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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » House effect. The Polish presidential election
The @POLITICOEurope poll tracker has Sunday's Polish presidential run-off as a coin toss.The betting markets think Duda is twice as likely to win as Trzaskowski. pic.twitter.com/xVbV3HCpVp
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https://twitter.com/brianklaas/status/1280873379428552704?s=20
Decided to back it on Betfair at 2.76.
Something really BAD may be happening in central London. Businesswise
Close friend just went to Charing Cross Rd. Half the bookshops are still shut, also the restaurants, bars, etc.
Why? Presumably there isn't yet enough passing traffic and footfall to make it profitable to open. But when will it ever be? So many people are going to WFH for months to come, which means these places will stay shut, which means even fewer people - eg tourists - will come in to town, as there are even fewer reasons to make the journey, which means even more places shut down for ever.
We could be witnessing the start of a hideous chain reaction of default and bankruptcy, hollowing out a global city in a few months.
I pray I am wrong.
There's a shock. Do you remember the wartime posters 'Coughs and sneezes spread diseases, catch the germs in your handkerchief''
Those genius people in 1939 already knew that.
Did Tony Hancock die in vain?
If you're ever looked across a sunbeam in a room, you'll see all the dust particles swirling around in the room. And they are are the heavy ones. Aerosols of virus have a massive surface area compared to volume and the water evaporates off quickly, leaving the virus to go through nuisance masks without hindrance. Leaving even relatively large particles to be sucked in between face and mask. HEPA filtration might help if it's worn correctly.
England cases plotted by specimen date.
As usual, last 3-5 days will be subject to heavy revision. last 5 days included for completeness.
Last 30 days of cases by England Lower Level Authority -
Taiwan has been doing well in this crisis and I missed this item when it came out more than two months ago. Taiwan's vice president, who is also a leading epidemiologist said:
"It’s not necessary to stop all activities. As long as more than 50% of the population reduces 50% of their social contacts then the outbreak can be controlled. They can go to school, to work but must reduce non-essential recreation and social contact."
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/taiwans-vice-president-chen-chien-jen-countrys-fight-covid-19/
If the economists' models are right about interaction between the epidemic and the behavioural response, which they seem to be, then the level of herd immunity may be well below what has been assumed based on epidemiological models with constant parameters.
As John Cochrane says in a comment on his blog, "Economists vs. epidemiologists has a long history. Economists point out that disease transmission is not a biological constant, but varies with human behavior. And human behavior varies predictably in response to incentives (and information)."
It is definitely hiding from an election when you're the opposition and are cowering away from an election while continuing to remain the opposition.
The opposition has a moral and political duty to be "up for it" to go to the polls and demand to be entrusted with power. If the opposition looks like it is afraid of the election then it is only going to be considered weak and not ready for power and it will do the opposition tremendous damage.
Its not a head-lock its just political reality. The opposition must be prepared to go to the polls.
Now they are not - perhaps 90% down.
But somewhere like Covent Garden, which is mainly retail and restaurants and tourist traps? - fecked. It is very sad.
And this pain will start in central London, but then it will ripple out....
A bit less of an obsession about London could be good for the rest of us.
The actual City of London (square mile) population is around 10,000, and the average daily commuters over half a million. It's actually quite the place to walk around at the weekend, even most of the pubs are shut on Saturdays.
- A potential legal challenge from the World Trade Organisation.
- Increased smuggling from the EU.
- Tariffs to be applied by "default" to all goods imported into Northern Ireland.
- The undermining of the UK's international trade policy.
Let's look on the bright side - at least one Cabinet Minister now realises that the government is taking us into what was until a few days ago a completely avoidable disaster, which is one more minister than we previously thought. Quite why no-one else in government hasn't understood these most obvious points, or listened to any experts all of whom have been saying the same thing for months, is one of the great mysteries of the age.
https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1280889426424541185?s=09
Central London in all its glory - restaurants, bars, pubs, clubs, cafes, theatres, galleries - generates enormous amounts of money, and of course employment. But nearly all of this biz comes from workers who commute in, and tourists, it is not self sustaining.
