Thanks for putting me on to this Topping. I really enjoyed Top Boy Summerhouse but was a bit disappointed with the follow up, Top Boy.
Yes Summerhouse was great and raw and had that energy that UK film makers can produce so well (Ill Manors, Attack the Block, Blue Story, Bullet Boy and even Starred up and '71).
Top Boy itself I still enjoyed it, and I could watch Stormzy Kano reading out recipes for Baked Alaska all day so for me it was better than much that's around right now.
Just started watching the OA which is proving intriguing. Any recommendations?
I wasn`t keen on The OA, to be honest. The best series I`ve seen recently is Unbelievable. And, My Brilliant Friend.
I assume you`ve seen all three Fargo series? These are the best that TV (or film) gets.
And Godless. Rectify is superb (but a slow burner).
Saw Unbelievable and yes Fargo and agree. But not My Brilliant Friend, nor Godless or Rectify so thanks.
Seems reasonable. Huge sympathy but the legal tests to allow the action are struct for very good reasons and politicians cannot get involved in the way requested
Thanks for putting me on to this Topping. I really enjoyed Top Boy Summerhouse but was a bit disappointed with the follow up, Top Boy.
Yes Summerhouse was great and raw and had that energy that UK film makers can produce so well (Ill Manors, Attack the Block, Blue Story, Bullet Boy and even Starred up and '71).
Top Boy itself I still enjoyed it, and I could watch Stormzy Kano reading out recipes for Baked Alaska all day so for me it was better than much that's around right now.
Just started watching the OA which is proving intriguing. Any recommendations?
I wasn`t keen on The OA, to be honest. The best series I`ve seen recently is Unbelievable. And, My Brilliant Friend.
I assume you`ve seen all three Fargo series? These are the best that TV (or film) gets.
And Godless. Rectify is superb (but a slow burner).
Saw Unbelievable and yes Fargo and agree. But not My Brilliant Friend, nor Godless or Rectify so thanks.
The thing I find with this is he says he has been named in the report
If so how many others and who
I have been named as an antisemite.
This is a lie and despicable smear arranged by the Jewish lobby.
He just doesn’t fucking get it, does he?
You're deliberately conflating "Israeli" and "Jewish", which is extremely antisemitic. As a Jewish person, it's dangerous and offensive when you imply that criticism against Israel- of which there is plenty to legitimately raise- should be recast as criticism against all Jewish people. I realise you did this in the interest of a bit of political point scoring against Williamson, but I'd urge you and the people who liked your post to reconsider whether that's justification for propagating antisemitic tropes.
Isn`t the problem the IHRA working definition of antisemitism, which the LP adopted? Makes it difficult to criticise Israel policies without being accused of antisemitism.
No. The problem is that Chris Williamson is a racist twat. No more, no less.
There is no earthly reason to think that the EHRC have been influenced by the Israelis, Jews, or indeed the Inuit peoples of Greenland. The reason he is being criticised is because he has a history of making outrageous remarks and has associated with racists.
However, his backers do not like this fact and so try to pretend 'he's only criticising Israel.' Rubbish. Neither he nor Corbyn are criticising Israel, they are working with anti-Semites for reasons which become painfully obvious with even a cursory glance at their record - they are anti-semites themselves.
And look at the abuse I get from their admirers for pointing this out. Ironic really given that I am accused of being anti-semitic for pointing out that Williamson is making an anti-semitic remark. But then I suppose I did quote what he meant rather than what he said, and what he meant was undoubtedly racist (is your head hurting yet)?
I`m not disagreeing re: Williamson.
However, I`m uncomfortble with the charge that some others, Corbyn for example, is racist. I struggle to accept this.
My hunch is that the hard left is anti wealth-creation and anti-capitalist - which leads them to be against the rich - some of whom are Jewish. I am sure that were they to find a group of poor downtrodden jewish people they would advocate for them as much as for any other of their victim groups. Therefore, to my mind, they are not racist. Maybe I`m wrong.
Could you go as far as accepting the Corbyn had several important allies who were anti Semitic, and when it came down to it, his loyalty was to them, not those complaining about them.
That is where my judgment is, and once he held the responsibility of being the leader of the Labour party, that loyalty made the party anti-semitic whether Corbyn was himself or not.
The thing I find with this is he says he has been named in the report
If so how many others and who
I have been named as an antisemite.
This is a lie and despicable smear arranged by the Jewish lobby.
He just doesn’t fucking get it, does he?
You're deliberately conflating "Israeli" and "Jewish", which is extremely antisemitic. As a Jewish person, it's dangerous and offensive when you imply that criticism against Israel- of which there is plenty to legitimately raise- should be recast as criticism against all Jewish people. I realise you did this in the interest of a bit of political point scoring against Williamson, but I'd urge you and the people who liked your post to reconsider whether that's justification for propagating antisemitic tropes.
Isn`t the problem the IHRA working definition of antisemitism, which the LP adopted? Makes it difficult to criticise Israel policies without being accused of antisemitism.
No. The problem is that Chris Williamson is a racist twat. No more, no less.
There is no earthly reason to think that the EHRC have been influenced by the Israelis, Jews, or indeed the Inuit peoples of Greenland. The reason he is being criticised is because he has a history of making outrageous remarks and has associated with racists.
However, his backers do not like this fact and so try to pretend 'he's only criticising Israel.' Rubbish. Neither he nor Corbyn are criticising Israel, they are working with anti-Semites for reasons which become painfully obvious with even a cursory glance at their record - they are anti-semites themselves.
And look at the abuse I get from their admirers for pointing this out. Ironic really given that I am accused of being anti-semitic for pointing out that Williamson is making an anti-semitic remark. But then I suppose I did quote what he meant rather than what he said, and what he meant was undoubtedly racist (is your head hurting yet)?
I`m not disagreeing re: Williamson.
However, I`m uncomfortble with the charge that some others, Corbyn for example, is racist. I struggle to accept this.
My hunch is that the hard left is anti wealth-creation and anti-capitalist - which leads them to be against the rich - some of whom are Jewish. I am sure that were they to find a group of poor downtrodden jewish people they would advocate for them as much as for any other of their victim groups. Therefore, to my mind, they are not racist. Maybe I`m wrong.
British Indians and Chinese are also largely ignored by the hard left for the same reason
Yes, that`s how I see it: "how dare our victim group have the temerity to no longer be victims!"
That is absolutely the heart of it. At the outset, Labour was a huge supporter of Israel and the Jews including because much of Jewish society (some of it?) was based upon socialist principles ie the kibbutz.
But then the damn Jews went and stopped being downtrodden and in need of saving and became strong. And hence they became part of the problem as far as many in the Labour movement were concerned. From oppressed to oppressors.
Same with people who leave their working class/poor roots behind and succeed in life - they also become enemies of Labour and the People as far as the hard left is concerned, whereas you would have thought they would be hailed as heroes.
The thing I find with this is he says he has been named in the report
If so how many others and who
I have been named as an antisemite.
This is a lie and despicable smear arranged by the Jewish lobby.
He just doesn’t fucking get it, does he?
You're deliberately conflating "Israeli" and "Jewish", which is extremely antisemitic. As a Jewish person, it's dangerous and offensive when you imply that criticism against Israel- of which there is plenty to legitimately raise- should be recast as criticism against all Jewish people. I realise you did this in the interest of a bit of political point scoring against Williamson, but I'd urge you and the people who liked your post to reconsider whether that's justification for propagating antisemitic tropes.
Isn`t the problem the IHRA working definition of antisemitism, which the LP adopted? Makes it difficult to criticise Israel policies without being accused of antisemitism.
No. The problem is that Chris Williamson is a racist twat. No more, no less.
There is no earthly reason to think that the EHRC have been influenced by the Israelis, Jews, or indeed the Inuit peoples of Greenland. The reason he is being criticised is because he has a history of making outrageous remarks and has associated with racists.
However, his backers do not like this fact and so try to pretend 'he's only criticising Israel.' Rubbish. Neither he nor Corbyn are criticising Israel, they are working with anti-Semites for reasons which become painfully obvious with even a cursory glance at their record - they are anti-semites themselves.
And look at the abuse I get from their admirers for pointing this out. Ironic really given that I am accused of being anti-semitic for pointing out that Williamson is making an anti-semitic remark. But then I suppose I did quote what he meant rather than what he said, and what he meant was undoubtedly racist (is your head hurting yet)?
I`m not disagreeing re: Williamson.
However, I`m uncomfortble with the charge that some others, Corbyn for example, is racist. I struggle to accept this.
My hunch is that the hard left is anti wealth-creation and anti-capitalist - which leads them to be against the rich - some of whom are Jewish. I am sure that were they to find a group of poor downtrodden jewish people they would advocate for them as much as for any other of their victim groups. Therefore, to my mind, they are not racist. Maybe I`m wrong.
Could you go as far as accepting the Corbyn had several important allies who were anti Semitic, and when it came down to it, his loyalty was to them, not those complaining about them.
That is where my judgment is, and once he held the responsibility of being the leader of the Labour party, that loyalty made the party anti-semitic whether Corbyn was himself or not.
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.
Just seen the photoo and it looks contrived. It's not a natural way to hold a piece of paper and why is he scribbling highly legible notes like that and walking around with them?
It’s entirely possible that it’s because of his usual carelessness and muddle-headedness.
Which is why he would be completely the wrong person to be President if the alternative were anyone other than Donald Trump.
That is very unfair, he is also more suited than the other Presidential runner, Mr West.
True.
Out of roughly 170 million eligible people, HTAF did they end up with this lot?
The voting system mostly eliminates people for their negatives, rather than selecting for their positives. Trump is the ones that tests the rule, since negatives were the positives in the eyes of his base, but he only got the job because he was up against Clinton, and she only got the candidature because she was up against Bernie, and so on down the line.
Yes, it's a bad system that promotes all the wrong people for all the wrong reasons, but we're hardly in a position to sneer.
Every majority election winner in our system in recent decades has been positively rated themselves regularly and not just riding in on their opponents negatives.
So who do you think were the half-decent Presidents/PMs post WW2?
USA - Truman, Eisenhower (I think), Kennedy, GHW Bush, Obama
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.
I'd add Cameron to your list for the UK so that's all majority election winners of my lifetime (born under Thatcher).
Too early to judge on Boris.
What did Cameron achieve with his majority win? A disasterous referendum campaign and early retirement is hardly even quarter-decent
For me his two greatest achievements:
* 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.
You said Cameron for his majority win. Gay marriage was a LibDem initiative during the coalition. And by Brown's economic catastrophe I take it you mean the financial crash? Where Cameron and Osborne argued for less regulation of the banking sector because Brown was trying the city up in red tape...
No I don't mean the financial crash. Crashes happen. Recessions happen.
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.
Disappointed to see another floating of this long discredited 'Tory Story' drivel. It's been less than a week.
Its not discredited its a matter of undeniable fact.
Brown claimed to have abolished boom and bust. He didn't. He left the country weak and exposed when a crash then hit.
Two things contributed to the fiscal mess we found ourselves in after the 08 Crash. (1) That the Crash happened. (2) That we had a 2.9% deficit before it happened.
Of these (1) was more important than (2). This is objective reality. To say (2) was more important than (1) is to depart from objective reality. This happens less and less these days – since it really is such obvious nonsense – but when it does happen the reason is always the same and is as follows.
Gordon Brown was responsible for (2) but not for (1). Thus if a person wishes to spread Tory Story propaganda and the Brownaphobic falsehood that his fecklessness led to a decade of austerity they must wildly exaggerate the importance of the pre-Crash deficit and furiously play down the importance of the Crash itself.
Below a reminder of just how profound and exceptional the Crash was.
He was responsible for ramping up the housing market to the point whereby it wasn't only Lehman that got hit but our non-IB domestic mortgage lenders also.
That was all on him.
Removing the Bank from regulatory oversight of capital is also on him. Under the old regime would RBS have been allowed to operate at 50x leverage, or Northern Rock at 35x leverage? The FSA was completely incapable of performing the "financial stability" part of its remit and we all paid the price for that. The FSA completely failed to force banks not to take unnecessary risks with our money and ultimately that's on Brown, given that he set it up in 2001 and took the financial stability regulation away from the Bank and handed it to the FSA.
