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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » The Biden note that’s made Harris odds on favourite once again
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » The Biden note that’s made Harris odds on favourite once again for the VP pick
On Betfair the betting on who Joe Biden will choose as his VP has been totally shaken up overnight following a photographer snapping a note seen in his hands in which Harris, the longtime favourite, is at the top and rated highly.
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Fix Your Bike Voucher Scheme
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If you restrict travel to relatively safe locations abroad, all you do is increase further the crush at popular UK resorts. Last week I was in the Cotswolds, Cornwall and the Dorset coast, and now I am back on the island, and the crush at some of the popular spots has to be seen to be believed. The island so far is the least crowded, presumably the additional cost and hassle of crossing the water remains a deterrent.
Most people can repair a bicycle: 80% of repair & maintenance is within the competence of anybody (Google is your friend, and most libraries stock a book on cycle maintenance), and the 20% that is tricky and usually needs an experienced bike technician is relatively cheap.
More likely to be cockup than conspiracy. Remember that Met officer who was photographed with all the government’s key counter-terrorism plans in a see through wallet facing outwards.
It doesn’t suggest though that Biden has overcome his habit of making silly mistakes.
https://twitter.com/dominicoc/status/1288354969993830406
Then again if the £50 includes those spares that's a help. If not absolutely needed.
The problem with a UK holiday is that many of the attractions are closed. Seeing the sights of London is tricky when they are shut. The seaside and hills are better options, and camping the best accommodation. A whole new generation could enjoy the English camping tradition:
https://youtu.be/Q21gn93G1N0
Which is why he would be completely the wrong person to be President if the alternative were anyone other than Donald Trump.
Out of roughly 170 million eligible people, HTAF did they end up with this lot?
And Good Morning fellow Pb-ers!
A setpiece speech like the State of the Union might be cringeworthy though.
It doesn’t take too much thought to produce the reasoning for what happened and there is also a need to consider the potential consequences of alternatives. Especially given the limited resources at the time (on things like PPE, testing) restricted the options available.
- clearly there was a great fear that hospitals would be over-run
- it was correctly believed that hospitals would be a very dangerous place for elderly people (because of the risks of catching the virus)
Both of the above factors strongly support a need to clear non covid patients, particularly elderly ones, from hospitals. And it is quite probable that this will have saved many lives (because hospitals weren’t overrun, but might have been, and many uninflected elderly patients will have been released and avoided getting COVID as a result).
Of course the flip side is what happened. Risk assessments on whether the released patients had COVID had to be made without comprehensive testing (because the testing capacity wasn’t available to test everyone and wait for results). The assessments relied too much on a poor understanding of the risks of asymptomatic carriers. And probably there was a knock on that care homes weren’t made sufficiently aware of the need to take additional precautions for the people they were receiving.
He wants to be adored.
Just like BoZo.
USA - Truman, Eisenhower (I think), Kennedy, GHW Bush, Obama
UK - Atlee, Churchill (when sober), Thatcher, Major, Blair (ignoring Iraq).
Guess it could have been worse.
Perhaps it's telling that I found it easier to pick the US ones. Seemed to be a clearer difference between the good and the bad. Eisenhower was the only marginal call for me.
The UK seemed to present greater mediocrity. I hesitated over Heath/Wilson for example.
Fun game. Sure there will be plenty of disagreement.
Mind you I wouldn't be much kinder about Boris and the UK.
Too early to judge on Boris.
But that’s not my point. I’m not arguing that the Govt didn’t get it wrong. They might have done (although consider the caveats applied above). In good faith and on the basis of the best available evidence or through failures/incompetence. I’m in no position to say. I’m just saying that criticism needs to be made and lessons to be learned by considering the whole picture, not in isolation.
Agree re Boris. I may yet be pleasantly surprised but I remember voting for him as Mayor London, and in the end was unpleasantly surprised.
Kennedy is very much hyped because of his good looks, but when you look at him with a cold eye he wasn’t actually that good. For example, he spent more time seducing his teenage interns than he did working on civil rights.