Now take away most of the commuters and most of the tourists and most of those businesses will go under very quickly.
That means tens of thousands of unemployed people, who live all over London: and now they can no longer afford to spend money in THEIR neighborhoods. The ripple has begun, and it is spreading beyond the centre.
The closure of all these businesses also means a collapse in the tax take - for councils, and for the Inland Revenue. That means rates have to go up elsewhere in London, to compensate.
Thus. More businesses go under, London becomes less attractive, rich people move out entirely, taxes have to go up even more as these taxpayers depart. And so on.
An advanced economy like the UK is highly interconnected. It is a complex machine. Collapsing central London is like taking a hammer to the engine of that machine. It might still work, but it will go slower, and make weird noises, and maybe catch fire.
Read what happened to New York City's economy in the 1960s and 70s. We could be about to see that replayed, but speeded up, in London (and New York, for that matter)
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned
Maybe 30 years ago it was what you describe: Angus Steak Houses.
Now it is (or was) an amazing destination, with thousands of small businesses, world class restaurants, beautiful independent shops.
Neal's Yard:
https://twitter.com/Quaintlyuk/status/1279098139186802694?s=20
Seven Dials:
https://twitter.com/frolic_fiction/status/1195443176322019330?s=20
Now it is all endangered. And this is just one part of London which is threatened, others are in the same dire straits.
And this same process will be repeated, on a smaller scale, in big cities across the UK.
And it will also be repeated across the western world, especially the USA
The PM will capitulate to the EU and lie outright (like he did to the ERG and the DUP) about his brilliant new deal.
There's plenty of space in the rest of the country. If people aren't travelling into Central London and aren't spending in Central London shops they will be working somewhere else instead. If they are working in their own LOCAL area and spending within their own LOCAL area that is a good thing. It is not a bad thing.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-53336489
Yes, the economy will eventually adjust, one hopes. But London pays more tax than anywhere else in the UK by a distance and if that tax money goes AWOL then we will all suffer. That is certain.
And there is a non-trivial risk that the shutdown of central London will cause a hideous chain reaction, the likes of which have not been seen in peacetime.
A business can be shut down in a day. Starting a new viable business takes years.
Rather than overthinking things and trying to get a perfect system up and running (which takes forever and never arrives), the country is getting used to being more agile and adaptable. Find a solution that works, JFDI and if its broken then fix it.
That agility, that adaptability will help with Brexit too. We don't need a perfect computer system, we need a fudge that works.
And it is based on the maths of disease incidence. Nothing to do with them being Spanish, or Tau Cetian, or whatever.
But my clear recollection is of a surprising comment which stressed the high muscle/fat ratio of the Prime Minister. Is your recollection materially different?
Maybe it's on your floppy in which case ... ??
People come to the UK mainly to see London. We don't have the Riviera, the Alps, Renaissance Tuscany, or oodles of Soanish sunshine. We don't have jungles, deserts or pyramids.
Take out London and foreign people just might not bother at all.
That's a tremendous blow to UK PLC.
The Rona has forced a hard stop. Which provides the opportunity for a hard reset. If you can work from home:
Does it make sense for you to waste hours every week travelling and burn £thousands doing so?
Does it make sense for your employer to spend £lots buying or renting an office and all the service and ancillary costs that go with it?
Does it make sense to spend £lots on twatty coffee and a danish on your way in then £lots on an increasingly twatty hipster lunch every day?
Is that shop near the office / train station where you pay £lots for books / clothes / stuff your best place to buy when almost anywhere else is cheaper?
If you don't need to waste cash and time commuting do you want to live in your slightly too small home because its close to the road in / station? When for less you could buy more elsewhere?
As I said on both the previous thread and many times before there are a lot of people for whom the answer to the above is "no". Whats more, their employer having been forced to adapt to remote working finds it delivers 95% of the productivity for 70% of the costs of having everyone in an office...
