Voters under 30 are at 65% approval of the Trump transition
The significance of this shouldn't be underestimated. It's the under-30s who are most enthusiastic about Trump 2.0. Labout won't be able to count on the youth vote in the next election.
Some on the right people are weirdly obsessed about Starmer. Beneath it all I think they’re trying to process how it was that Starmer defeated them in July. He doesn’t care about Xmas movies and likes ham! Omg. How can that be.
I thought he was a vegetarian.
No he’s not. But is there anything wrong if he was?
He was a vegetarian. Then he came out as a pescatarian this year. Now he cooks meat most Saturdays.
There's nothing there - the guy is a human vacuum.
I'm a vegetarian but cook meat several times a week. It's called having a family.
There's also (wince) vegetarian ham.
No there isn't.
Sadly, there is.
Find me a definition of ham which includes the option for it to be a non-meat product.
Or are we in tall-short black-white territory because it's your truth.
No, it's worse than that.
"Quorn Vegetarian Ham Slices"...
I continue to find it amusing that whichever brand people it was decided to use the name of one of the most distinguised fox hunts in the UK for their non-meat veggie products.
Should we avoid Quorn Hunters' Chicken because it has a distinctly foxy taste?
Surely there isn't a Quorn Hunters Chicken.
*Google*
Blimey there is. They are having a larf. That or the Quorn (foodstuff) CEO is an avid foxhunter and is trolling the veggies.
Something ridiculous like 30% of all people with my surname live in and around Quorn. There’s even a street named after us. I’ve not been there myself but my father has, on a self-guided DIY who-do-you-think-you-are expedition that also took in Liverpool, London and Cologne.
My ancestor, a stout Yeoman of Quorn, was lucky enough to employ the several times winner of the local ploughing competition back in the 17th century. That’s about as exciting as the WDYTYA revelations got.
Late to the party, but the main thread header seems to smack of a tremendous amount of hindsight. Criticising Walz, who in August and September was an inspired choice (said many on here) seems to be a significant error. There was nothing wrong with Walz.
The real answer lies (ha!) in Trump, who simply lies and lies and lies and says what he thinks people want to hear.
Enough people either believed the entirety of the lie, or believed he was lying about only certain parts that they felt he was the safe choice.
The real answer was almost given by Abraham Lincoln some 160 odd years ago. He started,
"You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time." Before concluding with "But you can't fool all of the people all of the time."
He finished wrong. He should have said, "And in a First Past the Post system, with a bit of luck, a bit of voter suppression and a bit of Gerrymandering, that's good enough to win all the time, every time."
It remains to be seen whether the man who promised that Christains only have to vote 'just once more' is good to his word, because I believe he will be. The United States might run a 2028 election, but it'll be more like Trump's mate Putin style election than a free and fair one we might expect.
Trump would need 2/3 of the Congress and 2/3 of the States to back a constitutional amendment to allow him to run for a third term which is highly unlikely especially given likely Democratic gains in the 2026 midterms
I’m not predicting it would happen, but he could get a majority of the Supreme Court to rule that the term limit doesn’t apply in his case. The Supreme Court have already said some pretty ridiculous things in order to serve Trump’s whims. They’ve already made him above the law.
How? The 22nd Amendment says clearly 'No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once'
The SC can interpret the constitution in a conservative fashion, they can't however override what it says clearly and explicitly in black and white
It says you can't be elected. It doesn't say you can't be inaugurated, or that you're ineligible to be President, or that you can't be nominated. You just can't be elected.
So, he could have his name on the ballot and it would be 75 million Americans voting for him who would be defying the Constitution. I could see the Supreme Court declining to override the wishes of the voters in that circumstance.
His name couldn't be on the ballot by definition as that would be standing for election. Given the 2026 midterms would likely see Democrats win back Congress they would of course immediately move to impeach Trump if that was even attempted
I appreciate you're trying to hope against hope that the rules somehow apply to Trump, but I think you're pissing into the wind here.
If Trump is alive, and wants to 'run', then he will. The US Constitution will be yesterdays fish paper faster than you can say, "President for Life".