Yes absolutely the regulatory regime was also on him but I didn't want to overload @kinabalu who was there probably trading CDSs with the best of them.
A much abused instrument. But anyway - as I've just said to you and Max, if people stay away from softhead Brownaphobic abuse they will get only the warmest reception from me. I'm not the biggest Chancellor Gordon fan. He presided over a corrupt and bloated financial sector and he didn't seem to care so long as the tax revenues kept rolling in.
I think we get on best when you agree with me so thank you for this.
All we are saying is that as those tax (and housing market receipts) were rolling in, he kept on spending. And while he was at it he dismantled the UK's system of regulatory oversight.
And hence, his actions exacerbated the effects of the GFC.
So long as "exacerbated" means "amplified by a modest but significant amount" rather than "turned a routine little recession into a catastrophe" this is still in the bounds of tenable argument.
And a (very) tenable additional assertion is as follows - it is unlikely on the face of it that if his policies were retrospectively replaced by those being propounded at the time by the Conservative opposition it would have made much of a difference in the positive direction.
The thing I find with this is he says he has been named in the report
If so how many others and who
I have been named as an antisemite.
This is a lie and despicable smear arranged by the Jewish lobby.
He just doesn’t fucking get it, does he?
You're deliberately conflating "Israeli" and "Jewish", which is extremely antisemitic. As a Jewish person, it's dangerous and offensive when you imply that criticism against Israel- of which there is plenty to legitimately raise- should be recast as criticism against all Jewish people. I realise you did this in the interest of a bit of political point scoring against Williamson, but I'd urge you and the people who liked your post to reconsider whether that's justification for propagating antisemitic tropes.
You are either dishonest or naive. He is deliberately using ‘Israel’ to hide the fact he means Jewish. As the context makes clear. As he always has, and as so many in Labour do. That’s what makes the video so horribly ironic.
As for the rest - you are the one who supports antisemites. Not me. Amazing for somebody who claims to be Jewish, but then of course Edwin Montagu was famous for his antisemitism as well.
I've no time for Chris Williamson, nor has the Labour Party, nor have the voters of Derby North (635 votes as an independent in 2019). And yes, there is an anti-semitism problem in the Labour Party, being tackled by Starmer.
But, and it's an important but, we have reached a stage where any criticism of the actions of the Israeli state is designated as ipso facto anti-semitic by a lot of commentators and pundits. This cannot be healthy, especially given some of the policies of the Israeli state over the last couple of years. We are also almost at the stage where support for the Palestinian cause is in itself perceived as evidence of anti-semitism as well. The debate has become unhealthily unbalanced.
Hardly. Lisa Nandy is a big supporter of the Palestinians. But has managed to do this without ever being accused of anti-semitism or getting involved with known anti-semites. Indeed, she became the Jewish Labour Movement’s favoured candidate for leadership.
If she could do it then there was absolutely no reason why plenty of her colleagues could not have done the same.
Quite so. Anyone claiming any criticism of Israel or support for Palestine is not permitted is a liar. And even if clearly valid criticism which is not antisemitic is attacked by some fool, that's not representative given the many criticism many people who are not anti semites make all the time.
It's not hard to not be anti semitic. It's not hard to avoid accusations of anti semitism. Avoiding clear anti semites is a good step to mean you can criticise Israel without people making such an accusation.
The thing I find with this is he says he has been named in the report
If so how many others and who
I have been named as an antisemite.
This is a lie and despicable smear arranged by the Jewish lobby.
He just doesn’t fucking get it, does he?
You're deliberately conflating "Israeli" and "Jewish", which is extremely antisemitic. As a Jewish person, it's dangerous and offensive when you imply that criticism against Israel- of which there is plenty to legitimately raise- should be recast as criticism against all Jewish people. I realise you did this in the interest of a bit of political point scoring against Williamson, but I'd urge you and the people who liked your post to reconsider whether that's justification for propagating antisemitic tropes.
You are either dishonest or naive. He is deliberately using ‘Israel’ to hide the fact he means Jewish. As the context makes clear. As he always has, and as so many in Labour do. That’s what makes the video so horribly ironic.
As for the rest - you are the one who supports antisemites. Not me. Amazing for somebody who claims to be Jewish, but then of course Edwin Montagu was famous for his antisemitism as well.
I've no time for Chris Williamson, nor has the Labour Party, nor have the voters of Derby North (635 votes as an independent in 2019). And yes, there is an anti-semitism problem in the Labour Party, being tackled by Starmer.
But, and it's an important but, we have reached a stage where any criticism of the actions of the Israeli state is designated as ipso facto anti-semitic by a lot of commentators and pundits. This cannot be healthy, especially given some of the policies of the Israeli state over the last couple of years. We are also almost at the stage where support for the Palestinian cause is in itself perceived as evidence of anti-semitism as well. The debate has become unhealthily unbalanced.
Hardly. Lisa Nandy is a big supporter of the Palestinians. But has managed to do this without ever being accused of anti-semitism or getting involved with known anti-semites. Indeed, she became the Jewish Labour Movement’s favoured candidate for leadership.
If she could do it then there was absolutely no reason why plenty of her colleagues could not have done the same.
Spot on. Corbyn twice asked the people of the UK to make him their Prime Minister. Whilst doing so, he made no attempt to distance himself from some people with odious views on the Jews - because he felt they generally shared his wider political aims. Utterly unacceptable - said the voters, giving Boris an 80 seat majority instead.
Thanks for putting me on to this Topping. I really enjoyed Top Boy Summerhouse but was a bit disappointed with the follow up, Top Boy.
Yes Summerhouse was great and raw and had that energy that UK film makers can produce so well (Ill Manors, Attack the Block, Blue Story, Bullet Boy and even Starred up and '71).
Top Boy itself I still enjoyed it, and I could watch Stormzy Kano reading out recipes for Baked Alaska all day so for me it was better than much that's around right now.
Just started watching the OA which is proving intriguing. Any recommendations?
I wasn`t keen on The OA, to be honest. The best series I`ve seen recently is Unbelievable. And, My Brilliant Friend.
I assume you`ve seen all three Fargo series? These are the best that TV (or film) gets.
And Godless. Rectify is superb (but a slow burner).
Definitely so on the latter. The OA was absolute tosh, narratively ill structured and up it's own bum with perceived deepness of meaning
On the question of whether Corbyn is personally anti semitic people will disagree . But what seems indisputable to me is that this life long anti racist campaigner is apparently incapable of spotting blatant racism right in front of him, which his own views notwithstanding speaks volumes.
Thanks for putting me on to this Topping. I really enjoyed Top Boy Summerhouse but was a bit disappointed with the follow up, Top Boy.
Yes Summerhouse was great and raw and had that energy that UK film makers can produce so well (Ill Manors, Attack the Block, Blue Story, Bullet Boy and even Starred up and '71).
Top Boy itself I still enjoyed it, and I could watch Stormzy Kano reading out recipes for Baked Alaska all day so for me it was better than much that's around right now.
Just started watching the OA which is proving intriguing. Any recommendations?
Sky - Succession, Chernobyl, Big Little Lies Amazon - 19-2, Halt & Catch Fire Netflix - Ozark, Seven Seconds, Narcos, Money Heist, White Lines, The Sinner BBC - Peaky Blinders
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.
Just seen the photoo and it looks contrived. It's not a natural way to hold a piece of paper and why is he scribbling highly legible notes like that and walking around with them?
It’s entirely possible that it’s because of his usual carelessness and muddle-headedness.
Which is why he would be completely the wrong person to be President if the alternative were anyone other than Donald Trump.
That is very unfair, he is also more suited than the other Presidential runner, Mr West.
True.
Out of roughly 170 million eligible people, HTAF did they end up with this lot?
The voting system mostly eliminates people for their negatives, rather than selecting for their positives. Trump is the ones that tests the rule, since negatives were the positives in the eyes of his base, but he only got the job because he was up against Clinton, and she only got the candidature because she was up against Bernie, and so on down the line.
Yes, it's a bad system that promotes all the wrong people for all the wrong reasons, but we're hardly in a position to sneer.
Every majority election winner in our system in recent decades has been positively rated themselves regularly and not just riding in on their opponents negatives.
So who do you think were the half-decent Presidents/PMs post WW2?
USA - Truman, Eisenhower (I think), Kennedy, GHW Bush, Obama
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.
I'd add Cameron to your list for the UK so that's all majority election winners of my lifetime (born under Thatcher).
Too early to judge on Boris.
What did Cameron achieve with his majority win? A disasterous referendum campaign and early retirement is hardly even quarter-decent
For me his two greatest achievements:
* 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.
You said Cameron for his majority win. Gay marriage was a LibDem initiative during the coalition. And by Brown's economic catastrophe I take it you mean the financial crash? Where Cameron and Osborne argued for less regulation of the banking sector because Brown was trying the city up in red tape...
No I don't mean the financial crash. Crashes happen. Recessions happen.
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.
Disappointed to see another floating of this long discredited 'Tory Story' drivel. It's been less than a week.
Its not discredited its a matter of undeniable fact.
Brown claimed to have abolished boom and bust. He didn't. He left the country weak and exposed when a crash then hit.
Two things contributed to the fiscal mess we found ourselves in after the 08 Crash. (1) That the Crash happened. (2) That we had a 2.9% deficit before it happened.
Of these (1) was more important than (2). This is objective reality. To say (2) was more important than (1) is to depart from objective reality. This happens less and less these days – since it really is such obvious nonsense – but when it does happen the reason is always the same and is as follows.
Gordon Brown was responsible for (2) but not for (1). Thus if a person wishes to spread Tory Story propaganda and the Brownaphobic falsehood that his fecklessness led to a decade of austerity they must wildly exaggerate the importance of the pre-Crash deficit and furiously play down the importance of the Crash itself.
Below a reminder of just how profound and exceptional the Crash was.
He was responsible for ramping up the housing market to the point whereby it wasn't only Lehman that got hit but our non-IB domestic mortgage lenders also.
That was all on him.
Removing the Bank from regulatory oversight of capital is also on him. Under the old regime would RBS have been allowed to operate at 50x leverage, or Northern Rock at 35x leverage? The FSA was completely incapable of performing the "financial stability" part of its remit and we all paid the price for that. The FSA completely failed to force banks not to take unnecessary risks with our money and ultimately that's on Brown, given that he set it up in 2001 and took the financial stability regulation away from the Bank and handed it to the FSA.
Yes absolutely the regulatory regime was also on him but I didn't want to overload @kinabalu who was there probably trading CDSs with the best of them.
A much abused instrument. But anyway - as I've just said to you and Max, if people stay away from softhead Brownaphobic abuse they will get only the warmest reception from me. I'm not the biggest Chancellor Gordon fan. He presided over a corrupt and bloated financial sector and he didn't seem to care so long as the tax revenues kept rolling in.
I think we get on best when you agree with me so thank you for this.
All we are saying is that as those tax (and housing market receipts) were rolling in, he kept on spending. And while he was at it he dismantled the UK's system of regulatory oversight.
And hence, his actions exacerbated the effects of the GFC.
So long as "exacerbated" means "amplified by a modest but significant amount" rather than "turned a routine little recession into a catastrophe" this is still in the bounds of tenable argument.
And a (very) tenable additional assertion is as follows - it is unlikely on the face of it that if his policies were retrospectively replaced by those being propounded at the time by the Conservative opposition it would have made much of a difference in the positive direction.
Who has said "routine little recession"? There's nothing little about recessions which is why you need to ensure you are prepared for them - and not pretentiously boast about having abolished them.
In Canada and Australia was the GFC the catastrophe it was in this country?
I'm going to burnish my four Yorkshiremen credentials (despite not coming from Yorkshire) by asking why peopele feel the need to go to poncey Spain or France when you've got good old Skegness on your doorstep.
For an upmarket feel, can I recommend Anderby Creek? It has a free car park too, and social distancing is practiced all year round.
