could be absolutely crucial in a State that Trump should have walked, Arizona.
(3) Which way will Haley Republicans vote? I suspect they'll (mostly) return to the fold on election day, but don't forget that - long after she was eliminated from the race - Nikki Haley was getting 20% of the vote in Republican Presidential Primaries. That's a lot of Republicans taking the time to express their dislike of Trump.
In the last few days, the polls have swung (slightly) back towards Harris. I'm going out on a limb here, and am going to make her the (very) narrow favourite.
Who if anybody do you think it helps if it's a very high turnout election?
Bit of a paradox this one. We know the mail in vote that's already in is broadly Democrat (Well maybe not Nevada but generally in the rust belt the mix is much more favourable to the Dems).
So if ABSOLUTELY noone voted on election day, Harris would win by an enormous margin.
But we know the election day mix is likely to be heavily R (Even in scenarios where Harris wins). So the republicans do need to get their election day vote out but in order to win Harris also needs to get lower propensity voters out on election day.
The gender divide could be even bigger than it was in 2016.
Usually the turnout is higher among women than men, which should give Harris an advantage, but perhaps subsections of the male demographic that would usually vote for the Democrats are less likely to turn out to vote for her.
There’s a lot of evidence of both turnout being higher among women than men, and of sex-based polarisation in the past few years, with women trending more left and men more right.
My point was that in all the focus on Democrat voting women and Republican voting men we shouldn't forget that there are a lot of Democrat voting men and Republican voting women. The relative turnout of each of these groups could be crucial.
The Harris campaign was obviously worried about black men, which could be a sign that part of her coalition may be AWOL when the votes are tallied.
Apologies if this has been covered but I need to raise this concern somewhere and think PB is a proven place to check things! I'm astonished how little focus is on the impact on part time workers / low paid jobs by the employer NI changes - especially the secondary threshold being lowered to £5k from £9.1k pa. I make it that the employer NI cost for someone earning just £12,000pa will increase from the current £400pa to a stonking £1,050pa.
I think that's right and surely that's going to risk lost jobs, the Chancellor previously called Employer NI raises as a tax on jobs, but isn't this actually a tax on low-paying jobs and those who most likely can least afford to risk those jobs?
I know the employment allowance is doubled at least but....
Ever since the minimum wage was introdced we have had crocodile tears about how its going to cost jobs for the lowest paid. Yet we are still waiting for this tsunami of unemployment.
Until about 6 months ago, it was beneficial for large employers to offer no more than 16 hours a week, so that pay was under the Secondary Threshold. This was compounded by the fact working tax credit kicks in at 16 hours.
Why design a system to get people to work 2 days a week to survive on additional benefits while at the same time large employers avoid NI contributions ?
In the vast majority of the country people can walk into low paid, part time work.
If the turnout all told is very high it could be a positive sign for Trump, is what I'm possibly thinking. Why? Because polling shows that Harris leads amongst people who always vote whereas Trump leads with people who don't.
If turnout is low this means a higher proportion of the voters are regulars - good for Harris. Conversely if it's high you've got relatively more of those less engaged citizens in there - good for him.
I hope everyone will appreciate just how carefully Jeremy Hunt balanced the curate egg of the UK economy in his budgets
I don’t actually. Quite the opposite.
In my opinion, Hunt’s budgets are woven into the market reaction to today’s budget.
The markets main issue with Truss Mini Budget was cutting tax and government income, whilst promising spending, and not putting it through the OBR for clear analysis how the two balanced out.
IMF love Reeves budget, other think tanks more meh - but can’t find too much wrong on its sums not balancing up or tax take throttling growth to that great degree. And it went through the OBR.
The last Hunt/Sunak budgets were cutting tax and government income, but only funded with money based on taking cuts in future departmental budgets, those were surely riskier budgets, but without today’s market meltdown.
So I think what is happening today, the market reaction goes back to Hunts tax cutting budgets funded by tough cuts in departmental funding in future years, that is not being strongly addressed enough by Reeves this week - such as with less spending commitments from same tax take, is what the markets preferred.
Reeves is saying opposite to departmental cuts Hunt promised in order to make his tax cuts. But Reeves can’t simply say no to the future cuts, pain and austerity Hunt set up in order to tax cut, or else the money is not there to pay for it. This is the nub of the market reaction.
So after about 6 months in my current job I've decided it's not for me. I'm going to take a year or so out to spend with the family while my wife goes back to work and keeps the mortgage paid and I'll decide what I'm going to do next. It will be the first time I'm actually unemployed for about 15 years and I'm really looking forwards to slowing down a bit and being a house husband.
If polls are out to the same degree (and in the same direction) as 2020, then your State-wide predictions are likely to be pretty accurate. Indeed, you might want to add Virginia to the list.
On the other hand, if the polls are out like in the 2022 Senate races, when Dr Oz was ahead of Fetterman in the Pennsylvania polling... but lost by 5 percentage points, then it's going to be a Harris sweep.
FWIW, I think Harris has definitely surprised on the upside as a candidate. Prior to being the candidate she ran 20 point negatives on the favorables. Now, she's basically flat. (Morning Consult today had her as +6!) That puts her in a very different category to Hillary Clinton.
To me, three questions are key in deciding which way to bet:
(1) Have the pollsters - through the introduction of past vote weighting - removed the anti-Trump bias? If so, then the election is likely to be a knife edge. If people under-remember voting for Biden, because he's so unpopular, then it could mean that it is Trump who is overrated in the polls.
(2) Will the abortion referenda make any difference to turnout? Some people say "no", but the group that is keenest on legal abortion (young women) is the most likely Democrat, and the least likely (historically) to make the trek to the polls. This could be absolutely crucial in a State that Trump should have walked, Arizona.
(3) Which way will Haley Republicans vote? I suspect they'll (mostly) return to the fold on election day, but don't forget that - long after she was eliminated from the race - Nikki Haley was getting 20% of the vote in Republican Presidential Primaries. That's a lot of Republicans taking the time to express their dislike of Trump.
In the last few days, the polls have swung (slightly) back towards Harris. I'm going out on a limb here, and am going to make her the (very) narrow favourite.
Who if anybody do you think it helps if it's a very high turnout election?
Bit of a paradox this one. We know the mail in vote that's already in is broadly Democrat (Well maybe not Nevada but generally in the rust belt the mix is much more favourable to the Dems).
So if ABSOLUTELY noone voted on election day, Harris would win by an enormous margin.
But we know the election day mix is likely to be heavily R (Even in scenarios where Harris wins). So the republicans do need to get their election day vote out but in order to win Harris also needs to get lower propensity voters out on election day.
The gender divide could be even bigger than it was in 2016.
Usually the turnout is higher among women than men, which should give Harris an advantage, but perhaps subsections of the male demographic that would usually vote for the Democrats are less likely to turn out to vote for her.
The Trump campaign is trying to get people (esp young men) who don't usually vote to vote for him. It's more about expanding the electorate than changing anybody's mind from DEM to GOP.
If polls are out to the same degree (and in the same direction) as 2020, then your State-wide predictions are likely to be pretty accurate. Indeed, you might want to add Virginia to the list.
On the other hand, if the polls are out like in the 2022 Senate races, when Dr Oz was ahead of Fetterman in the Pennsylvania polling... but lost by 5 percentage points, then it's going to be a Harris sweep.
FWIW, I think Harris has definitely surprised on the upside as a candidate. Prior to being the candidate she ran 20 point negatives on the favorables. Now, she's basically flat. (Morning Consult today had her as +6!) That puts her in a very different category to Hillary Clinton.
To me, three questions are key in deciding which way to bet:
(1) Have the pollsters - through the introduction of past vote weighting - removed the anti-Trump bias? If so, then the election is likely to be a knife edge. If people under-remember voting for Biden, because he's so unpopular, then it could mean that it is Trump who is overrated in the polls.
