I see I was wrong - the UK government passed the act in 1981 to incorporate the European Directive (though it wasn't EU legislation back then, of course). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildlife_and_Countryside_Act_1981 And we had our own similar legislation predating that.
Retained EU legislation which the tories kept after Brexit.
Actually, it doesn't appear that it was. Also, note the contribution to delay as well as the cost.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/nov/07/cost-of-shed-to-protect-bat-colony-near-hs2-has-topped-100m-chair-says ...He said the “bat shed” was his favourite example of the problems caused. Thompson said the Bechstein’s bat was not protected elsewhere and “generally pretty available in most of northern Europe, western Europe. But nevertheless, under the Wildlife Act, 1981, it’s deemed to be a protected species in the UK, this bat, even though there’s lots of them.”
Thomson added: “No evidence, by the way, that high speed trains interfere with bats, but leave it on one side.”
HS2 had to obtain a licence from Natural England, which approved the bat mitigation structure, before asking planning permission from Buckinghamshire county council, he said.
“So when we go to [the] council and say: ‘Would you like to give us planning permission for this blot on the landscape that costs £100m’, of course, the answer to that is, you’ve got to be joking, right? Why would [they] like this eyesore?
“So now I’ve got two different bodies. One says I have to do it. The other one says: ‘No chance’. So what do you do? I reach for the lawyers and the environmental specialists and hydrologists and so on and so forth. It stretches out the time. I spend hundreds of thousands of pounds trying to do something, and then in the end, I win the planning commission by going over [the county council’s] head.”..
They are definitely a European protected species.
If you make a clearing in a woodland to put a railway through, they will almost certainly fly up and down it.
However - for £100m you could do some serious habitat restoration elsewhere. Would using even a 1/10th of that to plant or manage some woodland for bats elsewhere be better than some ridiculously expensive bodge that might save a few individuals?
I did hit a bat once, driving home late one evening from Sidmouth.
I think that, just as with the birds killed by wind turbines, these are deaths that I would categorise as inevitable but marginal. They're not likely to make the difference between the survival or otherwise of a species. Water or air pollution, which could affect an entire food chain in an area, is a much higher risk, for example.
Another thing that I know a lot of Americans are complaining about. Ticket prices for everything. With COVID shut downs, plus inflation, plus monopoly of LiveNation, ticket prices are insane in the US. And then the cost of everything at the venue, plus tip....
People were moaning about £300 for Oasis here, I think most Americans would be going, wow, that's cheap.
And cheap motels. Motel 6 etc. Which used to be $50 and are suddenly $250 (plus tips)
Turning the great American road trip - a wonderful demotic thing - into a luxury (which is tragic)
And don't get me started on AirBnB.....Nightly Rate $199, plus cleaning fee, plus the fee on the cleaning fee, plus transaction fee, plus credit card fee on the transaction fee, plus the tax, plus the tip, plus the fine for not putting the garbage the correct 27 different bins each night you stay....that will be $499.
Yes. Oh god yes. I’ve had the same experience. Hideous and blatant gouging. Fuck them
I seriously have no great desire to return to the USA unless it is some gilded press trip and I get a personal robot butler (who doesn’t require tips)
Mrs U and I over the years have needed to go to the US a lot for work and often for extended periods. 10 years ago we would always tack on a trip, to see friends, family or just hang out and do tourism. Whichever partner wasn't out there, often join them for this.
We haven't done that since COVID because of the cost of it, and we are fortunate to earn good money. I can't see how Joe Bloggs, who used to take the family to Florida to see Mickey Mouse, is affording that these days.
They seem to afford their football season tickets.
A family day out in Fascist Mouse Land is now more than a football season ticket (obviously unless you want Starmer level seats)....especially if you actually want to go on all the rides, because you have to buy the premium queue jumper premium.
Magic Kingdom with lightening lane pass is $450 per person in peak season...for a single day. Then obviously they want all the fizzy drinks, candy, a toy.
Alton Towers walk up including their top priced fast track (Platinum) is over £200 per person...for a single day.
Which is expensive, but half the price. And if you go to Florida on your holidays, you want to do all the parks, Disney, Universal, etc. And yes you can buy multi-day passes that are cheaper on a per day basis.
The point is loads of working class Brits used to go to Florida for what was really quite affordable holiday. It ain't cheap now.
I thoroughly recommend reading his book 'Goliath' (which is only published in the US sadly, but is probably available on Amazon in the UK). His thesis, which I find compelling, is that one of the actual threats to democracy isn't (surprisingly) 'trans people or illegals', but monopolistic businesses who put their own dictators into power to prevent anti-trust policies or regulation that promotes competition (and thus keeps costs down).
The problems in the US are largely the result of unfettered capitalism, but they've just voted for even less fettered capitalism.
Many people on the right seem to love the take that Trump's success is down to the impoverishment and disempowerment of the working class. But they only love it so long as it remains a take. If a politician was to come along with a policy platform to address it (proper universal state-funded healthcare, say, and economic measures that prioritised labour over capital) they'd run a million miles. It'd suddenly be a case "oh no no no, didn't mean that!"
Retained EU legislation which the tories kept after Brexit.
Actually, it doesn't appear that it was. Also, note the contribution to delay as well as the cost.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/nov/07/cost-of-shed-to-protect-bat-colony-near-hs2-has-topped-100m-chair-says ...He said the “bat shed” was his favourite example of the problems caused. Thompson said the Bechstein’s bat was not protected elsewhere and “generally pretty available in most of northern Europe, western Europe. But nevertheless, under the Wildlife Act, 1981, it’s deemed to be a protected species in the UK, this bat, even though there’s lots of them.”
Thomson added: “No evidence, by the way, that high speed trains interfere with bats, but leave it on one side.”
HS2 had to obtain a licence from Natural England, which approved the bat mitigation structure, before asking planning permission from Buckinghamshire county council, he said.
“So when we go to [the] council and say: ‘Would you like to give us planning permission for this blot on the landscape that costs £100m’, of course, the answer to that is, you’ve got to be joking, right? Why would [they] like this eyesore?
“So now I’ve got two different bodies. One says I have to do it. The other one says: ‘No chance’. So what do you do? I reach for the lawyers and the environmental specialists and hydrologists and so on and so forth. It stretches out the time. I spend hundreds of thousands of pounds trying to do something, and then in the end, I win the planning commission by going over [the county council’s] head.”..
Does any other nation on earth bother with this nonsense ? I mean it's a bat. HS2 doesn't pass through that often; the bats might fly into the tunnel and still get hit by the train.
Very probably not. As I said at the start, it's a choice - and not a good one.
Bret Stephens, a conservative who reluctantly supported Harris, gives his verdict on where Dems need to go:
"The Democratic Party at its best stands for fairness and freedom. But the politics of today’s left is heavy on social engineering according to group identity. It also, increasingly, stands for the forcible imposition of bizarre cultural norms on hundreds of millions of Americans who want to live and let live but don’t like being told how to speak or what to think. Too many liberals forgot this, which explains how a figure like Trump, with his boisterous and transgressive disdain for liberal pieties, could be re-elected to the presidency."
"Right now, my larger fear is that liberals lack the introspection to see where they went wrong, the discipline to do better next time and the humility to change."
Retained EU legislation which the tories kept after Brexit.
Actually, it doesn't appear that it was. Also, note the contribution to delay as well as the cost.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/nov/07/cost-of-shed-to-protect-bat-colony-near-hs2-has-topped-100m-chair-says ...He said the “bat shed” was his favourite example of the problems caused. Thompson said the Bechstein’s bat was not protected elsewhere and “generally pretty available in most of northern Europe, western Europe. But nevertheless, under the Wildlife Act, 1981, it’s deemed to be a protected species in the UK, this bat, even though there’s lots of them.”
Thomson added: “No evidence, by the way, that high speed trains interfere with bats, but leave it on one side.”
HS2 had to obtain a licence from Natural England, which approved the bat mitigation structure, before asking planning permission from Buckinghamshire county council, he said.
“So when we go to [the] council and say: ‘Would you like to give us planning permission for this blot on the landscape that costs £100m’, of course, the answer to that is, you’ve got to be joking, right? Why would [they] like this eyesore?
“So now I’ve got two different bodies. One says I have to do it. The other one says: ‘No chance’. So what do you do? I reach for the lawyers and the environmental specialists and hydrologists and so on and so forth. It stretches out the time. I spend hundreds of thousands of pounds trying to do something, and then in the end, I win the planning commission by going over [the county council’s] head.”..
They are definitely a European protected species.
If you make a clearing in a woodland to put a railway through, they will almost certainly fly up and down it.
However - for £100m you could do some serious habitat restoration elsewhere. Would using even a 1/10th of that to plant or manage some woodland for bats elsewhere be better than some ridiculously expensive bodge that might save a few individuals?
In our French house this summer we woke up hearing flapping noises, which initially we thought were outside as the window was open. Not so: there was a bat flying around our bedroom.
Then we noticed there were two. Then a third, flapping around the staircase.
The process of removing flying bats from a bedroom with 2 small windows and a staircase with none is, believe me, lengthy, arduous, and rather comical.
Sunil asked about the red/blue confusion. It is fairly recent, dating, I think, from 2000, when the networks started using it.
(I have long suspected that they chose to do so, because "red" has negative connotations for most Americans. And most journalists really don't like Republicans.)
For the record: Some Democrats would better be described as greens.
Another thing that I know a lot of Americans are complaining about. Ticket prices for everything. With COVID shut downs, plus inflation, plus monopoly of LiveNation, ticket prices are insane in the US. And then the cost of everything at the venue, plus tip....
People were moaning about £300 for Oasis here, I think most Americans would be going, wow, that's cheap.
And cheap motels. Motel 6 etc. Which used to be $50 and are suddenly $250 (plus tips)
Turning the great American road trip - a wonderful demotic thing - into a luxury (which is tragic)
And don't get me started on AirBnB.....Nightly Rate $199, plus cleaning fee, plus the fee on the cleaning fee, plus transaction fee, plus credit card fee on the transaction fee, plus the tax, plus the tip, plus the fine for not putting the garbage the correct 27 different bins each night you stay....that will be $499.
Yes. Oh god yes. I’ve had the same experience. Hideous and blatant gouging. Fuck them
I seriously have no great desire to return to the USA unless it is some gilded press trip and I get a personal robot butler (who doesn’t require tips)
Mrs U and I over the years have needed to go to the US a lot for work and often for extended periods. 10 years ago we would always tack on a trip, to see friends, family or just hang out and do tourism. Whichever partner wasn't out there, often join them for this.
We haven't done that since COVID because of the cost of it, and we are fortunate to earn good money. I can't see how Joe Bloggs, who used to take the family to Florida to see Mickey Mouse, is affording that these days.
They seem to afford their football season tickets.
A family day out in Fascist Mouse Land is now more than a football season ticket (obviously unless you want Starmer level seats)....especially if you actually want to go on all the rides, because you have to buy the premium queue jumper premium.
Magic Kingdom with lightening lane pass is $450 per person in peak season...for a single day. Then obviously they want all the fizzy drinks, candy, a toy.
Alton Towers walk up including their top priced fast track (Platinum) is over £200 per person...for a single day.
Which is expensive, but half the price. And if you go to Florida on your holidays, you want to do all the parks, Disney, Universal, etc. And yes you can buy multi-day passes that are cheaper on a per day basis.
The point is loads of working class Brits used to go to Florida for what was really quite affordable holiday. It ain't cheap now.
I thoroughly recommend reading his book 'Goliath' (which is only published in the US sadly, but is probably available on Amazon in the UK). His thesis, which I find compelling, is that one of the actual threats to democracy isn't (surprisingly) 'trans people or illegals', but monopolistic businesses who put their own dictators into power to prevent anti-trust policies or regulation that promotes competition (and thus keeps costs down).
The problems in the US are largely the result of unfettered capitalism, but they've just voted for even less fettered capitalism.
Many people on the right seem to love the take that Trump's success is down to the impoverishment and disempowerment of the working class. But they only love it so long as it remains a take. If a politician was to come along with a policy platform to address it (proper universal state-funded healthcare, say, and economic measures that prioritised labour over capital) they'd run a million miles. It'd suddenly be a case "oh no no no, didn't mean that!"
Culture war costs them nothing though (in dollar terms, at least).
Taking the piss out of the Harris campaign isn't going to sustain them through four years of government, though. The terms of the argument change, the moment Trump takes office.
Retained EU legislation which the tories kept after Brexit.
Actually, it doesn't appear that it was. Also, note the contribution to delay as well as the cost.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/nov/07/cost-of-shed-to-protect-bat-colony-near-hs2-has-topped-100m-chair-says ...He said the “bat shed” was his favourite example of the problems caused. Thompson said the Bechstein’s bat was not protected elsewhere and “generally pretty available in most of northern Europe, western Europe. But nevertheless, under the Wildlife Act, 1981, it’s deemed to be a protected species in the UK, this bat, even though there’s lots of them.”
Thomson added: “No evidence, by the way, that high speed trains interfere with bats, but leave it on one side.”
HS2 had to obtain a licence from Natural England, which approved the bat mitigation structure, before asking planning permission from Buckinghamshire county council, he said.
“So when we go to [the] council and say: ‘Would you like to give us planning permission for this blot on the landscape that costs £100m’, of course, the answer to that is, you’ve got to be joking, right? Why would [they] like this eyesore?
“So now I’ve got two different bodies. One says I have to do it. The other one says: ‘No chance’. So what do you do? I reach for the lawyers and the environmental specialists and hydrologists and so on and so forth. It stretches out the time. I spend hundreds of thousands of pounds trying to do something, and then in the end, I win the planning commission by going over [the county council’s] head.”..
They are definitely a European protected species.
If you make a clearing in a woodland to put a railway through, they will almost certainly fly up and down it.
However - for £100m you could do some serious habitat restoration elsewhere. Would using even a 1/10th of that to plant or manage some woodland for bats elsewhere be better than some ridiculously expensive bodge that might save a few individuals?
I did hit a bat once, driving home late one evening from Sidmouth.
I think that, just as with the birds killed by wind turbines, these are deaths that I would categorise as inevitable but marginal. They're not likely to make the difference between the survival or otherwise of a species. Water or air pollution, which could affect an entire food chain in an area, is a much higher risk, for example.
We need to keep things in proportion.
Its the same with (Great crested) newts.
There is a lot of legislation to do with saving individuals on a development site rather than looking more generally at habitat management.
Biodiversity Net Gain was supposed to be a partial solution for this, but DEFRA have made it a nightmare.
Bryson Dechambeau, the well-known golf player, was part of Trump's victory do.
May he get the yips and never win another tournament.
Nice to see you've changed that avatar.
Where are the beans ??!!
They'll be back but I'm not exactly full of them atm.
Well done you for showing up after the election result. Not everyone, after making such a monumental tool of themselves, would have returned so soon after the event.
A few hours kip works wonders.
To be fair it's 72,701,692 (and counting) people over the pond who've made tools of themselves. Except, no, that is not fair. It's victim blaming. Donald Trump is a conman extraordinaire.
In any case it's their prerogative, isn't it. It was a free and fair election and this is who they want as their president. Just as individuals have the right to make bad choices so do countries.
Well that's as maybe but on this site we are supposed to bring dispassionate and incisive analysis to these kind of situations so I'm ever so slightly disappointed to see that you are trying to blame others for your failure in this regard.
I'm not sure that @kinabalu did make a "monumental tool" of himself. He thought Kamala would win. She did not. It's an error but it reaches the threshold for "well that was a bit dumb", not "you're a monumental tool".
Kinabalu had been very vocal, for a very long time, about his confidence that Trump wouldn't be a candidate in the election that he's now won.
I think he knows that it's fair he receives a bit of ribbing for that now.
As recently as polling day:
The polls are tied having moved towards Trump in the last few weeks. Trump probably has a PV to EC advantage. Therefore the betting is rational in making him the fav. Nevertheless I think the betting has it wrong. I’ve long thought America would never reelect Donald Trump because he’s palpably unfit to be president. I still think that. You can talk all you like about the economy and the border, Biden’s approval rating, about demographics, men v women, young v old, college degree or not, black, white, hispanic, sunbelt rustbelt, yada yada, it’s great, it’s what makes US elections such a blast, but at the end of the day the fundamental question is, knowing what they know, having seen what they’ve seen, will the American people put this guy back in the WH? It’s a no. I’m not as confident as the likes of MarqueMark but I am confident. Kamala Harris will win and it won’t be that close.
Retained EU legislation which the tories kept after Brexit.
Actually, it doesn't appear that it was. Also, note the contribution to delay as well as the cost.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/nov/07/cost-of-shed-to-protect-bat-colony-near-hs2-has-topped-100m-chair-says ...He said the “bat shed” was his favourite example of the problems caused. Thompson said the Bechstein’s bat was not protected elsewhere and “generally pretty available in most of northern Europe, western Europe. But nevertheless, under the Wildlife Act, 1981, it’s deemed to be a protected species in the UK, this bat, even though there’s lots of them.”
Thomson added: “No evidence, by the way, that high speed trains interfere with bats, but leave it on one side.”
HS2 had to obtain a licence from Natural England, which approved the bat mitigation structure, before asking planning permission from Buckinghamshire county council, he said.
“So when we go to [the] council and say: ‘Would you like to give us planning permission for this blot on the landscape that costs £100m’, of course, the answer to that is, you’ve got to be joking, right? Why would [they] like this eyesore?
“So now I’ve got two different bodies. One says I have to do it. The other one says: ‘No chance’. So what do you do? I reach for the lawyers and the environmental specialists and hydrologists and so on and so forth. It stretches out the time. I spend hundreds of thousands of pounds trying to do something, and then in the end, I win the planning commission by going over [the county council’s] head.”..