On the question of whether Corbyn is personally anti semitic people will disagree . But what seems indisputable to me is that this life long anti racist campaigner is apparently incapable of spotting blatant racism right in front of him, which his own views notwithstanding speaks volumes.
That is too generous as he didnt act even when it was pointed out to him there was a problem. His loyalty to ideological allies was simply more important to him than dealing properly with their racism.
And a (very) tenable additional assertion is as follows - it is unlikely on the face of it that if his policies were retrospectively replaced by those being propounded at the time by the Conservative opposition it would have made much of a difference in the positive direction.
I'm guessing you edited this in, so didn't reply to it last time.
It depends, they say that hindsight is 20/20 but there were two things being warned about that were not hindsight.
1: The Tories warned about Brown's removal of Bank of England oversight of the banks which directly played a part of what made the GFC awful here. 2: The Tories warned about Brown's deficit before the recession and said that the deficit was dangerous, which directly led to the awful 10% deficit after the crash.
What are the things Brown is criticised for afterwards? His role he played in messing around financial stability in this country (1) and the role he played in the deficit (2) - both of which the Tories warned about before the recession. Funny that!
I'm going to burnish my four Yorkshiremen credentials (despite not coming from Yorkshire) by asking why peopele feel the need to go to poncey Spain or France when you've got good old Skegness on your doorstep.
For an upmarket feel, can I recommend Anderby Creek? It has a free car park too, and social distancing is practiced all year round.
I think you are tongue-in-cheek. But, in case you are not, the definition of a holiday for me means "escaping the UK". Therefore, alas, Skeggy doesn`t qualify.
On the question of whether Corbyn is personally anti semitic people will disagree . But what seems indisputable to me is that this life long anti racist campaigner is apparently incapable of spotting blatant racism right in front of him, which his own views notwithstanding speaks volumes.
Yes. He presided over an environment whereby anti-semites flourished in the party. They were emboldened by the fact that he was leader.
I think @kinabalu lives in some bizarre parallel universe where crashes are for some reason never to be expected or prepared for so if a crash happens then its entirely reasonable to be fully exposed to it with no precautions.
Its like someone going hiking for a month in January, completely naked, with no backback, no tent, no supplies, they're just going to forage off the land. Then a storm comes in and they get hypothermia. Yes the storm may be what caused the hypothermia, but was it reasonable to be completely naked and exposed to the storm?
Did I say that a Tory Story propaganda merchant will often find themselves wildly exaggerating the importance of a single year's 2.9% deficit and playing down the importance of the Global Financial Crisis?
I'm so astute sometimes.
It wasn't a single year's deficit, it was a structural deficit that was created from 2002 to 2007.
If the GFC hadn't happened and Any Other Crisis (AOC) had happened instead, the results would have been the same. Brown had trashed the books so we were not prepared for a crisis to hit.
This wasn't an accident. He had done it because he had "abolished busts".
Meanwhile back at the farm -
The year before Labour came to power in 1997, the deficit was 3% of GDP and the debt was 37% of GDP. Labour's first term saw both measures fall, while during Labour's second and third terms they returned to pretty much their state in 1996/97.
Then the onset of the financial crisis saw debt and deficit increase dramatically. The deficit increased from nearly 3% of GDP in 2007/08 to 10% in 2009/10 - a peacetime high. The debt increased from 34% of GDP to 63% of GDP.
I'm going to burnish my four Yorkshiremen credentials (despite not coming from Yorkshire) by asking why peopele feel the need to go to poncey Spain or France when you've got good old Skegness on your doorstep.
For an upmarket feel, can I recommend Anderby Creek? It has a free car park too, and social distancing is practiced all year round.
I think you are tongue-in-cheek. But, in case you are not, the definition of a holiday for me means "escaping the UK". Therefore, alas, Skeggy doesn`t qualify.
I'm going to burnish my four Yorkshiremen credentials (despite not coming from Yorkshire) by asking why peopele feel the need to go to poncey Spain or France when you've got good old Skegness on your doorstep.
For an upmarket feel, can I recommend Anderby Creek? It has a free car park too, and social distancing is practiced all year round.
Not to mention the Cloud Bar, of course. You couldn't have one of those in some parts of Spain!
I'm going to burnish my four Yorkshiremen credentials (despite not coming from Yorkshire) by asking why peopele feel the need to go to poncey Spain or France when you've got good old Skegness on your doorstep.
For an upmarket feel, can I recommend Anderby Creek? It has a free car park too, and social distancing is practiced all year round.
I think you are tongue-in-cheek. But, in case you are not, the definition of a holiday for me means "escaping the UK". Therefore, alas, Skeggy doesn`t qualify.
On the question of whether Corbyn is personally anti semitic people will disagree . But what seems indisputable to me is that this life long anti racist campaigner is apparently incapable of spotting blatant racism right in front of him, which his own views notwithstanding speaks volumes.
Yes. He presided over an environment whereby anti-semites flourished in the party. They were emboldened by the fact that he was leader.
But it also flourished because a putrid cadre of party workers who wanted to bring about an end to the Corbyn project deliberately buried antisemitism complaints, which were then not addressed, causing still more distress to the victims. That isn't Corbyn's fault.
Financial crashes are NOT inevitable - they are failures of financial regulation.
Business cycles seem to be inevitable, but they often have different drivers. The current recession, for example, is a supply-side shock - nothing to do with the financial sector, which was fairly sound.
Shocks happen.
What causes the next shock can't be predicted, but we need to be prepared for a shock when it happens.
Yes, shocks do happen. But there is a huge difference between largely exogenous shocks, like China flu, and endogenous shocks, like the 2008 financial crash. The former was largely outside our control, though with perfect foresight we could have managed it better and the latter was because our financial regulation was criminally reckless and irresponsible.
Those who just dismiss the 2008 crash by saying "shocks happen" let Blair and Brown off much too lightly.
Do you really think that if the UK had continued with the system of financial regulation in place prior to 1997 we would have been largely shielded from the impact of the Global Financial Crisis?
Yes of course we would.
I think that's a touch optimistic.
Northern Rock's business model - of originating mortgages, packaging them up and then selling them - was not original, even in the UK. The Mortgage Company did it in the 1980s, it was just the Northern Rock perfected it.
And because house prices kept rising, the model looked brilliant. They originated loans, and sold them on at a profit, basically booking years of mortgage profits early and enabling then to outgrow their competition.
There were three problems with this plan:
1. If the market stopped going up, they needed to stop issuing mortgages immediately, as their model was based on them just owning (most of) loans for a short period of time.
2. People bought mortgages from Northern Rock, because Northern Rock's own traders provided a market for them. Buy a set of mortgages from Northern Rock. If you need to sell them later, Northern Rock will buy them back. The problem here was that because Northern Rock had a whole bunch of mortgages it needed to sell, that it needed to pretend that there was an orderly market for its mortgages. So, when the market was turning down it was actually buying its own mortgages back from investors.
3. Finally, when Northern Rock sold mortgages, it did so by breaking them down into tranches. To goose earnings, it kept the riskiest tranches. (Hey, house prices are always going up, so you never lose money even on the riskiest bit of a pool of mortgages!) Basel-II was predicated on all mortgages being the same, when the breaking of pools down into tranches, and having one tranche (so called "equity") seeing all the defaults broke that.
On the question of whether Corbyn is personally anti semitic people will disagree . But what seems indisputable to me is that this life long anti racist campaigner is apparently incapable of spotting blatant racism right in front of him, which his own views notwithstanding speaks volumes.
That is too generous as he didnt act even when it was pointed out to him there was a problem. His loyalty to ideological allies was simply more important to him than dealing properly with their racism.
Life long anti racist campaigner was supposed to be in quotations.
This raises an interesting point, the dynamics may be slightly different this year. Gary Johnson was a conventional American Libertarian; pro-small government, pro-gun, pro-drugs etc. Jorgensen's wing of Left-Libertarians are quite different, much closer to soft-progressive Democrats.
I doubt Jorgensen will do that well, and third parties were overstated in polling in 2016, but I'd guess she will take mostly from Democrats this year.
Financial crashes are NOT inevitable - they are failures of financial regulation.
Business cycles seem to be inevitable, but they often have different drivers. The current recession, for example, is a supply-side shock - nothing to do with the financial sector, which was fairly sound.
Shocks happen.
What causes the next shock can't be predicted, but we need to be prepared for a shock when it happens.
Yes, shocks do happen. But there is a huge difference between largely exogenous shocks, like China flu, and endogenous shocks, like the 2008 financial crash. The former was largely outside our control, though with perfect foresight we could have managed it better and the latter was because our financial regulation was criminally reckless and irresponsible.
Those who just dismiss the 2008 crash by saying "shocks happen" let Blair and Brown off much too lightly.
Do you really think that if the UK had continued with the system of financial regulation in place prior to 1997 we would have been largely shielded from the impact of the Global Financial Crisis?
Yes of course we would.
I'm sorry, Richard, I don't like to do this too often, and especially not to a solid sort of chap like you, but there is no suitable response to this other than -
I suspect that third parties will do a lot less well in 2020 than in 2016, and that benefits Trump more than Biden.
I wouldn't be surprised if both the Dems and the Republicans got a higher percentage of the vote than last time around, and on meaningfully higher turnout too.
I think @kinabalu lives in some bizarre parallel universe where crashes are for some reason never to be expected or prepared for so if a crash happens then its entirely reasonable to be fully exposed to it with no precautions.
Its like someone going hiking for a month in January, completely naked, with no backback, no tent, no supplies, they're just going to forage off the land. Then a storm comes in and they get hypothermia. Yes the storm may be what caused the hypothermia, but was it reasonable to be completely naked and exposed to the storm?
Did I say that a Tory Story propaganda merchant will often find themselves wildly exaggerating the importance of a single year's 2.9% deficit and playing down the importance of the Global Financial Crisis?
I'm so astute sometimes.
It wasn't a single year's deficit, it was a structural deficit that was created from 2002 to 2007.
If the GFC hadn't happened and Any Other Crisis (AOC) had happened instead, the results would have been the same. Brown had trashed the books so we were not prepared for a crisis to hit.
This wasn't an accident. He had done it because he had "abolished busts".
Meanwhile back at the farm -
The year before Labour came to power in 1997, the deficit was 3% of GDP and the debt was 37% of GDP. Labour's first term saw both measures fall, while during Labour's second and third terms they returned to pretty much their state in 1996/97.
Then the onset of the financial crisis saw debt and deficit increase dramatically. The deficit increased from nearly 3% of GDP in 2007/08 to 10% in 2009/10 - a peacetime high. The debt increased from 34% of GDP to 63% of GDP.
They did not return to their state in 1996/97.
1996/97 the deficit was falling as the economy recovered after the last recession. Perfectly appropriate with cyclical economics. 2002-07 the deficit was increased and not falling.
Do you see the difference or do I need to resort to pictures instead of words?
After 9 out of 58 elections the vice-president took over the office during the term. I was surprised it was that many.
4 deaths from illness: WH Harrison > Tyler Taylor > Fillmore Harding > Coolidge FD Roosevelt > Truman
3 assassinations: Lincoln > A Johnson McKinley > T Roosevelt Kennedy > LB Johnson
Gerald Ford succeeded Nixon, but was never elected Vice President (or President)
You missed James Garfield to Chester Arthur, 1881 (assassination).
Yes - How could I have forgotten?!?!