(2) Will the abortion referenda make any difference to turnout? Some people say "no", but the group that is keenest on legal abortion (young women) is the most likely Democrat, and the least likely (historically) to make the trek to the polls. This could be absolutely crucial in a State that Trump should have walked, Arizona.
(3) Which way will Haley Republicans vote? I suspect they'll (mostly) return to the fold on election day, but don't forget that - long after she was eliminated from the race - Nikki Haley was getting 20% of the vote in Republican Presidential Primaries. That's a lot of Republicans taking the time to express their dislike of Trump.
In the last few days, the polls have swung (slightly) back towards Harris. I'm going out on a limb here, and am going to make her the (very) narrow favourite.
Who if anybody do you think it helps if it's a very high turnout election?
Bit of a paradox this one. We know the mail in vote that's already in is broadly Democrat (Well maybe not Nevada but generally in the rust belt the mix is much more favourable to the Dems).
So if ABSOLUTELY noone voted on election day, Harris would win by an enormous margin.
But we know the election day mix is likely to be heavily R (Even in scenarios where Harris wins). So the republicans do need to get their election day vote out but in order to win Harris also needs to get lower propensity voters out on election day.
The gender divide could be even bigger than it was in 2016.
Usually the turnout is higher among women than men, which should give Harris an advantage, but perhaps subsections of the male demographic that would usually vote for the Democrats are less likely to turn out to vote for her.
I’m disappointed there hasn’t been a meme about men lying about their vote to their Kamala backing ladies. Perhaps the whiff of being pussy whipped is preventing it.
So after about 6 months in my current job I've decided it's not for me. I'm going to take a year or so out to spend with the family while my wife goes back to work and keeps the mortgage paid and I'll decide what I'm going to do next. It will be the first time I'm actually unemployed for about 15 years and I'm really looking forwards to slowing down a bit and being a house husband.
I actually have a hospital appointment this morning. What a budget!
I went to hospital yesterday.
There was a poster by the entrance warning about measles, which we thought had been vanquished in the 1960s, before they invented anti-vaxxers.
But beyond that were electronic signs displaying a message that their software licence had expired (presumably unbeknownst to whoever could either renew the licence or turn the system off to save electricity) and direction signs that stopped well short of their destination. The clock had not been put back an hour at the weekend, or so I thought till I noticed that even then it would be 10 minutes wrong.
People say the NHS needs huge investment. They are right. It does. But it also needs people directly running hospitals and clinics to pick the low hanging fruit.
My wife had a miscarriage at about 9 weeks 18 months or so ago. Turning up at my local large hospital to find there was nowhere to park (we would cheerfully have paid, but the site has about 50% of the parking spaces it needs - we ended up ditching the car in a nearby supermarket carpark), followed by having to find the "early pregnancy unit*" we'd been told to attend and then follow the non-existent signage to it with a tired and distressed wife was one of the less enjoyable experiences of my life, which could have been made vastly for virtually no cost by some decent signage.
I think I've posted before about how I nearly missed an expensive MRI slot because I went to the wrong hospital, thanks to the receptionist at a different hospital using without explanation the abbreviation MRI for Manchester Royal Infirmary, without considering this was also the department I was being sent to see. This was after a previous missed MRI because they failed to book an X-ray to check for steel splinters in my eyes first, despite my ringing them and telling them this exactly as instructed on the paperwork they sent out.
Stuff like this isn't hard, or expensive to fix - but because it's a state monolith entirely run by a mixture of incompetence and producer capture it isn't. Pouring loads more money in the top won't help either - this stuff isn't fixed primarily because nobody cares, rather than anything else.
*It turned out that it has been renamed the "Jasmine Suite" presumably to be more sensitive to people our situation, which is lovely and thoughtful, but does require that people are told to go there. And once we found that bit out, the signage was still rubbish to actually get there.
These are exactly the sorts of problems that arise when you keep cutting costs so there's no-one to check on signage and staff don't have the time to check everything has been understood. They have nothing to do with the system being "a state monolith".
Your claim that "nobody cares" is nonsense (and insulting). NHS staff generally do care, but they're worked off their feet. More money does help.
Nobody cares you just have to deal with it. What would the budget line item be for "checking signage".
I appreciate you evidently love the NHS but it is crap. Or rather, it is brilliant on many measures apart from saving lives and health outcomes.
My sister was just invited for a smear test which is available, apparently, to "all women and those people with cervixes". This is not a political correctness gone mad rant but that is where the money is going. Could the budget used for developing and writing that not have been used to "check signage".
The budget line for "checking signage" would probably be a manager. Politicians keep cutting NHS managers, who get described as "pen pushers". Yet NHS managers do important jobs.
The problem in a nutshell. If you walk into work and there is a crisp packet on the floor do you wait for the person responsible for picking up crisp packets to come along. No. You pick it up or ask for the cleaners to go over the area.
The NHS is full of people who walk past the crisp packet because it isn't their job to pick up crisp packets and meanwhile the place is full to brimming with rubbish. And they don't care enough either to pick the damn thing up or to ask the cleaners to do so.
And Cheese & Onion if you're wondering.
You've got a long patient list, you've just been bleeped, you're already behind on your paperwork.... what do you do? You need to give people capacity.
Yeah that's how every employee in the NHS operates.
Have you been in a hospital recently. amiright in saying you work in one. Open your eyes and look around at the nurses' station, or the doctors, or the administrators, or people like you, for that matter if you do work there.
If polls are out to the same degree (and in the same direction) as 2020, then your State-wide predictions are likely to be pretty accurate. Indeed, you might want to add Virginia to the list.
On the other hand, if the polls are out like in the 2022 Senate races, when Dr Oz was ahead of Fetterman in the Pennsylvania polling... but lost by 5 percentage points, then it's going to be a Harris sweep.
FWIW, I think Harris has definitely surprised on the upside as a candidate. Prior to being the candidate she ran 20 point negatives on the favorables. Now, she's basically flat. (Morning Consult today had her as +6!) That puts her in a very different category to Hillary Clinton.
To me, three questions are key in deciding which way to bet:
(1) Have the pollsters - through the introduction of past vote weighting - removed the anti-Trump bias? If so, then the election is likely to be a knife edge. If people under-remember voting for Biden, because he's so unpopular, then it could mean that it is Trump who is overrated in the polls.
(2) Will the abortion referenda make any difference to turnout? Some people say "no", but the group that is keenest on legal abortion (young women) is the most likely Democrat, and the least likely (historically) to make the trek to the polls. This could be absolutely crucial in a State that Trump should have walked, Arizona.
(3) Which way will Haley Republicans vote? I suspect they'll (mostly) return to the fold on election day, but don't forget that - long after she was eliminated from the race - Nikki Haley was getting 20% of the vote in Republican Presidential Primaries. That's a lot of Republicans taking the time to express their dislike of Trump.
In the last few days, the polls have swung (slightly) back towards Harris. I'm going out on a limb here, and am going to make her the (very) narrow favourite.
Who if anybody do you think it helps if it's a very high turnout election?
Bit of a paradox this one. We know the mail in vote that's already in is broadly Democrat (Well maybe not Nevada but generally in the rust belt the mix is much more favourable to the Dems).
So if ABSOLUTELY noone voted on election day, Harris would win by an enormous margin.
But we know the election day mix is likely to be heavily R (Even in scenarios where Harris wins). So the republicans do need to get their election day vote out but in order to win Harris also needs to get lower propensity voters out on election day.
The gender divide could be even bigger than it was in 2016.
Usually the turnout is higher among women than men, which should give Harris an advantage, but perhaps subsections of the male demographic that would usually vote for the Democrats are less likely to turn out to vote for her.
I’m disappointed there hasn’t been a meme about men lying about their vote to their Kamala backing ladies. Perhaps the whiff of being pussy whipped is preventing it.
"Is your man secretly voting for Trump? How well do you really know him?"
If polls are out to the same degree (and in the same direction) as 2020, then your State-wide predictions are likely to be pretty accurate. Indeed, you might want to add Virginia to the list.