They are definitely a European protected species.
If you make a clearing in a woodland to put a railway through, they will almost certainly fly up and down it.
However - for £100m you could do some serious habitat restoration elsewhere. Would using even a 1/10th of that to plant or manage some woodland for bats elsewhere be better than some ridiculously expensive bodge that might save a few individuals?
I did hit a bat once, driving home late one evening from Sidmouth.
I think that, just as with the birds killed by wind turbines, these are deaths that I would categorise as inevitable but marginal. They're not likely to make the difference between the survival or otherwise of a species. Water or air pollution, which could affect an entire food chain in an area, is a much higher risk, for example.
We need to keep things in proportion.
Its the same with (Great crested) newts.
There is a lot of legislation to do with saving individuals on a development site rather than looking more generally at habitat management.
Biodiversity Net Gain was supposed to be a partial solution for this, but DEFRA have made it a nightmare.
Defra making things a nightmare - that's been the case since at least 1945...
Bryson Dechambeau, the well-known golf player, was part of Trump's victory do.
May he get the yips and never win another tournament.
Nice to see you've changed that avatar.
Where are the beans ??!!
They'll be back but I'm not exactly full of them atm.
Well done you for showing up after the election result. Not everyone, after making such a monumental tool of themselves, would have returned so soon after the event.
A few hours kip works wonders.
To be fair it's 72,701,692 (and counting) people over the pond who've made tools of themselves. Except, no, that is not fair. It's victim blaming. Donald Trump is a conman extraordinaire.
In any case it's their prerogative, isn't it. It was a free and fair election and this is who they want as their president. Just as individuals have the right to make bad choices so do countries.
Well that's as maybe but on this site we are supposed to bring dispassionate and incisive analysis to these kind of situations so I'm ever so slightly disappointed to see that you are trying to blame others for your failure in this regard.
I'm not sure that @kinabalu did make a "monumental tool" of himself. He thought Kamala would win. She did not. It's an error but it reaches the threshold for "well that was a bit dumb", not "you're a monumental tool".
Kinabalu had been very vocal, for a very long time, about his confidence that Trump wouldn't be a candidate in the election that he's now won.
I think he knows that it's fair he receives a bit of ribbing for that now.
As recently as polling day:
The polls are tied having moved towards Trump in the last few weeks. Trump probably has a PV to EC advantage. Therefore the betting is rational in making him the fav. Nevertheless I think the betting has it wrong. I’ve long thought America would never reelect Donald Trump because he’s palpably unfit to be president. I still think that. You can talk all you like about the economy and the border, Biden’s approval rating, about demographics, men v women, young v old, college degree or not, black, white, hispanic, sunbelt rustbelt, yada yada, it’s great, it’s what makes US elections such a blast, but at the end of the day the fundamental question is, knowing what they know, having seen what they’ve seen, will the American people put this guy back in the WH? It’s a no. I’m not as confident as the likes of MarqueMark but I am confident. Kamala Harris will win and it won’t be that close.
LOL
At least they had the courage to make a call on PB.
We're told that there were many posters who were wholly confident that Trump would win but were "too scared" to say so. PB is a nest of lefty vipers, apparently.
Bryson Dechambeau, the well-known golf player, was part of Trump's victory do.
May he get the yips and never win another tournament.
Nice to see you've changed that avatar.
Where are the beans ??!!
They'll be back but I'm not exactly full of them atm.
Well done you for showing up after the election result. Not everyone, after making such a monumental tool of themselves, would have returned so soon after the event.
A few hours kip works wonders.
To be fair it's 72,701,692 (and counting) people over the pond who've made tools of themselves. Except, no, that is not fair. It's victim blaming. Donald Trump is a conman extraordinaire.
In any case it's their prerogative, isn't it. It was a free and fair election and this is who they want as their president. Just as individuals have the right to make bad choices so do countries.
Well that's as maybe but on this site we are supposed to bring dispassionate and incisive analysis to these kind of situations so I'm ever so slightly disappointed to see that you are trying to blame others for your failure in this regard.
I'm not sure that @kinabalu did make a "monumental tool" of himself. He thought Kamala would win. She did not. It's an error but it reaches the threshold for "well that was a bit dumb", not "you're a monumental tool".
Kinabalu had been very vocal, for a very long time, about his confidence that Trump wouldn't be a candidate in the election that he's now won.
I think he knows that it's fair he receives a bit of ribbing for that now.
Rib away. But only if we mix in some fulsome praise for my predicting (and betting) that there'd be no Biden/Trump rematch when it was trading as a virtual cert at 1.1.
Bret Stephens, a conservative who reluctantly supported Harris, gives his verdict on where Dems need to go:
"The Democratic Party at its best stands for fairness and freedom. But the politics of today’s left is heavy on social engineering according to group identity. It also, increasingly, stands for the forcible imposition of bizarre cultural norms on hundreds of millions of Americans who want to live and let live but don’t like being told how to speak or what to think. Too many liberals forgot this, which explains how a figure like Trump, with his boisterous and transgressive disdain for liberal pieties, could be re-elected to the presidency."
"Right now, my larger fear is that liberals lack the introspection to see where they went wrong, the discipline to do better next time and the humility to change."
In part true yes but if the Democrats win in 2028 in my view it will have more to do with the impact of Trump's tariffs on inflation and maybe a split on the right between loyal Trumpites and mainstream Republicans (especially if Vance replaces Trump as POTUS before then) than who the Democrat candidate is.
Just as here Starmer put on a mere 1.5% from Labour's 2019 voteshare in July but won a landslide with FPTP due to the economic impact of inflation and rising interest rates after the Truss budget and the division on the right between Sunak Tories and Boris loyalists joining Farage in Reform
Trump talks to Macron before Starmer. Cold revenge
This Labour government is so utterly useless
Economically Macron is right of Starmer and less woke albeit neither are keen on Trump's tariffs and both wary of Trump's less hostile approach to Putin
Under Trump’s first presidency his first state visit was to France (two years before the UK one - if I can correctly recall - sure Trump loved the parade put on for him). So obviously the Tories “were so utterly useless” then? Or maybe the order of calls or indeed visits is not massively important. It’s the deeds that matter.
Also I seem to recall last time Trump took a call from Taiwan - somewhat annoying China / and presumably against the advice of the US diplomatic apparatus who still cling to the “One China” Nixonian approach.
Trump does what Trump does
France is the US's oldest ally, united by a common enemy.
Wow, I suppose some urban myths really are indestructible.
France isn't America's oldest ally.
The alliance treaty between France and the US (imaginatively named the Treaty of Alliance) was annulled by the Adams administration in 1798. The French and Americans then engaged in a quasi-war from 1798-1800, hardly the behaviour of allies, and didn't resume an alliance until after the Second World War (during WWI, the US was an associated power, not an ally).
France may have been the US's first ally, but that's not the same thing and not at all relevant now. However this hoary old chestnut might be the oldest urban myth about the United States.
"On 6 November, Olaf Scholz fired Christian Lindner as finance minister. The decision marks the formal end of the three-party coalition – between the Social Democrats (SDP), Greens and Free Democratic Party (FDP), the latter of which Lindner leads. Hr was fired after refusing to accept Scholz’s order to declare a state of fiscal emergency that would allow the government to bypass the rules of the debt brake, which limits the government’s ability to borrow money. Scholz went on national TV to declare that he wants to set aside money to support Ukraine, and for an increase in defence spending that has now become necessary after the victory of Trump. He also said he would not accept a trade-off of taking funds earmarked for social policies. This will be the theme of the election campaign – and the new dividing line in German politics."
Looks like Germany is returning to traditional dividing lines with the FDP joining the CDU in opposition and the SDP staying in power for now with the Greens.
At the moment the AfD share though means neither block likely gets a majority at the next Federal election, so the likeliest outcome is another CDU and SPD grand coalition again as was the case from 2005-2009 and 2009-2021
The SPD would surely be extremely reluctant to join another grand coalition as the junior partner. It could be the death of them. Is a CDU/CSU coalition with the AfD still out of the question?
Zero chance of the CDU/CSU having anything at all to do with the AfD in this or the next parliament. If the SPD don't want (or maybe even if they do), CDU/CSU + Greens would be an alternative coalition - if they had the numbers. If Union + Greens isn't enough for a majority the SPD would (I'd assume) go into another grand coalition whether they want to or not.
I would imagine the Greens would be even less willing to go into a grand coalition with the CDU/CSU ideologically than the SPD are
CSU leader Söder is against it, but both CDU and Greens don't have a problem with it. The 2 parties govern 3 of the German states in coalition together, along with 2 more where they are in a 3-way coalition with the SPD. In both NRW and Schleswig-Holstein the CDU have gone into coalition with the Greens rather than the SPD
The Greens are (were) in a coalition with the FDP at the national level, and the FDP and Greens are further apart than Greens and CDU in most ways.
If Söder can be persuaded to drop his objections, it would in many ways be easier for the CDU to go into coalition with the Greens than the SPD. But sure the Greens might be unwilling - depends on what they were offered.
Interesting how he doesn't seem to have mentioned that in the interview he did *before* the election.
Like I said before, prediction market behaviour is hard to read because to an external observer a rich moron looks the same as someone with inside information, and if you've got inside information it's in your interests to try to look like a rich moron.
Bret Stephens, a conservative who reluctantly supported Harris, gives his verdict on where Dems need to go:
"The Democratic Party at its best stands for fairness and freedom. But the politics of today’s left is heavy on social engineering according to group identity. It also, increasingly, stands for the forcible imposition of bizarre cultural norms on hundreds of millions of Americans who want to live and let live but don’t like being told how to speak or what to think. Too many liberals forgot this, which explains how a figure like Trump, with his boisterous and transgressive disdain for liberal pieties, could be re-elected to the presidency."
"Right now, my larger fear is that liberals lack the introspection to see where they went wrong, the discipline to do better next time and the humility to change."
Bret Stephens, a conservative who reluctantly supported Harris, gives his verdict on where Dems need to go:
"The Democratic Party at its best stands for fairness and freedom. But the politics of today’s left is heavy on social engineering according to group identity. It also, increasingly, stands for the forcible imposition of bizarre cultural norms on hundreds of millions of Americans who want to live and let live but don’t like being told how to speak or what to think. Too many liberals forgot this, which explains how a figure like Trump, with his boisterous and transgressive disdain for liberal pieties, could be re-elected to the presidency."
"Right now, my larger fear is that liberals lack the introspection to see where they went wrong, the discipline to do better next time and the humility to change."
But began earlier - pretty wild the parties just went, "fine, we'll go with that": ..According to another source, in 1976, John Chancellor, the anchorman for NBC Nightly News, asked his network's engineers to construct a large illuminated map of the United States. The map was placed in the network's election-night news studio. If Jimmy Carter, the Democratic candidate that year, won a state, it was lit in red whereas if Gerald Ford, the incumbent Republican president, won a state, it was lit in blue. It was said that Roy Wetzel, then the newly minted general manager of NBC’s election unit, justified the color scheme of blue for Republicans and red for Democrats for a simple reason: "Great Britain. Without giving it a second thought, we said blue for conservatives, because that’s what the parliamentary system in London is, red for the more liberal party. And that settled it. We just did it. Forget all that communist red stuff. It didn’t occur to us. When I first heard it, I thought, ‘Oh, that’s really silly.’” The feature proved to be so popular that, four years later, all three major television networks used colors to designate the states won by the presidential candidates, though not all using the same color scheme. NBC continued its color scheme (blue for Republicans) until 1996. NBC newsman David Brinkley referred to the 1980 election map outcome showing Republican Ronald Reagan's 44-state landslide in blue as resembling a "suburban swimming pool".
Since the 1984 election, CBS has used the opposite scheme: blue for Democrats, red for Republicans. ABC used yellow for Republicans and blue for Democrats in 1976, then red for Republicans and blue for Democrats in 1980, 1984, and 1988. In 1980, when John Anderson had a relatively well publicized campaign as an independent candidate, at least one network indicated provisionally that they would use yellow if he were to win a state. Similarly, at least one network would have used yellow to indicate a state won by Ross Perot in 1992 and 1996, though neither of them did claim any states in any of these years...
Bryson Dechambeau, the well-known golf player, was part of Trump's victory do.
May he get the yips and never win another tournament.
Nice to see you've changed that avatar.
Where are the beans ??!!
They'll be back but I'm not exactly full of them atm.
Well done you for showing up after the election result. Not everyone, after making such a monumental tool of themselves, would have returned so soon after the event.
A few hours kip works wonders.
To be fair it's 72,701,692 (and counting) people over the pond who've made tools of themselves. Except, no, that is not fair. It's victim blaming. Donald Trump is a conman extraordinaire.
In any case it's their prerogative, isn't it. It was a free and fair election and this is who they want as their president. Just as individuals have the right to make bad choices so do countries.
Well that's as maybe but on this site we are supposed to bring dispassionate and incisive analysis to these kind of situations so I'm ever so slightly disappointed to see that you are trying to blame others for your failure in this regard.
I'm not sure that @kinabalu did make a "monumental tool" of himself. He thought Kamala would win. She did not. It's an error but it reaches the threshold for "well that was a bit dumb", not "you're a monumental tool".
Kinabalu had been very vocal, for a very long time, about his confidence that Trump wouldn't be a candidate in the election that he's now won.
I think he knows that it's fair he receives a bit of ribbing for that now.
As recently as polling day:
The polls are tied having moved towards Trump in the last few weeks. Trump probably has a PV to EC advantage. Therefore the betting is rational in making him the fav. Nevertheless I think the betting has it wrong. I’ve long thought America would never reelect Donald Trump because he’s palpably unfit to be president. I still think that. You can talk all you like about the economy and the border, Biden’s approval rating, about demographics, men v women, young v old, college degree or not, black, white, hispanic, sunbelt rustbelt, yada yada, it’s great, it’s what makes US elections such a blast, but at the end of the day the fundamental question is, knowing what they know, having seen what they’ve seen, will the American people put this guy back in the WH? It’s a no. I’m not as confident as the likes of MarqueMark but I am confident. Kamala Harris will win and it won’t be that close.
LOL
To be fair he was spot on with his last five words. Shame about the rest.
Bryson Dechambeau, the well-known golf player, was part of Trump's victory do.
May he get the yips and never win another tournament.
Nice to see you've changed that avatar.
Where are the beans ??!!
They'll be back but I'm not exactly full of them atm.
Well done you for showing up after the election result. Not everyone, after making such a monumental tool of themselves, would have returned so soon after the event.
A few hours kip works wonders.
To be fair it's 72,701,692 (and counting) people over the pond who've made tools of themselves. Except, no, that is not fair. It's victim blaming. Donald Trump is a conman extraordinaire.
In any case it's their prerogative, isn't it. It was a free and fair election and this is who they want as their president. Just as individuals have the right to make bad choices so do countries.
Well that's as maybe but on this site we are supposed to bring dispassionate and incisive analysis to these kind of situations so I'm ever so slightly disappointed to see that you are trying to blame others for your failure in this regard.
I'm not sure that @kinabalu did make a "monumental tool" of himself. He thought Kamala would win. She did not. It's an error but it reaches the threshold for "well that was a bit dumb", not "you're a monumental tool".
Kinabalu had been very vocal, for a very long time, about his confidence that Trump wouldn't be a candidate in the election that he's now won.
I think he knows that it's fair he receives a bit of ribbing for that now.
As recently as polling day:
The polls are tied having moved towards Trump in the last few weeks. Trump probably has a PV to EC advantage. Therefore the betting is rational in making him the fav. Nevertheless I think the betting has it wrong. I’ve long thought America would never reelect Donald Trump because he’s palpably unfit to be president. I still think that. You can talk all you like about the economy and the border, Biden’s approval rating, about demographics, men v women, young v old, college degree or not, black, white, hispanic, sunbelt rustbelt, yada yada, it’s great, it’s what makes US elections such a blast, but at the end of the day the fundamental question is, knowing what they know, having seen what they’ve seen, will the American people put this guy back in the WH? It’s a no. I’m not as confident as the likes of MarqueMark but I am confident. Kamala Harris will win and it won’t be that close.
LOL
At least they had the courage to make a call on PB.
We're told that there were many posters who were wholly confident that Trump would win but were "too scared" to say so. PB is a nest of lefty vipers, apparently.
Ha ha yes. I didn't make a call because I thought it was a toss-up the whole time, even when Biden was candidate (until the debate at least). Respect to the people who did make a call, even if they got it wrong. But it's always interesting to read people who are willing to make a call (though Kinabalu's reasoning quoted above isn't very persuasive - others made better cases for Harris winning I think).
Bryson Dechambeau, the well-known golf player, was part of Trump's victory do.
May he get the yips and never win another tournament.
Nice to see you've changed that avatar.
Where are the beans ??!!
They'll be back but I'm not exactly full of them atm.
Well done you for showing up after the election result. Not everyone, after making such a monumental tool of themselves, would have returned so soon after the event.
A few hours kip works wonders.
To be fair it's 72,701,692 (and counting) people over the pond who've made tools of themselves. Except, no, that is not fair. It's victim blaming. Donald Trump is a conman extraordinaire.
In any case it's their prerogative, isn't it. It was a free and fair election and this is who they want as their president. Just as individuals have the right to make bad choices so do countries.
Well that's as maybe but on this site we are supposed to bring dispassionate and incisive analysis to these kind of situations so I'm ever so slightly disappointed to see that you are trying to blame others for your failure in this regard.