MISTER GARFIELD Rambling Jack Elliott
Mr Garfield been shot down shot down shot down Mr Garfield been shot down low
Me and my brother was down close to the depot when I heard the report of a pistol My brother run out and come back in all excited And I said what was it and he said it was the report of a pistol and then he said Mr Garfield been shot down shot down shot down Mr Garfield been shot down low
Lord I knew the President was supposed to be at the depot that day And we just wouldn't believe that he's shot But we'd run over there and there was so many folks around That we couldn't see him but some lady was standin' there cryin' And I said mam what was it that happened mam and she said Mr Garfield been shot down shot down shot down Mr Garfield been shot down low
Well everybody drifted off toward home finally And they looked like they felt about as bad as I did But in a few weeks I heard that the President was still alive And I told my brother I said let's get on that train and go to where he's laid up hurt
Well when we got to his big house up there I asked the fellow I said who was it that did it who was it that shoot the President And he said it was Charlie Guiteau that shoot Mr Garfield and I said Charlie Guiteau done shot down a good man good man Charlie Guiteau done shot down a good man low
I heard some fellow there that had been in the house to see the President And I sidled up him to listen to what he was tellin' and he said Mrs Lucretia Garfield was always at his side In the heat of the day fannin' him when he was hot He said that just that day the President said to Mrs Lucretia He said Crete honey (he called her Crete) Said if somethin' worse happens to me after awhile you get yourself a good man
And Mrs Lucretia said James (she called him James) She said I won't hear to that now she said I love you too much but he said You'll make some good man a good wife good wife You'll make some man a good good good wife (Don't pull in single harness all your life good gal Don't pull in single harness all your life)
That's what he said don't pull in single harness all your life Well a few days later I come back to where the President was restin' And it seems everybody was cryin' The flag was hangin' halfway up to the flagpole in front of the house And everybody looked so sad and I asked a soldier boy there And I said is is is Mr Garfield and he said yeah he's gone Gonna lay him in that cold lonesome ground down low Gonna lay him in that cold lonesome ground Well they laid the President by that long cold branch Mr Garfield's been laid down low
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.
Just seen the photoo and it looks contrived. It's not a natural way to hold a piece of paper and why is he scribbling highly legible notes like that and walking around with them?
It’s entirely possible that it’s because of his usual carelessness and muddle-headedness.
Which is why he would be completely the wrong person to be President if the alternative were anyone other than Donald Trump.
That is very unfair, he is also more suited than the other Presidential runner, Mr West.
True.
Out of roughly 170 million eligible people, HTAF did they end up with this lot?
The voting system mostly eliminates people for their negatives, rather than selecting for their positives. Trump is the ones that tests the rule, since negatives were the positives in the eyes of his base, but he only got the job because he was up against Clinton, and she only got the candidature because she was up against Bernie, and so on down the line.
Yes, it's a bad system that promotes all the wrong people for all the wrong reasons, but we're hardly in a position to sneer.
Every majority election winner in our system in recent decades has been positively rated themselves regularly and not just riding in on their opponents negatives.
So who do you think were the half-decent Presidents/PMs post WW2?
USA - Truman, Eisenhower (I think), Kennedy, GHW Bush, Obama
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.
I'd add Cameron to your list for the UK so that's all majority election winners of my lifetime (born under Thatcher).
Too early to judge on Boris.
What did Cameron achieve with his majority win? A disasterous referendum campaign and early retirement is hardly even quarter-decent
For me his two greatest achievements:
* 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.
You said Cameron for his majority win. Gay marriage was a LibDem initiative during the coalition. And by Brown's economic catastrophe I take it you mean the financial crash? Where Cameron and Osborne argued for less regulation of the banking sector because Brown was trying the city up in red tape...
No I don't mean the financial crash. Crashes happen. Recessions happen.
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.
Didn't Cameron and Osborne pledge to match Labour spending pre crash?
An outrageous quoting of the facts to try and divert away from the spin. Shame...
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.
It’s the structural deficit that matters. That’s where brown messed up
Northern Rock's business model - of originating mortgages, packaging them up and then selling them - was not original, even in the UK. The Mortgage Company did it in the 1980s, it was just the Northern Rock perfected it.
And because house prices kept rising, the model looked brilliant. They originated loans, and sold them on at a profit, basically booking years of mortgage profits early and enabling then to outgrow their competition.
There were three problems with this plan:
1. If the market stopped going up, they needed to stop issuing mortgages immediately, as their model was based on them just owning (most of) loans for a short period of time.
2. People bought mortgages from Northern Rock, because Northern Rock's own traders provided a market for them. Buy a set of mortgages from Northern Rock. If you need to sell them later, Northern Rock will buy them back. The problem here was that because Northern Rock had a whole bunch of mortgages it needed to sell, that it needed to pretend that there was an orderly market for its mortgages. So, when the market was turning down it was actually buying its own mortgages back from investors.
3. Finally, when Northern Rock sold mortgages, it did so by breaking them down into tranches. To goose earnings, it kept the riskiest tranches. (Hey, house prices are always going up, so you never lose money even on the riskiest bit of a pool of mortgages!) Basel-II was predicated on all mortgages being the same, when the breaking of pools down into tranches, and having one tranche (so called "equity") seeing all the defaults broke that.
The point is that a sensible financial supervision system (not to be confused with financial regulation) would have had a good chance of spotting that NR was over-trading, and told them to cool it. OK, no guarantees of that - NR was, after all, a minor player, and might still have gone bust like banks have for generations - but a good chance. If it had just been NR, that wouldn't have been so bad.
More importantly, though, a sensible supervisory regime would have been looking at the systemic risks from multiple banks taking on highly-correlated risks. There was, literally, no-one tasked with doing that under Brown's tripartite mash-up. If there had been - if the BoE had been left in charge as it had been for 150 years - then it is very highly likely that the over-exposure would have been spotted and reined in. It still beggars belief that no-one in all the massive regulatory apparatus bothered to ask whether RBS was maybe over-doing things a tad with its takeover of ABN-Amro. IIRC the FSA board spent just a few minutes rubber-stamping the takeover. Of course they did - it was their job to check that all the boxes had been ticked, that all the bank employees had passed the utterly stupid FSA exams, that all the paperwork was properly filed, etc. It wasn't their job to check that the takeover wasn't going to crash the economy.
Thousands of compliance officers and regulators checking the minor details, no-one looking at the stability of the overall banking system. Thanks a bunch, Gordon.
I think @kinabalu lives in some bizarre parallel universe where crashes are for some reason never to be expected or prepared for so if a crash happens then its entirely reasonable to be fully exposed to it with no precautions.
Its like someone going hiking for a month in January, completely naked, with no backback, no tent, no supplies, they're just going to forage off the land. Then a storm comes in and they get hypothermia. Yes the storm may be what caused the hypothermia, but was it reasonable to be completely naked and exposed to the storm?
Did I say that a Tory Story propaganda merchant will often find themselves wildly exaggerating the importance of a single year's 2.9% deficit and playing down the importance of the Global Financial Crisis?
I'm so astute sometimes.
It wasn't a single year's deficit, it was a structural deficit that was created from 2002 to 2007.
If the GFC hadn't happened and Any Other Crisis (AOC) had happened instead, the results would have been the same. Brown had trashed the books so we were not prepared for a crisis to hit.
This wasn't an accident. He had done it because he had "abolished busts".
Meanwhile back at the farm -
The year before Labour came to power in 1997, the deficit was 3% of GDP and the debt was 37% of GDP. Labour's first term saw both measures fall, while during Labour's second and third terms they returned to pretty much their state in 1996/97.
Then the onset of the financial crisis saw debt and deficit increase dramatically. The deficit increased from nearly 3% of GDP in 2007/08 to 10% in 2009/10 - a peacetime high. The debt increased from 34% of GDP to 63% of GDP.
We shouldn't have been running a 3% budget deficit at the end of a long period of economic expansion. We should have been close to neutral.
That being said, the problem the UK had was not its government finances. The problem was that, as boom and bust had been "abolished", people felt free to borrow to the hilt. We had a private debt, not a public debt, problem going into the GFC.
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.
Just seen the photoo and it looks contrived. It's not a natural way to hold a piece of paper and why is he scribbling highly legible notes like that and walking around with them?
It’s entirely possible that it’s because of his usual carelessness and muddle-headedness.
Which is why he would be completely the wrong person to be President if the alternative were anyone other than Donald Trump.
That is very unfair, he is also more suited than the other Presidential runner, Mr West.
True.
Out of roughly 170 million eligible people, HTAF did they end up with this lot?
The voting system mostly eliminates people for their negatives, rather than selecting for their positives. Trump is the ones that tests the rule, since negatives were the positives in the eyes of his base, but he only got the job because he was up against Clinton, and she only got the candidature because she was up against Bernie, and so on down the line.
Yes, it's a bad system that promotes all the wrong people for all the wrong reasons, but we're hardly in a position to sneer.
Every majority election winner in our system in recent decades has been positively rated themselves regularly and not just riding in on their opponents negatives.
So who do you think were the half-decent Presidents/PMs post WW2?
USA - Truman, Eisenhower (I think), Kennedy, GHW Bush, Obama
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.
I'd add Cameron to your list for the UK so that's all majority election winners of my lifetime (born under Thatcher).
Too early to judge on Boris.
What did Cameron achieve with his majority win? A disasterous referendum campaign and early retirement is hardly even quarter-decent
For me his two greatest achievements:
* 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.
You said Cameron for his majority win. Gay marriage was a LibDem initiative during the coalition. And by Brown's economic catastrophe I take it you mean the financial crash? Where Cameron and Osborne argued for less regulation of the banking sector because Brown was trying the city up in red tape...
No I don't mean the financial crash. Crashes happen. Recessions happen.
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.
Didn't Cameron and Osborne pledge to match Labour spending pre crash?
An outrageous quoting of the facts to try and divert away from the spin. Shame...
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.
It’s the structural deficit that matters. That’s where brown messed up
Not sure why Brown's supporters find this so hard to acknowledge even now 13 years later?
Those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Until Labour is prepared to acknowledge where Brown went catastrophically wrong, they're not fit to be trusted with the economy again.
Harris does nothing for Biden in my view, dull, from California which he will win easily and despite being African American her record as a prosecutor could even turn off the black vote
One thing a Black VP candidate will NOT do - unless Trumpsky picks Clarence Thomas or Kanye West - is "turn off" the Black vote.
Sorta like how it turned out multi-racial Barack Obama WAS "Black enough" for Black folk.
I think @kinabalu lives in some bizarre parallel universe where crashes are for some reason never to be expected or prepared for so if a crash happens then its entirely reasonable to be fully exposed to it with no precautions.
Its like someone going hiking for a month in January, completely naked, with no backback, no tent, no supplies, they're just going to forage off the land. Then a storm comes in and they get hypothermia. Yes the storm may be what caused the hypothermia, but was it reasonable to be completely naked and exposed to the storm?
Did I say that a Tory Story propaganda merchant will often find themselves wildly exaggerating the importance of a single year's 2.9% deficit and playing down the importance of the Global Financial Crisis?
I'm so astute sometimes.
It wasn't a single year's deficit, it was a structural deficit that was created from 2002 to 2007.
If the GFC hadn't happened and Any Other Crisis (AOC) had happened instead, the results would have been the same. Brown had trashed the books so we were not prepared for a crisis to hit.
This wasn't an accident. He had done it because he had "abolished busts".
Meanwhile back at the farm -
The year before Labour came to power in 1997, the deficit was 3% of GDP and the debt was 37% of GDP. Labour's first term saw both measures fall, while during Labour's second and third terms they returned to pretty much their state in 1996/97.
Then the onset of the financial crisis saw debt and deficit increase dramatically. The deficit increased from nearly 3% of GDP in 2007/08 to 10% in 2009/10 - a peacetime high. The debt increased from 34% of GDP to 63% of GDP.
We shouldn't have been running a 3% budget deficit at the end of a long period of economic expansion. We should have been close to neutral.
That being said, the problem the UK had was not its government finances. The problem was that, as boom and bust had been "abolished", people felt free to borrow to the hilt. We had a private debt, not a public debt, problem going into the GFC.
We had both.
Worst of all worlds. Abolishing boom and bust was the most Icarus like moment in modern politics.
Northern Rock's business model - of originating mortgages, packaging them up and then selling them - was not original, even in the UK. The Mortgage Company did it in the 1980s, it was just the Northern Rock perfected it.
And because house prices kept rising, the model looked brilliant. They originated loans, and sold them on at a profit, basically booking years of mortgage profits early and enabling then to outgrow their competition.
There were three problems with this plan:
1. If the market stopped going up, they needed to stop issuing mortgages immediately, as their model was based on them just owning (most of) loans for a short period of time.