On the other hand, if the polls are out like in the 2022 Senate races, when Dr Oz was ahead of Fetterman in the Pennsylvania polling... but lost by 5 percentage points, then it's going to be a Harris sweep.
FWIW, I think Harris has definitely surprised on the upside as a candidate. Prior to being the candidate she ran 20 point negatives on the favorables. Now, she's basically flat. (Morning Consult today had her as +6!) That puts her in a very different category to Hillary Clinton.
To me, three questions are key in deciding which way to bet:
(1) Have the pollsters - through the introduction of past vote weighting - removed the anti-Trump bias? If so, then the election is likely to be a knife edge. If people under-remember voting for Biden, because he's so unpopular, then it could mean that it is Trump who is overrated in the polls.
(2) Will the abortion referenda make any difference to turnout? Some people say "no", but the group that is keenest on legal abortion (young women) is the most likely Democrat, and the least likely (historically) to make the trek to the polls. This could be absolutely crucial in a State that Trump should have walked, Arizona.
(3) Which way will Haley Republicans vote? I suspect they'll (mostly) return to the fold on election day, but don't forget that - long after she was eliminated from the race - Nikki Haley was getting 20% of the vote in Republican Presidential Primaries. That's a lot of Republicans taking the time to express their dislike of Trump.
In the last few days, the polls have swung (slightly) back towards Harris. I'm going out on a limb here, and am going to make her the (very) narrow favourite.
Who if anybody do you think it helps if it's a very high turnout election?
Bit of a paradox this one. We know the mail in vote that's already in is broadly Democrat (Well maybe not Nevada but generally in the rust belt the mix is much more favourable to the Dems).
So if ABSOLUTELY noone voted on election day, Harris would win by an enormous margin.
But we know the election day mix is likely to be heavily R (Even in scenarios where Harris wins). So the republicans do need to get their election day vote out but in order to win Harris also needs to get lower propensity voters out on election day.
The gender divide could be even bigger than it was in 2016.
Usually the turnout is higher among women than men, which should give Harris an advantage, but perhaps subsections of the male demographic that would usually vote for the Democrats are less likely to turn out to vote for her.
The Trump campaign is trying to get people (esp young men) who don't usually vote to vote for him. It's more about expanding the electorate than changing anybody's mind from DEM to GOP.
The problem with that strategy is that people who don't tend to vote..... don't tend to vote
So after about 6 months in my current job I've decided it's not for me. I'm going to take a year or so out to spend with the family while my wife goes back to work and keeps the mortgage paid and I'll decide what I'm going to do next. It will be the first time I'm actually unemployed for about 15 years and I'm really looking forwards to slowing down a bit and being a house husband.
If polls are out to the same degree (and in the same direction) as 2020, then your State-wide predictions are likely to be pretty accurate. Indeed, you might want to add Virginia to the list.
On the other hand, if the polls are out like in the 2022 Senate races, when Dr Oz was ahead of Fetterman in the Pennsylvania polling... but lost by 5 percentage points, then it's going to be a Harris sweep.
FWIW, I think Harris has definitely surprised on the upside as a candidate. Prior to being the candidate she ran 20 point negatives on the favorables. Now, she's basically flat. (Morning Consult today had her as +6!) That puts her in a very different category to Hillary Clinton.
To me, three questions are key in deciding which way to bet:
(1) Have the pollsters - through the introduction of past vote weighting - removed the anti-Trump bias? If so, then the election is likely to be a knife edge. If people under-remember voting for Biden, because he's so unpopular, then it could mean that it is Trump who is overrated in the polls.
(2) Will the abortion referenda make any difference to turnout? Some people say "no", but the group that is keenest on legal abortion (young women) is the most likely Democrat, and the least likely (historically) to make the trek to the polls. This could be absolutely crucial in a State that Trump should have walked, Arizona.
(3) Which way will Haley Republicans vote? I suspect they'll (mostly) return to the fold on election day, but don't forget that - long after she was eliminated from the race - Nikki Haley was getting 20% of the vote in Republican Presidential Primaries. That's a lot of Republicans taking the time to express their dislike of Trump.
In the last few days, the polls have swung (slightly) back towards Harris. I'm going out on a limb here, and am going to make her the (very) narrow favourite.
Who if anybody do you think it helps if it's a very high turnout election?
Bit of a paradox this one. We know the mail in vote that's already in is broadly Democrat (Well maybe not Nevada but generally in the rust belt the mix is much more favourable to the Dems).
So if ABSOLUTELY noone voted on election day, Harris would win by an enormous margin.
But we know the election day mix is likely to be heavily R (Even in scenarios where Harris wins). So the republicans do need to get their election day vote out but in order to win Harris also needs to get lower propensity voters out on election day.
The gender divide could be even bigger than it was in 2016.
Usually the turnout is higher among women than men, which should give Harris an advantage, but perhaps subsections of the male demographic that would usually vote for the Democrats are less likely to turn out to vote for her.
The Trump campaign is trying to get people (esp young men) who don't usually vote to vote for him. It's more about expanding the electorate than changing anybody's mind from DEM to GOP.
Not sure there’s very many minds to be changed now. It’s all about getting out the vote.
So after about 6 months in my current job I've decided it's not for me. I'm going to take a year or so out to spend with the family while my wife goes back to work and keeps the mortgage paid and I'll decide what I'm going to do next. It will be the first time I'm actually unemployed for about 15 years and I'm really looking forwards to slowing down a bit and being a house husband.
I applaud you for doing that.
Make the best of it, and create at least something that will last you a long time - whether a skill you would not otherwise get or whatever.
In ~2000 I took an entire year out to go training and have a break after several years of contracting, using one of those "Gold Cards" that places like IBM Training and Cap-Gemini used to have, where you paid £5k or so and could go on any of their courses for a year. I did just over 100 contact days - a lot of it at hotels in Poole and Boscombe. Great fun ,and met a lot of interesting people.
So after about 6 months in my current job I've decided it's not for me. I'm going to take a year or so out to spend with the family while my wife goes back to work and keeps the mortgage paid and I'll decide what I'm going to do next. It will be the first time I'm actually unemployed for about 15 years and I'm really looking forwards to slowing down a bit and being a house husband.
If you don't mind me asking what were you doing? I know previously you were a Sony man.
If polls are out to the same degree (and in the same direction) as 2020, then your State-wide predictions are likely to be pretty accurate. Indeed, you might want to add Virginia to the list.
On the other hand, if the polls are out like in the 2022 Senate races, when Dr Oz was ahead of Fetterman in the Pennsylvania polling... but lost by 5 percentage points, then it's going to be a Harris sweep.
FWIW, I think Harris has definitely surprised on the upside as a candidate. Prior to being the candidate she ran 20 point negatives on the favorables. Now, she's basically flat. (Morning Consult today had her as +6!) That puts her in a very different category to Hillary Clinton.
To me, three questions are key in deciding which way to bet:
(1) Have the pollsters - through the introduction of past vote weighting - removed the anti-Trump bias? If so, then the election is likely to be a knife edge. If people under-remember voting for Biden, because he's so unpopular, then it could mean that it is Trump who is overrated in the polls.
(2) Will the abortion referenda make any difference to turnout? Some people say "no", but the group that is keenest on legal abortion (young women) is the most likely Democrat, and the least likely (historically) to make the trek to the polls. This could be absolutely crucial in a State that Trump should have walked, Arizona.
(3) Which way will Haley Republicans vote? I suspect they'll (mostly) return to the fold on election day, but don't forget that - long after she was eliminated from the race - Nikki Haley was getting 20% of the vote in Republican Presidential Primaries. That's a lot of Republicans taking the time to express their dislike of Trump.
In the last few days, the polls have swung (slightly) back towards Harris. I'm going out on a limb here, and am going to make her the (very) narrow favourite.