I'm not sure that @kinabalu did make a "monumental tool" of himself. He thought Kamala would win. She did not. It's an error but it reaches the threshold for "well that was a bit dumb", not "you're a monumental tool".
Kinabalu had been very vocal, for a very long time, about his confidence that Trump wouldn't be a candidate in the election that he's now won.
I think he knows that it's fair he receives a bit of ribbing for that now.
As recently as polling day:
The polls are tied having moved towards Trump in the last few weeks. Trump probably has a PV to EC advantage. Therefore the betting is rational in making him the fav. Nevertheless I think the betting has it wrong. I’ve long thought America would never reelect Donald Trump because he’s palpably unfit to be president. I still think that. You can talk all you like about the economy and the border, Biden’s approval rating, about demographics, men v women, young v old, college degree or not, black, white, hispanic, sunbelt rustbelt, yada yada, it’s great, it’s what makes US elections such a blast, but at the end of the day the fundamental question is, knowing what they know, having seen what they’ve seen, will the American people put this guy back in the WH? It’s a no. I’m not as confident as the likes of MarqueMark but I am confident. Kamala Harris will win and it won’t be that close.
LOL
You do seem bouncy today. And thanks, I'm always happy to see my stuff in print. It's quite readable, isn't it.
Trump talks to Macron before Starmer. Cold revenge
This Labour government is so utterly useless
Economically Macron is right of Starmer and less woke albeit neither are keen on Trump's tariffs and both wary of Trump's less hostile approach to Putin
Under Trump’s first presidency his first state visit was to France (two years before the UK one - if I can correctly recall - sure Trump loved the parade put on for him). So obviously the Tories “were so utterly useless” then? Or maybe the order of calls or indeed visits is not massively important. It’s the deeds that matter.
Also I seem to recall last time Trump took a call from Taiwan - somewhat annoying China / and presumably against the advice of the US diplomatic apparatus who still cling to the “One China” Nixonian approach.
Trump does what Trump does
France is the US's oldest ally, united by a common enemy.
Wow, I suppose some urban myths really are indestructible.
France isn't America's oldest ally.
The alliance treaty between France and the US (imaginatively named the Treaty of Alliance) was annulled by the Adams administration in 1798. The French and Americans then engaged in a quasi-war from 1798-1800, hardly the behaviour of allies, and didn't resume an alliance until after the Second World War (during WWI, the US was an associated power, not an ally).
France may have been the US's first ally, but that's not the same thing and not at all relevant now. However this hoary old chestnut might be the oldest urban myth about the United States.
John Kerry certainly called France the oldest ally of the US
Retained EU legislation which the tories kept after Brexit.
Actually, it doesn't appear that it was. Also, note the contribution to delay as well as the cost.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/nov/07/cost-of-shed-to-protect-bat-colony-near-hs2-has-topped-100m-chair-says ...He said the “bat shed” was his favourite example of the problems caused. Thompson said the Bechstein’s bat was not protected elsewhere and “generally pretty available in most of northern Europe, western Europe. But nevertheless, under the Wildlife Act, 1981, it’s deemed to be a protected species in the UK, this bat, even though there’s lots of them.”
Thomson added: “No evidence, by the way, that high speed trains interfere with bats, but leave it on one side.”
HS2 had to obtain a licence from Natural England, which approved the bat mitigation structure, before asking planning permission from Buckinghamshire county council, he said.
“So when we go to [the] council and say: ‘Would you like to give us planning permission for this blot on the landscape that costs £100m’, of course, the answer to that is, you’ve got to be joking, right? Why would [they] like this eyesore?
“So now I’ve got two different bodies. One says I have to do it. The other one says: ‘No chance’. So what do you do? I reach for the lawyers and the environmental specialists and hydrologists and so on and so forth. It stretches out the time. I spend hundreds of thousands of pounds trying to do something, and then in the end, I win the planning commission by going over [the county council’s] head.”..
They are definitely a European protected species.
If you make a clearing in a woodland to put a railway through, they will almost certainly fly up and down it.
However - for £100m you could do some serious habitat restoration elsewhere. Would using even a 1/10th of that to plant or manage some woodland for bats elsewhere be better than some ridiculously expensive bodge that might save a few individuals?
I did hit a bat once, driving home late one evening from Sidmouth.
I think that, just as with the birds killed by wind turbines, these are deaths that I would categorise as inevitable but marginal. They're not likely to make the difference between the survival or otherwise of a species. Water or air pollution, which could affect an entire food chain in an area, is a much higher risk, for example.
We need to keep things in proportion.
Its the same with (Great crested) newts.
There is a lot of legislation to do with saving individuals on a development site rather than looking more generally at habitat management.
Biodiversity Net Gain was supposed to be a partial solution for this, but DEFRA have made it a nightmare.
Using bats to prevent a railway being built, or newts to prevent a housing development, is the equivalent of a defence lawyer defending a murderer using something irrelevant but emotional to obtain sympathy for their client, in the hope that they aren’t found guilty.
Retained EU legislation which the tories kept after Brexit.
Actually, it doesn't appear that it was. Also, note the contribution to delay as well as the cost.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/nov/07/cost-of-shed-to-protect-bat-colony-near-hs2-has-topped-100m-chair-says ...He said the “bat shed” was his favourite example of the problems caused. Thompson said the Bechstein’s bat was not protected elsewhere and “generally pretty available in most of northern Europe, western Europe. But nevertheless, under the Wildlife Act, 1981, it’s deemed to be a protected species in the UK, this bat, even though there’s lots of them.”
Thomson added: “No evidence, by the way, that high speed trains interfere with bats, but leave it on one side.”
HS2 had to obtain a licence from Natural England, which approved the bat mitigation structure, before asking planning permission from Buckinghamshire county council, he said.
“So when we go to [the] council and say: ‘Would you like to give us planning permission for this blot on the landscape that costs £100m’, of course, the answer to that is, you’ve got to be joking, right? Why would [they] like this eyesore?
“So now I’ve got two different bodies. One says I have to do it. The other one says: ‘No chance’. So what do you do? I reach for the lawyers and the environmental specialists and hydrologists and so on and so forth. It stretches out the time. I spend hundreds of thousands of pounds trying to do something, and then in the end, I win the planning commission by going over [the county council’s] head.”..
But apparently there's no fat to cut in the public sector.
The reality is that we are making ourselves poor by regulations, and the associated armies of the clipboard wielding who spend our money on fighting each other over their mutually incompatible aims.
Retained EU legislation which the tories kept after Brexit.
Actually, it doesn't appear that it was. Also, note the contribution to delay as well as the cost.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/nov/07/cost-of-shed-to-protect-bat-colony-near-hs2-has-topped-100m-chair-says ...He said the “bat shed” was his favourite example of the problems caused. Thompson said the Bechstein’s bat was not protected elsewhere and “generally pretty available in most of northern Europe, western Europe. But nevertheless, under the Wildlife Act, 1981, it’s deemed to be a protected species in the UK, this bat, even though there’s lots of them.”
Thomson added: “No evidence, by the way, that high speed trains interfere with bats, but leave it on one side.”
HS2 had to obtain a licence from Natural England, which approved the bat mitigation structure, before asking planning permission from Buckinghamshire county council, he said.
“So when we go to [the] council and say: ‘Would you like to give us planning permission for this blot on the landscape that costs £100m’, of course, the answer to that is, you’ve got to be joking, right? Why would [they] like this eyesore?
“So now I’ve got two different bodies. One says I have to do it. The other one says: ‘No chance’. So what do you do? I reach for the lawyers and the environmental specialists and hydrologists and so on and so forth. It stretches out the time. I spend hundreds of thousands of pounds trying to do something, and then in the end, I win the planning commission by going over [the county council’s] head.”..
They are definitely a European protected species.
If you make a clearing in a woodland to put a railway through, they will almost certainly fly up and down it.
However - for £100m you could do some serious habitat restoration elsewhere. Would using even a 1/10th of that to plant or manage some woodland for bats elsewhere be better than some ridiculously expensive bodge that might save a few individuals?
In our French house this summer we woke up hearing flapping noises, which initially we thought were outside as the window was open. Not so: there was a bat flying around our bedroom.
Then we noticed there were two. Then a third, flapping around the staircase.
The process of removing flying bats from a bedroom with 2 small windows and a staircase with none is, believe me, lengthy, arduous, and rather comical.
Don't you just wait until they stop flying around and hang upside down somewhere to sleep?
"Here’s a despairing, nihilistic piece of election analysis I keep hearing in liberal circles: Americans decided they were cool with authoritarianism if it meant prices would go down.
I don’t think this is true."
"Very few voters, in other words, actually chose to make the devil’s bargain described above. They didn’t embrace authoritarianism as the lesser evil than the price of eggs. The price of eggs was simply real to them, while Trump’s authoritarianism was not."
Another thing that I know a lot of Americans are complaining about. Ticket prices for everything. With COVID shut downs, plus inflation, plus monopoly of LiveNation, ticket prices are insane in the US. And then the cost of everything at the venue, plus tip....
People were moaning about £300 for Oasis here, I think most Americans would be going, wow, that's cheap.
And cheap motels. Motel 6 etc. Which used to be $50 and are suddenly $250 (plus tips)
Turning the great American road trip - a wonderful demotic thing - into a luxury (which is tragic)
And don't get me started on AirBnB.....Nightly Rate $199, plus cleaning fee, plus the fee on the cleaning fee, plus transaction fee, plus credit card fee on the transaction fee, plus the tax, plus the tip, plus the fine for not putting the garbage the correct 27 different bins each night you stay....that will be $499.
Yes. Oh god yes. I’ve had the same experience. Hideous and blatant gouging. Fuck them
I seriously have no great desire to return to the USA unless it is some gilded press trip and I get a personal robot butler (who doesn’t require tips)
Mrs U and I over the years have needed to go to the US a lot for work and often for extended periods. 10 years ago we would always tack on a trip, to see friends, family or just hang out and do tourism. Whichever partner wasn't out there, often join them for this.
We haven't done that since COVID because of the cost of it, and we are fortunate to earn good money. I can't see how Joe Bloggs, who used to take the family to Florida to see Mickey Mouse, is affording that these days.
They seem to afford their football season tickets.
A family day out in Fascist Mouse Land is now more than a football season ticket (obviously unless you want Starmer level seats)....especially if you actually want to go on all the rides, because you have to buy the premium queue jumper premium.
Magic Kingdom with lightening lane pass is $450 per person in peak season...for a single day. Then obviously they want all the fizzy drinks, candy, a toy.
Alton Towers walk up including their top priced fast track (Platinum) is over £200 per person...for a single day.
Which is expensive, but half the price. And if you go to Florida on your holidays, you want to do all the parks, Disney, Universal, etc. And yes you can buy multi-day passes that are cheaper on a per day basis.
The point is loads of working class Brits used to go to Florida for what was really quite affordable holiday. It ain't cheap now.
I thoroughly recommend reading his book 'Goliath' (which is only published in the US sadly, but is probably available on Amazon in the UK). His thesis, which I find compelling, is that one of the actual threats to democracy isn't (surprisingly) 'trans people or illegals', but monopolistic businesses who put their own dictators into power to prevent anti-trust policies or regulation that promotes competition (and thus keeps costs down).
The problems in the US are largely the result of unfettered capitalism, but they've just voted for even less fettered capitalism.
Many people on the right seem to love the take that Trump's success is down to the impoverishment and disempowerment of the working class. But they only love it so long as it remains a take. If a politician was to come along with a policy platform to address it (proper universal state-funded healthcare, say, and economic measures that prioritised labour over capital) they'd run a million miles. It'd suddenly be a case "oh no no no, didn't mean that!"
Culture war costs them nothing though (in dollar terms, at least).
Taking the piss out of the Harris campaign isn't going to sustain them through four years of government, though. The terms of the argument change, the moment Trump takes office.
Indeed. Fwiw she was a good candidate imo. By which I mean she had the personal qualities to front a campaign and be a good president if she won it. The problem, I think, was Biden going so late. It left no time to do anything but promote the VP and as VP she was tied to the unpopular incumbent.
Bryson Dechambeau, the well-known golf player, was part of Trump's victory do.
May he get the yips and never win another tournament.
Nice to see you've changed that avatar.
Where are the beans ??!!
They'll be back but I'm not exactly full of them atm.
Well done you for showing up after the election result. Not everyone, after making such a monumental tool of themselves, would have returned so soon after the event.
A few hours kip works wonders.
To be fair it's 72,701,692 (and counting) people over the pond who've made tools of themselves. Except, no, that is not fair. It's victim blaming. Donald Trump is a conman extraordinaire.
In any case it's their prerogative, isn't it. It was a free and fair election and this is who they want as their president. Just as individuals have the right to make bad choices so do countries.
Well that's as maybe but on this site we are supposed to bring dispassionate and incisive analysis to these kind of situations so I'm ever so slightly disappointed to see that you are trying to blame others for your failure in this regard.
I'm not sure that @kinabalu did make a "monumental tool" of himself. He thought Kamala would win. She did not. It's an error but it reaches the threshold for "well that was a bit dumb", not "you're a monumental tool".
Kinabalu had been very vocal, for a very long time, about his confidence that Trump wouldn't be a candidate in the election that he's now won.
I think he knows that it's fair he receives a bit of ribbing for that now.
As recently as polling day:
The polls are tied having moved towards Trump in the last few weeks. Trump probably has a PV to EC advantage. Therefore the betting is rational in making him the fav. Nevertheless I think the betting has it wrong. I’ve long thought America would never reelect Donald Trump because he’s palpably unfit to be president. I still think that. You can talk all you like about the economy and the border, Biden’s approval rating, about demographics, men v women, young v old, college degree or not, black, white, hispanic, sunbelt rustbelt, yada yada, it’s great, it’s what makes US elections such a blast, but at the end of the day the fundamental question is, knowing what they know, having seen what they’ve seen, will the American people put this guy back in the WH? It’s a no. I’m not as confident as the likes of MarqueMark but I am confident. Kamala Harris will win and it won’t be that close.
LOL
At least they had the courage to make a call on PB.
We're told that there were many posters who were wholly confident that Trump would win but were "too scared" to say so. PB is a nest of lefty vipers, apparently.
Ha ha yes. I didn't make a call because I thought it was a toss-up the whole time, even when Biden was candidate (until the debate at least). Respect to the people who did make a call, even if they got it wrong. But it's always interesting to read people who are willing to make a call (though Kinabalu's reasoning quoted above isn't very persuasive - others made better cases for Harris winning I think).
I didn't make a call because the electoral college system is messy; the race seemed close; my knowledge of the US is low, and local knowledge of the US non-existent; and the information/disinformation noise floor very, very high.
I don't think anyone truly knew what as going on, and there's a heck of a lot of wishcasting going on. Guesswork everywhere, most of it uneducated.
Bryson Dechambeau, the well-known golf player, was part of Trump's victory do.
May he get the yips and never win another tournament.
Nice to see you've changed that avatar.
Where are the beans ??!!
They'll be back but I'm not exactly full of them atm.
Well done you for showing up after the election result. Not everyone, after making such a monumental tool of themselves, would have returned so soon after the event.
A few hours kip works wonders.
To be fair it's 72,701,692 (and counting) people over the pond who've made tools of themselves. Except, no, that is not fair. It's victim blaming. Donald Trump is a conman extraordinaire.
In any case it's their prerogative, isn't it. It was a free and fair election and this is who they want as their president. Just as individuals have the right to make bad choices so do countries.
Well that's as maybe but on this site we are supposed to bring dispassionate and incisive analysis to these kind of situations so I'm ever so slightly disappointed to see that you are trying to blame others for your failure in this regard.
I'm not sure that @kinabalu did make a "monumental tool" of himself. He thought Kamala would win. She did not. It's an error but it reaches the threshold for "well that was a bit dumb", not "you're a monumental tool".
Kinabalu had been very vocal, for a very long time, about his confidence that Trump wouldn't be a candidate in the election that he's now won.
I think he knows that it's fair he receives a bit of ribbing for that now.
As recently as polling day:
The polls are tied having moved towards Trump in the last few weeks. Trump probably has a PV to EC advantage. Therefore the betting is rational in making him the fav. Nevertheless I think the betting has it wrong. I’ve long thought America would never reelect Donald Trump because he’s palpably unfit to be president. I still think that. You can talk all you like about the economy and the border, Biden’s approval rating, about demographics, men v women, young v old, college degree or not, black, white, hispanic, sunbelt rustbelt, yada yada, it’s great, it’s what makes US elections such a blast, but at the end of the day the fundamental question is, knowing what they know, having seen what they’ve seen, will the American people put this guy back in the WH? It’s a no. I’m not as confident as the likes of MarqueMark but I am confident. Kamala Harris will win and it won’t be that close.
LOL
At least they had the courage to make a call on PB.
We're told that there were many posters who were wholly confident that Trump would win but were "too scared" to say so. PB is a nest of lefty vipers, apparently.
Rubbish.
The polls were TCTC so it wasn't "making a call". It was lefty virtue signalling and wishcasting. A fatal, unprofitable, and monumentally toolish move.
Blaming and trying to guilt trip over 50% of the population for voting the wrong way won't help get them back on board. Also not great for your ratings either.
Bryson Dechambeau, the well-known golf player, was part of Trump's victory do.
May he get the yips and never win another tournament.
Nice to see you've changed that avatar.
Where are the beans ??!!
They'll be back but I'm not exactly full of them atm.
Well done you for showing up after the election result. Not everyone, after making such a monumental tool of themselves, would have returned so soon after the event.
A few hours kip works wonders.
To be fair it's 72,701,692 (and counting) people over the pond who've made tools of themselves. Except, no, that is not fair. It's victim blaming. Donald Trump is a conman extraordinaire.
