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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » COVID-19: It’s Not Your Fault

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  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    Stocky said:

    What odds should Trump be to win the popular vote? You can lay him at 4.8 with Bf (thin market admittedly). He`s got next to no chance has he?

    He's got a chance. Could go either way, those odds seem about right to me.
  • sarissasarissa Posts: 1,993

    I predict masks are going to be the new bog rolls in a month or two. And unlike bog roll, which was a distribution issue, there will be a long term shortage problem.

    I passed a closed shop the other day which had a sign in the window “No toilet rolls are stored on these premises”
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,149

    85k tests...Big John incoming in 5...4...3....2...1..

    Good evening

    No comment is required is it.
    If we waited for when a comment was required before making it I for one would have far fewer posts to my name.
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 28,482

    Here's the thing, you see. Michael Gove has probably done more for Holocaust education and the Jewish community in Britain than any senior politician other than Gordon Brown. It's obvious to anyone why he would have read the work of a Holocaust denier.

    Owen Jones, on the other hand, was an actual cheerleader for Jeremy Corbyn - a man described by one of his own MPs as a "racist antisemite". If Jones had his way, that same Jeremy Corbyn would be in Number Ten right now.

    Twitter can be annoying, infuriating and sometimes plain pointless. But sometimes it can reveal truths. And in one stupid tweet last night, Owen Jones confirmed a truth about himself and his fellow hard left travellers: that their true ideology is hypocrisy.

    https://www.thejc.com/comment/comment/one-stupid-tweet-by-owen-jones-confirms-all-you-need-to-know-about-the-hard-left-1.499433

    Who said anything about reading them? Displaying them on your bookshelf is a different thing.

    I think I have a video of Triumph of The Will kicking about in a trunk somewhere. The humiliation of having a shelf full of videotapes aside, I wouldn't be sticking it in a bookcase anytime. One of my favourite books is Memoirs of an Anti-Semite; in the unlikely event of me appearing on Zoom in front of my books, I'd think hard about displaying that due to the possibility of misinterpretation by the dumbasses that infest the world.
    Where else would one store a book?
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,226
    Stocky said:

    What odds should Trump be to win the popular vote? You can lay him at 4.8 with Bf (thin market admittedly). He`s got next to no chance has he?

    Safe as houses IMO. Might even do it.
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 119,675
    Fecking voodoo poll.
  • blairfblairf Posts: 98

    blairf said:

    The numbers on workers furloughed from HRMC are staggering. 6.3 million at a cost of GBP8bn.

    How many of those are going to walk back into work when that nice Mr Sunak takes his subsidies away?

    Many, many more than if the furlough wasn't there.
    it is what it is, what was done is done. getting them off furlough in the next two months is critical.
    Why?

    There's talk of 3 months potentially until social distancing ends in some businesses. Why would you end furlough in 2 months then end restrictions in 3?

    Furlough should end once we are back to normal.
    there is no money. none. we turned the engine off.

    without consumption directly employing shop workers, bar staff, hairdressers, dentists... there is less for bankers, insurers, accountants, property agents, IT professionals, advertising execs, cleaners, recruitment consultants... and so there is less for ... doctors, lawyers, teachers, nurses, soldiers, police people, social workers, bin men. And the reduced demand all round hits factory workers, builders, carpenters, delivery drivers.

    and we end up in the utter shit show we are in. we have to get to work and consuming.
  • BannedinnParisBannedinnParis Posts: 1,884

    85k tests...Big John incoming in 5...4...3....2...1..

    85k on a Sunday is mighty impressive.
    99 % sure you'll have people chasing weekend effect shadows.
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 52,608
    Alistair said:

    Own up, which one of you did it

    https://twitter.com/LadPolitics/status/1257329572124798977

    Shadsy is openly mocking people takin this bet.

    Surely, both sides of Congress would happily amend the Constitution if it prevented Trump and Biden being the only options in November?
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 119,675
    Fantastic news.

    Taika Waititi Confirmed To Direct New Star Wars Movie

    It’s May the 4th, and Disney wants to make all your dreams come true: Taika Waititi is officially making a new Star Wars movie. As confirmed by Disney and LucasFilm, the Kiwi filmmaker, fresh from helming the final episode of The Mandalorian Season 1, will be cooking up something else in the galaxy far, far away for the big screen – adding to his long, long list of upcoming projects.

    https://www.empireonline.com/movies/news/taika-waititi-confirmed-to-direct-new-star-wars-movie/
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 52,608
    malcolmg said:

    85k tests...Big John incoming in 5...4...3....2...1..

    85k on a Sunday is mighty impressive.
    you are easy pleased
    And you have never knowingly been pleased!
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 78,205
    Stocky said:

    What odds should Trump be to win the popular vote? You can lay him at 4.8 with Bf (thin market admittedly). He`s got next to no chance has he?

    It'll probably shorten when rural Indiana and Kentucky are even more lopsided than last time.
  • BannedinnParisBannedinnParis Posts: 1,884
    At the risk of being Off Topic, any more on that truly independent Shadow SAGE committee?
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 82,119

    Fantastic news.

    Taika Waititi Confirmed To Direct New Star Wars Movie

    It’s May the 4th, and Disney wants to make all your dreams come true: Taika Waititi is officially making a new Star Wars movie. As confirmed by Disney and LucasFilm, the Kiwi filmmaker, fresh from helming the final episode of The Mandalorian Season 1, will be cooking up something else in the galaxy far, far away for the big screen – adding to his long, long list of upcoming projects.

    https://www.empireonline.com/movies/news/taika-waititi-confirmed-to-direct-new-star-wars-movie/

    Baby Yoda - The Movie ?
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 82,119

    At the risk of being Off Topic, any more on that truly independent Shadow SAGE committee?

    It descended into ranting about Tories austerity killing babies.
  • noisywinternoisywinter Posts: 249

    Alistair said:

    Own up, which one of you did it

    https://twitter.com/LadPolitics/status/1257329572124798977

    Shadsy is openly mocking people takin this bet.

    Surely, both sides of Congress would happily amend the Constitution if it prevented Trump and Biden being the only options in November?
    Nothing to stop Obama serving as vice President, and indeed as president if the incumbent were to resign or have actuarial demise
  • rpjsrpjs Posts: 3,787

    Alistair said:

    Alistair said:

    Alistair said:

    Alistair said:

    Is a former two terms president ineligible to be elected to Congress?

    No. Only VP needs to be eligible to become President (I think).
    So Obama can still become president again then.
    Nope. Even if he got into the order of succession by reason of being elected to Congress, he would be eliminated from the said order of succession by his being elected president twice.
    Surely that cannot count as being elected president?
    Becoming President doesn't require election, it does require eligibility.
    But the 22nd only prohibits being elected president.
    You're right.
    However, the Presidential Succession Act of 1947 states that the order of succession to the Presidency in the event of a vacancy of both the President and Vice-President only applies to those constitutionally eligible to be elected President. So in the current administration, Elaine Chao, the Secretary of Transportation, could not succeed as she's a naturalized, not natural-born, US citizen. Even if Obama became Speaker of the House, President Pro-Tem of the Senate or one of the Cabinet officers designated by that statute as being in the line of succession, he could not succeed as he's ineligible to be elected as President again.

    I think the only way Obama could become POTUS again would be for the Vice-Presidency to fall vacant, POTUS to appoint Obama to be VP and a majority of both houses ratifying this, and the President to then die or resign.
  • Scrapheap_as_wasScrapheap_as_was Posts: 10,069
    edited May 2020
    Spurs' unbeaten run is one of the few positives currently.....
  • BannedinnParisBannedinnParis Posts: 1,884

    BigRich said:

    isam said:
    6th-8th March looks very significant - from 3 to pretty much 1.

    What happened there?
    This graph seems to show that lockdown has not made much difference
    Assuming that the graph is accurate in portraying those impacts, lockdown could still have saved countless lives.