2. People bought mortgages from Northern Rock, because Northern Rock's own traders provided a market for them. Buy a set of mortgages from Northern Rock. If you need to sell them later, Northern Rock will buy them back. The problem here was that because Northern Rock had a whole bunch of mortgages it needed to sell, that it needed to pretend that there was an orderly market for its mortgages. So, when the market was turning down it was actually buying its own mortgages back from investors.
3. Finally, when Northern Rock sold mortgages, it did so by breaking them down into tranches. To goose earnings, it kept the riskiest tranches. (Hey, house prices are always going up, so you never lose money even on the riskiest bit of a pool of mortgages!) Basel-II was predicated on all mortgages being the same, when the breaking of pools down into tranches, and having one tranche (so called "equity") seeing all the defaults broke that.
The point is that a sensible financial supervision system (not to be confused with financial regulation) would have had a good chance of spotting that NR was over-trading, and told them to cool it. OK, no guarantees of that - NR was, after all, a minor player, and might still have gone bust like banks have for generations - but a good chance. If it had just been NR, that wouldn't have been so bad.
More importantly, though, a sensible supervisory regime would have been looking at the systemic risks from multiple banks taking on highly-correlated risks. There was, literally, no-one tasked with doing that under Brown's tripartite mash-up. If there had been - if the BoE had been left in charge as it had been for 150 years - then it is very highly likely that the over-exposure would have been spotted and reined in. It still beggars belief that no-one in all the massive regulatory apparatus bothered to ask whether RBS was maybe over-doing things a tad with its takeover of ABN-Amro. IIRC the FSA board spent just a few minutes rubber-stamping the takeover. Of course they did - it was their job to check that all the boxes had been ticked, that all the bank employees had passed the utterly stupid FSA exams, that all the paperwork was properly filed, etc. It wasn't their job to check that the takeover wasn't going to crash the economy.
Thousands of compliance officers and regulators checking the minor details, no-one looking at the stability of the overall banking system. Thanks a bunch, Gordon.
Well said. Ensuring boxes are ticked is not supervision. A computer can do that with no thinking.
Northern Rock's business model - of originating mortgages, packaging them up and then selling them - was not original, even in the UK. The Mortgage Company did it in the 1980s, it was just the Northern Rock perfected it.
And because house prices kept rising, the model looked brilliant. They originated loans, and sold them on at a profit, basically booking years of mortgage profits early and enabling then to outgrow their competition.
There were three problems with this plan:
1. If the market stopped going up, they needed to stop issuing mortgages immediately, as their model was based on them just owning (most of) loans for a short period of time.
2. People bought mortgages from Northern Rock, because Northern Rock's own traders provided a market for them. Buy a set of mortgages from Northern Rock. If you need to sell them later, Northern Rock will buy them back. The problem here was that because Northern Rock had a whole bunch of mortgages it needed to sell, that it needed to pretend that there was an orderly market for its mortgages. So, when the market was turning down it was actually buying its own mortgages back from investors.
3. Finally, when Northern Rock sold mortgages, it did so by breaking them down into tranches. To goose earnings, it kept the riskiest tranches. (Hey, house prices are always going up, so you never lose money even on the riskiest bit of a pool of mortgages!) Basel-II was predicated on all mortgages being the same, when the breaking of pools down into tranches, and having one tranche (so called "equity") seeing all the defaults broke that.
The point is that a sensible financial supervision system (not to be confused with financial regulation) would have had a good chance of spotting that NR was over-trading, and told them to cool it. OK, no guarantees of that - NR was, after all, a minor player, and might still have gone bust like banks have for generations - but a good chance. If it had just been NR, that wouldn't have been so bad.
More importantly, though, a sensible supervisory regime would have been looking at the systemic risks from multiple banks taking on highly-correlated risks. There was, literally, no-one tasked with doing that under Brown's tripartite mash-up. If there had been - if the BoE had been left in charge as it had been for 150 years - then it is very highly likely that the over-exposure would have been spotted and reined in. It still beggars belief that no-one in all the massive regulatory apparatus bothered to ask whether RBS was maybe over-doing things a tad with its takeover of ABN-Amro. IIRC the FSA board spent just a few minutes rubber-stamping the takeover. Of course they did - it was their job to check that all the boxes had been ticked, that all the bank employees had passed the utterly stupid FSA exams, that all the paperwork was properly filed, etc. It wasn't their job to check that the takeover wasn't going to crash the economy.
Thousands of compliance officers and regulators checking the minor details, no-one looking at the stability of the overall banking system. Thanks a bunch, Gordon.
I agree.
But I also think you are optimistic. The reality is that the Governor of the Bank of England would have been under enormous pressure to "back" British banks. The argument, which politicians would have heard and believed would have gone something like this:
We - as a country - live on our invisible earnings from services like banking. If national champions like RBS want to expand by acquiring poorly run European firms, therefore bringing jobs and profits to London, the Bank of England should be backing them, not standing in their way.
After 9 out of 58 elections the vice-president took over the office during the term. I was surprised it was that many.
4 deaths from illness: WH Harrison > Tyler Taylor > Fillmore Harding > Coolidge FD Roosevelt > Truman
3 assassinations: Lincoln > A Johnson McKinley > T Roosevelt Kennedy > LB Johnson
Gerald Ford succeeded Nixon, but was never elected Vice President (or President)
You missed James Garfield to Chester Arthur, 1881 (assassination).
Yes - How could I have forgotten?!?!
Well, fair play, even if it was a big event it was a while ago now. If you are able to physically remember it, I can only say I really hope I am as mentally sharp as you are when I am north of 140.
I don't think we would have been shielded from the impact of the GFC if we'd had the pre-97 financial regulation system. The collapse in the global economy caused by the American crash would have affected us whatever, as would the near-collapse of the Euro.
But it is at least possible, though ultimately unprovable, that our own financial system would not have contributed to the disaster.
At any rate, the Conservatives, had they been in power in 1997-2007, could hardly have done worse than Brown did in those years.
This raises an interesting point, the dynamics may be slightly different this year. Gary Johnson was a conventional American Libertarian; pro-small government, pro-gun, pro-drugs etc. Jorgensen's wing of Left-Libertarians are quite different, much closer to soft-progressive Democrats.
I doubt Jorgensen will do that well, and third parties were overstated in polling in 2016, but I'd guess she will take mostly from Democrats this year.
One factor in 2016 somewhat overlooked, were folks who cast votes for write-in candidates - and there were IIRC a couple nationally who were Never Trumpers - plus the higher-than-normal falloff in the presidential race - people who cast ballots but did NOT vote for anyone for President.
In 2020, many of these voters are planning to vote for Biden, while others who voted for Trumpsky last time this election will opt for none-of-the-above.
Of course some lefties will do this, but more of 3rd party & falloff will come out of Trumpsky's hide.
I think @kinabalu lives in some bizarre parallel universe where crashes are for some reason never to be expected or prepared for so if a crash happens then its entirely reasonable to be fully exposed to it with no precautions.
Its like someone going hiking for a month in January, completely naked, with no backback, no tent, no supplies, they're just going to forage off the land. Then a storm comes in and they get hypothermia. Yes the storm may be what caused the hypothermia, but was it reasonable to be completely naked and exposed to the storm?
Did I say that a Tory Story propaganda merchant will often find themselves wildly exaggerating the importance of a single year's 2.9% deficit and playing down the importance of the Global Financial Crisis?
I'm so astute sometimes.
It wasn't a single year's deficit, it was a structural deficit that was created from 2002 to 2007.
If the GFC hadn't happened and Any Other Crisis (AOC) had happened instead, the results would have been the same. Brown had trashed the books so we were not prepared for a crisis to hit.
This wasn't an accident. He had done it because he had "abolished busts".
Meanwhile back at the farm -
The year before Labour came to power in 1997, the deficit was 3% of GDP and the debt was 37% of GDP. Labour's first term saw both measures fall, while during Labour's second and third terms they returned to pretty much their state in 1996/97.
Then the onset of the financial crisis saw debt and deficit increase dramatically. The deficit increased from nearly 3% of GDP in 2007/08 to 10% in 2009/10 - a peacetime high. The debt increased from 34% of GDP to 63% of GDP.
They did not return to their state in 1996/97.
1996/97 the deficit was falling as the economy recovered after the last recession. Perfectly appropriate with cyclical economics. 2002-07 the deficit was increased and not falling.
Do you see the difference or do I need to resort to pictures instead of words?
Yes, get your crayons out. It would be a suitable way to express your understanding of this.
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.
Just seen the photoo and it looks contrived. It's not a natural way to hold a piece of paper and why is he scribbling highly legible notes like that and walking around with them?
It’s entirely possible that it’s because of his usual carelessness and muddle-headedness.
Which is why he would be completely the wrong person to be President if the alternative were anyone other than Donald Trump.
That is very unfair, he is also more suited than the other Presidential runner, Mr West.
True.
Out of roughly 170 million eligible people, HTAF did they end up with this lot?
The voting system mostly eliminates people for their negatives, rather than selecting for their positives. Trump is the ones that tests the rule, since negatives were the positives in the eyes of his base, but he only got the job because he was up against Clinton, and she only got the candidature because she was up against Bernie, and so on down the line.
Yes, it's a bad system that promotes all the wrong people for all the wrong reasons, but we're hardly in a position to sneer.
Every majority election winner in our system in recent decades has been positively rated themselves regularly and not just riding in on their opponents negatives.
So who do you think were the half-decent Presidents/PMs post WW2?
USA - Truman, Eisenhower (I think), Kennedy, GHW Bush, Obama
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.
I'd add Cameron to your list for the UK so that's all majority election winners of my lifetime (born under Thatcher).
Too early to judge on Boris.
What did Cameron achieve with his majority win? A disasterous referendum campaign and early retirement is hardly even quarter-decent
For me his two greatest achievements:
* 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.
You said Cameron for his majority win. Gay marriage was a LibDem initiative during the coalition. And by Brown's economic catastrophe I take it you mean the financial crash? Where Cameron and Osborne argued for less regulation of the banking sector because Brown was trying the city up in red tape...
No I don't mean the financial crash. Crashes happen. Recessions happen.
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.
Didn't Cameron and Osborne pledge to match Labour spending pre crash?
An outrageous quoting of the facts to try and divert away from the spin. Shame...
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.
It’s the structural deficit that matters. That’s where brown messed up
What's our structural deficit like at the moment ?
After 9 out of 58 elections the vice-president took over the office during the term. I was surprised it was that many.
4 deaths from illness: WH Harrison > Tyler Taylor > Fillmore Harding > Coolidge FD Roosevelt > Truman
3 assassinations: Lincoln > A Johnson McKinley > T Roosevelt Kennedy > LB Johnson
Gerald Ford succeeded Nixon, but was never elected Vice President (or President)
You missed James Garfield to Chester Arthur, 1881 (assassination).
Yes - How could I have forgotten?!?!
Well, fair play, even if it was a big event it was a while ago now. If you are able to physically remember it, I can only say I really hope I am as mentally sharp as you are when I am north of 140.
"I am a Stalwart of the Stalwarts - and Arthur is President now!"
Words of Garfield's assassin Charles Guiteau just after he shot the President, in reference to the bitter political battle between two factions of the Republican Party in 1881 - the Stalwarts who supported former Pres. Ulysses S. Grant, including Chester Arthur; and the Half Breeds led (until his death) by James Garfield.
It's not. But I'm also super sceptical of the high numbers for both the Greens and the Libertarians. This is such a polarising election: you are either voting for Trump to continue in office, or for him to leave office.
I think @kinabalu lives in some bizarre parallel universe where crashes are for some reason never to be expected or prepared for so if a crash happens then its entirely reasonable to be fully exposed to it with no precautions.
Its like someone going hiking for a month in January, completely naked, with no backback, no tent, no supplies, they're just going to forage off the land. Then a storm comes in and they get hypothermia. Yes the storm may be what caused the hypothermia, but was it reasonable to be completely naked and exposed to the storm?
Did I say that a Tory Story propaganda merchant will often find themselves wildly exaggerating the importance of a single year's 2.9% deficit and playing down the importance of the Global Financial Crisis?