In any case it's their prerogative, isn't it. It was a free and fair election and this is who they want as their president. Just as individuals have the right to make bad choices so do countries.
Well that's as maybe but on this site we are supposed to bring dispassionate and incisive analysis to these kind of situations so I'm ever so slightly disappointed to see that you are trying to blame others for your failure in this regard.
I'm not sure that @kinabalu did make a "monumental tool" of himself. He thought Kamala would win. She did not. It's an error but it reaches the threshold for "well that was a bit dumb", not "you're a monumental tool".
Kinabalu had been very vocal, for a very long time, about his confidence that Trump wouldn't be a candidate in the election that he's now won.
I think he knows that it's fair he receives a bit of ribbing for that now.
Rib away. But only if we mix in some fulsome praise for my predicting (and betting) that there'd be no Biden/Trump rematch when it was trading as a virtual cert at 1.1.
Yeah, I was wrong about Biden. I didn't think he'd let himself be pushed aside.
Retained EU legislation which the tories kept after Brexit.
Actually, it doesn't appear that it was. Also, note the contribution to delay as well as the cost.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/nov/07/cost-of-shed-to-protect-bat-colony-near-hs2-has-topped-100m-chair-says ...He said the “bat shed” was his favourite example of the problems caused. Thompson said the Bechstein’s bat was not protected elsewhere and “generally pretty available in most of northern Europe, western Europe. But nevertheless, under the Wildlife Act, 1981, it’s deemed to be a protected species in the UK, this bat, even though there’s lots of them.”
Thomson added: “No evidence, by the way, that high speed trains interfere with bats, but leave it on one side.”
HS2 had to obtain a licence from Natural England, which approved the bat mitigation structure, before asking planning permission from Buckinghamshire county council, he said.
“So when we go to [the] council and say: ‘Would you like to give us planning permission for this blot on the landscape that costs £100m’, of course, the answer to that is, you’ve got to be joking, right? Why would [they] like this eyesore?
“So now I’ve got two different bodies. One says I have to do it. The other one says: ‘No chance’. So what do you do? I reach for the lawyers and the environmental specialists and hydrologists and so on and so forth. It stretches out the time. I spend hundreds of thousands of pounds trying to do something, and then in the end, I win the planning commission by going over [the county council’s] head.”..
But apparently there's no fat to cut in the public sector.
The reality is that we are making ourselves poor by regulations, and the associated armies of the clipboard wielding who spend our money on fighting each other over their mutually incompatible aims.
Rubbish. Everybody knows the only way we'll get prosperity is by taxing, spending and regulating the private sector out of existence.
See paradises like North Korea, Venezuela and the old Soviet Union.
(Unfortunately, with the current government, the above comment is less satire than a statement of economic policy).
Retained EU legislation which the tories kept after Brexit.
Actually, it doesn't appear that it was. Also, note the contribution to delay as well as the cost.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/nov/07/cost-of-shed-to-protect-bat-colony-near-hs2-has-topped-100m-chair-says ...He said the “bat shed” was his favourite example of the problems caused. Thompson said the Bechstein’s bat was not protected elsewhere and “generally pretty available in most of northern Europe, western Europe. But nevertheless, under the Wildlife Act, 1981, it’s deemed to be a protected species in the UK, this bat, even though there’s lots of them.”
Thomson added: “No evidence, by the way, that high speed trains interfere with bats, but leave it on one side.”
HS2 had to obtain a licence from Natural England, which approved the bat mitigation structure, before asking planning permission from Buckinghamshire county council, he said.
“So when we go to [the] council and say: ‘Would you like to give us planning permission for this blot on the landscape that costs £100m’, of course, the answer to that is, you’ve got to be joking, right? Why would [they] like this eyesore?
“So now I’ve got two different bodies. One says I have to do it. The other one says: ‘No chance’. So what do you do? I reach for the lawyers and the environmental specialists and hydrologists and so on and so forth. It stretches out the time. I spend hundreds of thousands of pounds trying to do something, and then in the end, I win the planning commission by going over [the county council’s] head.”..
But apparently there's no fat to cut in the public sector.
The reality is that we are making ourselves poor by regulations, and the associated armies of the clipboard wielding who spend our money on fighting each other over their mutually incompatible aims.
Rubbish. Everybody knows the only way we'll get prosperity is by taxing, spending and regulating the private sector out of existence.
See paradises like North Korea, Venezuela and the old Soviet Union.
(Unfortunately, with the current government, the above comment is less satire than a statement of economic policy).
Given that you list consisted of HS2 (badly ran by the previous Government who changed the plans all the time), not giving Northern Ireland any money and annoying farmers even more than the IHT changes have done - I don't think you ideas are that great.
Bryson Dechambeau, the well-known golf player, was part of Trump's victory do.
May he get the yips and never win another tournament.
Nice to see you've changed that avatar.
Where are the beans ??!!
They'll be back but I'm not exactly full of them atm.
Well done you for showing up after the election result. Not everyone, after making such a monumental tool of themselves, would have returned so soon after the event.
A few hours kip works wonders.
To be fair it's 72,701,692 (and counting) people over the pond who've made tools of themselves. Except, no, that is not fair. It's victim blaming. Donald Trump is a conman extraordinaire.
In any case it's their prerogative, isn't it. It was a free and fair election and this is who they want as their president. Just as individuals have the right to make bad choices so do countries.
Well that's as maybe but on this site we are supposed to bring dispassionate and incisive analysis to these kind of situations so I'm ever so slightly disappointed to see that you are trying to blame others for your failure in this regard.
I'm not sure that @kinabalu did make a "monumental tool" of himself. He thought Kamala would win. She did not. It's an error but it reaches the threshold for "well that was a bit dumb", not "you're a monumental tool".
Kinabalu had been very vocal, for a very long time, about his confidence that Trump wouldn't be a candidate in the election that he's now won.
I think he knows that it's fair he receives a bit of ribbing for that now.
As recently as polling day:
The polls are tied having moved towards Trump in the last few weeks. Trump probably has a PV to EC advantage. Therefore the betting is rational in making him the fav. Nevertheless I think the betting has it wrong. I’ve long thought America would never reelect Donald Trump because he’s palpably unfit to be president. I still think that. You can talk all you like about the economy and the border, Biden’s approval rating, about demographics, men v women, young v old, college degree or not, black, white, hispanic, sunbelt rustbelt, yada yada, it’s great, it’s what makes US elections such a blast, but at the end of the day the fundamental question is, knowing what they know, having seen what they’ve seen, will the American people put this guy back in the WH? It’s a no. I’m not as confident as the likes of MarqueMark but I am confident. Kamala Harris will win and it won’t be that close.
LOL
At least they had the courage to make a call on PB.
We're told that there were many posters who were wholly confident that Trump would win but were "too scared" to say so. PB is a nest of lefty vipers, apparently.
Ha ha yes. I didn't make a call because I thought it was a toss-up the whole time, even when Biden was candidate (until the debate at least). Respect to the people who did make a call, even if they got it wrong. But it's always interesting to read people who are willing to make a call (though Kinabalu's reasoning quoted above isn't very persuasive - others made better cases for Harris winning I think).
Bryson Dechambeau, the well-known golf player, was part of Trump's victory do.
May he get the yips and never win another tournament.
Nice to see you've changed that avatar.
Where are the beans ??!!
They'll be back but I'm not exactly full of them atm.
Well done you for showing up after the election result. Not everyone, after making such a monumental tool of themselves, would have returned so soon after the event.
A few hours kip works wonders.
To be fair it's 72,701,692 (and counting) people over the pond who've made tools of themselves. Except, no, that is not fair. It's victim blaming. Donald Trump is a conman extraordinaire.
In any case it's their prerogative, isn't it. It was a free and fair election and this is who they want as their president. Just as individuals have the right to make bad choices so do countries.
Well that's as maybe but on this site we are supposed to bring dispassionate and incisive analysis to these kind of situations so I'm ever so slightly disappointed to see that you are trying to blame others for your failure in this regard.
I'm not sure that @kinabalu did make a "monumental tool" of himself. He thought Kamala would win. She did not. It's an error but it reaches the threshold for "well that was a bit dumb", not "you're a monumental tool".
Kinabalu had been very vocal, for a very long time, about his confidence that Trump wouldn't be a candidate in the election that he's now won.
I think he knows that it's fair he receives a bit of ribbing for that now.
Rib away. But only if we mix in some fulsome praise for my predicting (and betting) that there'd be no Biden/Trump rematch when it was trading as a virtual cert at 1.1.
Yeah, I was wrong about Biden. I didn't think he'd let himself be pushed aside.
I bet he's regretting it now though.
Doubt he is. I'm fairly sure he would have done even worse than Kamala, and he knows it too.
He maybe regrets having tried to run at-all this time; I'm not sure anything could have won this election for the Dems, but their best hope would have been a proper primary, and a fresh, moderate face.
Bryson Dechambeau, the well-known golf player, was part of Trump's victory do.
May he get the yips and never win another tournament.
Nice to see you've changed that avatar.
Where are the beans ??!!
They'll be back but I'm not exactly full of them atm.
Well done you for showing up after the election result. Not everyone, after making such a monumental tool of themselves, would have returned so soon after the event.
A few hours kip works wonders.
To be fair it's 72,701,692 (and counting) people over the pond who've made tools of themselves. Except, no, that is not fair. It's victim blaming. Donald Trump is a conman extraordinaire.
In any case it's their prerogative, isn't it. It was a free and fair election and this is who they want as their president. Just as individuals have the right to make bad choices so do countries.
Well that's as maybe but on this site we are supposed to bring dispassionate and incisive analysis to these kind of situations so I'm ever so slightly disappointed to see that you are trying to blame others for your failure in this regard.
I'm not sure that @kinabalu did make a "monumental tool" of himself. He thought Kamala would win. She did not. It's an error but it reaches the threshold for "well that was a bit dumb", not "you're a monumental tool".
Kinabalu had been very vocal, for a very long time, about his confidence that Trump wouldn't be a candidate in the election that he's now won.
I think he knows that it's fair he receives a bit of ribbing for that now.
Rib away. But only if we mix in some fulsome praise for my predicting (and betting) that there'd be no Biden/Trump rematch when it was trading as a virtual cert at 1.1.
Yeah, I was wrong about Biden. I didn't think he'd let himself be pushed aside.
I bet he's regretting it now though.
Probably. I can imagine he's thinking (wrongly imo) that he'd have whupped Trump again.
Another thing that I know a lot of Americans are complaining about. Ticket prices for everything. With COVID shut downs, plus inflation, plus monopoly of LiveNation, ticket prices are insane in the US. And then the cost of everything at the venue, plus tip....
People were moaning about £300 for Oasis here, I think most Americans would be going, wow, that's cheap.
And cheap motels. Motel 6 etc. Which used to be $50 and are suddenly $250 (plus tips)
Turning the great American road trip - a wonderful demotic thing - into a luxury (which is tragic)
And don't get me started on AirBnB.....Nightly Rate $199, plus cleaning fee, plus the fee on the cleaning fee, plus transaction fee, plus credit card fee on the transaction fee, plus the tax, plus the tip, plus the fine for not putting the garbage the correct 27 different bins each night you stay....that will be $499.
Yes. Oh god yes. I’ve had the same experience. Hideous and blatant gouging. Fuck them
I seriously have no great desire to return to the USA unless it is some gilded press trip and I get a personal robot butler (who doesn’t require tips)
Mrs U and I over the years have needed to go to the US a lot for work and often for extended periods. 10 years ago we would always tack on a trip, to see friends, family or just hang out and do tourism. Whichever partner wasn't out there, often join them for this.
We haven't done that since COVID because of the cost of it, and we are fortunate to earn good money. I can't see how Joe Bloggs, who used to take the family to Florida to see Mickey Mouse, is affording that these days.
They seem to afford their football season tickets.
A family day out in Fascist Mouse Land is now more than a football season ticket (obviously unless you want Starmer level seats)....especially if you actually want to go on all the rides, because you have to buy the premium queue jumper premium.
Magic Kingdom with lightening lane pass is $450 per person in peak season...for a single day. Then obviously they want all the fizzy drinks, candy, a toy.
Alton Towers walk up including their top priced fast track (Platinum) is over £200 per person...for a single day.
Which is expensive, but half the price. And if you go to Florida on your holidays, you want to do all the parks, Disney, Universal, etc. And yes you can buy multi-day passes that are cheaper on a per day basis.
The point is loads of working class Brits used to go to Florida for what was really quite affordable holiday. It ain't cheap now.
I thoroughly recommend reading his book 'Goliath' (which is only published in the US sadly, but is probably available on Amazon in the UK). His thesis, which I find compelling, is that one of the actual threats to democracy isn't (surprisingly) 'trans people or illegals', but monopolistic businesses who put their own dictators into power to prevent anti-trust policies or regulation that promotes competition (and thus keeps costs down).
The problems in the US are largely the result of unfettered capitalism, but they've just voted for even less fettered capitalism.
Many people on the right seem to love the take that Trump's success is down to the impoverishment and disempowerment of the working class. But they only love it so long as it remains a take. If a politician was to come along with a policy platform to address it (proper universal state-funded healthcare, say, and economic measures that prioritised labour over capital) they'd run a million miles. It'd suddenly be a case "oh no no no, didn't mean that!"
Culture war costs them nothing though (in dollar terms, at least).
Taking the piss out of the Harris campaign isn't going to sustain them through four years of government, though. The terms of the argument change, the moment Trump takes office.
Indeed. Fwiw she was a good candidate imo. By which I mean she had the personal qualities to front a campaign and be a good president if she won it. The problem, I think, was Biden going so late. It left no time to do anything but promote the VP and as VP she was tied to the unpopular incumbent.
I think Trump was going to win regardless, a more centrist candidate who was a governor from a swing state might have helped make it closer. Yet Middle America was dissatisfied with lack of border control and the state of the economy and rolled the dice on Trump and his agenda of big tariffs and immigrant deportations.
Whether the Democrats succeed or not in 2028 depends more on the economic impact of that than who their candidate is.
Blaming and trying to guilt trip over 50% of the population for voting the wrong way won't help get them back on board. Also not great for your ratings either.
Oh God, they're such pricks.
Don't they realise that this will continue forevermore until they start showing some humility?
Bryson Dechambeau, the well-known golf player, was part of Trump's victory do.
May he get the yips and never win another tournament.
Nice to see you've changed that avatar.
Where are the beans ??!!
They'll be back but I'm not exactly full of them atm.
Well done you for showing up after the election result. Not everyone, after making such a monumental tool of themselves, would have returned so soon after the event.
A few hours kip works wonders.
To be fair it's 72,701,692 (and counting) people over the pond who've made tools of themselves. Except, no, that is not fair. It's victim blaming. Donald Trump is a conman extraordinaire.
In any case it's their prerogative, isn't it. It was a free and fair election and this is who they want as their president. Just as individuals have the right to make bad choices so do countries.
Well that's as maybe but on this site we are supposed to bring dispassionate and incisive analysis to these kind of situations so I'm ever so slightly disappointed to see that you are trying to blame others for your failure in this regard.
I'm not sure that @kinabalu did make a "monumental tool" of himself. He thought Kamala would win. She did not. It's an error but it reaches the threshold for "well that was a bit dumb", not "you're a monumental tool".
Kinabalu had been very vocal, for a very long time, about his confidence that Trump wouldn't be a candidate in the election that he's now won.
I think he knows that it's fair he receives a bit of ribbing for that now.
Rib away. But only if we mix in some fulsome praise for my predicting (and betting) that there'd be no Biden/Trump rematch when it was trading as a virtual cert at 1.1.
Yeah, I was wrong about Biden. I didn't think he'd let himself be pushed aside.
I bet he's regretting it now though.
At some level he'll enjoy the schadenfreude I think.
He'd probably have lost by even more but he'll feel vindicated about Harris.
Bryson Dechambeau, the well-known golf player, was part of Trump's victory do.
May he get the yips and never win another tournament.
Nice to see you've changed that avatar.
Where are the beans ??!!
They'll be back but I'm not exactly full of them atm.
Well done you for showing up after the election result. Not everyone, after making such a monumental tool of themselves, would have returned so soon after the event.
A few hours kip works wonders.
To be fair it's 72,701,692 (and counting) people over the pond who've made tools of themselves. Except, no, that is not fair. It's victim blaming. Donald Trump is a conman extraordinaire.
In any case it's their prerogative, isn't it. It was a free and fair election and this is who they want as their president. Just as individuals have the right to make bad choices so do countries.
Well that's as maybe but on this site we are supposed to bring dispassionate and incisive analysis to these kind of situations so I'm ever so slightly disappointed to see that you are trying to blame others for your failure in this regard.
I'm not sure that @kinabalu did make a "monumental tool" of himself. He thought Kamala would win. She did not. It's an error but it reaches the threshold for "well that was a bit dumb", not "you're a monumental tool".
Kinabalu had been very vocal, for a very long time, about his confidence that Trump wouldn't be a candidate in the election that he's now won.
I think he knows that it's fair he receives a bit of ribbing for that now.
Rib away. But only if we mix in some fulsome praise for my predicting (and betting) that there'd be no Biden/Trump rematch when it was trading as a virtual cert at 1.1.
Yeah, I was wrong about Biden. I didn't think he'd let himself be pushed aside.
I bet he's regretting it now though.
The only time Biden made any contribution to the campaign, it was to greatly antagonise the people who turned out in huge numbers for Trump.
I think his campaign over several months would have turned out to have been "garbage", cubed.
Plus, it was who Trump was geared up to meet. He would have been even more brutal than he was about Harris.