    If the infection period is deemed to last about a week, then if R had stayed at 0.9 the number of new cases at the end of 8 weeks would still be about 43% of the level at the start. By contrast if R were consistently 0.7 it means that new cases would be reduced to about 6% of the original level. R was 0.9 when lockdown started and has declined to about 0.7 since then, although the decline has been gradual not immediate.

    Well there are 2 other factors that will have contribution to R falling gradually over the long term.

    1) Some people have now had the desise and therefor wont get it again, this is the start of the heard effect,

    2) The weather has been getting warmer, we don't know how big an impact this will have had, as I understand it most of this family of viruses are to some extent weather transmition affected, so this viruses may also be.
    I thought heat having a positive impact was debunked? That the virus could live on through temperatures well past those of a good old-fashioned English spring/summer.
    The only data out there I have seen was that to completely sterilise does appear to require very high temperatures.

    Warm weather and sunlight need only interfere with the virus and hinder its transmission to have a positive effect (for us).
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 119,675

    Fantastic news.

    Taika Waititi Confirmed To Direct New Star Wars Movie

    It’s May the 4th, and Disney wants to make all your dreams come true: Taika Waititi is officially making a new Star Wars movie. As confirmed by Disney and LucasFilm, the Kiwi filmmaker, fresh from helming the final episode of The Mandalorian Season 1, will be cooking up something else in the galaxy far, far away for the big screen – adding to his long, long list of upcoming projects.

    https://www.empireonline.com/movies/news/taika-waititi-confirmed-to-direct-new-star-wars-movie/

    Baby Yoda - The Movie ?
    I hope so.
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 51,878

    Fantastic news.

    Taika Waititi Confirmed To Direct New Star Wars Movie

    It’s May the 4th, and Disney wants to make all your dreams come true: Taika Waititi is officially making a new Star Wars movie. As confirmed by Disney and LucasFilm, the Kiwi filmmaker, fresh from helming the final episode of The Mandalorian Season 1, will be cooking up something else in the galaxy far, far away for the big screen – adding to his long, long list of upcoming projects.

    https://www.empireonline.com/movies/news/taika-waititi-confirmed-to-direct-new-star-wars-movie/

    Disney Star Wars is dire crap, apart from Captain Corelli's Mandalorian, allegedly.
  • bigjohnowlsbigjohnowls Posts: 22,676
    edited May 2020
    Hancock Test Track & Trace strategy

    TEST in the post lets count it

    On TRACK to meet a political target even though tens of thousands are not processed

    Not a TRACE of integrity

    Goodbye for today.

    CLP Accounts to 30.4.20 to do.
  • TGOHF666TGOHF666 Posts: 2,052

    Fantastic news.

    Taika Waititi Confirmed To Direct New Star Wars Movie

    It’s May the 4th, and Disney wants to make all your dreams come true: Taika Waititi is officially making a new Star Wars movie. As confirmed by Disney and LucasFilm, the Kiwi filmmaker, fresh from helming the final episode of The Mandalorian Season 1, will be cooking up something else in the galaxy far, far away for the big screen – adding to his long, long list of upcoming projects.

    https://www.empireonline.com/movies/news/taika-waititi-confirmed-to-direct-new-star-wars-movie/

    Disney Star Wars is dire crap, apart from Captain Corelli's Mandalorian, allegedly.
    Mando > any of the last Skywalker films.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 78,205

    # new cases seems a bit stubborn.

    That's because of increased testing. A few days ago I wouldn't have been able to get tested for my mild symptoms. We are just picking up people who would never have been tested before. The blue bars are on the old basis of hospital admissions plus health care workers, and seems to be steadily falling
    Have you had your test result back yet ?
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 52,608
    TGOHF666 said:

    Isle of Wight seeing the benefits of voting Conservative.

    Isle of Skye - well, if you will vote for the Ian Blackford...
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    blairf said:

    blairf said:

    The numbers on workers furloughed from HRMC are staggering. 6.3 million at a cost of GBP8bn.

    How many of those are going to walk back into work when that nice Mr Sunak takes his subsidies away?

    Many, many more than if the furlough wasn't there.
    it is what it is, what was done is done. getting them off furlough in the next two months is critical.
    Why?

    There's talk of 3 months potentially until social distancing ends in some businesses. Why would you end furlough in 2 months then end restrictions in 3?

    Furlough should end once we are back to normal.
    there is no money. none. we turned the engine off.

    without consumption directly employing shop workers, bar staff, hairdressers, dentists... there is less for bankers, insurers, accountants, property agents, IT professionals, advertising execs, cleaners, recruitment consultants... and so there is less for ... doctors, lawyers, teachers, nurses, soldiers, police people, social workers, bin men. And the reduced demand all round hits factory workers, builders, carpenters, delivery drivers.

    and we end up in the utter shit show we are in. we have to get to work and consuming.
    There's no consumption either way as people stay at home, that's why 30 million Americans have lost their jobs - with that starting before lockdown. There doesn't need to be consumption now either.

    £8 billion borrowed at 0.1% interest to keep millions from being made unemployed. Is that all its cost? So £80 million interest costs to protect the economy and save millions of jobs?

    Its worth remembering once more than in 1920 when there was no furlough or anything else nominal GDP fell by 20% in one year due to the pandemic and its aftermath. It took two decades and World War Two to start before nominal GDP returned to its 1920 level.
  • contrariancontrarian Posts: 5,818
    DavidL said:

    The numbers on workers furloughed from HRMC are staggering. 6.3 million at a cost of GBP8bn.

    How many of those are going to walk back into work when that nice Mr Sunak takes his subsidies away?

    I reckon something like 1m will be made redundant and maybe another million gig workers will find their contracts at an end. Which compared with the 30m jobs lost in the US is an incredibly good result.
    so four million workers when you add the extra universal credit claims right? is that really much better than the US proportionally?

    I would say given the government's dithering, which is killing the economy more every single day, 2m out of that six is a very conservative estimate.

    But we shall see.
  • rpjsrpjs Posts: 3,787

    BigRich said:

    isam said:
    6th-8th March looks very significant - from 3 to pretty much 1.

    What happened there?
    This graph seems to show that lockdown has not made much difference
    Assuming that the graph is accurate in portraying those impacts, lockdown could still have saved countless lives.

    If the infection period is deemed to last about a week, then if R had stayed at 0.9 the number of new cases at the end of 8 weeks would still be about 43% of the level at the start. By contrast if R were consistently 0.7 it means that new cases would be reduced to about 6% of the original level. R was 0.9 when lockdown started and has declined to about 0.7 since then, although the decline has been gradual not immediate.

    Well there are 2 other factors that will have contribution to R falling gradually over the long term.

    1) Some people have now had the desise and therefor wont get it again, this is the start of the heard effect,

    2) The weather has been getting warmer, we don't know how big an impact this will have had, as I understand it most of this family of viruses are to some extent weather transmition affected, so this viruses may also be.
    I thought heat having a positive impact was debunked? That the virus could live on through temperatures well past those of a good old-fashioned English spring/summer.
    The only data out there I have seen was that to completely sterilise does appear to require very high temperatures.

    Warm weather and sunlight need only interfere with the virus and hinder its transmission to have a positive effect (for us).
    It seems to have done quite a number of Guayaquil, Ecuador, though, where the average annual low is 22C/72F.
  • TGOHF666TGOHF666 Posts: 2,052

    TGOHF666 said:

    Isle of Wight seeing the benefits of voting Conservative.

    Isle of Skye - well, if you will vote for the Ian Blackford...
    Indeed.

    Or maybe its the (Westminster funded) bridge.
  • BannedinnParisBannedinnParis Posts: 1,884
    kle4 said:

    RobD said:
    That seems to misunderstand what they intended. Even being referred to as an alternative SAGE means it achieved what it wanted i presume.
    One might describe it as 'winning the argument'?
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 52,608

    blairf said:

    blairf said:

    The numbers on workers furloughed from HRMC are staggering. 6.3 million at a cost of GBP8bn.