I've been fairly critical of Starmer on here, but if this conversation is an example of the best the 'Conservatives' can do, then he's going to be PM for many, many decades.
He can eat what he wants.
But if this was Boris, you'd say he was incapable of telling the truth on any subject.
From summer 2024, after saying he forced his kids to be vegetarian until 10:
“We don’t have meat or fish in the house, we don’t cook it...'
The ex-vegetarian, ex-pescatarian is now saying he cooks meat (ham) and fish as his staple dish on a Saturday after observing his Jewish family evening, that's really important on the Friday.
In the scheme of things it really isn't important. But we can add this to not dreaming, no favourite book, no favourite poem, no favourite christmas movie, no phobias and so on. There is no substance to the man, he's soulless.
So?
A man who has a maelstrom of evil where his soul should be has just won a simply huge election. (C'mon, even if you think Trump is an effective man, he's not a good man, is he?)
It's the lived economy, stupid. And always is. If people's lived experience is better in 2028/9 than it is now, Labour win no matter what the weaknesses of their candidate. You may think that they are going the wrong way about that, but that's for them to decide, not us.
And until the government decide to call an election, there is pretty much nothing their opponents can do about it. In the same way that Johnson survived partygate and was only deposed by his MPs when a different set of lies ("putting a sex pest in as their HR manager"gate) directly affected them.
"Four more years of impotence and irrelevance" doesn't take long if you say it quickly.
(I'm not saying this is a good thing, but it is a thing.)
So? He's a man who it appears can no more tell the truth on a simple question than Boris. Most people would find it instructive.
Can a man with no imagination or soul really dig this country out of a hole, economic and otherwise, that it appears to be digging deeper into?
Are you saying that these things should not be discussed until shortly before the next election? Yet you are happy to bring Trump into it.
I fully understand that he will cling on for as long as he dearly can, as without imagination or a soul or fear, why wouldn't he. From a betting perspective, that he what this discussion site is about.
I've been fairly critical of Starmer on here, but if this conversation is an example of the best the 'Conservatives' can do, then he's going to be PM for many, many decades.
He can eat what he wants.
But if this was Boris, you'd say he was incapable of telling the truth on any subject.
From summer 2024, after saying he forced his kids to be vegetarian until 10:
“We don’t have meat or fish in the house, we don’t cook it...'
The ex-vegetarian, ex-pescatarian is now saying he cooks meat (ham) and fish as his staple dish on a Saturday after observing his Jewish family evening, that's really important on the Friday.
In the scheme of things it really isn't important. But we can add this to not dreaming, no favourite book, no favourite poem, no favourite christmas movie, no phobias and so on. There is no substance to the man, he's soulless.
So?
A man who has a maelstrom of evil where his soul should be has just won a simply huge election. (C'mon, even if you think Trump is an effective man, he's not a good man, is he?)
Oh get over yourself. He's just some bloke who got elected to POTUS. Talking about the thread header, the attempted demonisation of Trump is a contributory factor to his victory.
Agree with part of that. Yes, Trump won, them's the rules.
It's just that fitness for office has a lot less impact on getting elected to office than we mostly like to think.
Something to make PB's public-sector* antagonists' heads explode: just been trying to apply for paternity leave and it looks like the University now offers six weeks at full pay (to be taken in any combination within 12 months of birth). Last time I applied, in 2022, it was the standard two weeks, albeit with one week boosted to full pay and the other at statutory.
*actually private-sector, ish, depends how you see universities I guess.
ETA: I'll still be expected to meet the same targets in terms of publications and funding though, I'm sure!
25-30 days of leave is fairly standard in good private sector jobs. Working days that is - not including bank holidays.
He’s talking paternity leave not holiday.
Minimum for me would be 5 weeks and ideally 28/30 before bank holidays
I really can't think what anyone would do with that 5 weeks except drive your poor wife to distraction.
6 weeks.
If the birth goes well then, with my wife's parents nearby and supportive, 2-3 weeks is doable post-birth (I've generally taken the two weeks and then added just a few days annual leave to go up to a weekend, previously. But this will enable me to offer a lot more support over school holidays in the first few months where things that can be done with a baby in tow can be limited and the other three will get some quality time with us/me/my wife. It will be a headache fitting in that much leave with my pre-existing research grants though - ideally they'd automatically extend too, but it's not that simple and my team won't be taking equivalent time off.