"Here’s a despairing, nihilistic piece of election analysis I keep hearing in liberal circles: Americans decided they were cool with authoritarianism if it meant prices would go down.
I don’t think this is true."
"Very few voters, in other words, actually chose to make the devil’s bargain described above. They didn’t embrace authoritarianism as the lesser evil than the price of eggs. The price of eggs was simply real to them, while Trump’s authoritarianism was not."
Bryson Dechambeau, the well-known golf player, was part of Trump's victory do.
May he get the yips and never win another tournament.
Nice to see you've changed that avatar.
Where are the beans ??!!
They'll be back but I'm not exactly full of them atm.
Well done you for showing up after the election result. Not everyone, after making such a monumental tool of themselves, would have returned so soon after the event.
A few hours kip works wonders.
To be fair it's 72,701,692 (and counting) people over the pond who've made tools of themselves. Except, no, that is not fair. It's victim blaming. Donald Trump is a conman extraordinaire.
In any case it's their prerogative, isn't it. It was a free and fair election and this is who they want as their president. Just as individuals have the right to make bad choices so do countries.
Well that's as maybe but on this site we are supposed to bring dispassionate and incisive analysis to these kind of situations so I'm ever so slightly disappointed to see that you are trying to blame others for your failure in this regard.
I'm not sure that @kinabalu did make a "monumental tool" of himself. He thought Kamala would win. She did not. It's an error but it reaches the threshold for "well that was a bit dumb", not "you're a monumental tool".
Kinabalu had been very vocal, for a very long time, about his confidence that Trump wouldn't be a candidate in the election that he's now won.
I think he knows that it's fair he receives a bit of ribbing for that now.
Rib away. But only if we mix in some fulsome praise for my predicting (and betting) that there'd be no Biden/Trump rematch when it was trading as a virtual cert at 1.1.
Yeah, I was wrong about Biden. I didn't think he'd let himself be pushed aside.
Retained EU legislation which the tories kept after Brexit.
Actually, it doesn't appear that it was. Also, note the contribution to delay as well as the cost.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/nov/07/cost-of-shed-to-protect-bat-colony-near-hs2-has-topped-100m-chair-says ...He said the “bat shed” was his favourite example of the problems caused. Thompson said the Bechstein’s bat was not protected elsewhere and “generally pretty available in most of northern Europe, western Europe. But nevertheless, under the Wildlife Act, 1981, it’s deemed to be a protected species in the UK, this bat, even though there’s lots of them.”
Thomson added: “No evidence, by the way, that high speed trains interfere with bats, but leave it on one side.”
HS2 had to obtain a licence from Natural England, which approved the bat mitigation structure, before asking planning permission from Buckinghamshire county council, he said.
“So when we go to [the] council and say: ‘Would you like to give us planning permission for this blot on the landscape that costs £100m’, of course, the answer to that is, you’ve got to be joking, right? Why would [they] like this eyesore?
“So now I’ve got two different bodies. One says I have to do it. The other one says: ‘No chance’. So what do you do? I reach for the lawyers and the environmental specialists and hydrologists and so on and so forth. It stretches out the time. I spend hundreds of thousands of pounds trying to do something, and then in the end, I win the planning commission by going over [the county council’s] head.”..
But apparently there's no fat to cut in the public sector.
The reality is that we are making ourselves poor by regulations, and the associated armies of the clipboard wielding who spend our money on fighting each other over their mutually incompatible aims.
There's no easy fat to cut.
You have to stop the State doing stupid and unnecessary stuff, like this, without throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
We have an absolutist approach written into law and regulations on birds, bats and badgers that do vast economic damage but it needs immense intelligence and care to go through it all to reform it without creating a total free for all.
Retained EU legislation which the tories kept after Brexit.
Actually, it doesn't appear that it was. Also, note the contribution to delay as well as the cost.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/nov/07/cost-of-shed-to-protect-bat-colony-near-hs2-has-topped-100m-chair-says ...He said the “bat shed” was his favourite example of the problems caused. Thompson said the Bechstein’s bat was not protected elsewhere and “generally pretty available in most of northern Europe, western Europe. But nevertheless, under the Wildlife Act, 1981, it’s deemed to be a protected species in the UK, this bat, even though there’s lots of them.”
Thomson added: “No evidence, by the way, that high speed trains interfere with bats, but leave it on one side.”
HS2 had to obtain a licence from Natural England, which approved the bat mitigation structure, before asking planning permission from Buckinghamshire county council, he said.
“So when we go to [the] council and say: ‘Would you like to give us planning permission for this blot on the landscape that costs £100m’, of course, the answer to that is, you’ve got to be joking, right? Why would [they] like this eyesore?
“So now I’ve got two different bodies. One says I have to do it. The other one says: ‘No chance’. So what do you do? I reach for the lawyers and the environmental specialists and hydrologists and so on and so forth. It stretches out the time. I spend hundreds of thousands of pounds trying to do something, and then in the end, I win the planning commission by going over [the county council’s] head.”..
But apparently there's no fat to cut in the public sector.
The reality is that we are making ourselves poor by regulations, and the associated armies of the clipboard wielding who spend our money on fighting each other over their mutually incompatible aims.
Rubbish. Everybody knows the only way we'll get prosperity is by taxing, spending and regulating the private sector out of existence.
See paradises like North Korea, Venezuela and the old Soviet Union.
(Unfortunately, with the current government, the above comment is less satire than a statement of economic policy).
Given that you list consisted of HS2 (badly ran by the previous Government who changed the plans all the time), not giving Northern Ireland any money and annoying farmers even more than the IHT changes have done - I don't think you ideas are that great.
HS2 is a financial disaster zone for many, many reasons, but this particular case is not really about HS2, but about the pointless costs which come from inflexible regulations - and which result in lots of public (and private) sector money being spent completely uselessly.
I'm heading over to NY shortly so I am hearing that I should be prepared for a tippeganza.
If you’re used to posh bits of NYC you likely won’t notice a difference
The change is the spread beyond the big glam cities and into every single possible transaction. Buy some beef jerky in a gas station in Tennessee and your card transaction will have a tipping option - 15-30% - and it’s not obvious how you say No Tip
And you’re tipping someone who literally just pressed a button on a till or scanned your jerky
Wow seems bonkers although this time round I won't indeed be buying beef jerky in a gas station in Tennessee but thanks for the heads up.
And speaking of the square states I will always remember fondly when as a starter in Kentucky one time I ordered "Potato skins" and was brought sixteen full halves of potato (so eight potatoes in all), not hollowed out but deep fried and then slathered in all the stuff you would expect, sour cream, bacon, whatnot.
As a starter. I then had the burger.
Bliss.
I do love the flyover states. Lost roads in Alabama or Arkansas or Mississippi
You can get lost in America - in your own car - like nowhere else on earth
Retained EU legislation which the tories kept after Brexit.
Actually, it doesn't appear that it was. Also, note the contribution to delay as well as the cost.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/nov/07/cost-of-shed-to-protect-bat-colony-near-hs2-has-topped-100m-chair-says ...He said the “bat shed” was his favourite example of the problems caused. Thompson said the Bechstein’s bat was not protected elsewhere and “generally pretty available in most of northern Europe, western Europe. But nevertheless, under the Wildlife Act, 1981, it’s deemed to be a protected species in the UK, this bat, even though there’s lots of them.”
Thomson added: “No evidence, by the way, that high speed trains interfere with bats, but leave it on one side.”
HS2 had to obtain a licence from Natural England, which approved the bat mitigation structure, before asking planning permission from Buckinghamshire county council, he said.
“So when we go to [the] council and say: ‘Would you like to give us planning permission for this blot on the landscape that costs £100m’, of course, the answer to that is, you’ve got to be joking, right? Why would [they] like this eyesore?
“So now I’ve got two different bodies. One says I have to do it. The other one says: ‘No chance’. So what do you do? I reach for the lawyers and the environmental specialists and hydrologists and so on and so forth. It stretches out the time. I spend hundreds of thousands of pounds trying to do something, and then in the end, I win the planning commission by going over [the county council’s] head.”..
But apparently there's no fat to cut in the public sector.
The reality is that we are making ourselves poor by regulations, and the associated armies of the clipboard wielding who spend our money on fighting each other over their mutually incompatible aims.
Rubbish. Everybody knows the only way we'll get prosperity is by taxing, spending and regulating the private sector out of existence.
See paradises like North Korea, Venezuela and the old Soviet Union.
(Unfortunately, with the current government, the above comment is less satire than a statement of economic policy).
Given that you list consisted of HS2 (badly ran by the previous Government who changed the plans all the time), not giving Northern Ireland any money and annoying farmers even more than the IHT changes have done - I don't think you ideas are that great.
HS2 is a financial disaster zone for many, many reasons, but this particular case is not really about HS2, but about the pointless costs which come from inflexible regulations - and which result in lots of public (and private) sector money being spent completely uselessly.
But what’s the cause of these regulations? It’s often small-c conservative NIMBYism.
Bryson Dechambeau, the well-known golf player, was part of Trump's victory do.
May he get the yips and never win another tournament.
Nice to see you've changed that avatar.
Where are the beans ??!!
They'll be back but I'm not exactly full of them atm.
Well done you for showing up after the election result. Not everyone, after making such a monumental tool of themselves, would have returned so soon after the event.
A few hours kip works wonders.
To be fair it's 72,701,692 (and counting) people over the pond who've made tools of themselves. Except, no, that is not fair. It's victim blaming. Donald Trump is a conman extraordinaire.
In any case it's their prerogative, isn't it. It was a free and fair election and this is who they want as their president. Just as individuals have the right to make bad choices so do countries.
Well that's as maybe but on this site we are supposed to bring dispassionate and incisive analysis to these kind of situations so I'm ever so slightly disappointed to see that you are trying to blame others for your failure in this regard.
I'm not sure that @kinabalu did make a "monumental tool" of himself. He thought Kamala would win. She did not. It's an error but it reaches the threshold for "well that was a bit dumb", not "you're a monumental tool".
Kinabalu had been very vocal, for a very long time, about his confidence that Trump wouldn't be a candidate in the election that he's now won.
I think he knows that it's fair he receives a bit of ribbing for that now.
As recently as polling day:
The polls are tied having moved towards Trump in the last few weeks. Trump probably has a PV to EC advantage. Therefore the betting is rational in making him the fav. Nevertheless I think the betting has it wrong. I’ve long thought America would never reelect Donald Trump because he’s palpably unfit to be president. I still think that. You can talk all you like about the economy and the border, Biden’s approval rating, about demographics, men v women, young v old, college degree or not, black, white, hispanic, sunbelt rustbelt, yada yada, it’s great, it’s what makes US elections such a blast, but at the end of the day the fundamental question is, knowing what they know, having seen what they’ve seen, will the American people put this guy back in the WH? It’s a no. I’m not as confident as the likes of MarqueMark but I am confident. Kamala Harris will win and it won’t be that close.
LOL
At least they had the courage to make a call on PB.
We're told that there were many posters who were wholly confident that Trump would win but were "too scared" to say so. PB is a nest of lefty vipers, apparently.
Rubbish.
The polls were TCTC so it wasn't "making a call". It was lefty virtue signalling and wishcasting. A fatal, unprofitable, and monumentally toolish move.
See also: Rory Stewart.
The early voting numbers were rock solid, 100% accurate.
Interpreting them in the light of polling that consistently had women breaking way more for Harris and at rates way in advance of the normal 3-4% margin women historically vote more than men was sound enough.
The polling just missed the sheer scale of men voting for Trump. Was I made to look a fool? Sure. Was it purely "lefty virtue signalling and wishcasting"? Sure, cuz that really who I am.... (Rolls eyes heavanwards....)
Retained EU legislation which the tories kept after Brexit.
Actually, it doesn't appear that it was. Also, note the contribution to delay as well as the cost.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/nov/07/cost-of-shed-to-protect-bat-colony-near-hs2-has-topped-100m-chair-says ...He said the “bat shed” was his favourite example of the problems caused. Thompson said the Bechstein’s bat was not protected elsewhere and “generally pretty available in most of northern Europe, western Europe. But nevertheless, under the Wildlife Act, 1981, it’s deemed to be a protected species in the UK, this bat, even though there’s lots of them.”
Thomson added: “No evidence, by the way, that high speed trains interfere with bats, but leave it on one side.”
HS2 had to obtain a licence from Natural England, which approved the bat mitigation structure, before asking planning permission from Buckinghamshire county council, he said.
“So when we go to [the] council and say: ‘Would you like to give us planning permission for this blot on the landscape that costs £100m’, of course, the answer to that is, you’ve got to be joking, right? Why would [they] like this eyesore?
“So now I’ve got two different bodies. One says I have to do it. The other one says: ‘No chance’. So what do you do? I reach for the lawyers and the environmental specialists and hydrologists and so on and so forth. It stretches out the time. I spend hundreds of thousands of pounds trying to do something, and then in the end, I win the planning commission by going over [the county council’s] head.”..
But apparently there's no fat to cut in the public sector.
The reality is that we are making ourselves poor by regulations, and the associated armies of the clipboard wielding who spend our money on fighting each other over their mutually incompatible aims.
There's no easy fat to cut.
You have to stop the State doing stupid and unnecessary stuff, like this, without throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
We have an absolutist approach written into law and regulations on birds, bats and badgers that do vast economic damage but it needs immense intelligence and care to go through it all to reform it without creating a total free for all.
Luntz:: "Trump's support is so hard core; never in my adult life have I seen any politician who has more people, more dedicated, more loyal, more intense and passionate, you can add all the superlatives and you still wont get there...they will walk through fire to get Donald Trump elected."
Retained EU legislation which the tories kept after Brexit.
Actually, it doesn't appear that it was. Also, note the contribution to delay as well as the cost.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/nov/07/cost-of-shed-to-protect-bat-colony-near-hs2-has-topped-100m-chair-says ...He said the “bat shed” was his favourite example of the problems caused. Thompson said the Bechstein’s bat was not protected elsewhere and “generally pretty available in most of northern Europe, western Europe. But nevertheless, under the Wildlife Act, 1981, it’s deemed to be a protected species in the UK, this bat, even though there’s lots of them.”
Thomson added: “No evidence, by the way, that high speed trains interfere with bats, but leave it on one side.”
HS2 had to obtain a licence from Natural England, which approved the bat mitigation structure, before asking planning permission from Buckinghamshire county council, he said.
“So when we go to [the] council and say: ‘Would you like to give us planning permission for this blot on the landscape that costs £100m’, of course, the answer to that is, you’ve got to be joking, right? Why would [they] like this eyesore?
“So now I’ve got two different bodies. One says I have to do it. The other one says: ‘No chance’. So what do you do? I reach for the lawyers and the environmental specialists and hydrologists and so on and so forth. It stretches out the time. I spend hundreds of thousands of pounds trying to do something, and then in the end, I win the planning commission by going over [the county council’s] head.”..
But apparently there's no fat to cut in the public sector.
The reality is that we are making ourselves poor by regulations, and the associated armies of the clipboard wielding who spend our money on fighting each other over their mutually incompatible aims.
Rubbish. Everybody knows the only way we'll get prosperity is by taxing, spending and regulating the private sector out of existence.
See paradises like North Korea, Venezuela and the old Soviet Union.
(Unfortunately, with the current government, the above comment is less satire than a statement of economic policy).
Given that you list consisted of HS2 (badly ran by the previous Government who changed the plans all the time), not giving Northern Ireland any money and annoying farmers even more than the IHT changes have done - I don't think you ideas are that great.
HS2 is a financial disaster zone for many, many reasons, but this particular case is not really about HS2, but about the pointless costs which come from inflexible regulations - and which result in lots of public (and private) sector money being spent completely uselessly.
But what’s the cause of these regulations? It’s often small-c conservative NIMBYism.
Which shouldn't be allowed on strategically important infrastructure projects - it should be it has gone through Parliament so we are now building it as specified at the time..
As I've said multiple times before HS2's problem is that the Government continually interfered rather than telling people that this is what we are doing and the people impacts have been suitable recompensed. Instead Cheryl Gillan added £10bn to the bill for zero real benefit...
Blaming and trying to guilt trip over 50% of the population for voting the wrong way won't help get them back on board. Also not great for your ratings either.
Oh God, they're such pricks.
Don't they realise that this will continue forevermore until they start showing some humility?
I genuinely don't think they realise how their hysterical reaction to everything enables the Trump monster to be fuelled. People tune in to watch some comedian tells jokes, an actor talk about their movie and a band play their latest hit, instead they get a hectoring lecture every single night.
Those night late talk shows used to be universal watching in America.
Retained EU legislation which the tories kept after Brexit.
Actually, it doesn't appear that it was. Also, note the contribution to delay as well as the cost.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/nov/07/cost-of-shed-to-protect-bat-colony-near-hs2-has-topped-100m-chair-says ...He said the “bat shed” was his favourite example of the problems caused. Thompson said the Bechstein’s bat was not protected elsewhere and “generally pretty available in most of northern Europe, western Europe. But nevertheless, under the Wildlife Act, 1981, it’s deemed to be a protected species in the UK, this bat, even though there’s lots of them.”
Thomson added: “No evidence, by the way, that high speed trains interfere with bats, but leave it on one side.”
HS2 had to obtain a licence from Natural England, which approved the bat mitigation structure, before asking planning permission from Buckinghamshire county council, he said.
“So when we go to [the] council and say: ‘Would you like to give us planning permission for this blot on the landscape that costs £100m’, of course, the answer to that is, you’ve got to be joking, right? Why would [they] like this eyesore?