    How many of those are going to walk back into work when that nice Mr Sunak takes his subsidies away?

    Many, many more than if the furlough wasn't there.
    it is what it is, what was done is done. getting them off furlough in the next two months is critical.
    Why?

    There's talk of 3 months potentially until social distancing ends in some businesses. Why would you end furlough in 2 months then end restrictions in 3?

    Furlough should end once we are back to normal.
    there is no money. none. we turned the engine off.

    without consumption directly employing shop workers, bar staff, hairdressers, dentists... there is less for bankers, insurers, accountants, property agents, IT professionals, advertising execs, cleaners, recruitment consultants... and so there is less for ... doctors, lawyers, teachers, nurses, soldiers, police people, social workers, bin men. And the reduced demand all round hits factory workers, builders, carpenters, delivery drivers.

    and we end up in the utter shit show we are in. we have to get to work and consuming.
    There's no consumption either way as people stay at home, that's why 30 million Americans have lost their jobs - with that starting before lockdown. There doesn't need to be consumption now either.

    £8 billion borrowed at 0.1% interest to keep millions from being made unemployed. Is that all its cost? So £80 million interest costs to protect the economy and save millions of jobs?
    £8m interest at 0.1% on £8 billion.
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 43,357

    Here's the thing, you see. Michael Gove has probably done more for Holocaust education and the Jewish community in Britain than any senior politician other than Gordon Brown. It's obvious to anyone why he would have read the work of a Holocaust denier.

    Owen Jones, on the other hand, was an actual cheerleader for Jeremy Corbyn - a man described by one of his own MPs as a "racist antisemite". If Jones had his way, that same Jeremy Corbyn would be in Number Ten right now.

    Twitter can be annoying, infuriating and sometimes plain pointless. But sometimes it can reveal truths. And in one stupid tweet last night, Owen Jones confirmed a truth about himself and his fellow hard left travellers: that their true ideology is hypocrisy.

    https://www.thejc.com/comment/comment/one-stupid-tweet-by-owen-jones-confirms-all-you-need-to-know-about-the-hard-left-1.499433

    Who said anything about reading them? Displaying them on your bookshelf is a different thing.

    I think I have a video of Triumph of The Will kicking about in a trunk somewhere. The humiliation of having a shelf full of videotapes aside, I wouldn't be sticking it in a bookcase anytime. One of my favourite books is Memoirs of an Anti-Semite; in the unlikely event of me appearing on Zoom in front of my books, I'd think hard about displaying that due to the possibility of misinterpretation by the dumbasses that infest the world.
    Where else would one store a book?
    loft , garage , etc
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 42,885
    edited May 2020
    TGOHF666 said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    Isle of Wight seeing the benefits of voting Conservative.

    Isle of Skye - well, if you will vote for the Ian Blackford...
    Indeed.

    Or maybe its the (Westminster funded) bridge.
    It was funded out of PFI - and the tolls hit the pockets of the local people and their visitors. Edit: Infamously so.

    Mind, there was no Scottish Parliament then.

  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 51,878

    TGOHF666 said:

    Isle of Wight seeing the benefits of voting Conservative.

    Isle of Skye - well, if you will vote for the Ian Blackford...
    10 months ago this week, we stayed for four nights on the Isle of Skye.
  • BannedinnParisBannedinnParis Posts: 1,884
    edited May 2020
    rpjs said:

    BigRich said:

    isam said:
    6th-8th March looks very significant - from 3 to pretty much 1.

    What happened there?
    This graph seems to show that lockdown has not made much difference
    Assuming that the graph is accurate in portraying those impacts, lockdown could still have saved countless lives.

    If the infection period is deemed to last about a week, then if R had stayed at 0.9 the number of new cases at the end of 8 weeks would still be about 43% of the level at the start. By contrast if R were consistently 0.7 it means that new cases would be reduced to about 6% of the original level. R was 0.9 when lockdown started and has declined to about 0.7 since then, although the decline has been gradual not immediate.

    Well there are 2 other factors that will have contribution to R falling gradually over the long term.

    1) Some people have now had the desise and therefor wont get it again, this is the start of the heard effect,

    2) The weather has been getting warmer, we don't know how big an impact this will have had, as I understand it most of this family of viruses are to some extent weather transmition affected, so this viruses may also be.
    I thought heat having a positive impact was debunked? That the virus could live on through temperatures well past those of a good old-fashioned English spring/summer.
    The only data out there I have seen was that to completely sterilise does appear to require very high temperatures.

    Warm weather and sunlight need only interfere with the virus and hinder its transmission to have a positive effect (for us).
    It seems to have done quite a number of Guayaquil, Ecuador, though, where the average annual low is 22C/72F.
    Oh I am sure there are trivial counter examples, but a reply citing the original French work on high temperature treatments will be taken much more seriously. Cheers!
  • rpjsrpjs Posts: 3,787
    edited May 2020

    blairf said:

    blairf said:

    The numbers on workers furloughed from HRMC are staggering. 6.3 million at a cost of GBP8bn.

    How many of those are going to walk back into work when that nice Mr Sunak takes his subsidies away?

    Many, many more than if the furlough wasn't there.
    it is what it is, what was done is done. getting them off furlough in the next two months is critical.
    Why?

    There's talk of 3 months potentially until social distancing ends in some businesses. Why would you end furlough in 2 months then end restrictions in 3?

    Furlough should end once we are back to normal.
    there is no money. none. we turned the engine off.

    without consumption directly employing shop workers, bar staff, hairdressers, dentists... there is less for bankers, insurers, accountants, property agents, IT professionals, advertising execs, cleaners, recruitment consultants... and so there is less for ... doctors, lawyers, teachers, nurses, soldiers, police people, social workers, bin men. And the reduced demand all round hits factory workers, builders, carpenters, delivery drivers.

    and we end up in the utter shit show we are in. we have to get to work and consuming.
    There's no consumption either way as people stay at home, that's why 30 million Americans have lost their jobs - with that starting before lockdown. There doesn't need to be consumption now either.

    £8 billion borrowed at 0.1% interest to keep millions from being made unemployed. Is that all its cost? So £80 million interest costs to protect the economy and save millions of jobs?

    Its worth remembering once more than in 1920 when there was no furlough or anything else nominal GDP fell by 20% in one year due to the pandemic and its aftermath. It took two decades and World War Two to start before nominal GDP returned to its 1920 level.
    US media over the weekend featured some small businesses who have been able to re-open over the last few days as their states ease their lockdowns, but are finding that, so far, virtually no-one wants to go out and patronize them anyway.
  • BannedinnParisBannedinnParis Posts: 1,884

    At the risk of being Off Topic, any more on that truly independent Shadow SAGE committee?

    It descended into ranting about Tories austerity killing babies.
    I AM SHOCKED
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826

    85k tests...Big John incoming in 5...4...3....2...1..

    85k on a Sunday is mighty impressive.
    99 % sure you'll have people chasing weekend effect shadows.
    In 24 hours we'll know.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,149
    edited May 2020

    kle4 said:

    RobD said:
    That seems to misunderstand what they intended. Even being referred to as an alternative SAGE means it achieved what it wanted i presume.
    One might describe it as 'winning the argument'?
    Not really. Winning the argument has some measurable related factors associated with it to judge if the person claiming is talking bullshit. This instance just needed them to get some publicity.
  • JohnLilburneJohnLilburne Posts: 6,259
    Pulpstar said:

    # new cases seems a bit stubborn.

    That's because of increased testing. A few days ago I wouldn't have been able to get tested for my mild symptoms. We are just picking up people who would never have been tested before. The blue bars are on the old basis of hospital admissions plus health care workers, and seems to be steadily falling
    Have you had your test result back yet ?
    No not yet. 72 hours and counting.
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 52,608
    This is a massively positive health story:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52530828
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 43,357
    TGOHF666 said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    Isle of Wight seeing the benefits of voting Conservative.