I’d have taken off all the time I was allowed to. Not because I enjoy spending time with babies, but because looking after your first baby takes up literally all of one parent’s waking time, but that parent then has no time to look after themselves; that then becomes the job of the second parent. Looking after a subsequent baby is easier, but to counter that there are existing children to look after. This goes on for weeks on end. It doesn’t really stop being a massive joyless slog until you’re about 8 weeks in. (It’s less joyless the second and third time around because you have larger children to keep you distracted.) Babies are awful. Children are great, but babies are awful.
In all honesty, I disagree about babies being awful. The first few days are really hard until they get the hang of sleeping a bit, but I've very fond memories of paternity leave, particularly with our first. Two adults, one baby, nothing else going on - it really was quite a wondrous time. I remember us both watching TV with a sleeping baby during paternity leave and then pausing it for twenty minutes just to watch him as he went though the process of waking up, utterly mesmerised.
With subsequent babies it's been harder, number two in particular we didn't manage so well as we started off with me on the older child and my wife on the baby, which - breastfeeding - made some sense, but we both felt we were missing out, me on baby time and my wife on her relationship with our eldest. Third one we got a bit better at managing that. Hopefully this time we'll perfect it
On babies, I've known several men who don't really find much joy/connection in a baby before about six months, when they interact in more purposeful ways, but I've never felt that way.
ETA: I should note we've been reasonably lucky so far with babies and sleep. Waking has been mostly for feeding and sleep, after feeding, generally straightforward. With the odd run of terrible nights for teething or a bug, of course.
Aye, that was me. I'd say it took me at least two months to take some joy from my first - with whom I could start to interact more meaningfully - and longer with second and third, for whom unfortunately older siblings could always interact more meaningfully and rewardingly than they could.
None of mine slept very well. My oldest didn't sleep through the night more than once a week until she was two and a half. I think she was shamed into it by her younger sister who started doing so at about a year old. But my oldest was always relatively easy to settle, whereas when her younger sisters were awake they could be awake for hours. I remember colleagues telling me as I was emerging from this cadaverous eternity that I was a really bad avert for having children close together. Still, wouldn't change a thing.
Changing the rules so Trump could run again in 2028 would massively help the Democrats chances of victory.
Because the Democrat candidate would obviously be Obama (B), and he really would easily beat an 82 year old Trump.
Obama would lose to Vance in 2028.
Unlikely given Obama has higher net approval ratings than Vance.
Though of course if Trump's tariffs and tax cuts lead to a booming US economy and no massive price rises and new manufacturing jobs anything is possible
I would argue that Biden gave Kamala the border to look after because he knew she would fail. He intended to run again and ensured she would not be a threat to him.
Comments
Wait until he's actually in office.
If Trump is alive, and wants to 'run', then he will. The US Constitution will be yesterdays fish paper faster than you can say, "President for Life".
NEW THREAD
Can a man with no imagination or soul really dig this country out of a hole, economic and otherwise, that it appears to be digging deeper into?
Are you saying that these things should not be discussed until shortly before the next election? Yet you are happy to bring Trump into it.
I fully understand that he will cling on for as long as he dearly can, as without imagination or a soul or fear, why wouldn't he. From a betting perspective, that he what this discussion site is about.
It's just that fitness for office has a lot less impact on getting elected to office than we mostly like to think.
panem et circenses as the old saying goes.
None of mine slept very well. My oldest didn't sleep through the night more than once a week until she was two and a half. I think she was shamed into it by her younger sister who started doing so at about a year old. But my oldest was always relatively easy to settle, whereas when her younger sisters were awake they could be awake for hours. I remember colleagues telling me as I was emerging from this cadaverous eternity that I was a really bad avert for having children close together.
Still, wouldn't change a thing.
Though of course if Trump's tariffs and tax cuts lead to a booming US economy and no massive price rises and new manufacturing jobs anything is possible
I would argue that Biden gave Kamala the border to look after because he knew she would fail. He intended to run again and ensured she would not be a threat to him.