“So now I’ve got two different bodies. One says I have to do it. The other one says: ‘No chance’. So what do you do? I reach for the lawyers and the environmental specialists and hydrologists and so on and so forth. It stretches out the time. I spend hundreds of thousands of pounds trying to do something, and then in the end, I win the planning commission by going over [the county council’s] head.”..
They are definitely a European protected species.
If you make a clearing in a woodland to put a railway through, they will almost certainly fly up and down it.
However - for £100m you could do some serious habitat restoration elsewhere. Would using even a 1/10th of that to plant or manage some woodland for bats elsewhere be better than some ridiculously expensive bodge that might save a few individuals?
In our French house this summer we woke up hearing flapping noises, which initially we thought were outside as the window was open. Not so: there was a bat flying around our bedroom.
Then we noticed there were two. Then a third, flapping around the staircase.
The process of removing flying bats from a bedroom with 2 small windows and a staircase with none is, believe me, lengthy, arduous, and rather comical.
Don't you just wait until they stop flying around and hang upside down somewhere to sleep?
Bryson Dechambeau, the well-known golf player, was part of Trump's victory do.
May he get the yips and never win another tournament.
Nice to see you've changed that avatar.
Where are the beans ??!!
They'll be back but I'm not exactly full of them atm.
Well done you for showing up after the election result. Not everyone, after making such a monumental tool of themselves, would have returned so soon after the event.
A few hours kip works wonders.
To be fair it's 72,701,692 (and counting) people over the pond who've made tools of themselves. Except, no, that is not fair. It's victim blaming. Donald Trump is a conman extraordinaire.
In any case it's their prerogative, isn't it. It was a free and fair election and this is who they want as their president. Just as individuals have the right to make bad choices so do countries.
Well that's as maybe but on this site we are supposed to bring dispassionate and incisive analysis to these kind of situations so I'm ever so slightly disappointed to see that you are trying to blame others for your failure in this regard.
I'm not sure that @kinabalu did make a "monumental tool" of himself. He thought Kamala would win. She did not. It's an error but it reaches the threshold for "well that was a bit dumb", not "you're a monumental tool".
Kinabalu had been very vocal, for a very long time, about his confidence that Trump wouldn't be a candidate in the election that he's now won.
I think he knows that it's fair he receives a bit of ribbing for that now.
As recently as polling day:
The polls are tied having moved towards Trump in the last few weeks. Trump probably has a PV to EC advantage. Therefore the betting is rational in making him the fav. Nevertheless I think the betting has it wrong. I’ve long thought America would never reelect Donald Trump because he’s palpably unfit to be president. I still think that. You can talk all you like about the economy and the border, Biden’s approval rating, about demographics, men v women, young v old, college degree or not, black, white, hispanic, sunbelt rustbelt, yada yada, it’s great, it’s what makes US elections such a blast, but at the end of the day the fundamental question is, knowing what they know, having seen what they’ve seen, will the American people put this guy back in the WH? It’s a no. I’m not as confident as the likes of MarqueMark but I am confident. Kamala Harris will win and it won’t be that close.
LOL
At least they had the courage to make a call on PB.
We're told that there were many posters who were wholly confident that Trump would win but were "too scared" to say so. PB is a nest of lefty vipers, apparently.
Rubbish.
The polls were TCTC so it wasn't "making a call". It was lefty virtue signalling and wishcasting. A fatal, unprofitable, and monumentally toolish move.
See also: Rory Stewart.
The early voting numbers were rock solid, 100% accurate.
Interpreting them in the light of polling that consistently had women breaking way more for Harris and at rates way in advance of the normal 3-4% margin women historically vote more than men was sound enough.
The polling just missed the sheer scale of men voting for Trump. Was I made to look a fool? Sure. Was it purely "lefty virtue signalling and wishcasting"? Sure, cuz that really who I am.... (Rolls eyes heavanwards....)
Well neither is Rory the Tory but it is certainly wishcasting. And you're on betting site.
Plus wrt "early voting numbers", I hear that the first 9 metres of a 10 metre fall are entirely pain free.
Another thing that I know a lot of Americans are complaining about. Ticket prices for everything. With COVID shut downs, plus inflation, plus monopoly of LiveNation, ticket prices are insane in the US. And then the cost of everything at the venue, plus tip....
People were moaning about £300 for Oasis here, I think most Americans would be going, wow, that's cheap.
And cheap motels. Motel 6 etc. Which used to be $50 and are suddenly $250 (plus tips)
Turning the great American road trip - a wonderful demotic thing - into a luxury (which is tragic)
And don't get me started on AirBnB.....Nightly Rate $199, plus cleaning fee, plus the fee on the cleaning fee, plus transaction fee, plus credit card fee on the transaction fee, plus the tax, plus the tip, plus the fine for not putting the garbage the correct 27 different bins each night you stay....that will be $499.
Yes. Oh god yes. I’ve had the same experience. Hideous and blatant gouging. Fuck them
I seriously have no great desire to return to the USA unless it is some gilded press trip and I get a personal robot butler (who doesn’t require tips)
Mrs U and I over the years have needed to go to the US a lot for work and often for extended periods. 10 years ago we would always tack on a trip, to see friends, family or just hang out and do tourism. Whichever partner wasn't out there, often join them for this.
We haven't done that since COVID because of the cost of it, and we are fortunate to earn good money. I can't see how Joe Bloggs, who used to take the family to Florida to see Mickey Mouse, is affording that these days.
They seem to afford their football season tickets.
A family day out in Fascist Mouse Land is now more than a football season ticket (obviously unless you want Starmer level seats)....especially if you actually want to go on all the rides, because you have to buy the premium queue jumper premium.
Magic Kingdom with lightening lane pass is $450 per person in peak season...for a single day. Then obviously they want all the fizzy drinks, candy, a toy.
Alton Towers walk up including their top priced fast track (Platinum) is over £200 per person...for a single day.
Which is expensive, but half the price. And if you go to Florida on your holidays, you want to do all the parks, Disney, Universal, etc. And yes you can buy multi-day passes that are cheaper on a per day basis.
The point is loads of working class Brits used to go to Florida for what was really quite affordable holiday. It ain't cheap now.
I thoroughly recommend reading his book 'Goliath' (which is only published in the US sadly, but is probably available on Amazon in the UK). His thesis, which I find compelling, is that one of the actual threats to democracy isn't (surprisingly) 'trans people or illegals', but monopolistic businesses who put their own dictators into power to prevent anti-trust policies or regulation that promotes competition (and thus keeps costs down).
The problems in the US are largely the result of unfettered capitalism, but they've just voted for even less fettered capitalism.
Many people on the right seem to love the take that Trump's success is down to the impoverishment and disempowerment of the working class. But they only love it so long as it remains a take. If a politician was to come along with a policy platform to address it (proper universal state-funded healthcare, say, and economic measures that prioritised labour over capital) they'd run a million miles. It'd suddenly be a case "oh no no no, didn't mean that!"
Culture war costs them nothing though (in dollar terms, at least).
Taking the piss out of the Harris campaign isn't going to sustain them through four years of government, though. The terms of the argument change, the moment Trump takes office.
Indeed. Fwiw she was a good candidate imo. By which I mean she had the personal qualities to front a campaign and be a good president if she won it. The problem, I think, was Biden going so late. It left no time to do anything but promote the VP and as VP she was tied to the unpopular incumbent.
I think Trump was going to win regardless, a more centrist candidate who was a governor from a swing state might have helped make it closer. Yet Middle America was dissatisfied with lack of border control and the state of the economy and rolled the dice on Trump and his agenda of big tariffs and immigrant deportations.
Whether the Democrats succeed or not in 2028 depends more on the economic impact of that than who their candidate is.
A bit stronger in the RB and your 'sneak the EC but lose the PV' thing (and indeed my bet on it at 44) might just have transpired. Imagine the ructions from the Trump side if it had.
Bryson Dechambeau, the well-known golf player, was part of Trump's victory do.
May he get the yips and never win another tournament.
Nice to see you've changed that avatar.
Where are the beans ??!!
They'll be back but I'm not exactly full of them atm.
Well done you for showing up after the election result. Not everyone, after making such a monumental tool of themselves, would have returned so soon after the event.
A few hours kip works wonders.
To be fair it's 72,701,692 (and counting) people over the pond who've made tools of themselves. Except, no, that is not fair. It's victim blaming. Donald Trump is a conman extraordinaire.
In any case it's their prerogative, isn't it. It was a free and fair election and this is who they want as their president. Just as individuals have the right to make bad choices so do countries.
Well that's as maybe but on this site we are supposed to bring dispassionate and incisive analysis to these kind of situations so I'm ever so slightly disappointed to see that you are trying to blame others for your failure in this regard.
I'm not sure that @kinabalu did make a "monumental tool" of himself. He thought Kamala would win. She did not. It's an error but it reaches the threshold for "well that was a bit dumb", not "you're a monumental tool".
Kinabalu had been very vocal, for a very long time, about his confidence that Trump wouldn't be a candidate in the election that he's now won.
I think he knows that it's fair he receives a bit of ribbing for that now.
Rib away. But only if we mix in some fulsome praise for my predicting (and betting) that there'd be no Biden/Trump rematch when it was trading as a virtual cert at 1.1.
Yeah, I was wrong about Biden. I didn't think he'd let himself be pushed aside.
I bet he's regretting it now though.
I'd think he's quite relieved that it wasn't him.
Yes Biden can at least say he will always be won 1 lost 0 as a Democratic presidential nominee
The trouble is we have written into law that bats are a protected species and the UK is legally obliged to hit Net Zero by 2050 with little to no caveats on it. Sounds good when a politician passes it as a policy or a law, and they'll love to grandstand, but we have a very strong rule of law here so that means it's judiciable and if a case can be brought against it in law then the judges will be obliged to rule accordingly.
The fact that the judges will be educated middle-class and have some natural sympathy with some of the claimants and their politics might make it easier for them to see their point of view, but that's not the point. Unless you write in: "take measures as far as reasonably practical to avoid X, Y, Z on this species, but taking into account due consideration of the proportionation to the benefit and economic cost" instead of "you must take all reasonable measures possible to avoid any impact" (OK I'm not a lawyer) then you've got your man.
English law and regulation is now full of stuff like this. Agencies to police it (who have absolutely no incentive to do anything other than enforce compliance) and judges (who must rule in accordance with the law).
The problem is the law, and to a lesser extent the funding/zeal of the regulatory policing.
Bryson Dechambeau, the well-known golf player, was part of Trump's victory do.
May he get the yips and never win another tournament.
Nice to see you've changed that avatar.
Where are the beans ??!!
They'll be back but I'm not exactly full of them atm.
Well done you for showing up after the election result. Not everyone, after making such a monumental tool of themselves, would have returned so soon after the event.
A few hours kip works wonders.
To be fair it's 72,701,692 (and counting) people over the pond who've made tools of themselves. Except, no, that is not fair. It's victim blaming. Donald Trump is a conman extraordinaire.
In any case it's their prerogative, isn't it. It was a free and fair election and this is who they want as their president. Just as individuals have the right to make bad choices so do countries.
Well that's as maybe but on this site we are supposed to bring dispassionate and incisive analysis to these kind of situations so I'm ever so slightly disappointed to see that you are trying to blame others for your failure in this regard.
I'm not sure that @kinabalu did make a "monumental tool" of himself. He thought Kamala would win. She did not. It's an error but it reaches the threshold for "well that was a bit dumb", not "you're a monumental tool".
Kinabalu had been very vocal, for a very long time, about his confidence that Trump wouldn't be a candidate in the election that he's now won.
I think he knows that it's fair he receives a bit of ribbing for that now.
Rib away. But only if we mix in some fulsome praise for my predicting (and betting) that there'd be no Biden/Trump rematch when it was trading as a virtual cert at 1.1.
Yeah, I was wrong about Biden. I didn't think he'd let himself be pushed aside.
I bet he's regretting it now though.
Doubt he is. I'm fairly sure he would have done even worse than Kamala, and he knows it too.
He maybe regrets having tried to run at-all this time; I'm not sure anything could have won this election for the Dems, but their best hope would have been a proper primary, and a fresh, moderate face.
Looking at it from Biden's point of view, he was persuaded not to run for the Presidency twice and Trump has won twice.
I don't think he knows he would have done worse. Not in the slightest. If he genuinely thought he wasn't up to it he would have stood down from the Presidency as well as the nomination and Harris would be President.
One of the reasons Biden's Presidency was in some ways a better Presidency than Obama's is that he is a consensus politician willing to compromise. It's why he passed his legislation. It's why he reluctantly listened to those who told him not to run in 2016 and again this year.
Retained EU legislation which the tories kept after Brexit.
Actually, it doesn't appear that it was. Also, note the contribution to delay as well as the cost.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/nov/07/cost-of-shed-to-protect-bat-colony-near-hs2-has-topped-100m-chair-says ...He said the “bat shed” was his favourite example of the problems caused. Thompson said the Bechstein’s bat was not protected elsewhere and “generally pretty available in most of northern Europe, western Europe. But nevertheless, under the Wildlife Act, 1981, it’s deemed to be a protected species in the UK, this bat, even though there’s lots of them.”
Thomson added: “No evidence, by the way, that high speed trains interfere with bats, but leave it on one side.”
HS2 had to obtain a licence from Natural England, which approved the bat mitigation structure, before asking planning permission from Buckinghamshire county council, he said.
“So when we go to [the] council and say: ‘Would you like to give us planning permission for this blot on the landscape that costs £100m’, of course, the answer to that is, you’ve got to be joking, right? Why would [they] like this eyesore?
“So now I’ve got two different bodies. One says I have to do it. The other one says: ‘No chance’. So what do you do? I reach for the lawyers and the environmental specialists and hydrologists and so on and so forth. It stretches out the time. I spend hundreds of thousands of pounds trying to do something, and then in the end, I win the planning commission by going over [the county council’s] head.”..
But apparently there's no fat to cut in the public sector.
The reality is that we are making ourselves poor by regulations, and the associated armies of the clipboard wielding who spend our money on fighting each other over their mutually incompatible aims.
There's no easy fat to cut.
You have to stop the State doing stupid and unnecessary stuff, like this, without throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
We have an absolutist approach written into law and regulations on birds, bats and badgers that do vast economic damage but it needs immense intelligence and care to go through it all to reform it without creating a total free for all.
But, be done it must.
Applying 'immense intelligence and care' to this task means that nothing will get cut. You can listen to Steve Hilton talk about this. You start going through the regulations with the aim of removing them but leave the meeting agreeing to create more. Of all the people who have gone in to government, only Dominic Cummings has had credible ideas of how to deal with this phenomenon. It will be interesting though to see what Elon Musk may be able to do/influence in the US.
Retained EU legislation which the tories kept after Brexit.
Actually, it doesn't appear that it was. Also, note the contribution to delay as well as the cost.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/nov/07/cost-of-shed-to-protect-bat-colony-near-hs2-has-topped-100m-chair-says ...He said the “bat shed” was his favourite example of the problems caused. Thompson said the Bechstein’s bat was not protected elsewhere and “generally pretty available in most of northern Europe, western Europe. But nevertheless, under the Wildlife Act, 1981, it’s deemed to be a protected species in the UK, this bat, even though there’s lots of them.”
Thomson added: “No evidence, by the way, that high speed trains interfere with bats, but leave it on one side.”
HS2 had to obtain a licence from Natural England, which approved the bat mitigation structure, before asking planning permission from Buckinghamshire county council, he said.
“So when we go to [the] council and say: ‘Would you like to give us planning permission for this blot on the landscape that costs £100m’, of course, the answer to that is, you’ve got to be joking, right? Why would [they] like this eyesore?
“So now I’ve got two different bodies. One says I have to do it. The other one says: ‘No chance’. So what do you do? I reach for the lawyers and the environmental specialists and hydrologists and so on and so forth. It stretches out the time. I spend hundreds of thousands of pounds trying to do something, and then in the end, I win the planning commission by going over [the county council’s] head.”..
But apparently there's no fat to cut in the public sector.
The reality is that we are making ourselves poor by regulations, and the associated armies of the clipboard wielding who spend our money on fighting each other over their mutually incompatible aims.
Rubbish. Everybody knows the only way we'll get prosperity is by taxing, spending and regulating the private sector out of existence.
See paradises like North Korea, Venezuela and the old Soviet Union.
(Unfortunately, with the current government, the above comment is less satire than a statement of economic policy).
Given that you list consisted of HS2 (badly ran by the previous Government who changed the plans all the time), not giving Northern Ireland any money and annoying farmers even more than the IHT changes have done - I don't think you ideas are that great.
HS2 is a financial disaster zone for many, many reasons, but this particular case is not really about HS2, but about the pointless costs which come from inflexible regulations - and which result in lots of public (and private) sector money being spent completely uselessly.
But what’s the cause of these regulations? It’s often small-c conservative NIMBYism.
On HS2, a lot of the cost was induced by the political uncertainty of whether it would actually go ahead. Firms had to hedge against that, and that bill landed with us.
The much bigger cost will actually be from other projects. Wound you invest in the equipment and staff required for a massive tidal pond in the knowledge it might randomly get cancelled by someone like Sunak? A SMR? A battery plant?
The reason other countries can get this so cheap is because there is a constant programme of investment that is immune to shite decisions from politicians. This is particularly the case with rail electrification. In Edinburgh, why the fuck have we downed tools on the tram instead of slowly but steadily building a few miles a year? A smaller, cheaper, local workforce that develops deep technical expertise and job security over time.
Bryson Dechambeau, the well-known golf player, was part of Trump's victory do.
May he get the yips and never win another tournament.
Nice to see you've changed that avatar.
Where are the beans ??!!