    Isle of Skye - well, if you will vote for the Ian Blackford...
    Indeed.

    Or maybe its the (Westminster funded) bridge.
    Meow, look a squirrel over there
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 52,608

    TGOHF666 said:

    Isle of Wight seeing the benefits of voting Conservative.

    Isle of Skye - well, if you will vote for the Ian Blackford...
    10 months ago this week, we stayed for four nights on the Isle of Skye.
    Have the midge bites gone down yet? :smiley:
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830
    Dave Greenfield: The Stranglers keyboard player dies at 71

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-52537293
  • TGOHF666TGOHF666 Posts: 2,052
    malcolmg said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    Isle of Wight seeing the benefits of voting Conservative.

    Isle of Skye - well, if you will vote for the Ian Blackford...
    Indeed.

    Or maybe its the (Westminster funded) bridge.
    Meow, look a squirrel over there
    Likely a red squirrel in Skye.
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 41,999

    Here's the thing, you see. Michael Gove has probably done more for Holocaust education and the Jewish community in Britain than any senior politician other than Gordon Brown. It's obvious to anyone why he would have read the work of a Holocaust denier.

    Owen Jones, on the other hand, was an actual cheerleader for Jeremy Corbyn - a man described by one of his own MPs as a "racist antisemite". If Jones had his way, that same Jeremy Corbyn would be in Number Ten right now.

    Twitter can be annoying, infuriating and sometimes plain pointless. But sometimes it can reveal truths. And in one stupid tweet last night, Owen Jones confirmed a truth about himself and his fellow hard left travellers: that their true ideology is hypocrisy.

    https://www.thejc.com/comment/comment/one-stupid-tweet-by-owen-jones-confirms-all-you-need-to-know-about-the-hard-left-1.499433

    Who said anything about reading them? Displaying them on your bookshelf is a different thing.

    I think I have a video of Triumph of The Will kicking about in a trunk somewhere. The humiliation of having a shelf full of videotapes aside, I wouldn't be sticking it in a bookcase anytime. One of my favourite books is Memoirs of an Anti-Semite; in the unlikely event of me appearing on Zoom in front of my books, I'd think hard about displaying that due to the possibility of misinterpretation by the dumbasses that infest the world.
    Where else would one store a book?
    Some of us less yahoo-ey types have more than one bookcase.
  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 60,216
    Asked about anti-vaxxers.....where's the editor of the Lancet?
  • TGOHF666TGOHF666 Posts: 2,052

    Here's the thing, you see. Michael Gove has probably done more for Holocaust education and the Jewish community in Britain than any senior politician other than Gordon Brown. It's obvious to anyone why he would have read the work of a Holocaust denier.

    Owen Jones, on the other hand, was an actual cheerleader for Jeremy Corbyn - a man described by one of his own MPs as a "racist antisemite". If Jones had his way, that same Jeremy Corbyn would be in Number Ten right now.

    Twitter can be annoying, infuriating and sometimes plain pointless. But sometimes it can reveal truths. And in one stupid tweet last night, Owen Jones confirmed a truth about himself and his fellow hard left travellers: that their true ideology is hypocrisy.

    https://www.thejc.com/comment/comment/one-stupid-tweet-by-owen-jones-confirms-all-you-need-to-know-about-the-hard-left-1.499433

    Who said anything about reading them? Displaying them on your bookshelf is a different thing.

    I think I have a video of Triumph of The Will kicking about in a trunk somewhere. The humiliation of having a shelf full of videotapes aside, I wouldn't be sticking it in a bookcase anytime. One of my favourite books is Memoirs of an Anti-Semite; in the unlikely event of me appearing on Zoom in front of my books, I'd think hard about displaying that due to the possibility of misinterpretation by the dumbasses that infest the world.
    Where else would one store a book?
    Some of us less yahoo-ey types have more than one bookcase.
    Do these luddites not own a Kindle ?
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 52,608

    Alistair said:

    Own up, which one of you did it

    https://twitter.com/LadPolitics/status/1257329572124798977

    Shadsy is openly mocking people takin this bet.

    Surely, both sides of Congress would happily amend the Constitution if it prevented Trump and Biden being the only options in November?
    Nothing to stop Obama serving as vice President, and indeed as president if the incumbent were to resign or have actuarial demise
    "Nothing to stop Obama serving as vice President"

    Exhibit A - the Supreme Court....
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    rpjs said:

    blairf said:

    blairf said:

    The numbers on workers furloughed from HRMC are staggering. 6.3 million at a cost of GBP8bn.

    How many of those are going to walk back into work when that nice Mr Sunak takes his subsidies away?

    Many, many more than if the furlough wasn't there.
    it is what it is, what was done is done. getting them off furlough in the next two months is critical.
    Why?

    There's talk of 3 months potentially until social distancing ends in some businesses. Why would you end furlough in 2 months then end restrictions in 3?

    Furlough should end once we are back to normal.
    there is no money. none. we turned the engine off.

    without consumption directly employing shop workers, bar staff, hairdressers, dentists... there is less for bankers, insurers, accountants, property agents, IT professionals, advertising execs, cleaners, recruitment consultants... and so there is less for ... doctors, lawyers, teachers, nurses, soldiers, police people, social workers, bin men. And the reduced demand all round hits factory workers, builders, carpenters, delivery drivers.

    and we end up in the utter shit show we are in. we have to get to work and consuming.
    There's no consumption either way as people stay at home, that's why 30 million Americans have lost their jobs - with that starting before lockdown. There doesn't need to be consumption now either.

    £8 billion borrowed at 0.1% interest to keep millions from being made unemployed. Is that all its cost? So £80 million interest costs to protect the economy and save millions of jobs?

    Its worth remembering once more than in 1920 when there was no furlough or anything else nominal GDP fell by 20% in one year due to the pandemic and its aftermath. It took two decades and World War Two to start before nominal GDP returned to its 1920 level.
    US media over the weekend featured some small businesses who have been able to re-open over the last few days as their states ease their lockdowns, but are finding that, so far, virtually no-one wants to go out and patronize them anyway.
    That's what I've been saying. If you turn off life support and turn the economy back on prematurely you won't suddenly see an economic recovery instead you'll see lots of businesses going bust.

    On the other hand if we keep furlough going a bit longer you might find that when restrictions and furlough ends then the economic recovery will be much more real.
  • MikeLMikeL Posts: 7,708
    edited May 2020
    Such a shame the rule isn't that you can't win more than two Presidential terms in a row.

    Surely the point is to prevent an incumbent going on and on - as an incumbent has an advantage in an election.

    It would also be great as a spectacle with Presidents going head to head.

    We would have had Bush v Clinton in 2004 (*) and Trump v Obama in 2020.

    (*) Clinton would have fought an election against a father and his son!
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,218

    Stocky said:

    What odds should Trump be to win the popular vote? You can lay him at 4.8 with Bf (thin market admittedly). He`s got next to no chance has he?

    He's got a chance. Could go either way, those odds seem about right to me.
    Agreed.

    We are, after all, a solid six months from the election.

    If he handles the rest of the CV-19 pandemic well, and manages to deflect blame onto the Chinese government, then it's entirely possible he will be more popular than Biden.

    At the same time, I worry the US is reopening too quickly, and we're going to see a terrible second wave in places like Georgia. To miss the first wave can be excused by it blindsiding us. To catch a bad second wave will look awfully like carelessness.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826

    Alistair said:

    Own up, which one of you did it

    https://twitter.com/LadPolitics/status/1257329572124798977

    Shadsy is openly mocking people takin this bet.