I'm so astute sometimes.
It wasn't a single year's deficit, it was a structural deficit that was created from 2002 to 2007.
If the GFC hadn't happened and Any Other Crisis (AOC) had happened instead, the results would have been the same. Brown had trashed the books so we were not prepared for a crisis to hit.
This wasn't an accident. He had done it because he had "abolished busts".
Meanwhile back at the farm -
The year before Labour came to power in 1997, the deficit was 3% of GDP and the debt was 37% of GDP. Labour's first term saw both measures fall, while during Labour's second and third terms they returned to pretty much their state in 1996/97.
Then the onset of the financial crisis saw debt and deficit increase dramatically. The deficit increased from nearly 3% of GDP in 2007/08 to 10% in 2009/10 - a peacetime high. The debt increased from 34% of GDP to 63% of GDP.
We shouldn't have been running a 3% budget deficit at the end of a long period of economic expansion. We should have been close to neutral.
That being said, the problem the UK had was not its government finances. The problem was that, as boom and bust had been "abolished", people felt free to borrow to the hilt. We had a private debt, not a public debt, problem going into the GFC.
So now we have Tory governments, the private debt problem is solved? Or even, just reduced? Even a smidgin better?
So, as rumour swirls that returnees from Belgium, Luxembourg and Croatia will be added to the UK quarantine list from Friday, the official government position is now to encourage people to go abroad on holiday whilst simultaneously threatening to wreck their trip at next to no notice?
The highest rates of cases per head in continental Europe at the moment are Spain, Sweden, the Balkans and Belgium so seems rational
Maybe in such circumstances having Dowden encouraging people to “continue booking” foreign holidays isn’t quite so rational, then?
It's not. But I'm also super sceptical of the high numbers for both the Greens and the Libertarians. This is such a polarising election: you are either voting for Trump to continue in office, or for him to leave office.
And a (very) tenable additional assertion is as follows - it is unlikely on the face of it that if his policies were retrospectively replaced by those being propounded at the time by the Conservative opposition it would have made much of a difference in the positive direction.
I'm guessing you edited this in, so didn't reply to it last time.
It depends, they say that hindsight is 20/20 but there were two things being warned about that were not hindsight.
1: The Tories warned about Brown's removal of Bank of England oversight of the banks which directly played a part of what made the GFC awful here. 2: The Tories warned about Brown's deficit before the recession and said that the deficit was dangerous, which directly led to the awful 10% deficit after the crash.
What are the things Brown is criticised for afterwards? His role he played in messing around financial stability in this country (1) and the role he played in the deficit (2) - both of which the Tories warned about before the recession. Funny that!
No, not edited in. It was my post to Topping.
But, ok, so we got stuck with a 10% deficit post crash rather than - I suppose we're saying - a 7 to 8% deficit if we'd had little or no deficit going into it.
Well done. That is a good hyperbole buster. Trouble is, it's your own on the receiving end.
It's not. But I'm also super sceptical of the high numbers for both the Greens and the Libertarians. This is such a polarising election: you are either voting for Trump to continue in office, or for him to leave office.
It's not. But I'm also super sceptical of the high numbers for both the Greens and the Libertarians. This is such a polarising election: you are either voting for Trump to continue in office, or for him to leave office.
When hasn't a US election been polarising and have the third party candidates done better in those elections?
Well, before the 2016 election, I was very much of the opinion of this Washington Post piece. That is, the checks and balances of the US system were such that whoever wins, it would be "ok". Not great, mind, as I wasn't enthused by either candidate, but "ok".
I would have almost certainly voted Johnson in 2016.
For much of this Presidency, I have wanted Trump to be re-elected, because I felt it was right that he (and not his successor) should face the consequences of his pro-cyclical economic policies.
Now, I believe that we need to see Biden elected. Not because I like Biden (I think he'll be a terrible President), but because a good system is better than a great person.
And it's essential that the US system of checks and balances, with a relatively weak Presidency, continues. President Trump has shown us how little he cares for the US system of government. Preserving that good system matters more than any particular choice of leader, and I say this without hyperbole, that President Trump is a threat to the US constitution. His bullying of the Supreme Court and the judiciary, his use of Executive Orders to overrule the Houses of Congress, his requirement for personal loyalty among subordinates rather than to the United States of America.
All these strike at the heart of the US system. And that's why, while I have no love for Biden, it's imperative that President Trump must be defeated in 2020.
It's not. But I'm also super sceptical of the high numbers for both the Greens and the Libertarians. This is such a polarising election: you are either voting for Trump to continue in office, or for him to leave office.
When hasn't a US election been polarising and have the third party candidates done better in those elections?
I find the idea that 2016 was not a such a polarising election somewhat amusing.
There were lots of "never Trumpers" who didn't vote for Hillary, mind. Look at the success of Johnson nationally, or at Evan McMullin in Utah, or (indeed) turnout levels in traditionally Republican areas such as Orange County.
It's worth remembering that Trump got a smaller share of the electorate to vote for him that Romney, and Hillary got a smaller share than Kerry.
That's right. They both did worse in exciting the electorate than serial losers Romney and Kerry.
And a (very) tenable additional assertion is as follows - it is unlikely on the face of it that if his policies were retrospectively replaced by those being propounded at the time by the Conservative opposition it would have made much of a difference in the positive direction.
I'm guessing you edited this in, so didn't reply to it last time.
It depends, they say that hindsight is 20/20 but there were two things being warned about that were not hindsight.
1: The Tories warned about Brown's removal of Bank of England oversight of the banks which directly played a part of what made the GFC awful here. 2: The Tories warned about Brown's deficit before the recession and said that the deficit was dangerous, which directly led to the awful 10% deficit after the crash.
What are the things Brown is criticised for afterwards? His role he played in messing around financial stability in this country (1) and the role he played in the deficit (2) - both of which the Tories warned about before the recession. Funny that!
No, not edited in. It was my post to Topping.
But, ok, so we got stuck with a 10% deficit post crash rather than - I suppose we're saying - a 7 to 8% deficit if we'd had little or no deficit going into it.
Well done. That is a good hyperbole buster. Trouble is, it's your own on the receiving end.
There is a world of difference between a 10% deficit and a 7% deficit.
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.
Just seen the photoo and it looks contrived. It's not a natural way to hold a piece of paper and why is he scribbling highly legible notes like that and walking around with them?
It’s entirely possible that it’s because of his usual carelessness and muddle-headedness.
Which is why he would be completely the wrong person to be President if the alternative were anyone other than Donald Trump.
That is very unfair, he is also more suited than the other Presidential runner, Mr West.
True.
Out of roughly 170 million eligible people, HTAF did they end up with this lot?
The voting system mostly eliminates people for their negatives, rather than selecting for their positives. Trump is the ones that tests the rule, since negatives were the positives in the eyes of his base, but he only got the job because he was up against Clinton, and she only got the candidature because she was up against Bernie, and so on down the line.
Yes, it's a bad system that promotes all the wrong people for all the wrong reasons, but we're hardly in a position to sneer.
Every majority election winner in our system in recent decades has been positively rated themselves regularly and not just riding in on their opponents negatives.
So who do you think were the half-decent Presidents/PMs post WW2?
USA - Truman, Eisenhower (I think), Kennedy, GHW Bush, Obama
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.
I'd add Cameron to your list for the UK so that's all majority election winners of my lifetime (born under Thatcher).
Too early to judge on Boris.
What did Cameron achieve with his majority win? A disasterous referendum campaign and early retirement is hardly even quarter-decent
For me his two greatest achievements:
* 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.
You said Cameron for his majority win. Gay marriage was a LibDem initiative during the coalition. And by Brown's economic catastrophe I take it you mean the financial crash? Where Cameron and Osborne argued for less regulation of the banking sector because Brown was trying the city up in red tape...
No I don't mean the financial crash. Crashes happen. Recessions happen.
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.
Disappointed to see another floating of this long discredited 'Tory Story' drivel. It's been less than a week.
Its not discredited its a matter of undeniable fact.
Brown claimed to have abolished boom and bust. He didn't. He left the country weak and exposed when a crash then hit.
Two things contributed to the fiscal mess we found ourselves in after the 08 Crash. (1) That the Crash happened. (2) That we had a 2.9% deficit before it happened.
Of these (1) was more important than (2). This is objective reality. To say (2) was more important than (1) is to depart from objective reality. This happens less and less these days – since it really is such obvious nonsense – but when it does happen the reason is always the same and is as follows.
Gordon Brown was responsible for (2) but not for (1). Thus if a person wishes to spread Tory Story propaganda and the Brownaphobic falsehood that his fecklessness led to a decade of austerity they must wildly exaggerate the importance of the pre-Crash deficit and furiously play down the importance of the Crash itself.
Below a reminder of just how profound and exceptional the Crash was.
He was responsible for ramping up the housing market to the point whereby it wasn't only Lehman that got hit but our non-IB domestic mortgage lenders also.
That was all on him.
Removing the Bank from regulatory oversight of capital is also on him. Under the old regime would RBS have been allowed to operate at 50x leverage, or Northern Rock at 35x leverage? The FSA was completely incapable of performing the "financial stability" part of its remit and we all paid the price for that. The FSA completely failed to force banks not to take unnecessary risks with our money and ultimately that's on Brown, given that he set it up in 2001 and took the financial stability regulation away from the Bank and handed it to the FSA.
Yes absolutely the regulatory regime was also on him but I didn't want to overload @kinabalu who was there probably trading CDSs with the best of them.
A much abused instrument. But anyway - as I've just said to you and Max, if people stay away from softhead Brownaphobic abuse they will get only the warmest reception from me. I'm not the biggest Chancellor Gordon fan. He presided over a corrupt and bloated financial sector and he didn't seem to care so long as the tax revenues kept rolling in.
I think we get on best when you agree with me so thank you for this.
All we are saying is that as those tax (and housing market receipts) were rolling in, he kept on spending. And while he was at it he dismantled the UK's system of regulatory oversight.
And hence, his actions exacerbated the effects of the GFC.
So long as "exacerbated" means "amplified by a modest but significant amount" rather than "turned a routine little recession into a catastrophe" this is still in the bounds of tenable argument.
And a (very) tenable additional assertion is as follows - it is unlikely on the face of it that if his policies were retrospectively replaced by those being propounded at the time by the Conservative opposition it would have made much of a difference in the positive direction.
Who has said "routine little recession"? There's nothing little about recessions which is why you need to ensure you are prepared for them - and not pretentiously boast about having abolished them.
In Canada and Australia was the GFC the catastrophe it was in this country?
Poetic licence. You said it was "nothing special".
His "hubristic" - and now "pretentious" - boasting about abolishing busts? Foolish. Not as foolish as the far more influential Alun Greenspan but foolish nonetheless. But let's not let irritation at the man cloud our judgement and lead us into Tory Story propaganda. It often seems as if you have swallowed the Cons 2010 GE campaign rhetoric whole and are now all these years later unable to burp it up even though its authors have long done so.
The relative size of our financial sector was a big part of why we were hit so hard. Hosting the City of London - the Square Mile - turned from blessing to curse on a sixpence.
It's not. But I'm also super sceptical of the high numbers for both the Greens and the Libertarians. This is such a polarising election: you are either voting for Trump to continue in office, or for him to leave office.
When hasn't a US election been polarising and have the third party candidates done better in those elections?
I find the idea that 2016 was not a such a polarising election somewhat amusing.
There were lots of "never Trumpers" who didn't vote for Hillary, mind. Look at the success of Johnson nationally, or at Evan McMullin in Utah, or (indeed) turnout levels in traditionally Republican areas such as Orange County.
It's worth remembering that Trump got a smaller share of the electorate to vote for him that Romney, and Hillary got a smaller share than Kerry.
That's right. They both did worse in exciting the electorate than serial losers Romney and Kerry.
McMullin got a number of write-in votes for Pres in WA State - how many, nobody knows because they were NOT counted (as they would not have changed the statewide outcome). So the Never Trump but Not Hillary Either vote was under-reported - not hugely, but somewhat.