Who if anybody do you think it helps if it's a very high turnout election?
Bit of a paradox this one. We know the mail in vote that's already in is broadly Democrat (Well maybe not Nevada but generally in the rust belt the mix is much more favourable to the Dems).
So if ABSOLUTELY noone voted on election day, Harris would win by an enormous margin.
But we know the election day mix is likely to be heavily R (Even in scenarios where Harris wins). So the republicans do need to get their election day vote out but in order to win Harris also needs to get lower propensity voters out on election day.
The gender divide could be even bigger than it was in 2016.
Usually the turnout is higher among women than men, which should give Harris an advantage, but perhaps subsections of the male demographic that would usually vote for the Democrats are less likely to turn out to vote for her.
There’s a lot of evidence of both turnout being higher among women than men, and of sex-based polarisation in the past few years, with women trending more left and men more right.
My point was that in all the focus on Democrat voting women and Republican voting men we shouldn't forget that there are a lot of Democrat voting men and Republican voting women. The relative turnout of each of these groups could be crucial.
The Harris campaign was obviously worried about black men, which could be a sign that part of her coalition may be AWOL when the votes are tallied.
That's right: just as there are lots of Brexit Londoners, and the like. It's all too easy to think of groups as monoliths, and they're simply not.
It's also worth noting that - if you look at Georgia - that while the gender split looks very positive for Harris, early voting is mostly driven by older women. And older women are not as Democrat as younger ones.
So after about 6 months in my current job I've decided it's not for me. I'm going to take a year or so out to spend with the family while my wife goes back to work and keeps the mortgage paid and I'll decide what I'm going to do next. It will be the first time I'm actually unemployed for about 15 years and I'm really looking forwards to slowing down a bit and being a house husband.
Good luck having a few months off, but also make sure you keep up to date with skills that are rapidly evolving. Been there, done that.
If polls are out to the same degree (and in the same direction) as 2020, then your State-wide predictions are likely to be pretty accurate. Indeed, you might want to add Virginia to the list.
On the other hand, if the polls are out like in the 2022 Senate races, when Dr Oz was ahead of Fetterman in the Pennsylvania polling... but lost by 5 percentage points, then it's going to be a Harris sweep.
FWIW, I think Harris has definitely surprised on the upside as a candidate. Prior to being the candidate she ran 20 point negatives on the favorables. Now, she's basically flat. (Morning Consult today had her as +6!) That puts her in a very different category to Hillary Clinton.
To me, three questions are key in deciding which way to bet:
(1) Have the pollsters - through the introduction of past vote weighting - removed the anti-Trump bias? If so, then the election is likely to be a knife edge. If people under-remember voting for Biden, because he's so unpopular, then it could mean that it is Trump who is overrated in the polls.
(2) Will the abortion referenda make any difference to turnout? Some people say "no", but the group that is keenest on legal abortion (young women) is the most likely Democrat, and the least likely (historically) to make the trek to the polls. This could be absolutely crucial in a State that Trump should have walked, Arizona.
(3) Which way will Haley Republicans vote? I suspect they'll (mostly) return to the fold on election day, but don't forget that - long after she was eliminated from the race - Nikki Haley was getting 20% of the vote in Republican Presidential Primaries. That's a lot of Republicans taking the time to express their dislike of Trump.
In the last few days, the polls have swung (slightly) back towards Harris. I'm going out on a limb here, and am going to make her the (very) narrow favourite.
Who if anybody do you think it helps if it's a very high turnout election?
Bit of a paradox this one. We know the mail in vote that's already in is broadly Democrat (Well maybe not Nevada but generally in the rust belt the mix is much more favourable to the Dems).
So if ABSOLUTELY noone voted on election day, Harris would win by an enormous margin.
But we know the election day mix is likely to be heavily R (Even in scenarios where Harris wins). So the republicans do need to get their election day vote out but in order to win Harris also needs to get lower propensity voters out on election day.
The gender divide could be even bigger than it was in 2016.
Usually the turnout is higher among women than men, which should give Harris an advantage, but perhaps subsections of the male demographic that would usually vote for the Democrats are less likely to turn out to vote for her.
I’m disappointed there hasn’t been a meme about men lying about their vote to their Kamala backing ladies. Perhaps the whiff of being pussy whipped is preventing it.
"Is your man secretly voting for Trump? How well do you really know him?"
If polls are out to the same degree (and in the same direction) as 2020, then your State-wide predictions are likely to be pretty accurate. Indeed, you might want to add Virginia to the list.
On the other hand, if the polls are out like in the 2022 Senate races, when Dr Oz was ahead of Fetterman in the Pennsylvania polling... but lost by 5 percentage points, then it's going to be a Harris sweep.
FWIW, I think Harris has definitely surprised on the upside as a candidate. Prior to being the candidate she ran 20 point negatives on the favorables. Now, she's basically flat. (Morning Consult today had her as +6!) That puts her in a very different category to Hillary Clinton.
To me, three questions are key in deciding which way to bet:
(1) Have the pollsters - through the introduction of past vote weighting - removed the anti-Trump bias? If so, then the election is likely to be a knife edge. If people under-remember voting for Biden, because he's so unpopular, then it could mean that it is Trump who is overrated in the polls.
(2) Will the abortion referenda make any difference to turnout? Some people say "no", but the group that is keenest on legal abortion (young women) is the most likely Democrat, and the least likely (historically) to make the trek to the polls. This could be absolutely crucial in a State that Trump should have walked, Arizona.
(3) Which way will Haley Republicans vote? I suspect they'll (mostly) return to the fold on election day, but don't forget that - long after she was eliminated from the race - Nikki Haley was getting 20% of the vote in Republican Presidential Primaries. That's a lot of Republicans taking the time to express their dislike of Trump.
In the last few days, the polls have swung (slightly) back towards Harris. I'm going out on a limb here, and am going to make her the (very) narrow favourite.
Who if anybody do you think it helps if it's a very high turnout election?
Bit of a paradox this one. We know the mail in vote that's already in is broadly Democrat (Well maybe not Nevada but generally in the rust belt the mix is much more favourable to the Dems).
So if ABSOLUTELY noone voted on election day, Harris would win by an enormous margin.
But we know the election day mix is likely to be heavily R (Even in scenarios where Harris wins). So the republicans do need to get their election day vote out but in order to win Harris also needs to get lower propensity voters out on election day.
So many variables in a US election, aren't there. It's a dream for aficionados.
Is anybody doing a Ralston on the early data in other states, do we know? Or is that kind of deep grunt analysis only possible in NV because it's small?
So after about 6 months in my current job I've decided it's not for me. I'm going to take a year or so out to spend with the family while my wife goes back to work and keeps the mortgage paid and I'll decide what I'm going to do next. It will be the first time I'm actually unemployed for about 15 years and I'm really looking forwards to slowing down a bit and being a house husband.
I left full-time employment a while ago and it was nerve-wracking at the time, but in the end the best thing I ever did.
Anyway before I disappear off into the ether again in the next day ir so, my US prediction is for the following states go be won by Trump in an easy EC victory for him
All of 2020 plus
Pennsylvania Michigan (Coin Toss) Wisconsin Georgia Nevada Arizona (Coin toss) Virginia (Perhaps) New Hampshire
Why New Hampshire?
Because he'll run her very close there. I think NJ might ge close enough to raise some eyebrows too
A few months ago I thought of writing an article about how modern-day issues - abortion, trans, immigration, insurrection - produced choropleths which can be used to produce bands of states, which when compared to the existing state rankings could indicate value or a flip. I abandoned it because of time issues, but one of those maps stuck in my mind because it had NH as red. It's too late to revisit but it's beginning to bug me...
Had to laugh at this:
High-Risk States (AR, IA, IN, MO, NE, NH, OH, SC, WV): All of these states have passed some anti-trans adult laws, but they haven't reached the same level of severity as the worst states. Missouri and West Virginia, for example, prohibit gender-affirming care for incarcerated adults as well as transgender youth…
Imagine going so far as to not fund sex changes for prisoners and children.