    Surely, both sides of Congress would happily amend the Constitution if it prevented Trump and Biden being the only options in November?
    Nothing to stop Obama serving as vice President, and indeed as president if the incumbent were to resign or have actuarial demise
    "Nothing to stop Obama serving as vice President"

    Exhibit A - the Supreme Court....
    Yeah that should have said nothing to stop George W Bush service as Vice President.
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 41,999
    TGOHF666 said:

    Here's the thing, you see. Michael Gove has probably done more for Holocaust education and the Jewish community in Britain than any senior politician other than Gordon Brown. It's obvious to anyone why he would have read the work of a Holocaust denier.

    Owen Jones, on the other hand, was an actual cheerleader for Jeremy Corbyn - a man described by one of his own MPs as a "racist antisemite". If Jones had his way, that same Jeremy Corbyn would be in Number Ten right now.

    Twitter can be annoying, infuriating and sometimes plain pointless. But sometimes it can reveal truths. And in one stupid tweet last night, Owen Jones confirmed a truth about himself and his fellow hard left travellers: that their true ideology is hypocrisy.

    https://www.thejc.com/comment/comment/one-stupid-tweet-by-owen-jones-confirms-all-you-need-to-know-about-the-hard-left-1.499433

    Who said anything about reading them? Displaying them on your bookshelf is a different thing.

    I think I have a video of Triumph of The Will kicking about in a trunk somewhere. The humiliation of having a shelf full of videotapes aside, I wouldn't be sticking it in a bookcase anytime. One of my favourite books is Memoirs of an Anti-Semite; in the unlikely event of me appearing on Zoom in front of my books, I'd think hard about displaying that due to the possibility of misinterpretation by the dumbasses that infest the world.
    Where else would one store a book?
    Some of us less yahoo-ey types have more than one bookcase.
    Do these luddites not own a Kindle ?
    Holocaust denial books do furnish a room.
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 52,608
    They really aren't mind-blowing, Laura. They are the consequence of a pandemic that risked killing at least 500,000 of us if we just shrugged and said "Meh - I'm off down the pub...."
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 119,675
    MikeL said:

    Such a shame the rule isn't that you can't win more than two Presidential terms in a row.

    Surely the point is to prevent an incumbent going on and on - as an incumbent has an advantage in an election.

    It would also be great as a spectacle with Presidents going head to head.

    We would have had Bush v Clinton in 2004 and Trump v Obama in 2020.

    Nah you'd have farces like the 2008 Russian presidential election all over again.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,370

    Here's the thing, you see. Michael Gove has probably done more for Holocaust education and the Jewish community in Britain than any senior politician other than Gordon Brown. It's obvious to anyone why he would have read the work of a Holocaust denier.

    Owen Jones, on the other hand, was an actual cheerleader for Jeremy Corbyn - a man described by one of his own MPs as a "racist antisemite". If Jones had his way, that same Jeremy Corbyn would be in Number Ten right now.

    Twitter can be annoying, infuriating and sometimes plain pointless. But sometimes it can reveal truths. And in one stupid tweet last night, Owen Jones confirmed a truth about himself and his fellow hard left travellers: that their true ideology is hypocrisy.

    https://www.thejc.com/comment/comment/one-stupid-tweet-by-owen-jones-confirms-all-you-need-to-know-about-the-hard-left-1.499433

    Who said anything about reading them? Displaying them on your bookshelf is a different thing.

    I think I have a video of Triumph of The Will kicking about in a trunk somewhere. The humiliation of having a shelf full of videotapes aside, I wouldn't be sticking it in a bookcase anytime. One of my favourite books is Memoirs of an Anti-Semite; in the unlikely event of me appearing on Zoom in front of my books, I'd think hard about displaying that due to the possibility of misinterpretation by the dumbasses that infest the world.
    Where else would one store a book?
    Some of us less yahoo-ey types have more than one bookcase.
    For some of us an empty wall, is the Call For Another Bookcase....
  • eristdooferistdoof Posts: 5,065
    An excellent main article, thank you. I'm guessing most of the PBers younger than me won't get the original reference for the "Mourning in America" video at the top. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EU-IBF8nwSY

    Although there is no rigid definition of Occam's razor, I prefer 'choose the simpler explanation' rather than 'choose the one with less assumptions'. The first version works much better with statistical and machine learning models, where "simpler explanation" becomes "model with less parameters", but also applies to the Wuhan Bat Hypothesis above.
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 41,999

    Here's the thing, you see. Michael Gove has probably done more for Holocaust education and the Jewish community in Britain than any senior politician other than Gordon Brown. It's obvious to anyone why he would have read the work of a Holocaust denier.

    Owen Jones, on the other hand, was an actual cheerleader for Jeremy Corbyn - a man described by one of his own MPs as a "racist antisemite". If Jones had his way, that same Jeremy Corbyn would be in Number Ten right now.

    Twitter can be annoying, infuriating and sometimes plain pointless. But sometimes it can reveal truths. And in one stupid tweet last night, Owen Jones confirmed a truth about himself and his fellow hard left travellers: that their true ideology is hypocrisy.

    https://www.thejc.com/comment/comment/one-stupid-tweet-by-owen-jones-confirms-all-you-need-to-know-about-the-hard-left-1.499433

    Who said anything about reading them? Displaying them on your bookshelf is a different thing.

    I think I have a video of Triumph of The Will kicking about in a trunk somewhere. The humiliation of having a shelf full of videotapes aside, I wouldn't be sticking it in a bookcase anytime. One of my favourite books is Memoirs of an Anti-Semite; in the unlikely event of me appearing on Zoom in front of my books, I'd think hard about displaying that due to the possibility of misinterpretation by the dumbasses that infest the world.
    Where else would one store a book?
    Some of us less yahoo-ey types have more than one bookcase.
    For some of us an empty wall, is the Call For Another Bookcase....
    Aye, if we're allowed!

    'Haven't you already read all these old books?'
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 119,675
    The accuracy of coronavirus tests used in Tanzania has been questioned by the country's president after a goat and a papaya both tested positive for the disease.

    President John Magufuli, whose government has already faced criticism over its handling of coronavirus outbreak and has previously asked people to pray the disease away, said the kits had "technical errors".

    https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-tanzania-testing-kits-questioned-after-goat-and-papaya-test-positive-11982864
  • eristdooferistdoof Posts: 5,065

    DavidL said:

    The numbers on workers furloughed from HRMC are staggering. 6.3 million at a cost of GBP8bn.

    How many of those are going to walk back into work when that nice Mr Sunak takes his subsidies away?

    I reckon something like 1m will be made redundant and maybe another million gig workers will find their contracts at an end. Which compared with the 30m jobs lost in the US is an incredibly good result.
    so four million workers when you add the extra universal credit claims right? is that really much better than the US proportionally?

    I would say given the government's dithering, which is killing the economy more every single day, 2m out of that six is a very conservative estimate.

    But we shall see.
    You just don't get it do you?
    The lockdown is working.
    The economy would be in a worse state if there were no lockdown and Covid-19 had run riot.
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 41,999
    Might incline me to watch a Star Wars dead horse being flogged, might not.

    https://twitter.com/DEADLINE/status/1257345002654621697?s=20
  • noisywinternoisywinter Posts: 249

    Alistair said:

    Own up, which one of you did it

    https://twitter.com/LadPolitics/status/1257329572124798977

    Shadsy is openly mocking people takin this bet.

    Surely, both sides of Congress would happily amend the Constitution if it prevented Trump and Biden being the only options in November?
    Nothing to stop Obama serving as vice President, and indeed as president if the incumbent were to resign or have actuarial demise
    "Nothing to stop Obama serving as vice President"

    Exhibit A - the Supreme Court....
    Don't think that is correct, check out Legal Eagles YouTube video on whether trump could serve a third term
  • eristdooferistdoof Posts: 5,065
    MikeL said:

    Such a shame the rule isn't that you can't win more than two Presidential terms in a row.