Even now Governments are struggling to deal with Covid even though we know a lot more about it e.g. Israel, Hong Kong, Australia etc.
The idea that any future enquiry is going to hold the Government negligent is just daft. Of course there will be lessons to be learned but this is a brand new very odd disease, the Government have done their best, they have made mistakes, but these have been in good faith.
Many of the 750k volunteers have done very little, absolutely through no fault of their own, but because govt didnt even think about how to best use them.
* He saved the country from an economic catastrophe that Brown had bequeathed.
* Introduced equal marriage.
Losing an election doesn't count him out for me. Europe was a ticking timebomb in this country for decades and I hold Blair and Brown in more contempt for pushing through Lisbon without a referendum (having pledged one) because they knew they'd lose it, rather than Cameron for fighting honourably and losing. Had Blair/Brown not played silly buggers over Lisbon then I don't think Cameron's referendum would have ever happened or needed to happen.
Kennedy was certainly a close call for me but again, by popular acclaim....
For example, sending care home residents home from hospital at 2am. This is because had a manager been on duty they might have refused to take them back in. The trifling detail that protocols demanded a manager be present to accept these residents was overlooked, and threats were used to force the on duty staff to take the patients.
Now I can’t prove that that is true, but I trust my source, whom I will not identify beyond saying he’s a doctor who works for a Birmingham trust. He also says that the legal teams are bracing themselves to deal with manslaughter charges. More likely to be hyperbole, but it does suggest the Trusts know they got this hopelessly, even criminally wrong.
Cameron and Osborne saved the economy from a catastrophic deficit. For that alone they deserve to be listed amongst the greats for me. Introducing equal marriage was the cherry on the cake.
But then, I’m always wary of judging standards across eras. It makes it difficult to understand them.
My bigger concern was his brinksmanship over both Cuba and Berlin that brought the world within literally seconds of nuclear war.
Anyway, I have a sick car to go and fetch. Later.
The disaster was not having a crash. The disaster was the decisions made before the crash. The disaster was the Chancellor hubristically believing he'd "abolished boom and bust" and so leaving the country completely unprepared for the inevitable next bust.
During the recession the deficit changed by 7% from trough to peak which is fairly standard for recessions - the financial crash was actually not that exceptional a recession.
What was exceptional, what was catastrophic, was running a 3% deficit BEFORE the recession hit. Had the country been running a small surplus before the recession hit then the deficit would have risen to 7% instead of 10% which is an order of magnitude more manageable.
Neither option would make me want to go out and vote for him.
Brown's hubris in believing he had abolished busts led to catastrophe. Busts can't be abolished, they happen . . . what sane governments need to do is to ensure we are well prepared for when they next shock happens not hubristically gloat that we have abolished them.
Much more ambivalence for me on the UK side.
Oh go on then. We could afford to run a small deficit for investment because overall debt had dropped. According to Cameron's Office for Budget Responsibility debt had risen to an outrageous 33.4% in 2007 vs a far more acceptable and clearly lower 36.1% in 1996 (https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/government-debt-to-gdp).
You can spend more in deficit when your overall borrowing is lower because the economy is growing. As Cameron the LOTO pledged to do, match every pound Brown was spending AND share in the proceeds of (further, faster) economic growth with a tax cut on top.
Top class revisionist history Philip. Bravo.
Brown claimed to have abolished boom and bust. He didn't. He left the country weak and exposed when a crash then hit.
As the government can finance a large deficit by QE, how is having one catastrophic?
If we were in the high interest rate environment of the 80s, I would agree with you. But deficits cannot be catastrophic if they can be financed at very low interest rates. Indeed, arguably it is the government's duty to run one, if the social discount rate exceeds the interest rate.
But the problem with this is that as he gets close to the pick there are probably quite a few people who know who it is, so unless you're one of them the winning move is probably not to play.
Threads are coming thick and fast today.
But fake.