I understand the point, but it was not my point. We have been going for years on the assumption that voting behaviour is related to past voting behaviour and is influenced by things like the economy that can be tracked over time. That means that given the votes in the last election, modify them by polls today, and - voila, we can predict elections. But PB's been around for 20 years now and it's becoming bloody obvious that sometimes that just doesn't work. So we need something else.
Every given election deals with issues (duh), and it being the internet partisans produce polemics, articles,... and maps. Specifically choropleths, a type of map very useful for USA elections. We can take those and by comparing them to the results of the last election, we can see which states are flipping. Which is why I was so interested in New Hampshire...
If polls are out to the same degree (and in the same direction) as 2020, then your State-wide predictions are likely to be pretty accurate. Indeed, you might want to add Virginia to the list.
On the other hand, if the polls are out like in the 2022 Senate races, when Dr Oz was ahead of Fetterman in the Pennsylvania polling... but lost by 5 percentage points, then it's going to be a Harris sweep.
FWIW, I think Harris has definitely surprised on the upside as a candidate. Prior to being the candidate she ran 20 point negatives on the favorables. Now, she's basically flat. (Morning Consult today had her as +6!) That puts her in a very different category to Hillary Clinton.
To me, three questions are key in deciding which way to bet:
(1) Have the pollsters - through the introduction of past vote weighting - removed the anti-Trump bias? If so, then the election is likely to be a knife edge. If people under-remember voting for Biden, because he's so unpopular, then it could mean that it is Trump who is overrated in the polls.
(2) Will the abortion referenda make any difference to turnout? Some people say "no", but the group that is keenest on legal abortion (young women) is the most likely Democrat, and the least likely (historically) to make the trek to the polls. This could be absolutely crucial in a State that Trump should have walked, Arizona.
(3) Which way will Haley Republicans vote? I suspect they'll (mostly) return to the fold on election day, but don't forget that - long after she was eliminated from the race - Nikki Haley was getting 20% of the vote in Republican Presidential Primaries. That's a lot of Republicans taking the time to express their dislike of Trump.
In the last few days, the polls have swung (slightly) back towards Harris. I'm going out on a limb here, and am going to make her the (very) narrow favourite.
Who if anybody do you think it helps if it's a very high turnout election?
Bit of a paradox this one. We know the mail in vote that's already in is broadly Democrat (Well maybe not Nevada but generally in the rust belt the mix is much more favourable to the Dems).
So if ABSOLUTELY noone voted on election day, Harris would win by an enormous margin.
But we know the election day mix is likely to be heavily R (Even in scenarios where Harris wins). So the republicans do need to get their election day vote out but in order to win Harris also needs to get lower propensity voters out on election day.
The gender divide could be even bigger than it was in 2016.
Usually the turnout is higher among women than men, which should give Harris an advantage, but perhaps subsections of the male demographic that would usually vote for the Democrats are less likely to turn out to vote for her.
The Trump campaign is trying to get people (esp young men) who don't usually vote to vote for him. It's more about expanding the electorate than changing anybody's mind from DEM to GOP.
Not sure there’s very many minds to be changed now. It’s all about getting out the vote.
Yep. But what is 'the' vote? That's the million $$$ question.
So after about 6 months in my current job I've decided it's not for me. I'm going to take a year or so out to spend with the family while my wife goes back to work and keeps the mortgage paid and I'll decide what I'm going to do next. It will be the first time I'm actually unemployed for about 15 years and I'm really looking forwards to slowing down a bit and being a house husband.
If you don't mind me asking what were you doing? I know previously you were a Sony man.
VP of Data at a b2b fintech scale up. It is about the most dull thing I've ever done. I was trying to kid myself that I liked it but my daughter looked at me a few weeks ago and said "daddy why do you look so sad all the time" and I couldn't really deny it any longer. The job was getting me down, I didn't enjoy the work, I hated the people and I wanted out. I spoke to my wife last weekend and she fully supported me and since she's going back to work in January we figured it would be a good time for me to resign. We're going to spend the winter in Sicily and then when we come back I'll be a full time dad, though my daughter will be at nursery for 3 days a week, my son will be home with me though which is a bit scary!
For a couple of years now, we've had these little white robot delivery vehicles in our village. Anyway, someone has put halloween stickers/masks on some of them for Halloween.
A lovely little idea. Annoyingly I was driving so I couldn't take a piccie.
If polls are out to the same degree (and in the same direction) as 2020, then your State-wide predictions are likely to be pretty accurate. Indeed, you might want to add Virginia to the list.
On the other hand, if the polls are out like in the 2022 Senate races, when Dr Oz was ahead of Fetterman in the Pennsylvania polling... but lost by 5 percentage points, then it's going to be a Harris sweep.
FWIW, I think Harris has definitely surprised on the upside as a candidate. Prior to being the candidate she ran 20 point negatives on the favorables. Now, she's basically flat. (Morning Consult today had her as +6!) That puts her in a very different category to Hillary Clinton.
To me, three questions are key in deciding which way to bet:
(1) Have the pollsters - through the introduction of past vote weighting - removed the anti-Trump bias? If so, then the election is likely to be a knife edge. If people under-remember voting for Biden, because he's so unpopular, then it could mean that it is Trump who is overrated in the polls.
(2) Will the abortion referenda make any difference to turnout? Some people say "no", but the group that is keenest on legal abortion (young women) is the most likely Democrat, and the least likely (historically) to make the trek to the polls. This could be absolutely crucial in a State that Trump should have walked, Arizona.
(3) Which way will Haley Republicans vote? I suspect they'll (mostly) return to the fold on election day, but don't forget that - long after she was eliminated from the race - Nikki Haley was getting 20% of the vote in Republican Presidential Primaries. That's a lot of Republicans taking the time to express their dislike of Trump.
In the last few days, the polls have swung (slightly) back towards Harris. I'm going out on a limb here, and am going to make her the (very) narrow favourite.
Who if anybody do you think it helps if it's a very high turnout election?
Bit of a paradox this one. We know the mail in vote that's already in is broadly Democrat (Well maybe not Nevada but generally in the rust belt the mix is much more favourable to the Dems).
So if ABSOLUTELY noone voted on election day, Harris would win by an enormous margin.
But we know the election day mix is likely to be heavily R (Even in scenarios where Harris wins). So the republicans do need to get their election day vote out but in order to win Harris also needs to get lower propensity voters out on election day.
The gender divide could be even bigger than it was in 2016.
Usually the turnout is higher among women than men, which should give Harris an advantage, but perhaps subsections of the male demographic that would usually vote for the Democrats are less likely to turn out to vote for her.
The Trump campaign is trying to get people (esp young men) who don't usually vote to vote for him. It's more about expanding the electorate than changing anybody's mind from DEM to GOP.
Not sure there’s very many minds to be changed now. It’s all about getting out the vote.
I think that's right.
The polls show very, very few undecided voters. And the undecided voters are probably least likely to turn up.
The question I have is: is Harris a good organizer?
In the past two competitive Democrat primary seasons, we saw the benefits of really strong on the ground organization, and also what happened if you failed to have it.
Obama had amazing organization, and it allowed him to beat Hillary. He was in every caucus with his people, and he got every last vote out. Hillary, by contrast, showed herself supremely disinterested in these nuts and bolts.
And in 2020, Buttigieg followed the Obama playbook, and had the Iowa Caucuses not been an organizational disaster for the Democrats, he might well have ended up the nominee.
We don't know if Harris is of the Obama/Buttigieg family, or the Hillary Clinton one.
So after about 6 months in my current job I've decided it's not for me. I'm going to take a year or so out to spend with the family while my wife goes back to work and keeps the mortgage paid and I'll decide what I'm going to do next. It will be the first time I'm actually unemployed for about 15 years and I'm really looking forwards to slowing down a bit and being a house husband.