    Surely the point is to prevent an incumbent going on and on - as an incumbent has an advantage in an election.

    It would also be great as a spectacle with Presidents going head to head.

    We would have had Bush v Clinton in 2004 (*) and Trump v Obama in 2020.

    (*) Clinton would have fought an election against a father and his son!

    I can think of many US presidential clashes I'd like to see, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea.

    If there should be any change it would be to allow 3 consecutive terms not a comeback after a break.
  • mwadamsmwadams Posts: 3,596
    TGOHF666 said:

    Fantastic news.

    Taika Waititi Confirmed To Direct New Star Wars Movie

    It’s May the 4th, and Disney wants to make all your dreams come true: Taika Waititi is officially making a new Star Wars movie. As confirmed by Disney and LucasFilm, the Kiwi filmmaker, fresh from helming the final episode of The Mandalorian Season 1, will be cooking up something else in the galaxy far, far away for the big screen – adding to his long, long list of upcoming projects.

    https://www.empireonline.com/movies/news/taika-waititi-confirmed-to-direct-new-star-wars-movie/

    Disney Star Wars is dire crap, apart from Captain Corelli's Mandalorian, allegedly.
    Mando > any of the last Skywalker films.
    Agreed. Rogue One was also a good film, though. And they are all 30 million times better than Ep I-III.
  • ChrisChris Posts: 11,751
    eristdoof said:

    DavidL said:

    The numbers on workers furloughed from HRMC are staggering. 6.3 million at a cost of GBP8bn.

    How many of those are going to walk back into work when that nice Mr Sunak takes his subsidies away?

    I reckon something like 1m will be made redundant and maybe another million gig workers will find their contracts at an end. Which compared with the 30m jobs lost in the US is an incredibly good result.
    so four million workers when you add the extra universal credit claims right? is that really much better than the US proportionally?

    I would say given the government's dithering, which is killing the economy more every single day, 2m out of that six is a very conservative estimate.

    But we shall see.
    You just don't get it do you?
    The lockdown is working.
    The economy would be in a worse state if there were no lockdown and Covid-19 had run riot.
    Unfortunately, for some people, the fact that the lockdowns have prevented millions of deaths is proof that COVID-19 is "no worse than the flu" after all.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 71,225
    Conclusion shopping (from last week)...

    Trump Officials Are Said to Press Spies to Link Virus and Wuhan Labs
    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/30/us/politics/trump-administration-intelligence-coronavirus-china.html
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670

    At the risk of being Off Topic, any more on that truly independent Shadow SAGE committee?

    It descended into ranting about Tories austerity killing babies.
    This angle will be tough for the "economic effects of lockdown are killing people, we must reopen now" crowd to argue against.

    Unless they are goo g to go for, well those economic policies didn't kill anyone whilst these ones totally are.
  • blairfblairf Posts: 98
    eristdoof said:

    DavidL said:

    The numbers on workers furloughed from HRMC are staggering. 6.3 million at a cost of GBP8bn.

    How many of those are going to walk back into work when that nice Mr Sunak takes his subsidies away?

    I reckon something like 1m will be made redundant and maybe another million gig workers will find their contracts at an end. Which compared with the 30m jobs lost in the US is an incredibly good result.
    so four million workers when you add the extra universal credit claims right? is that really much better than the US proportionally?

    I would say given the government's dithering, which is killing the economy more every single day, 2m out of that six is a very conservative estimate.

    But we shall see.
    You just don't get it do you?
    The lockdown is working.
    The economy would be in a worse state if there were no lockdown and Covid-19 had run riot.
    except it wouldn't have if we hadn't arsed up the response. ref korea, thailand, japan, sweden, iceland, taiwan, and yes even china. we drove our economy off a cliff in a fit of panic fuelled by hysteria and rushed modelling. hey ho. we need to kick on. And that is accepting we are not ALL GOING TO DIE by going back to work

  • sarissasarissa Posts: 1,993

    Pulpstar said:

    Mr. Pulpstar, I was in China a year earlier. Whereabouts were you?

    I visited mostly Shanghai and Beijing.

    Went Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong, Xi'an (Horrendously polluted), Chengdu

    Here's me in Yangshuo :smile:

    />
    You're right about Xi'an. Fascinating, but I thought Beijing was badly polluted, until we went to Xi'an. We were there 2009.
    Better or worse than New Delhi? That is the only place I’ve seen pollution haze inside a building (the arrivals terminal).
  • TimTTimT Posts: 6,468
    Penddu2 said:

    I lived in Shanghai for one year - fantastic place.
    I visted Beijing - Forbidden City and Great Wall are...Great. But otherwise not up to much.
    I also visited Tianjing - filthy;
    Qingdao - great beer but otherwise - meh
    Jiangsu, QiDong nothing to report.
    Shandong area is interesting
    Guangshou ok



    I love Shanghai. Up there with London, New York, Hong Kong, Beirut and Istanbul in my book. Shenzhen - at least the coastal resort bits around Yantian - is pretty nice too
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830
    eristdoof said:

    An excellent main article, thank you. I'm guessing most of the PBers younger than me won't get the original reference for the "Mourning in America" video at the top. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EU-IBF8nwSY

    Although there is no rigid definition of Occam's razor, I prefer 'choose the simpler explanation' rather than 'choose the one with less assumptions'. The first version works much better with statistical and machine learning models, where "simpler explanation" becomes "model with less parameters", but also applies to the Wuhan Bat Hypothesis above.

    The trouble with it is that as used it usually conflicts with the dictum that "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler." Entertainingly, Occam himself used it to defend the existence of miracles, which most people probably think require a rather complicated explanation involving self-delusion and religious psychology rather than the pleasingly simple "God made it happen." Similarly, look at Father Christmas: either he exists, or Mummy and Daddy (known opponents of the telling of lies) have deliberately conspired to lie to us. Again, criminal law becomes very easy for prosecutors: look, members of the jury, the Defendant is in the dock. What is the most likely explanation of his getting there? Wood burns down to ashes which are so light they blow away: is it more likely that the loss of weight comes of losing something (phlogiston) or of combination with something (oxygen)? And for that matter: it makes people cough and gives them a fever, and kills off a lot of old people but others quite often recover. I say it's flu, you have introduced a new entity called covid 19. I win.

    It isn't a completely useless maxim, but it is a rough and ready rule of thumb, not a rule of logic which says that nothing is ever complicated or counterintuitive.

  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 62,766

    They really aren't mind-blowing, Laura. They are the consequence of a pandemic that risked killing at least 500,000 of us if we just shrugged and said "Meh - I'm off down the pub...."
    According to Ferguson's model.

    Others seem to be available.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    blairf said:

    eristdoof said:

    DavidL said:

    The numbers on workers furloughed from HRMC are staggering. 6.3 million at a cost of GBP8bn.

    How many of those are going to walk back into work when that nice Mr Sunak takes his subsidies away?

    I reckon something like 1m will be made redundant and maybe another million gig workers will find their contracts at an end. Which compared with the 30m jobs lost in the US is an incredibly good result.
    so four million workers when you add the extra universal credit claims right? is that really much better than the US proportionally?

    I would say given the government's dithering, which is killing the economy more every single day, 2m out of that six is a very conservative estimate.

    But we shall see.
    You just don't get it do you?
    The lockdown is working.
    The economy would be in a worse state if there were no lockdown and Covid-19 had run riot.
    except it wouldn't have if we hadn't arsed up the response. ref korea, thailand, japan, sweden, iceland, taiwan, and yes even china. we drove our economy off a cliff in a fit of panic fuelled by hysteria and rushed modelling. hey ho. we need to kick on. And that is accepting we are not ALL GOING TO DIE by going back to work

    You realise that Sweden is seeing large job losses right now too don't you?
  • sarissasarissa Posts: 1,993
    sarissa said:

    I predict masks are going to be the new bog rolls in a month or two. And unlike bog roll, which was a distribution issue, there will be a long term shortage problem.