Covid-19 is worse, by several orders of magnitude,
A photo essay of Covent Garden right now. Today:
https://onechancetoseetheworld.com/2020/07/08/12-walking-through-an-empty-covent-garden-although-it-is-getting-busier/
I shudder to think of the economic effects of this, if it persists for much longer
The trouble is, the movement from the old commuting model, to your new model, is going to happen overnight, it seems, and not in some slowly evolving way.
That means gruesome amounts of economic pain
Johnson would indeed be a hero at the sight of a tearful Mark François, realising his dreams of economic armageddon for the return of imaginary sovereignty are no more than dust
Boris Johnson isn't a pathological liar, he genuinely means it when he says it, even if it contradicts something he's said in the past.
Might work that into a future PB thread header.
Go to Euston or Paddington or fitzrovia or Victoria, they are full of new flats.
They've resisted WFH for years, preferring everyone to spend three or four hours a day getting to some of the most expensive real estate in the world, all at the same time five days a week.
When it was forced on them, they had no choice but to embrace it and now they realise that they can get the majority of the productivity for a fraction of the cost.
The 'new normal' in a lot of white-collar industries might be teams meeting up for two or three days every two or three weeks, with WFH the rest of the time - with significant impact on both city office requirements and how far away people are prepared to live from the office.
So going forward people won't have the absolute right to come in here and claim benefits - We Will Deport Them (legally, as EU law allows...). Instead we will welcome our European neighbours in to do the jobs in our economy taht we need. Like working in our care homes, food factories, harvesting crops etc etc etc. Not because we have to forced by bally foreigners as rule takers. But because we are now Rule Makers. And our rule is come here to work.
I said repeatedly that I'd never said that and even requoted my original post in full. But you got off on banging on about Muscles Johnson when I never said that whatsoever.
It's a lie, a fabrication. You're putting words into quote marks that I never used and that's just not on.
Methinks the betting money is on Duda on theory that, if election is close, he & his henchpeople will steal it. Not sure that's the case, but given government's conduct can NOT rule it out.
Best thing about Hartlepools? A lot of roads out.
Many of those people have fled London, because plague, and many have not yet come back, hence the still-deserted streets. Lots might not come back for a looooong time
Likely NOT her happiest Bastille Day. But then, into each life a little rain must fall. OR in her case, a monsoon.
https://gothamist.com/news/nyc-could-face-worst-recession-1970s
What NYC looked like, back then:
https://allthatsinteresting.com/1970s-new-york-photos
https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1280881009836412928?s=20
https://twitter.com/samueltombs/status/1280902158444113921
Restaurants that people can walk or drive to will be the first to revive. I am off to the Isle of Wight for the weekend. Shall report back on pubs etc
May be nationwide too, I think. I`m just back from a few nights in Dorset/Devon border. I was surprised and disappointed that only, I`d say, 25% of pubs were open. Maybe more have opened since I`ve got back? A higher proportion of cafes, though, are open - maybe 75%.
Many shops are closed. Some have notices on the door saying lack of staff!
We fancied having a browse round a particular clothes shop. It was of decent size. There was a queue outside with a notice saying "maximum four people in store at any time". If we had entered, my family of four would have stopped anyone else from entering, whilst we were merely having a browse with no real intent to buy anything. In the end we walked away. Businesses can not operate in this way. Many people (I have to say many on the left) seem to think things will magic back to normal.
I`ve got friends who are no nearer coming out of hiding than they were a month ago. I have others who say they are "shielding" but have no clue that their ailments do not nearly qualify them for that status.
Many were keen to hector about civic duty in (over)complying with lockdown, but don`t follow that through with a civic duty to get things going again in un-lockdown.
Part of the problem seems to me to be that a substantial minority of the public don't really give a shit about the virus spreading or the safety of others so it keeps others away.
To give you an example we went into town on public transport today for the first time. We assumed that as it is compulsory to wear a mask we would be happy to do so only to find people on the bus without masks. I mentioned it to the driver who told me "we're not the police mate". So what is the point of making it compulsory if nobody enforces it? We won't be going into town to a restaurant again for a good while.
What I find ironical is the very people who aren't giving a shit now will be the very ones whinging most loudly when the pubs close down again, the shops shut and businesses collapse.
It was in the Tory manifesto.