Very best of luck to you, Max. I remember all those years ago your attending the interview and my offering some tips (sartorial: always err on the side of being too smart rather than vice versa; procedural: if the interviewer is talking a lot, let them – they will literally talk themselves into hiring you) and your very graciously thanking me before you actually were offered the job. It seems that we have now gone full circle and you'll be back in your joggers for the very best of reasons.
For a couple of years now, we've had these little white robot delivery vehicles in our village. Anyway, someone has put halloween stickers/masks on some of them for Halloween.
A lovely little idea. Annoyingly I was driving so I couldn't take a piccie.
Thinly-veiled I want a dashcam for Christmas.
LOL. I'm not to bothered about a dashcam; but I'm really considering getting one for my bike. Especially if I start training for longer-distance races.
This 'hobby' can get very expensive, very, very quickly.
So after about 6 months in my current job I've decided it's not for me. I'm going to take a year or so out to spend with the family while my wife goes back to work and keeps the mortgage paid and I'll decide what I'm going to do next. It will be the first time I'm actually unemployed for about 15 years and I'm really looking forwards to slowing down a bit and being a house husband.
Good luck but be careful. Anecdotally, the job market has tightened muchly in recent weeks. Make sure you can climb back aboard when and if needs be.
So after about 6 months in my current job I've decided it's not for me. I'm going to take a year or so out to spend with the family while my wife goes back to work and keeps the mortgage paid and I'll decide what I'm going to do next. It will be the first time I'm actually unemployed for about 15 years and I'm really looking forwards to slowing down a bit and being a house husband.
If you don't mind me asking what were you doing? I know previously you were a Sony man.
VP of Data at a b2b fintech scale up. It is about the most dull thing I've ever done. I was trying to kid myself that I liked it but my daughter looked at me a few weeks ago and said "daddy why do you look so sad all the time" and I couldn't really deny it any longer. The job was getting me down, I didn't enjoy the work, I hated the people and I wanted out. I spoke to my wife last weekend and she fully supported me and since she's going back to work in January we figured it would be a good time for me to resign. We're going to spend the winter in Sicily and then when we come back I'll be a full time dad, though my daughter will be at nursery for 3 days a week, my son will be home with me though which is a bit scary!
So after about 6 months in my current job I've decided it's not for me. I'm going to take a year or so out to spend with the family while my wife goes back to work and keeps the mortgage paid and I'll decide what I'm going to do next. It will be the first time I'm actually unemployed for about 15 years and I'm really looking forwards to slowing down a bit and being a house husband.
Very best of luck to you, Max. I remember all those years ago your attending the interview and my offering some tips (sartorial: always err on the side of being too smart rather than vice versa; procedural: if the interviewer is talking a lot, let them – they will literally talk themselves into hiring you) and your very graciously thanking me before you actually were offered the job. It seems that we have now gone full circle and you'll be back in your joggers for the very best of reasons.
More power to your elbow.
It does seem like a lifetime ago Bob, almost 10 years to the day since I made my move into the City!
So after about 6 months in my current job I've decided it's not for me. I'm going to take a year or so out to spend with the family while my wife goes back to work and keeps the mortgage paid and I'll decide what I'm going to do next. It will be the first time I'm actually unemployed for about 15 years and I'm really looking forwards to slowing down a bit and being a house husband.
Good luck Max! Good to step off the treadmill and enjoy the view.
If polls are out to the same degree (and in the same direction) as 2020, then your State-wide predictions are likely to be pretty accurate. Indeed, you might want to add Virginia to the list.
On the other hand, if the polls are out like in the 2022 Senate races, when Dr Oz was ahead of Fetterman in the Pennsylvania polling... but lost by 5 percentage points, then it's going to be a Harris sweep.
FWIW, I think Harris has definitely surprised on the upside as a candidate. Prior to being the candidate she ran 20 point negatives on the favorables. Now, she's basically flat. (Morning Consult today had her as +6!) That puts her in a very different category to Hillary Clinton.
To me, three questions are key in deciding which way to bet:
(1) Have the pollsters - through the introduction of past vote weighting - removed the anti-Trump bias? If so, then the election is likely to be a knife edge. If people under-remember voting for Biden, because he's so unpopular, then it could mean that it is Trump who is overrated in the polls.
(2) Will the abortion referenda make any difference to turnout? Some people say "no", but the group that is keenest on legal abortion (young women) is the most likely Democrat, and the least likely (historically) to make the trek to the polls. This could be absolutely crucial in a State that Trump should have walked, Arizona.
(3) Which way will Haley Republicans vote? I suspect they'll (mostly) return to the fold on election day, but don't forget that - long after she was eliminated from the race - Nikki Haley was getting 20% of the vote in Republican Presidential Primaries. That's a lot of Republicans taking the time to express their dislike of Trump.
In the last few days, the polls have swung (slightly) back towards Harris. I'm going out on a limb here, and am going to make her the (very) narrow favourite.
Who if anybody do you think it helps if it's a very high turnout election?
Bit of a paradox this one. We know the mail in vote that's already in is broadly Democrat (Well maybe not Nevada but generally in the rust belt the mix is much more favourable to the Dems).
So if ABSOLUTELY noone voted on election day, Harris would win by an enormous margin.
But we know the election day mix is likely to be heavily R (Even in scenarios where Harris wins). So the republicans do need to get their election day vote out but in order to win Harris also needs to get lower propensity voters out on election day.
The gender divide could be even bigger than it was in 2016.
Usually the turnout is higher among women than men, which should give Harris an advantage, but perhaps subsections of the male demographic that would usually vote for the Democrats are less likely to turn out to vote for her.
There’s a lot of evidence of both turnout being higher among women than men, and of sex-based polarisation in the past few years, with women trending more left and men more right.
My point was that in all the focus on Democrat voting women and Republican voting men we shouldn't forget that there are a lot of Democrat voting men and Republican voting women. The relative turnout of each of these groups could be crucial.
The Harris campaign was obviously worried about black men, which could be a sign that part of her coalition may be AWOL when the votes are tallied.
That's right: just as there are lots of Brexit Londoners, and the like. It's all too easy to think of groups as monoliths, and they're simply not.
It's also worth noting that - if you look at Georgia - that while the gender split looks very positive for Harris, early voting is mostly driven by older women. And older women are not as Democrat as younger ones.
The Harris campaign has spent a lot of time in deep red areas of swing states trying to get just a few extra votes in those places. They all count one.
So after about 6 months in my current job I've decided it's not for me. I'm going to take a year or so out to spend with the family while my wife goes back to work and keeps the mortgage paid and I'll decide what I'm going to do next. It will be the first time I'm actually unemployed for about 15 years and I'm really looking forwards to slowing down a bit and being a house husband.
I left full-time employment a while ago and it was nerve-wracking at the time, but in the end the best thing I ever did.
Did you tell your employer? Or did you just stop working full time?
Anyway before I disappear off into the ether again in the next day ir so, my US prediction is for the following states go be won by Trump in an easy EC victory for him
All of 2020 plus
Pennsylvania Michigan (Coin Toss) Wisconsin Georgia Nevada Arizona (Coin toss) Virginia (Perhaps) New Hampshire
Why New Hampshire?
Because he'll run her very close there. I think NJ might ge close enough to raise some eyebrows too
A few months ago I thought of writing an article about how modern-day issues - abortion, trans, immigration, insurrection - produced choropleths which can be used to produce bands of states, which when compared to the existing state rankings could indicate value or a flip. I abandoned it because of time issues, but one of those maps stuck in my mind because it had NH as red. It's too late to revisit but it's beginning to bug me...
Had to laugh at this:
High-Risk States (AR, IA, IN, MO, NE, NH, OH, SC, WV): All of these states have passed some anti-trans adult laws, but they haven't reached the same level of severity as the worst states. Missouri and West Virginia, for example, prohibit gender-affirming care for incarcerated adults as well as transgender youth…
Imagine going so far as to not fund sex changes for prisoners and children.