    I passed a closed shop the other day which had a sign in the window “No toilet rolls are stored on these premises”
    Should have said - it sold rocks and fossils!
  • sarissasarissa Posts: 1,993

    Spurs' unbeaten run is one of the few positives currently.....

    Spare a thought for us Heart of Midlothian supporters on indefinite death row...
  • TimTTimT Posts: 6,468
    It seems there is still confusion regarding the statistics in the ranks of the MSM. From my Google News feed:

    UK coronavirus hospital death toll rises by 229 in lowest total in six weeks
    Mirror Online
    20 minutes ago
    Coronavirus map LIVE: UK death toll rises by 288 - lowest daily total in seven weeks
    Express
    1 hour ago

    UK coronavirus death toll hits 28,734 as 288 more people die but it’s the lowest rise for five weeks
    The Sun
    15 minutes ago

  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 123,139
    edited May 2020
    MikeL said:

    Such a shame the rule isn't that you can't win more than two Presidential terms in a row.

    Surely the point is to prevent an incumbent going on and on - as an incumbent has an advantage in an election.

    It would also be great as a spectacle with Presidents going head to head.

    We would have had Bush v Clinton in 2004 (*) and Trump v Obama in 2020.

    (*) Clinton would have fought an election against a father and his son!

    I think Obama would have beaten Trump to get a third term and Clinton would have beaten Bush to get a third term and Reagan would definitely have beaten Dukakis to get a third term, however Obama would probably have beaten Bush in 2008 anyway so he would only have got the 2 terms.

    However even the best leaders should stop at 10 years, Blair leaving in 2007 was the best thing to happen to him, Thatcher should have gone in 1989 rather than being forced out in tears in 1990 by Heseltine' s leadership challenge
  • sarissasarissa Posts: 1,993
    TGOHF666 said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    Isle of Wight seeing the benefits of voting Conservative.

    Isle of Skye - well, if you will vote for the Ian Blackford...
    Indeed.

    Or maybe its the (Westminster funded) bridge.
    Pathetic joke attempt alert!
  • blairfblairf Posts: 98

    blairf said:

    eristdoof said:

    DavidL said:

    The numbers on workers furloughed from HRMC are staggering. 6.3 million at a cost of GBP8bn.

    How many of those are going to walk back into work when that nice Mr Sunak takes his subsidies away?

    I reckon something like 1m will be made redundant and maybe another million gig workers will find their contracts at an end. Which compared with the 30m jobs lost in the US is an incredibly good result.
    so four million workers when you add the extra universal credit claims right? is that really much better than the US proportionally?

    I would say given the government's dithering, which is killing the economy more every single day, 2m out of that six is a very conservative estimate.

    But we shall see.
    You just don't get it do you?
    The lockdown is working.
    The economy would be in a worse state if there were no lockdown and Covid-19 had run riot.
    except it wouldn't have if we hadn't arsed up the response. ref korea, thailand, japan, sweden, iceland, taiwan, and yes even china. we drove our economy off a cliff in a fit of panic fuelled by hysteria and rushed modelling. hey ho. we need to kick on. And that is accepting we are not ALL GOING TO DIE by going back to work

    You realise that Sweden is seeing large job losses right now too don't you?
    we all are. the global economy just got borked. we need to deal with that. it has happened. now we need to review the wreckage and get on with it. more debt and refusing to accept the reality of furlough to redundancy (which everyone is looking at, trust me, everyone) won't work.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,226
    IshmaelZ said:

    eristdoof said:

    An excellent main article, thank you. I'm guessing most of the PBers younger than me won't get the original reference for the "Mourning in America" video at the top. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EU-IBF8nwSY

    Although there is no rigid definition of Occam's razor, I prefer 'choose the simpler explanation' rather than 'choose the one with less assumptions'. The first version works much better with statistical and machine learning models, where "simpler explanation" becomes "model with less parameters", but also applies to the Wuhan Bat Hypothesis above.

    The trouble with it is that as used it usually conflicts with the dictum that "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler." Entertainingly, Occam himself used it to defend the existence of miracles, which most people probably think require a rather complicated explanation involving self-delusion and religious psychology rather than the pleasingly simple "God made it happen." Similarly, look at Father Christmas: either he exists, or Mummy and Daddy (known opponents of the telling of lies) have deliberately conspired to lie to us. Again, criminal law becomes very easy for prosecutors: look, members of the jury, the Defendant is in the dock. What is the most likely explanation of his getting there? Wood burns down to ashes which are so light they blow away: is it more likely that the loss of weight comes of losing something (phlogiston) or of combination with something (oxygen)? And for that matter: it makes people cough and gives them a fever, and kills off a lot of old people but others quite often recover. I say it's flu, you have introduced a new entity called covid 19. I win.

    It isn't a completely useless maxim, but it is a rough and ready rule of thumb, not a rule of logic which says that nothing is ever complicated or counterintuitive.

    That sounds good to me.

    I go by this - if there is nothing wrong with the simple explanation it is very likely the explanation.

    Don't know whose razor that is - or even if it is one - but I do find it usually works.

    Unless it doesn't, of course, but that is not so often.
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758
    Somehow I accidentally stumbled into a thread from October 2017 with Mike talking about the right/wrong polling

    I read about 50 posts before @TOPPING said it was Friday afternoon and I realised something was wrong

    Nothing has changed!

    😆
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 123,139
    edited May 2020
    Stocky said:

    What odds should Trump be to win the popular vote? You can lay him at 4.8 with Bf (thin market admittedly). He`s got next to no chance has he?

    Latest polling has Biden doing better in Michigan and Pennsylvania than nationally, Michigan and Pennsylvania and the Hillary states gives him 269 EC votes and the Presidency as the Democratic controlled house is the decider in a tie. So not impossible Trump wins the popular vote and Biden the EC in a reverse of 2016

    https://twitter.com/Politics_Polls/status/1256779250000158720?s=20
  • contrariancontrarian Posts: 5,818
    edited May 2020

    They really aren't mind-blowing, Laura. They are the consequence of a pandemic that risked killing at least 500,000 of us if we just shrugged and said "Meh - I'm off down the pub...."
    According to Ferguson's model.

    Others seem to be available.
    'Us' is a complete misnomer. NHS England figures show that if you are healthy and under 60 the risks really are extremely small. 250 people with no other conditions have died between 0 and 60.

    even for healthy people up to 80 its under 1000.

    We may think we are in this together but the virus absolutely doesn't. Cruelly, it goes for those who are both aged and infirm.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 49,868

    They really aren't mind-blowing, Laura. They are the consequence of a pandemic that risked killing at least 500,000 of us if we just shrugged and said "Meh - I'm off down the pub...."
    According to Ferguson's model.

    Others seem to be available.
    'Us' is a complete misnomer. NHS England figures show that if you are healthy and under 60 the risks really are extremely small. 250 people with no other conditions have died between 0 and 60.

    even for healthy people up to 80 its under 1000.

    We may think we are in this together but the virus absolutely doesn't.
    Do we have statistics as to how many younger people who catch the virus need hospital treatment, intensive care, and ventilators? Despite their mostly recovering, there might be a significant burden on health services to achieve that.
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670

    They really aren't mind-blowing, Laura. They are the consequence of a pandemic that risked killing at least 500,000 of us if we just shrugged and said "Meh - I'm off down the pub...."
    According to Ferguson's model.

    Others seem to be available.
    'Us' is a complete misnomer. NHS England figures show that if you are healthy and under 60 the risks really are extremely small. 250 people with no other conditions have died between 0 and 60.

    even for healthy people up to 80 its under 1000.