I think @kinabalu lives in some bizarre parallel universe where crashes are for some reason never to be expected or prepared for so if a crash happens then its entirely reasonable to be fully exposed to it with no precautions.
Its like someone going hiking for a month in January, completely naked, with no backback, no tent, no supplies, they're just going to forage off the land. Then a storm comes in and they get hypothermia. Yes the storm may be what caused the hypothermia, but was it reasonable to be completely naked and exposed to the storm?
Did I say that a Tory Story propaganda merchant will often find themselves wildly exaggerating the importance of a single year's 2.9% deficit and playing down the importance of the Global Financial Crisis?
I'm so astute sometimes.
It wasn't a single year's deficit, it was a structural deficit that was created from 2002 to 2007.
If the GFC hadn't happened and Any Other Crisis (AOC) had happened instead, the results would have been the same. Brown had trashed the books so we were not prepared for a crisis to hit.
This wasn't an accident. He had done it because he had "abolished busts".
Meanwhile back at the farm -
The year before Labour came to power in 1997, the deficit was 3% of GDP and the debt was 37% of GDP. Labour's first term saw both measures fall, while during Labour's second and third terms they returned to pretty much their state in 1996/97.
Then the onset of the financial crisis saw debt and deficit increase dramatically. The deficit increased from nearly 3% of GDP in 2007/08 to 10% in 2009/10 - a peacetime high. The debt increased from 34% of GDP to 63% of GDP.
They did not return to their state in 1996/97.
1996/97 the deficit was falling as the economy recovered after the last recession. Perfectly appropriate with cyclical economics. 2002-07 the deficit was increased and not falling.
Do you see the difference or do I need to resort to pictures instead of words?
Yes, get your crayons out. It would be a suitable way to express your understanding of this.
Lets try again then. I'll even colour code it for you.
1992-1997 under the Tories the deficit was going down 📉 2002-2007 under Labour the deficit went up 📈
Do you understand the difference between 📉 and 📈 ?
I think @kinabalu lives in some bizarre parallel universe where crashes are for some reason never to be expected or prepared for so if a crash happens then its entirely reasonable to be fully exposed to it with no precautions.
Its like someone going hiking for a month in January, completely naked, with no backback, no tent, no supplies, they're just going to forage off the land. Then a storm comes in and they get hypothermia. Yes the storm may be what caused the hypothermia, but was it reasonable to be completely naked and exposed to the storm?
Did I say that a Tory Story propaganda merchant will often find themselves wildly exaggerating the importance of a single year's 2.9% deficit and playing down the importance of the Global Financial Crisis?
I'm so astute sometimes.
It wasn't a single year's deficit, it was a structural deficit that was created from 2002 to 2007.
If the GFC hadn't happened and Any Other Crisis (AOC) had happened instead, the results would have been the same. Brown had trashed the books so we were not prepared for a crisis to hit.
This wasn't an accident. He had done it because he had "abolished busts".
Meanwhile back at the farm -
The year before Labour came to power in 1997, the deficit was 3% of GDP and the debt was 37% of GDP. Labour's first term saw both measures fall, while during Labour's second and third terms they returned to pretty much their state in 1996/97.
Then the onset of the financial crisis saw debt and deficit increase dramatically. The deficit increased from nearly 3% of GDP in 2007/08 to 10% in 2009/10 - a peacetime high. The debt increased from 34% of GDP to 63% of GDP.
They did not return to their state in 1996/97.
1996/97 the deficit was falling as the economy recovered after the last recession. Perfectly appropriate with cyclical economics. 2002-07 the deficit was increased and not falling.
Do you see the difference or do I need to resort to pictures instead of words?
Yes, get your crayons out. It would be a suitable way to express your understanding of this.
Lets try again then. I'll even colour code it for you.
1992-1997 under the Tories the deficit was going down 📉 2002-2007 under Labour the deficit went up 📈
Do you understand the difference between 📉 and 📈 ?
Ooh me sir me sir....is it red (which is also for Labour) is good, blue for Cons is bad? Is that it?
"The Tories have lost the plot Their unhealthy embrace of nanny-state gimmicks reveals an administration that has lost its way.
PADDY HANNAM"
Daniel Hannan should choose a less obvious pseudonym.
On domestic policy the article suggests Boris is governing like New Labour
So that's why he is ahead in the polls.
LOL.
Interesting to see that the proposal is for calorie information only to be required for chains with over 250 employees.
That's entirely logical to me. A chain restaurant following chain procedures and supplies should easily be able to get exact details and simply print them.
A small independent restaurant with a chef making fresh food using fresh produce shouldn't need to have the chef spend his time calculating the calorific data of what goes in to the food.
Reasonable compromise. McDonalds already have the data on their menus, other chains largely already have it on their websites too. Reasonable for chains to do this but exemption for the independents seems smart.
It's not. But I'm also super sceptical of the high numbers for both the Greens and the Libertarians. This is such a polarising election: you are either voting for Trump to continue in office, or for him to leave office.
I think @kinabalu lives in some bizarre parallel universe where crashes are for some reason never to be expected or prepared for so if a crash happens then its entirely reasonable to be fully exposed to it with no precautions.
Its like someone going hiking for a month in January, completely naked, with no backback, no tent, no supplies, they're just going to forage off the land. Then a storm comes in and they get hypothermia. Yes the storm may be what caused the hypothermia, but was it reasonable to be completely naked and exposed to the storm?
Did I say that a Tory Story propaganda merchant will often find themselves wildly exaggerating the importance of a single year's 2.9% deficit and playing down the importance of the Global Financial Crisis?
I'm so astute sometimes.
It wasn't a single year's deficit, it was a structural deficit that was created from 2002 to 2007.
If the GFC hadn't happened and Any Other Crisis (AOC) had happened instead, the results would have been the same. Brown had trashed the books so we were not prepared for a crisis to hit.
This wasn't an accident. He had done it because he had "abolished busts".
Meanwhile back at the farm -
The year before Labour came to power in 1997, the deficit was 3% of GDP and the debt was 37% of GDP. Labour's first term saw both measures fall, while during Labour's second and third terms they returned to pretty much their state in 1996/97.
Then the onset of the financial crisis saw debt and deficit increase dramatically. The deficit increased from nearly 3% of GDP in 2007/08 to 10% in 2009/10 - a peacetime high. The debt increased from 34% of GDP to 63% of GDP.
We shouldn't have been running a 3% budget deficit at the end of a long period of economic expansion. We should have been close to neutral.
That being said, the problem the UK had was not its government finances. The problem was that, as boom and bust had been "abolished", people felt free to borrow to the hilt. We had a private debt, not a public debt, problem going into the GFC.
Yes. And "people" included banks and corporates. Brown should have stamped out the bonus culture in the City and he should not have assumed that the finance sector understood their own activities or the principles of risk management. It was complacency on a grand scale, mitigated only by the fact that almost everyone else was on-board. Bet he so wishes he could have his time again. Just imagine if he had gone against the prevailing orthodoxy - he would a hero.
Why does the PM need someone to communicate on his behalf? Is he too grand to do it himself or something? It’s the PM’s job to speak to the country he seeks to lead. If he can’t be bothered to do that he can resign and let someone else have a go.
It's not. But I'm also super sceptical of the high numbers for both the Greens and the Libertarians. This is such a polarising election: you are either voting for Trump to continue in office, or for him to leave office.
Actually it's not a bad poll for Biden. The last Zogby analytics poll was from 1-2 June and had Biden 46 Trump 46.
I'm more worried about the Change Research polls today showing Biden's lead dropping in Pa from +8 to +2, and in Fla from +7 to +3, compared to 2 weeks ago.
It's not. But I'm also super sceptical of the high numbers for both the Greens and the Libertarians. This is such a polarising election: you are either voting for Trump to continue in office, or for him to leave office.
Actually it's not a bad poll for Biden. The last Zogby analytics poll was from 1-2 June and had Biden 46 Trump 46.
I'm more worried about the Change Research polls today showing Biden's lead dropping in Pa from +8 to +2, and in Fla from +7 to +3, compared to 2 weeks ago.
If the US annouces a vaccine before the election, which is highly likely, then Trump will win.
Why does the PM need someone to communicate on his behalf? Is he too grand to do it himself or something? It’s the PM’s job to speak to the country he seeks to lead. If he can’t be bothered to do that he can resign and let someone else have a go.
That’s a silly comment
Is there any politician that doesn't have a spokesperson?
This really ought to put to an end the nonsense about lab origins of the virus.
Evolutionary origins of the SARS-CoV-2 sarbecovirus lineage responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-020-0771-4 There are outstanding evolutionary questions on the recent emergence of human coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 including the role of reservoir species, the role of recombination and its time of divergence from animal viruses. We find that the sarbecoviruses—the viral subgenus containing SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2—undergo frequent recombination and exhibit spatially structured genetic diversity on a regional scale in China. SARS-CoV-2 itself is not a recombinant of any sarbecoviruses detected to date, and its receptor-binding motif, important for specificity to human ACE2 receptors, appears to be an ancestral trait shared with bat viruses and not one acquired recently via recombination. To employ phylogenetic dating methods, recombinant regions of a 68-genome sarbecovirus alignment were removed with three independent methods. Bayesian evolutionary rate and divergence date estimates were shown to be consistent for these three approaches and for two different prior specifications of evolutionary rates based on HCoV-OC43 and MERS-CoV. Divergence dates between SARS-CoV-2 and the bat sarbecovirus reservoir were estimated as 1948 (95% highest posterior density (HPD): 1879–1999), 1969 (95% HPD: 1930–2000) and 1982 (95% HPD: 1948–2009), indicating that the lineage giving rise to SARS-CoV-2 has been circulating unnoticed in bats for decades....
The only people who think this thing is genetically engineered from the ground up are the ones who think it is spread by 5g signals. The interesting and in my view tenable lab origin theory says that it was collected from the wild, taken to a lab and escaped again. This paper has nothing to say about that...
No, but that's a pretty feeble theory, too. If such coronaviruses are endemic in wild bat populations, which they are, the number of human exposures to them is large and ongoing. The chances of this particular virus emerging from a bat taken to the lab, and then emerging to infect humans, is infinitesimal in comparison to the likelihood of it's being an encounter with a wold bat.
It's not. But I'm also super sceptical of the high numbers for both the Greens and the Libertarians. This is such a polarising election: you are either voting for Trump to continue in office, or for him to leave office.
Actually it's not a bad poll for Biden. The last Zogby analytics poll was from 1-2 June and had Biden 46 Trump 46.
I'm more worried about the Change Research polls today showing Biden's lead dropping in Pa from +8 to +2, and in Fla from +7 to +3, compared to 2 weeks ago.
If the US annouces a vaccine before the election, which is highly likely, then Trump will win.
Just because a vaccine is announced - it doesn't actually change anything until people have actually been given it.
Since increasing age appears to be affecting my balance my wife is insisting I sell my (electric-assist) bike. I just can't face not having it about any more, though. Keep thinking I will get back to it one day.
There's quite a lot of evidence on here that you are leaning too far to the left if that's any help.
Keeping to the left is quite a good thing on a bike!. Middle of the road is dangerous.
It's not. But I'm also super sceptical of the high numbers for both the Greens and the Libertarians. This is such a polarising election: you are either voting for Trump to continue in office, or for him to leave office.
Actually it's not a bad poll for Biden. The last Zogby analytics poll was from 1-2 June and had Biden 46 Trump 46.
I'm more worried about the Change Research polls today showing Biden's lead dropping in Pa from +8 to +2, and in Fla from +7 to +3, compared to 2 weeks ago.
If the US annouces a vaccine before the election, which is highly likely, then Trump will win.
Just because a vaccine is announced - it doesn't actually change anything until people have actually been given it.
It does in the American mindset. It will be annouced as a big win for the US. American's will lap it up.
It's not. But I'm also super sceptical of the high numbers for both the Greens and the Libertarians. This is such a polarising election: you are either voting for Trump to continue in office, or for him to leave office.
Actually it's not a bad poll for Biden. The last Zogby analytics poll was from 1-2 June and had Biden 46 Trump 46.