So you think it good policy to legally prohibit the supply of hormones, for example, to transitioned individuals ?
Fake news. The law prohibits inmates being given gender transition surgery, not medication:
That's a prohibition on surgery, not "gender affirming care", then.
Would you say the people who wrote the article were fearmongering in that case?
Given the bit that Sandpit quoted said "High-Risk States (AR, IA, IN, MO, NE, NH, OH, SC, WV): All of these states have passed some anti-trans adult laws, but they haven't reached the same level of severity as the worst states. Missouri and West Virginia, for example, prohibit gender-affirming care for incarcerated adults as well as transgender youth…", it would appear not. Which bit in that passage do you think is factually inaccurate?
So after about 6 months in my current job I've decided it's not for me. I'm going to take a year or so out to spend with the family while my wife goes back to work and keeps the mortgage paid and I'll decide what I'm going to do next. It will be the first time I'm actually unemployed for about 15 years and I'm really looking forwards to slowing down a bit and being a house husband.
If you don't mind me asking what were you doing? I know previously you were a Sony man.
VP of Data at a b2b fintech scale up. It is about the most dull thing I've ever done. I was trying to kid myself that I liked it but my daughter looked at me a few weeks ago and said "daddy why do you look so sad all the time" and I couldn't really deny it any longer. The job was getting me down, I didn't enjoy the work, I hated the people and I wanted out. I spoke to my wife last weekend and she fully supported me and since she's going back to work in January we figured it would be a good time for me to resign. We're going to spend the winter in Sicily and then when we come back I'll be a full time dad, though my daughter will be at nursery for 3 days a week, my son will be home with me though which is a bit scary!
Your story sounds similar to mine. They do say that the child is father (daughter) to the man.
My young son (four or five at the time) said to me: "Daddy why do you always forget the question I have just asked you?"
I was hopelessly distracted by a miserable job, and that was my trigger to find pastures new. Never looked back.
If polls are out to the same degree (and in the same direction) as 2020, then your State-wide predictions are likely to be pretty accurate. Indeed, you might want to add Virginia to the list.
On the other hand, if the polls are out like in the 2022 Senate races, when Dr Oz was ahead of Fetterman in the Pennsylvania polling... but lost by 5 percentage points, then it's going to be a Harris sweep.
FWIW, I think Harris has definitely surprised on the upside as a candidate. Prior to being the candidate she ran 20 point negatives on the favorables. Now, she's basically flat. (Morning Consult today had her as +6!) That puts her in a very different category to Hillary Clinton.
To me, three questions are key in deciding which way to bet:
(1) Have the pollsters - through the introduction of past vote weighting - removed the anti-Trump bias? If so, then the election is likely to be a knife edge. If people under-remember voting for Biden, because he's so unpopular, then it could mean that it is Trump who is overrated in the polls.
(2) Will the abortion referenda make any difference to turnout? Some people say "no", but the group that is keenest on legal abortion (young women) is the most likely Democrat, and the least likely (historically) to make the trek to the polls. This could be absolutely crucial in a State that Trump should have walked, Arizona.
(3) Which way will Haley Republicans vote? I suspect they'll (mostly) return to the fold on election day, but don't forget that - long after she was eliminated from the race - Nikki Haley was getting 20% of the vote in Republican Presidential Primaries. That's a lot of Republicans taking the time to express their dislike of Trump.
In the last few days, the polls have swung (slightly) back towards Harris. I'm going out on a limb here, and am going to make her the (very) narrow favourite.
Who if anybody do you think it helps if it's a very high turnout election?
Bit of a paradox this one. We know the mail in vote that's already in is broadly Democrat (Well maybe not Nevada but generally in the rust belt the mix is much more favourable to the Dems).
So if ABSOLUTELY noone voted on election day, Harris would win by an enormous margin.
But we know the election day mix is likely to be heavily R (Even in scenarios where Harris wins). So the republicans do need to get their election day vote out but in order to win Harris also needs to get lower propensity voters out on election day.
The gender divide could be even bigger than it was in 2016.
Usually the turnout is higher among women than men, which should give Harris an advantage, but perhaps subsections of the male demographic that would usually vote for the Democrats are less likely to turn out to vote for her.
The Trump campaign is trying to get people (esp young men) who don't usually vote to vote for him. It's more about expanding the electorate than changing anybody's mind from DEM to GOP.
Not sure there’s very many minds to be changed now. It’s all about getting out the vote.
Yep. But what is 'the' vote? That's the million $$$ question.
The turnout, which was actually pretty damn high last time out for the US, 2/3 of registered voters casting their ballots.
Comments
https://www.firstdirect.com/content/dam/wpb/fsdt/en/documents/pdf/mortgage_interest_rates.pdf
https://wessexarchaeologylibrary.org/?ct=t()&mc_cid=e69504787f&mc_eid=cda5c3c216
Shields buckling, captain
Worst thing about it was that there was, for a while, a touchscreen bug with ghost touches - where the screen would register that you'd touch it when you hadn't. Best thing about it was that they developed a patch fixing the bug. Previous phone had a bug with the camera - using the camera would sometimes cause the phone to reboot - a known software bug that was never fixed.
Popcorn weekend ahead
Heavy emission & larger ICE vehicles.
Lighter hits on smaller ICE vehicles.
And hybrids, especially hybrids bought to take advantage of business use tax regimens, which are then very little used on electric.
The nudge away from Tonkas is welcome. But it all seems to be year 1 tax only, rather than every year - which I would have preferred.
I don't get why billions of £££ of subsidies and tax breaks (I make it of the order of at least 5 to 7 billion or more) are being pushed at motor vehicles with no apparent consideration for the 25% of adults who do not have driving licenses, especially those who cannot get one.
The sweet spot will I think be grandfathered-in newish second hand vehicles.
If polls are out to the same degree (and in the same direction) as 2020, then your State-wide predictions are likely to be pretty accurate. Indeed, you might want to add Virginia to the list.
On the other hand, if the polls are out like in the 2022 Senate races, when Dr Oz was ahead of Fetterman in the Pennsylvania polling... but lost by 5 percentage points, then it's going to be a Harris sweep.
FWIW, I think Harris has definitely surprised on the upside as a candidate. Prior to being the candidate she ran 20 point negatives on the favorables. Now, she's basically flat. (Morning Consult today had her as +6!) That puts her in a very different category to Hillary Clinton.
To me, three questions are key in deciding which way to bet:
(1) Have the pollsters - through the introduction of past vote weighting - removed the anti-Trump bias? If so, then the election is likely to be a knife edge. If people under-remember voting for Biden, because he's so unpopular, then it could mean that it is Trump who is overrated in the polls.
(2) Will the abortion referenda make any difference to turnout? Some people say "no", but the group that is keenest on legal abortion (young women) is the most likely Democrat, and the least likely (historically) to make the trek to the polls. This could be absolutely crucial in a State that Trump should have walked, Arizona.
(3) Which way will Haley Republicans vote? I suspect they'll (mostly) return to the fold on election day, but don't forget that - long after she was eliminated from the race - Nikki Haley was getting 20% of the vote in Republican Presidential Primaries. That's a lot of Republicans taking the time to express their dislike of Trump.
In the last few days, the polls have swung (slightly) back towards Harris. I'm going out on a limb here, and am going to make her the (very) narrow favourite.
(Totally worth my picture allowance)
Otherwise, recipient fires up their banking app and reads out or messages the details across.
I also discovered recently that Herpes is for life and thought that would be a bit of an awks conversation in a new relationship “BTW, I’ve got herpes so you will likely get it too now”.
"This [NI] change also increases the tax advantages of self-employment status, since there is then no Employer rate: already by last financial year, the total National Insurance due on self- employment was £6 billion less than it would have been on equivalent earnings. This disparity – and perhaps the temptation for bogus and unprotected forms of freelancing - will only grow."