    We may think we are in this together but the virus absolutely doesn't. Cruelly, it goes for those who are both aged and infirm.
    14% of under 40s have a long term condition.
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758
    Actually Robert, I think it’s highly likely the Wuhan lab was implicated

    Case 1: unlucky farmer sells infected bat to wet market and it somehow cross contaminates a shopper

    Case 2: lab collects lots of specimens of infected bats near the wet market. An underpaid employee illicitly sells some (probably multiple over time) bats to the market. One of them cross contaminates a shopper

    Basically case 1 you have to be really unlucky. Case 2 you have lots of shots on goal.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,149
    edited May 2020
    HYUFD said:

    MikeL said:

    Such a shame the rule isn't that you can't win more than two Presidential terms in a row.

    Surely the point is to prevent an incumbent going on and on - as an incumbent has an advantage in an election.

    It would also be great as a spectacle with Presidents going head to head.

    We would have had Bush v Clinton in 2004 (*) and Trump v Obama in 2020.

    (*) Clinton would have fought an election against a father and his son!

    I think Obama would have beaten Trump to get a third term and Clinton would have beaten Bush to get a third term and Reagan would definitely have beaten Dukakis to get a third term, however Obama would probably have beaten Bush in 2008 anyway so he would only have got the 2 terms.

    However even the best leaders should stop at 10 years, Blair leaving in 2007 was the best thing to happen to him, Thatcher should have gone in 1989 rather than being forced out in tears in 1990 by Heseltine' s leadership challenge
    Didn't the Chinese enforce leadership changes every 10 years for a few decades, pre Xi (post Mao obviously), presumably on a similar principle?
  • kamskikamski Posts: 5,191
    HYUFD said:

    Stocky said:

    What odds should Trump be to win the popular vote? You can lay him at 4.8 with Bf (thin market admittedly). He`s got next to no chance has he?

    Latest polling has Biden doing better in Michigan and Pennsylvania than nationally, Michigan and Pennsylvania and the Hillary states gives him 269 EC votes and the Presidency as the Democratic controlled house is the decider in a tie. So not impossible Trump wins the popular vote and Biden the EC in a reverse of 2016

    https://twitter.com/Politics_Polls/status/1256779250000158720?s=20
    Wrong. The house vote doesn't work the way you think it does. It needs a majority of states. It has a built-in republican majority.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    Charles said:

    Actually Robert, I think it’s highly likely the Wuhan lab was implicated

    Case 1: unlucky farmer sells infected bat to wet market and it somehow cross contaminates a shopper

    Case 2: lab collects lots of specimens of infected bats near the wet market. An underpaid employee illicitly sells some (probably multiple over time) bats to the market. One of them cross contaminates a shopper

    Basically case 1 you have to be really unlucky. Case 2 you have lots of shots on goal.

    Case 3: Poor hygiene leads to an employee getting infected in the lab. Passes on the virus via human to human transmission at the wet market.

    Given "patient zero" has never been identified that seems quite plausible.
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 43,357
    Carnyx said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    Isle of Wight seeing the benefits of voting Conservative.

    Isle of Skye - well, if you will vote for the Ian Blackford...
    Indeed.

    Or maybe its the (Westminster funded) bridge.
    It was funded out of PFI - and the tolls hit the pockets of the local people and their visitors. Edit: Infamously so.

    Mind, there was no Scottish Parliament then.

    Ask the barstewards about Crossrial, HS2 and all the other infrastructure in England we pay for.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    blairf said:

    blairf said:

    eristdoof said:

    DavidL said:

    The numbers on workers furloughed from HRMC are staggering. 6.3 million at a cost of GBP8bn.

    How many of those are going to walk back into work when that nice Mr Sunak takes his subsidies away?

    I reckon something like 1m will be made redundant and maybe another million gig workers will find their contracts at an end. Which compared with the 30m jobs lost in the US is an incredibly good result.
    so four million workers when you add the extra universal credit claims right? is that really much better than the US proportionally?

    I would say given the government's dithering, which is killing the economy more every single day, 2m out of that six is a very conservative estimate.

    But we shall see.
    You just don't get it do you?
    The lockdown is working.
    The economy would be in a worse state if there were no lockdown and Covid-19 had run riot.
    except it wouldn't have if we hadn't arsed up the response. ref korea, thailand, japan, sweden, iceland, taiwan, and yes even china. we drove our economy off a cliff in a fit of panic fuelled by hysteria and rushed modelling. hey ho. we need to kick on. And that is accepting we are not ALL GOING TO DIE by going back to work

    You realise that Sweden is seeing large job losses right now too don't you?
    we all are. the global economy just got borked. we need to deal with that. it has happened. now we need to review the wreckage and get on with it. more debt and refusing to accept the reality of furlough to redundancy (which everyone is looking at, trust me, everyone) won't work.
    Well we don't know what the wreckage is yet. If we can eliminate the virus New Zealand style then we may be able to lift more restrictions while putting more in at the border and avoid much of the economic damage.

    It will take a bit of patience at this stage.
  • contrariancontrarian Posts: 5,818
    Alistair said:

    They really aren't mind-blowing, Laura. They are the consequence of a pandemic that risked killing at least 500,000 of us if we just shrugged and said "Meh - I'm off down the pub...."
    According to Ferguson's model.

    Others seem to be available.
    'Us' is a complete misnomer. NHS England figures show that if you are healthy and under 60 the risks really are extremely small. 250 people with no other conditions have died between 0 and 60.

    even for healthy people up to 80 its under 1000.

    We may think we are in this together but the virus absolutely doesn't. Cruelly, it goes for those who are both aged and infirm.
    14% of under 40s have a long term condition.
    That's a very fair point but I think the numbers show anybody under 40 has a very good chance of survival.

  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 82,119

    Charles said:

    Actually Robert, I think it’s highly likely the Wuhan lab was implicated

    Case 1: unlucky farmer sells infected bat to wet market and it somehow cross contaminates a shopper

    Case 2: lab collects lots of specimens of infected bats near the wet market. An underpaid employee illicitly sells some (probably multiple over time) bats to the market. One of them cross contaminates a shopper

    Basically case 1 you have to be really unlucky. Case 2 you have lots of shots on goal.

    Case 3: Poor hygiene leads to an employee getting infected in the lab. Passes on the virus via human to human transmission at the wet market.

    Given "patient zero" has never been identified that seems quite plausible.
    The first patient that has been confirmed from mid November had no contact with the wet market. Now either it was much wider spread much earlier or the wet market wasn't the origin.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    malcolmg said:

    Carnyx said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    Isle of Wight seeing the benefits of voting Conservative.

    Isle of Skye - well, if you will vote for the Ian Blackford...
    Indeed.

    Or maybe its the (Westminster funded) bridge.
    It was funded out of PFI - and the tolls hit the pockets of the local people and their visitors. Edit: Infamously so.

    Mind, there was no Scottish Parliament then.

    Ask the barstewards about Crossrial, HS2 and all the other infrastructure in England we pay for.
    You don't pay for those. We've discussed this before, they're classed as local expenditure here and you get Barnett consequentials for them. Why do you still repeat that claim?
  • TimTTimT Posts: 6,468
    Charles said:

    Actually Robert, I think it’s highly likely the Wuhan lab was implicated

    Case 1: unlucky farmer sells infected bat to wet market and it somehow cross contaminates a shopper

    Case 2: lab collects lots of specimens of infected bats near the wet market. An underpaid employee illicitly sells some (probably multiple over time) bats to the market. One of them cross contaminates a shopper

    Basically case 1 you have to be really unlucky. Case 2 you have lots of shots on goal.

    Case 3: Wuhan lab virus hunters actively go out into the field and collect 20,000 wild type bat coronaviruses from large bat colonies in caves, then selectively work on those closest to making the zoonotic jump to humans, and even do gain of function work on these viruses. Then they have lots of unreported LAIs (lab acquired infections) with such viruses, one of which happens to permit human to human transmission, which then occurs both inside and outside the lab before its impact is known.
This discussion has been closed.