They'll be back but I'm not exactly full of them atm.
Well done you for showing up after the election result. Not everyone, after making such a monumental tool of themselves, would have returned so soon after the event.
A few hours kip works wonders.
To be fair it's 72,701,692 (and counting) people over the pond who've made tools of themselves. Except, no, that is not fair. It's victim blaming. Donald Trump is a conman extraordinaire.
In any case it's their prerogative, isn't it. It was a free and fair election and this is who they want as their president. Just as individuals have the right to make bad choices so do countries.
Well that's as maybe but on this site we are supposed to bring dispassionate and incisive analysis to these kind of situations so I'm ever so slightly disappointed to see that you are trying to blame others for your failure in this regard.
I'm not sure that @kinabalu did make a "monumental tool" of himself. He thought Kamala would win. She did not. It's an error but it reaches the threshold for "well that was a bit dumb", not "you're a monumental tool".
Kinabalu had been very vocal, for a very long time, about his confidence that Trump wouldn't be a candidate in the election that he's now won.
I think he knows that it's fair he receives a bit of ribbing for that now.
Rib away. But only if we mix in some fulsome praise for my predicting (and betting) that there'd be no Biden/Trump rematch when it was trading as a virtual cert at 1.1.
Yeah, I was wrong about Biden. I didn't think he'd let himself be pushed aside.
I bet he's regretting it now though.
The only time Biden made any contribution to the campaign, it was to greatly antagonise the people who turned out in huge numbers for Trump.
I think his campaign over several months would have turned out to have been "garbage", cubed.
Plus, it was who Trump was geared up to meet. He would have been even more brutal than he was about Harris.
My point isn't whether Biden would have won this year, but whether he thinks he would have had a better shot at it than Harris. Of course he will think he would. He beat Trump in 2020. Clinton/Harris both lost.
Another thing that I know a lot of Americans are complaining about. Ticket prices for everything. With COVID shut downs, plus inflation, plus monopoly of LiveNation, ticket prices are insane in the US. And then the cost of everything at the venue, plus tip....
People were moaning about £300 for Oasis here, I think most Americans would be going, wow, that's cheap.
And cheap motels. Motel 6 etc. Which used to be $50 and are suddenly $250 (plus tips)
Turning the great American road trip - a wonderful demotic thing - into a luxury (which is tragic)
And don't get me started on AirBnB.....Nightly Rate $199, plus cleaning fee, plus the fee on the cleaning fee, plus transaction fee, plus credit card fee on the transaction fee, plus the tax, plus the tip, plus the fine for not putting the garbage the correct 27 different bins each night you stay....that will be $499.
Yes. Oh god yes. I’ve had the same experience. Hideous and blatant gouging. Fuck them
I seriously have no great desire to return to the USA unless it is some gilded press trip and I get a personal robot butler (who doesn’t require tips)
Mrs U and I over the years have needed to go to the US a lot for work and often for extended periods. 10 years ago we would always tack on a trip, to see friends, family or just hang out and do tourism. Whichever partner wasn't out there, often join them for this.
We haven't done that since COVID because of the cost of it, and we are fortunate to earn good money. I can't see how Joe Bloggs, who used to take the family to Florida to see Mickey Mouse, is affording that these days.
They seem to afford their football season tickets.
A family day out in Fascist Mouse Land is now more than a football season ticket (obviously unless you want Starmer level seats)....especially if you actually want to go on all the rides, because you have to buy the premium queue jumper premium.
Magic Kingdom with lightening lane pass is $450 per person in peak season...for a single day. Then obviously they want all the fizzy drinks, candy, a toy.
Alton Towers walk up including their top priced fast track (Platinum) is over £200 per person...for a single day.
Which is expensive, but half the price. And if you go to Florida on your holidays, you want to do all the parks, Disney, Universal, etc. And yes you can buy multi-day passes that are cheaper on a per day basis.
The point is loads of working class Brits used to go to Florida for what was really quite affordable holiday. It ain't cheap now.
I thoroughly recommend reading his book 'Goliath' (which is only published in the US sadly, but is probably available on Amazon in the UK). His thesis, which I find compelling, is that one of the actual threats to democracy isn't (surprisingly) 'trans people or illegals', but monopolistic businesses who put their own dictators into power to prevent anti-trust policies or regulation that promotes competition (and thus keeps costs down).
The problems in the US are largely the result of unfettered capitalism, but they've just voted for even less fettered capitalism.
Many people on the right seem to love the take that Trump's success is down to the impoverishment and disempowerment of the working class. But they only love it so long as it remains a take. If a politician was to come along with a policy platform to address it (proper universal state-funded healthcare, say, and economic measures that prioritised labour over capital) they'd run a million miles. It'd suddenly be a case "oh no no no, didn't mean that!"
Culture war costs them nothing though (in dollar terms, at least).
Taking the piss out of the Harris campaign isn't going to sustain them through four years of government, though. The terms of the argument change, the moment Trump takes office.
Indeed. Fwiw she was a good candidate imo. By which I mean she had the personal qualities to front a campaign and be a good president if she won it. The problem, I think, was Biden going so late. It left no time to do anything but promote the VP and as VP she was tied to the unpopular incumbent.
I also think she was a good candidate. She did very well in the debate. I thought she looked tough in her trouser suits. But I think that the happy clappy joy with the stars didn't resonate with those just scraping a living, of whom there are millions. It looked out of touch and elitist. Trump swearing and fulminating was down with the crowd.
Retained EU legislation which the tories kept after Brexit.
Actually, it doesn't appear that it was. Also, note the contribution to delay as well as the cost.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/nov/07/cost-of-shed-to-protect-bat-colony-near-hs2-has-topped-100m-chair-says ...He said the “bat shed” was his favourite example of the problems caused. Thompson said the Bechstein’s bat was not protected elsewhere and “generally pretty available in most of northern Europe, western Europe. But nevertheless, under the Wildlife Act, 1981, it’s deemed to be a protected species in the UK, this bat, even though there’s lots of them.”
Thomson added: “No evidence, by the way, that high speed trains interfere with bats, but leave it on one side.”
HS2 had to obtain a licence from Natural England, which approved the bat mitigation structure, before asking planning permission from Buckinghamshire county council, he said.
“So when we go to [the] council and say: ‘Would you like to give us planning permission for this blot on the landscape that costs £100m’, of course, the answer to that is, you’ve got to be joking, right? Why would [they] like this eyesore?
“So now I’ve got two different bodies. One says I have to do it. The other one says: ‘No chance’. So what do you do? I reach for the lawyers and the environmental specialists and hydrologists and so on and so forth. It stretches out the time. I spend hundreds of thousands of pounds trying to do something, and then in the end, I win the planning commission by going over [the county council’s] head.”..
But apparently there's no fat to cut in the public sector.
The reality is that we are making ourselves poor by regulations, and the associated armies of the clipboard wielding who spend our money on fighting each other over their mutually incompatible aims.
There's no easy fat to cut.
You have to stop the State doing stupid and unnecessary stuff, like this, without throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
We have an absolutist approach written into law and regulations on birds, bats and badgers that do vast economic damage but it needs immense intelligence and care to go through it all to reform it without creating a total free for all.
But, be done it must.
Another example - the lack of a catalogue in the British Library.
We are told that it *must* costs 100s of millions to do it.
Except that I have participated in a volunteer effort at a smaller museum, where they simply photographed (this was pre mobile - used a digital camera) and created a database of the artefacts on a piece by piece basis. Took years, but it's done now.
I know that such as a project won't have a head of inclusion, a Norman Foster building and provide high paid employment for people who know fuck all about museums, to manage. I understand these things are vital to some people.
But these are the people whose hearts I want to break.
Retained EU legislation which the tories kept after Brexit.
Actually, it doesn't appear that it was. Also, note the contribution to delay as well as the cost.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/nov/07/cost-of-shed-to-protect-bat-colony-near-hs2-has-topped-100m-chair-says ...He said the “bat shed” was his favourite example of the problems caused. Thompson said the Bechstein’s bat was not protected elsewhere and “generally pretty available in most of northern Europe, western Europe. But nevertheless, under the Wildlife Act, 1981, it’s deemed to be a protected species in the UK, this bat, even though there’s lots of them.”
Thomson added: “No evidence, by the way, that high speed trains interfere with bats, but leave it on one side.”
HS2 had to obtain a licence from Natural England, which approved the bat mitigation structure, before asking planning permission from Buckinghamshire county council, he said.
“So when we go to [the] council and say: ‘Would you like to give us planning permission for this blot on the landscape that costs £100m’, of course, the answer to that is, you’ve got to be joking, right? Why would [they] like this eyesore?
“So now I’ve got two different bodies. One says I have to do it. The other one says: ‘No chance’. So what do you do? I reach for the lawyers and the environmental specialists and hydrologists and so on and so forth. It stretches out the time. I spend hundreds of thousands of pounds trying to do something, and then in the end, I win the planning commission by going over [the county council’s] head.”..
But apparently there's no fat to cut in the public sector.
The reality is that we are making ourselves poor by regulations, and the associated armies of the clipboard wielding who spend our money on fighting each other over their mutually incompatible aims.
There's no easy fat to cut.
You have to stop the State doing stupid and unnecessary stuff, like this, without throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
We have an absolutist approach written into law and regulations on birds, bats and badgers that do vast economic damage but it needs immense intelligence and care to go through it all to reform it without creating a total free for all.
But, be done it must.
Another example - the lack of a catalogue in the British Library.
We are told that it *must* costs 100s of millions to do it.
Except that I have participated in a volunteer effort at a smaller museum, where they simply photographed (this was pre mobile - used a digital camera) and created a database of the artefacts on a piece by piece basis. Took years, but it's done now.
I know that such as a project won't have a head of inclusion, a Norman Foster building and provide high paid employment for people who know fuck all about museums, to manage. I understand these things are vital to some people.
But these are the people whose hearts I want to break.
That will be because the governance and process of the organisation will be set up in such a way that no-one is empowered together with a culture where initiative is punished and not rewarded.
Bryson Dechambeau, the well-known golf player, was part of Trump's victory do.
May he get the yips and never win another tournament.
Nice to see you've changed that avatar.
Where are the beans ??!!
They'll be back but I'm not exactly full of them atm.
Well done you for showing up after the election result. Not everyone, after making such a monumental tool of themselves, would have returned so soon after the event.
A few hours kip works wonders.
To be fair it's 72,701,692 (and counting) people over the pond who've made tools of themselves. Except, no, that is not fair. It's victim blaming. Donald Trump is a conman extraordinaire.
In any case it's their prerogative, isn't it. It was a free and fair election and this is who they want as their president. Just as individuals have the right to make bad choices so do countries.
Well that's as maybe but on this site we are supposed to bring dispassionate and incisive analysis to these kind of situations so I'm ever so slightly disappointed to see that you are trying to blame others for your failure in this regard.
I'm not sure that @kinabalu did make a "monumental tool" of himself. He thought Kamala would win. She did not. It's an error but it reaches the threshold for "well that was a bit dumb", not "you're a monumental tool".
Kinabalu had been very vocal, for a very long time, about his confidence that Trump wouldn't be a candidate in the election that he's now won.
I think he knows that it's fair he receives a bit of ribbing for that now.
Rib away. But only if we mix in some fulsome praise for my predicting (and betting) that there'd be no Biden/Trump rematch when it was trading as a virtual cert at 1.1.
Yeah, I was wrong about Biden. I didn't think he'd let himself be pushed aside.
I bet he's regretting it now though.
If the other option was him voluntarily stepping down a year earlier, sure.
Another thing that I know a lot of Americans are complaining about. Ticket prices for everything. With COVID shut downs, plus inflation, plus monopoly of LiveNation, ticket prices are insane in the US. And then the cost of everything at the venue, plus tip....
People were moaning about £300 for Oasis here, I think most Americans would be going, wow, that's cheap.
And cheap motels. Motel 6 etc. Which used to be $50 and are suddenly $250 (plus tips)
Turning the great American road trip - a wonderful demotic thing - into a luxury (which is tragic)
And don't get me started on AirBnB.....Nightly Rate $199, plus cleaning fee, plus the fee on the cleaning fee, plus transaction fee, plus credit card fee on the transaction fee, plus the tax, plus the tip, plus the fine for not putting the garbage the correct 27 different bins each night you stay....that will be $499.
Yes. Oh god yes. I’ve had the same experience. Hideous and blatant gouging. Fuck them
I seriously have no great desire to return to the USA unless it is some gilded press trip and I get a personal robot butler (who doesn’t require tips)
Mrs U and I over the years have needed to go to the US a lot for work and often for extended periods. 10 years ago we would always tack on a trip, to see friends, family or just hang out and do tourism. Whichever partner wasn't out there, often join them for this.
We haven't done that since COVID because of the cost of it, and we are fortunate to earn good money. I can't see how Joe Bloggs, who used to take the family to Florida to see Mickey Mouse, is affording that these days.
They seem to afford their football season tickets.
A family day out in Fascist Mouse Land is now more than a football season ticket (obviously unless you want Starmer level seats)....especially if you actually want to go on all the rides, because you have to buy the premium queue jumper premium.
Magic Kingdom with lightening lane pass is $450 per person in peak season...for a single day. Then obviously they want all the fizzy drinks, candy, a toy.
Alton Towers walk up including their top priced fast track (Platinum) is over £200 per person...for a single day.
Which is expensive, but half the price. And if you go to Florida on your holidays, you want to do all the parks, Disney, Universal, etc. And yes you can buy multi-day passes that are cheaper on a per day basis.
The point is loads of working class Brits used to go to Florida for what was really quite affordable holiday. It ain't cheap now.
I thoroughly recommend reading his book 'Goliath' (which is only published in the US sadly, but is probably available on Amazon in the UK). His thesis, which I find compelling, is that one of the actual threats to democracy isn't (surprisingly) 'trans people or illegals', but monopolistic businesses who put their own dictators into power to prevent anti-trust policies or regulation that promotes competition (and thus keeps costs down).
The problems in the US are largely the result of unfettered capitalism, but they've just voted for even less fettered capitalism.
Many people on the right seem to love the take that Trump's success is down to the impoverishment and disempowerment of the working class. But they only love it so long as it remains a take. If a politician was to come along with a policy platform to address it (proper universal state-funded healthcare, say, and economic measures that prioritised labour over capital) they'd run a million miles. It'd suddenly be a case "oh no no no, didn't mean that!"
Although I'm not normally a big Bernie Sanders fan, I think he is spot-on with his critique of the Harris campaign.
Given the difficulty all incumbents face, the Dems only chance was an authentic working-class candidate, distanced from the Biden administration, who would focus on the economics, and trash the Trumpists as money-stealing oligarchs. The more lurid the charges the better. Fight fire with fire.
Instead they presented Trump's ideal candidate - Hillary Mk 2.
Retained EU legislation which the tories kept after Brexit.
Actually, it doesn't appear that it was. Also, note the contribution to delay as well as the cost.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/nov/07/cost-of-shed-to-protect-bat-colony-near-hs2-has-topped-100m-chair-says ...He said the “bat shed” was his favourite example of the problems caused. Thompson said the Bechstein’s bat was not protected elsewhere and “generally pretty available in most of northern Europe, western Europe. But nevertheless, under the Wildlife Act, 1981, it’s deemed to be a protected species in the UK, this bat, even though there’s lots of them.”
Thomson added: “No evidence, by the way, that high speed trains interfere with bats, but leave it on one side.”
HS2 had to obtain a licence from Natural England, which approved the bat mitigation structure, before asking planning permission from Buckinghamshire county council, he said.
“So when we go to [the] council and say: ‘Would you like to give us planning permission for this blot on the landscape that costs £100m’, of course, the answer to that is, you’ve got to be joking, right? Why would [they] like this eyesore?
“So now I’ve got two different bodies. One says I have to do it. The other one says: ‘No chance’. So what do you do? I reach for the lawyers and the environmental specialists and hydrologists and so on and so forth. It stretches out the time. I spend hundreds of thousands of pounds trying to do something, and then in the end, I win the planning commission by going over [the county council’s] head.”..
They are definitely a European protected species.
If you make a clearing in a woodland to put a railway through, they will almost certainly fly up and down it.
However - for £100m you could do some serious habitat restoration elsewhere. Would using even a 1/10th of that to plant or manage some woodland for bats elsewhere be better than some ridiculously expensive bodge that might save a few individuals?
In our French house this summer we woke up hearing flapping noises, which initially we thought were outside as the window was open. Not so: there was a bat flying around our bedroom.
Then we noticed there were two. Then a third, flapping around the staircase.
The process of removing flying bats from a bedroom with 2 small windows and a staircase with none is, believe me, lengthy, arduous, and rather comical.
Don't you just wait until they stop flying around and hang upside down somewhere to sleep?
When I've had that we just open a route out, and leave them to it. It's nice when the lost creature has 'radar'. It's only happened a few time, but they are well able to find a top window which is open.
Why are UK voting patterns so different to the US? Housing costs? Social media?
The abortion thing appears to be a mirage. Astonishing pro-Trump figures for young women. Leapords, faces?
Abortion is not the only thing which is of interest to women.
From yesterday's thread -
""I was convinced the assaults on women’s rights would be sufficient to push Harris over the line. I was obviously badly wrong."
What a lot of posters on here have missed is the fact there were other assaults on women's rights in the US in recent years - not just in relation to abortion - and the Democrats were behind them: male rapists and other sex offenders in women's prisons, men competing in women's sports for instance and the Title IX changes (the subject of various legal claims in recent months). In one of his last rallies Trump had on stage a women's college volleyball team who had forfeited a match by refusing to play against a team with men in it. The female captain had previously made a heartfelt speech about why having men in women's sports was wrong and against the patronising condescension of the sports authorities. Sport may seem insignificant to us here but in US colleges sports scholarships are valuable and adopting policies which disadvantage women is going to annoy some.