You presumably didn't pick up on the deliberate exaggeration. No, indeed, the US isn't the same as Iran. But. The direction of travel is certainly away from liberty (and willingly so), away from an impartial justice system, away from universal rights (and it's always the less powerful groups that lose their rights first), with political power structures boosted and fluffed by claims of celestial righteousness, with a politicisation of much which would normally be outside or beyond politics, and a whole lot of other parallels that should be uncomfortable viewing.
But what about dominatrix?
(Ask one and she'll tell you FIRMLY.)
So if ABSOLUTELY noone voted on election day, Harris would win by an enormous margin.
But we know the election day mix is likely to be heavily R (Even in scenarios where Harris wins). So the republicans do need to get their election day vote out but in order to win Harris also needs to get lower propensity voters out on election day.
So: if a white British person in a village decides to become a Muslim, and to adopt all the garb, etc., that is presumably OK? Or should the village be able to decide they can't do that, because that changes the culture of the village?
It is also worth remembering that there have been parts of the UK, particularly in East London, that have seen waves of immigration (from Eastern European and Russian Jews to Bangladeshis in the last 100 years). How do we deal with that? Or Pinner's extremely orthodox Jewish community? (Which, again, has been around for a long time.)
https://x.com/nicksortor/status/1851778017825079683
Hopefully we will see an uptick in saving rates down the line. I have a few pots maturing end of this year. Start of next year.
I'm glad you've come off it though. It wasn't good for me or my mental health at all.
I don't miss it.
Usually the turnout is higher among women than men, which should give Harris an advantage, but perhaps subsections of the male demographic that would usually vote for the Democrats are less likely to turn out to vote for her.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fa7nSzCiGXk
If it comes from young women, then Trump is in terrible trouble.
If it comes from poorer people in left behind communities who see Trump as the answer to a failed political system, then it is Harris who should be panicked.
For a couple of years now, we've had these little white robot delivery vehicles in our village. Anyway, someone has put halloween stickers/masks on some of them for Halloween.
A lovely little idea. Annoyingly I was driving so I couldn't take a piccie.
At exactly the same point in the timeline of Truss mini budget, the day after and the day after that too, Truss and Kwarteng were still being chaired around the room by Conservative media and great many PB posters. The market crash is happening much quicker after Reeves budget.
First budget of the new Labour government - the biggest tax and spend budget of all time - has properly Trussed the British economy.
The first 27 minutes was utter waffle and a complete waste of everyone's time.
Symbolic of how she will waste everyone's money.
https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-1960s-uk-carry-on-doctor-film-poster-85364632.html?imageid=8191E938-DEA0-4F3B-96C0-5AB700C0517D&p=1337086
"This was the worst Budget I have ever heard a British Chancellor deliver, by an enormous margin." - Allister Heath today.
"This was the best Budget I have ever heard a British Chancellor deliver, by a massive margin." Allister Heath on Kwarteng budget.
That’s not stopping the Republican women though, who are having fun with their get out the vote campaign.
https://x.com/stclairashley/status/1851711203820867655
https://x.com/arynnewexler/status/1851731423046344956
https://x.com/ada_lluch/status/1851713837411475503
Which is bigger; enormous or massive?
Or are both huge?
BRACE BRACE
He only got the rape conviction overturned on Appeal.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jul/23/judges-rule-lying-about-fertility-to-sexual-partner-is-not
Siri, how would an oil price shock sound to oor Rachel
They'll probably pay you back, but you don't want to be chasing them.
Just realised this wasn't really your question. Chinese payment systems Wepay and Alipay work off barcodes. Recipient phone shows barcode. Payment phone scans it. Both parties check their accounts that the transaction goes through. Not sure why Western payment systems don't do that.
Oh crap…
https://youtu.be/0yZditlCybA?t=10
The Harris campaign was obviously worried about black men, which could be a sign that part of her coalition may be AWOL when the votes are tallied.
Yet we are still waiting for this tsunami of unemployment.
Until about 6 months ago, it was beneficial for large employers to offer no more than 16 hours a week, so that pay was under the Secondary Threshold. This was compounded by the fact working tax credit kicks in at 16 hours.
Why design a system to get people to work 2 days a week to survive on additional benefits while at the same time large employers avoid NI contributions ?
In the vast majority of the country people can walk into low paid, part time work.
Thanks.
If the turnout all told is very high it could be a positive sign for Trump, is what I'm possibly thinking. Why? Because polling shows that Harris leads amongst people who always vote whereas Trump leads with people who don't.
If turnout is low this means a higher proportion of the voters are regulars - good for Harris. Conversely if it's high you've got relatively more of those less engaged citizens in there - good for him.
In my opinion, Hunt’s budgets are woven into the market reaction to today’s budget.
The markets main issue with Truss Mini Budget was cutting tax and government income, whilst promising spending, and not putting it through the OBR for clear analysis how the two balanced out.
IMF love Reeves budget, other think tanks more meh - but can’t find too much wrong on its sums not balancing up or tax take throttling growth to that great degree. And it went through the OBR.
The last Hunt/Sunak budgets were cutting tax and government income, but only funded with money based on taking cuts in future departmental budgets, those were surely riskier budgets, but without today’s market meltdown.
So I think what is happening today, the market reaction goes back to Hunts tax cutting budgets funded by tough cuts in departmental funding in future years, that is not being strongly addressed enough by Reeves this week - such as with less spending commitments from same tax take, is what the markets preferred.
Reeves is saying opposite to departmental cuts Hunt promised in order to make his tax cuts. But Reeves can’t simply say no to the future cuts, pain and austerity Hunt set up in order to tax cut, or else the money is not there to pay for it. This is the nub of the market reaction.
Have you been in a hospital recently. amiright in saying you work in one. Open your eyes and look around at the nurses' station, or the doctors, or the administrators, or people like you, for that matter if you do work there.
Good luck with whatever you go on to do.
Make the best of it, and create at least something that will last you a long time - whether a skill you would not otherwise get or whatever.
In ~2000 I took an entire year out to go training and have a break after several years of contracting, using one of those "Gold Cards" that places like IBM Training and Cap-Gemini used to have, where you paid £5k or so and could go on any of their courses for a year. I did just over 100 contact days - a lot of it at hotels in Poole and Boscombe. Great fun ,and met a lot of interesting people.
It's also worth noting that - if you look at Georgia - that while the gender split looks very positive for Harris, early voting is mostly driven by older women. And older women are not as Democrat as younger ones.
Is anybody doing a Ralston on the early data in other states, do we know? Or is that kind of deep grunt analysis only possible in NV because it's small?
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5yr7n5ly8ko
We aren't anywhere nearer addressing this problem....
Every given election deals with issues (duh), and it being the internet partisans produce polemics, articles,... and maps. Specifically choropleths, a type of map very useful for USA elections. We can take those and by comparing them to the results of the last election, we can see which states are flipping. Which is why I was so interested in New Hampshire...
The polls show very, very few undecided voters. And the undecided voters are probably least likely to turn up.
The question I have is: is Harris a good organizer?
In the past two competitive Democrat primary seasons, we saw the benefits of really strong on the ground organization, and also what happened if you failed to have it.
Obama had amazing organization, and it allowed him to beat Hillary. He was in every caucus with his people, and he got every last vote out. Hillary, by contrast, showed herself supremely disinterested in these nuts and bolts.
And in 2020, Buttigieg followed the Obama playbook, and had the Iowa Caucuses not been an organizational disaster for the Democrats, he might well have ended up the nominee.
We don't know if Harris is of the Obama/Buttigieg family, or the Hillary Clinton one.
More power to your elbow.
This 'hobby' can get very expensive, very, very quickly.
Kemi 1.14
Bob J 7.6
My young son (four or five at the time) said to me: "Daddy why do you always forget the question I have just asked you?"
I was hopelessly distracted by a miserable job, and that was my trigger to find pastures new.
Never looked back.