Point is - women have not been well served by either party. The assumption that their votes automatically belong to one party or another is patronising and ignores that women have different views and interests.
FWIW I would not have ever voted for Trump. But if the Democrats do not look properly at what they did and got wrong they will be out of power for more than 4 years. Same for the Tories here. Serious self-reflection is needed."
Looks as if Dem Senate candidates have won MI, WI, AZ and NV - all states Trump won (or appears to have won).
In PA, Dem Senate candidate is currently 0.4% behind and race not yet called (Trump won by 1.9%).
So Dem Senate candidates significantly outperforming Harris across all key states - and Dems would have been within wafer thin margin of winning Presidency if based on Senate votes.
Bryson Dechambeau, the well-known golf player, was part of Trump's victory do.
May he get the yips and never win another tournament.
Nice to see you've changed that avatar.
Where are the beans ??!!
They'll be back but I'm not exactly full of them atm.
Well done you for showing up after the election result. Not everyone, after making such a monumental tool of themselves, would have returned so soon after the event.
A few hours kip works wonders.
To be fair it's 72,701,692 (and counting) people over the pond who've made tools of themselves. Except, no, that is not fair. It's victim blaming. Donald Trump is a conman extraordinaire.
In any case it's their prerogative, isn't it. It was a free and fair election and this is who they want as their president. Just as individuals have the right to make bad choices so do countries.
Well that's as maybe but on this site we are supposed to bring dispassionate and incisive analysis to these kind of situations so I'm ever so slightly disappointed to see that you are trying to blame others for your failure in this regard.
I'm not sure that @kinabalu did make a "monumental tool" of himself. He thought Kamala would win. She did not. It's an error but it reaches the threshold for "well that was a bit dumb", not "you're a monumental tool".
Kinabalu had been very vocal, for a very long time, about his confidence that Trump wouldn't be a candidate in the election that he's now won.
I think he knows that it's fair he receives a bit of ribbing for that now.
To be honest, I wouldn't call that a "bit of ribbing".
That 18 to 29 year old men category and I’ve noticed this with even kids of parents I know here .
Whether we like to accept it or not , the view that women are too powerful now and men feel de-masculated is out there .
Oh get real: women can't even ask for - let alone get - a single sex changing room without being accused, including by many on here, of bigotry, etc.,. Too much power, my arse. If men's idea of being a real man is to disrespect and control and bully women, then it is long past the time for men of all ages, to learn different.
The amount of young men being thrilled has really caught me by surprise. Trump clearly appeals to these people on the economy and other issues. It seems like going on Rogan etc was a touch of genius - assuming that is what has helped him reach these people.
I also wonder how if some of that is a rejection of Harris basically saying “vote for me, I am a woman” and almost taking those voters for granted.
I'm not surprised. It's a push back from young American men, especially white and Latino ones, who get told everything is their fault by women on TV and social media. There's been a drip, drip of poison that has made men on America feel emasculated and powerless in what they now feel is a system rigged against their success. Why would they vote for a woman who they feel was not only part of this emasculation process but also will speed it up?
A golden rule in life: whatever goes wrong, it's always women to blame.
Is Trump really going to deport millions of people including US citizens? How? If he even tried I don't see how that won't lead to appalling violence - as well as legal challenges. Are they going to be detained in camps?
This seems to be the most appalling tragedy in the making. Interested what US-based posters think of this.
Bryson Dechambeau, the well-known golf player, was part of Trump's victory do.
May he get the yips and never win another tournament.
Nice to see you've changed that avatar.
Where are the beans ??!!
They'll be back but I'm not exactly full of them atm.
Well done you for showing up after the election result. Not everyone, after making such a monumental tool of themselves, would have returned so soon after the event.
A few hours kip works wonders.
To be fair it's 72,701,692 (and counting) people over the pond who've made tools of themselves. Except, no, that is not fair. It's victim blaming. Donald Trump is a conman extraordinaire.
In any case it's their prerogative, isn't it. It was a free and fair election and this is who they want as their president. Just as individuals have the right to make bad choices so do countries.
Well that's as maybe but on this site we are supposed to bring dispassionate and incisive analysis to these kind of situations so I'm ever so slightly disappointed to see that you are trying to blame others for your failure in this regard.
I'm not sure that @kinabalu did make a "monumental tool" of himself. He thought Kamala would win. She did not. It's an error but it reaches the threshold for "well that was a bit dumb", not "you're a monumental tool".
Kinabalu had been very vocal, for a very long time, about his confidence that Trump wouldn't be a candidate in the election that he's now won.
I think he knows that it's fair he receives a bit of ribbing for that now.
Rib away. But only if we mix in some fulsome praise for my predicting (and betting) that there'd be no Biden/Trump rematch when it was trading as a virtual cert at 1.1.
Yeah, I was wrong about Biden. I didn't think he'd let himself be pushed aside.
I bet he's regretting it now though.
I wouldn't worry. He'll have forgotten it in five minutes
The amount of young men being thrilled has really caught me by surprise. Trump clearly appeals to these people on the economy and other issues. It seems like going on Rogan etc was a touch of genius - assuming that is what has helped him reach these people.
I also wonder how if some of that is a rejection of Harris basically saying “vote for me, I am a woman” and almost taking those voters for granted.
I'm not surprised. It's a push back from young American men, especially white and Latino ones, who get told everything is their fault by women on TV and social media. There's been a drip, drip of poison that has made men on America feel emasculated and powerless in what they now feel is a system rigged against their success. Why would they vote for a woman who they feel was not only part of this emasculation process but also will speed it up?
That late TV ad with women winking at each other as they voted the opposite way from their husbands probably didn't do them any favours with male voters, either.
Women: Know Your Place.
The idea anyone should expect a woman to vote as she's told by her husband, or the same way, is sickening.
Nobody would expect a man to vote as his wife tells him to.
I don't know how my wife votes, although I "insist" that she does (she was a non-voter before marriage, I can now get her to reluctantly come to the polling station with me). For all I know she just writes "none of the above" across the ballot paper.
However, it's fair to say that putting out ads that basically say "we think your husband is a lying controlling scumbag if he votes for Trump, so vote for us" may not have quite the desired effect.
See that makes you a controlling male arsehole....you insist she votes how fucking dare you?
Comments
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildlife_and_Countryside_Act_1981
And we had our own similar legislation predating that.
I think that, just as with the birds killed by wind turbines, these are deaths that I would categorise as inevitable but marginal. They're not likely to make the difference between the survival or otherwise of a species. Water or air pollution, which could affect an entire food chain in an area, is a much higher risk, for example.
We need to keep things in proportion.
As I said at the start, it's a choice - and not a good one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_states_and_blue_states
Then we noticed there were two. Then a third, flapping around the staircase.
The process of removing flying bats from a bedroom with 2 small windows and a staircase with none is, believe me, lengthy, arduous, and rather comical.
(I have long suspected that they chose to do so, because "red" has negative connotations for most Americans. And most journalists really don't like Republicans.)
For the record: Some Democrats would better be described as greens.
Taking the piss out of the Harris campaign isn't going to sustain them through four years of government, though. The terms of the argument change, the moment Trump takes office.
There is a lot of legislation to do with saving individuals on a development site rather than looking more generally at habitat management.
Biodiversity Net Gain was supposed to be a partial solution for this, but DEFRA have made it a nightmare.
The polls are tied having moved towards Trump in the last few weeks. Trump probably has a PV to EC advantage. Therefore the betting is rational in making him the fav. Nevertheless I think the betting has it wrong. I’ve long thought America would never reelect Donald Trump because he’s palpably unfit to be president. I still think that. You can talk all you like about the economy and the border, Biden’s approval rating, about demographics, men v women, young v old, college degree or not, black, white, hispanic, sunbelt rustbelt, yada yada, it’s great, it’s what makes US elections such a blast, but at the end of the day the fundamental question is, knowing what they know, having seen what they’ve seen, will the American people put this guy back in the WH? It’s a no. I’m not as confident as the likes of MarqueMark but I am confident. Kamala Harris will win and it won’t be that close.
LOL
We're told that there were many posters who were wholly confident that Trump would win but were "too scared" to say so. PB is a nest of lefty vipers, apparently.
Just as here Starmer put on a mere 1.5% from Labour's 2019 voteshare in July but won a landslide with FPTP due to the economic impact of inflation and rising interest rates after the Truss budget and the division on the right between Sunak Tories and Boris loyalists joining Farage in Reform
France isn't America's oldest ally.
The alliance treaty between France and the US (imaginatively named the Treaty of Alliance) was annulled by the Adams administration in 1798. The French and Americans then engaged in a quasi-war from 1798-1800, hardly the behaviour of allies, and didn't resume an alliance until after the Second World War (during WWI, the US was an associated power, not an ally).
France may have been the US's first ally, but that's not the same thing and not at all relevant now. However this hoary old chestnut might be the oldest urban myth about the United States.
The Greens are (were) in a coalition with the FDP at the national level, and the FDP and Greens are further apart than Greens and CDU in most ways.
If Söder can be persuaded to drop his objections, it would in many ways be easier for the CDU to go into coalition with the Greens than the SPD. But sure the Greens might be unwilling - depends on what they were offered.
..According to another source, in 1976, John Chancellor, the anchorman for NBC Nightly News, asked his network's engineers to construct a large illuminated map of the United States. The map was placed in the network's election-night news studio. If Jimmy Carter, the Democratic candidate that year, won a state, it was lit in red whereas if Gerald Ford, the incumbent Republican president, won a state, it was lit in blue. It was said that Roy Wetzel, then the newly minted general manager of NBC’s election unit, justified the color scheme of blue for Republicans and red for Democrats for a simple reason: "Great Britain. Without giving it a second thought, we said blue for conservatives, because that’s what the parliamentary system in London is, red for the more liberal party. And that settled it. We just did it. Forget all that communist red stuff. It didn’t occur to us. When I first heard it, I thought, ‘Oh, that’s really silly.’” The feature proved to be so popular that, four years later, all three major television networks used colors to designate the states won by the presidential candidates, though not all using the same color scheme. NBC continued its color scheme (blue for Republicans) until 1996. NBC newsman David Brinkley referred to the 1980 election map outcome showing Republican Ronald Reagan's 44-state landslide in blue as resembling a "suburban swimming pool".
Since the 1984 election, CBS has used the opposite scheme: blue for Democrats, red for Republicans. ABC used yellow for Republicans and blue for Democrats in 1976, then red for Republicans and blue for Democrats in 1980, 1984, and 1988. In 1980, when John Anderson had a relatively well publicized campaign as an independent candidate, at least one network indicated provisionally that they would use yellow if he were to win a state. Similarly, at least one network would have used yellow to indicate a state won by Ross Perot in 1992 and 1996, though neither of them did claim any states in any of these years...
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/10277510/Syria-John-Kerry-slaps-Britain-in-face-as-he-calls-France-oldest-allies.html
https://x.com/daniel_freund/status/1854540943363318245
The reality is that we are making ourselves poor by regulations, and the associated armies of the clipboard wielding who spend our money on fighting each other over their mutually incompatible aims.
I don’t think this is true."
"Very few voters, in other words, actually chose to make the devil’s bargain described above. They didn’t embrace authoritarianism as the lesser evil than the price of eggs. The price of eggs was simply real to them, while Trump’s authoritarianism was not."
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/no-honeymoon-for-trumpism?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
I don't think anyone truly knew what as going on, and there's a heck of a lot of wishcasting going on. Guesswork everywhere, most of it uneducated.
The polls were TCTC so it wasn't "making a call". It was lefty virtue signalling and wishcasting. A fatal, unprofitable, and monumentally toolish move.
See also: Rory Stewart.
Blaming and trying to guilt trip over 50% of the population for voting the wrong way won't help get them back on board. Also not great for your ratings either.
I bet he's regretting it now though.
See paradises like North Korea, Venezuela and the old Soviet Union.
(Unfortunately, with the current government, the above comment is less satire than a statement of economic policy).
He maybe regrets having tried to run at-all this time; I'm not sure anything could have won this election for the Dems, but their best hope would have been a proper primary, and a fresh, moderate face.
I called Starmer though when people here were saying he’d have to resign over a curry.
Whether the Democrats succeed or not in 2028 depends more on the economic impact of that than who their candidate is.
Don't they realise that this will continue forevermore until they start showing some humility?
He'd probably have lost by even more but he'll feel vindicated about Harris.
I think his campaign over several months would have turned out to have been "garbage", cubed.
Plus, it was who Trump was geared up to meet. He would have been even more brutal than he was about Harris.
You have to stop the State doing stupid and unnecessary stuff, like this, without throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
We have an absolutist approach written into law and regulations on birds, bats and badgers that do vast economic damage but it needs immense intelligence and care to go through it all to reform it without creating a total free for all.
But, be done it must.
Interpreting them in the light of polling that consistently had women breaking way more for Harris and at rates way in advance of the normal 3-4% margin women historically vote more than men was sound enough.
The polling just missed the sheer scale of men voting for Trump. Was I made to look a fool? Sure. Was it purely "lefty virtue signalling and wishcasting"? Sure, cuz that really who I am.... (Rolls eyes heavanwards....)
https://x.com/FrankLuntz/status/1854331598113505413
===
It's snake oil but a potent brew.
NEW THREAD
As I've said multiple times before HS2's problem is that the Government continually interfered rather than telling people that this is what we are doing and the people impacts have been suitable recompensed. Instead Cheryl Gillan added £10bn to the bill for zero real benefit...
Those night late talk shows used to be universal watching in America.
Plus wrt "early voting numbers", I hear that the first 9 metres of a 10 metre fall are entirely pain free.
The fact that the judges will be educated middle-class and have some natural sympathy with some of the claimants and their politics might make it easier for them to see their point of view, but that's not the point. Unless you write in: "take measures as far as reasonably practical to avoid X, Y, Z on this species, but taking into account due consideration of the proportionation to the benefit and economic cost" instead of "you must take all reasonable measures possible to avoid any impact" (OK I'm not a lawyer) then you've got your man.
English law and regulation is now full of stuff like this. Agencies to police it (who have absolutely no incentive to do anything other than enforce compliance) and judges (who must rule in accordance with the law).
The problem is the law, and to a lesser extent the funding/zeal of the regulatory policing.
I don't think he knows he would have done worse. Not in the slightest. If he genuinely thought he wasn't up to it he would have stood down from the Presidency as well as the nomination and Harris would be President.
One of the reasons Biden's Presidency was in some ways a better Presidency than Obama's is that he is a consensus politician willing to compromise. It's why he passed his legislation. It's why he reluctantly listened to those who told him not to run in 2016 and again this year.
The much bigger cost will actually be from other projects. Wound you invest in the equipment and staff required for a massive tidal pond in the knowledge it might randomly get cancelled by someone like Sunak? A SMR? A battery plant?
The reason other countries can get this so cheap is because there is a constant programme of investment that is immune to shite decisions from politicians. This is particularly the case with rail electrification. In Edinburgh, why the fuck have we downed tools on the tram instead of slowly but steadily building a few miles a year? A smaller, cheaper, local workforce that develops deep technical expertise and job security over time.
We are told that it *must* costs 100s of millions to do it.
Except that I have participated in a volunteer effort at a smaller museum, where they simply photographed (this was pre mobile - used a digital camera) and created a database of the artefacts on a piece by piece basis. Took years, but it's done now.
I know that such as a project won't have a head of inclusion, a Norman Foster building and provide high paid employment for people who know fuck all about museums, to manage. I understand these things are vital to some people.
But these are the people whose hearts I want to break.
https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2024/11/06/2024-election-results-live-coverage-updates-analysis/bernie-sanders-election-response-00187980
Given the difficulty all incumbents face, the Dems only chance was an authentic working-class candidate, distanced from the Biden administration, who would focus on the economics, and trash the Trumpists as money-stealing oligarchs. The more lurid the charges the better. Fight fire with fire.
Instead they presented Trump's ideal candidate - Hillary Mk 2.
If they need to be caught, it's a butterfly net.
I'm sure @MarqueeMark could help.
From yesterday's thread -
""I was convinced the assaults on women’s rights would be sufficient to push Harris over the line. I was obviously badly wrong."
What a lot of posters on here have missed is the fact there were other assaults on women's rights in the US in recent years - not just in relation to abortion - and the Democrats were behind them: male rapists and other sex offenders in women's prisons, men competing in women's sports for instance and the Title IX changes (the subject of various legal claims in recent months). In one of his last rallies Trump had on stage a women's college volleyball team who had forfeited a match by refusing to play against a team with men in it. The female captain had previously made a heartfelt speech about why having men in women's sports was wrong and against the patronising condescension of the sports authorities. Sport may seem insignificant to us here but in US colleges sports scholarships are valuable and adopting policies which disadvantage women is going to annoy some.
Point is - women have not been well served by either party. The assumption that their votes automatically belong to one party or another is patronising and ignores that women have different views and interests.
FWIW I would not have ever voted for Trump. But if the Democrats do not look properly at what they did and got wrong they will be out of power for more than 4 years. Same for the Tories here. Serious self-reflection is needed."
In PA, Dem Senate candidate is currently 0.4% behind and race not yet called (Trump won by 1.9%).
So Dem Senate candidates significantly outperforming Harris across all key states - and Dems would have been within wafer thin margin of winning Presidency if based on Senate votes.
** Sarcasm alert **
This seems to be the most appalling tragedy in the making. Interested what US-based posters think of this.