I'm more worried about the Change Research polls today showing Biden's lead dropping in Pa from +8 to +2, and in Fla from +7 to +3, compared to 2 weeks ago.
If the US annouces a vaccine before the election, which is highly likely, then Trump will win.
Just because a vaccine is announced - it doesn't actually change anything until people have actually been given it.
It does in the American mindset. It will be annouced as a big win for the US. American's will lap it up.
It's not. But I'm also super sceptical of the high numbers for both the Greens and the Libertarians. This is such a polarising election: you are either voting for Trump to continue in office, or for him to leave office.
Actually it's not a bad poll for Biden. The last Zogby analytics poll was from 1-2 June and had Biden 46 Trump 46.
I'm more worried about the Change Research polls today showing Biden's lead dropping in Pa from +8 to +2, and in Fla from +7 to +3, compared to 2 weeks ago.
If the US annouces a vaccine before the election, which is highly likely, then Trump will win.
There's no "will" in the world of forecasting, there is only "more likely" or "less likely".
Also, President Trump is likely to announce a vaccine, whether one exists or not.
Seems reasonable. Huge sympathy but the legal tests to allow the action are struct for very good reasons and politicians cannot get involved in the way requested
I really, really, think we should wait for the sentence. Life, with a minimum of 25 years is, I understand, quite possible for manslaughter.
It's not. But I'm also super sceptical of the high numbers for both the Greens and the Libertarians. This is such a polarising election: you are either voting for Trump to continue in office, or for him to leave office.
Actually it's not a bad poll for Biden. The last Zogby analytics poll was from 1-2 June and had Biden 46 Trump 46.
I'm more worried about the Change Research polls today showing Biden's lead dropping in Pa from +8 to +2, and in Fla from +7 to +3, compared to 2 weeks ago.
If the US annouces a vaccine before the election, which is highly likely, then Trump will win.
Just because a vaccine is announced - it doesn't actually change anything until people have actually been given it.
It does in the American mindset. It will be annouced as a big win for the US. American's will lap it up.
And if it's a UK vaccine?
Or better still a Chinese one - they have several serious-looking contenders.
It's not. But I'm also super sceptical of the high numbers for both the Greens and the Libertarians. This is such a polarising election: you are either voting for Trump to continue in office, or for him to leave office.
Actually it's not a bad poll for Biden. The last Zogby analytics poll was from 1-2 June and had Biden 46 Trump 46.
I'm more worried about the Change Research polls today showing Biden's lead dropping in Pa from +8 to +2, and in Fla from +7 to +3, compared to 2 weeks ago.
If the US annouces a vaccine before the election, which is highly likely, then Trump will win.
Just because a vaccine is announced - it doesn't actually change anything until people have actually been given it.
I think @kinabalu lives in some bizarre parallel universe where crashes are for some reason never to be expected or prepared for so if a crash happens then its entirely reasonable to be fully exposed to it with no precautions.
Its like someone going hiking for a month in January, completely naked, with no backback, no tent, no supplies, they're just going to forage off the land. Then a storm comes in and they get hypothermia. Yes the storm may be what caused the hypothermia, but was it reasonable to be completely naked and exposed to the storm?
Did I say that a Tory Story propaganda merchant will often find themselves wildly exaggerating the importance of a single year's 2.9% deficit and playing down the importance of the Global Financial Crisis?
I'm so astute sometimes.
It wasn't a single year's deficit, it was a structural deficit that was created from 2002 to 2007.
If the GFC hadn't happened and Any Other Crisis (AOC) had happened instead, the results would have been the same. Brown had trashed the books so we were not prepared for a crisis to hit.
This wasn't an accident. He had done it because he had "abolished busts".
Meanwhile back at the farm -
The year before Labour came to power in 1997, the deficit was 3% of GDP and the debt was 37% of GDP. Labour's first term saw both measures fall, while during Labour's second and third terms they returned to pretty much their state in 1996/97.
Then the onset of the financial crisis saw debt and deficit increase dramatically. The deficit increased from nearly 3% of GDP in 2007/08 to 10% in 2009/10 - a peacetime high. The debt increased from 34% of GDP to 63% of GDP.
They did not return to their state in 1996/97.
1996/97 the deficit was falling as the economy recovered after the last recession. Perfectly appropriate with cyclical economics. 2002-07 the deficit was increased and not falling.
Do you see the difference or do I need to resort to pictures instead of words?
Yes, get your crayons out. It would be a suitable way to express your understanding of this.
Lets try again then. I'll even colour code it for you.
1992-1997 under the Tories the deficit was going down 📉 2002-2007 under Labour the deficit went up 📈
Do you understand the difference between 📉 and 📈 ?
It's not. But I'm also super sceptical of the high numbers for both the Greens and the Libertarians. This is such a polarising election: you are either voting for Trump to continue in office, or for him to leave office.
When hasn't a US election been polarising and have the third party candidates done better in those elections?
Well, before the 2016 election, I was very much of the opinion of this Washington Post piece. That is, the checks and balances of the US system were such that whoever wins, it would be "ok". Not great, mind, as I wasn't enthused by either candidate, but "ok".
I would have almost certainly voted Johnson in 2016.
For much of this Presidency, I have wanted Trump to be re-elected, because I felt it was right that he (and not his successor) should face the consequences of his pro-cyclical economic policies.
Now, I believe that we need to see Biden elected. Not because I like Biden (I think he'll be a terrible President), but because a good system is better than a great person.
And it's essential that the US system of checks and balances, with a relatively weak Presidency, continues. President Trump has shown us how little he cares for the US system of government. Preserving that good system matters more than any particular choice of leader, and I say this without hyperbole, that President Trump is a threat to the US constitution. His bullying of the Supreme Court and the judiciary, his use of Executive Orders to overrule the Houses of Congress, his requirement for personal loyalty among subordinates rather than to the United States of America.
All these strike at the heart of the US system. And that's why, while I have no love for Biden, it's imperative that President Trump must be defeated in 2020.
Seems reasonable. Huge sympathy but the legal tests to allow the action are struct for very good reasons and politicians cannot get involved in the way requested
I really, really, think we should wait for the sentence. Life, with a minimum of 25 years is, I understand, quite possible for manslaughter.
It's not. But I'm also super sceptical of the high numbers for both the Greens and the Libertarians. This is such a polarising election: you are either voting for Trump to continue in office, or for him to leave office.
Actually it's not a bad poll for Biden. The last Zogby analytics poll was from 1-2 June and had Biden 46 Trump 46.
I'm more worried about the Change Research polls today showing Biden's lead dropping in Pa from +8 to +2, and in Fla from +7 to +3, compared to 2 weeks ago.
If the US annouces a vaccine before the election, which is highly likely, then Trump will win.
Just because a vaccine is announced - it doesn't actually change anything until people have actually been given it.
It does in the American mindset. It will be annouced as a big win for the US. American's will lap it up.
And if it's a UK vaccine?
Or better still a Chinese one - they have several serious-looking contenders.
It's not. But I'm also super sceptical of the high numbers for both the Greens and the Libertarians. This is such a polarising election: you are either voting for Trump to continue in office, or for him to leave office.
Actually it's not a bad poll for Biden. The last Zogby analytics poll was from 1-2 June and had Biden 46 Trump 46.
I'm more worried about the Change Research polls today showing Biden's lead dropping in Pa from +8 to +2, and in Fla from +7 to +3, compared to 2 weeks ago.
If the US annouces a vaccine before the election, which is highly likely, then Trump will win.
Just because a vaccine is announced - it doesn't actually change anything until people have actually been given it.
It does in the American mindset. It will be annouced as a big win for the US. American's will lap it up.
Comments
(Rectify had the added bonus of Abigail Spencer in it, who I find really sexy: https://www.indiewire.com/2013/06/abigail-spencer-on-rectify-getting-discovered-by-kathy-lee-and-telling-a-story-by-way-of-its-private-moments-37261/)
That is where my judgment is, and once he held the responsibility of being the leader of the Labour party, that loyalty made the party anti-semitic whether Corbyn was himself or not.
But then the damn Jews went and stopped being downtrodden and in need of saving and became strong. And hence they became part of the problem as far as many in the Labour movement were concerned. From oppressed to oppressors.
Same with people who leave their working class/poor roots behind and succeed in life - they also become enemies of Labour and the People as far as the hard left is concerned, whereas you would have thought they would be hailed as heroes.
And a (very) tenable additional assertion is as follows - it is unlikely on the face of it that if his policies were retrospectively replaced by those being propounded at the time by the Conservative opposition it would have made much of a difference in the positive direction.
It's not hard to not be anti semitic. It's not hard to avoid accusations of anti semitism. Avoiding clear anti semites is a good step to mean you can criticise Israel without people making such an accusation.
Amazon - 19-2, Halt & Catch Fire
Netflix - Ozark, Seven Seconds, Narcos, Money Heist, White Lines, The Sinner
BBC - Peaky Blinders
In Canada and Australia was the GFC the catastrophe it was in this country?
For an upmarket feel, can I recommend Anderby Creek? It has a free car park too, and social distancing is practiced all year round.
https://twitter.com/owenjones84/status/1287526393526484998?s=21
https://twitter.com/owenjones84/status/1288404140457107456?s=21
It depends, they say that hindsight is 20/20 but there were two things being warned about that were not hindsight.
1: The Tories warned about Brown's removal of Bank of England oversight of the banks which directly played a part of what made the GFC awful here.
2: The Tories warned about Brown's deficit before the recession and said that the deficit was dangerous, which directly led to the awful 10% deficit after the crash.
What are the things Brown is criticised for afterwards? His role he played in messing around financial stability in this country (1) and the role he played in the deficit (2) - both of which the Tories warned about before the recession. Funny that!
The year before Labour came to power in 1997, the deficit was 3% of GDP and the debt was 37% of GDP. Labour's first term saw both measures fall, while during Labour's second and third terms they returned to pretty much their state in 1996/97.
Then the onset of the financial crisis saw debt and deficit increase dramatically. The deficit increased from nearly 3% of GDP in 2007/08 to 10% in 2009/10 - a peacetime high. The debt increased from 34% of GDP to 63% of GDP.
I'd probably go Florida -> Pennsylvania -> Michigan -> Wisconsin in terms of electoral importance this time round.
Northern Rock's business model - of originating mortgages, packaging them up and then selling them - was not original, even in the UK. The Mortgage Company did it in the 1980s, it was just the Northern Rock perfected it.
And because house prices kept rising, the model looked brilliant. They originated loans, and sold them on at a profit, basically booking years of mortgage profits early and enabling then to outgrow their competition.
There were three problems with this plan:
1. If the market stopped going up, they needed to stop issuing mortgages immediately, as their model was based on them just owning (most of) loans for a short period of time.
2. People bought mortgages from Northern Rock, because Northern Rock's own traders provided a market for them. Buy a set of mortgages from Northern Rock. If you need to sell them later, Northern Rock will buy them back. The problem here was that because Northern Rock had a whole bunch of mortgages it needed to sell, that it needed to pretend that there was an orderly market for its mortgages. So, when the market was turning down it was actually buying its own mortgages back from investors.
3. Finally, when Northern Rock sold mortgages, it did so by breaking them down into tranches. To goose earnings, it kept the riskiest tranches. (Hey, house prices are always going up, so you never lose money even on the riskiest bit of a pool of mortgages!) Basel-II was predicated on all mortgages being the same, when the breaking of pools down into tranches, and having one tranche (so called "equity") seeing all the defaults broke that.
This raises an interesting point, the dynamics may be slightly different this year. Gary Johnson was a conventional American Libertarian; pro-small government, pro-gun, pro-drugs etc. Jorgensen's wing of Left-Libertarians are quite different, much closer to soft-progressive Democrats.
I doubt Jorgensen will do that well, and third parties were overstated in polling in 2016, but I'd guess she will take mostly from Democrats this year.
Your numbers are broadly in line with the Trump net favorability numbers.
LOL!
I wouldn't be surprised if both the Dems and the Republicans got a higher percentage of the vote than last time around, and on meaningfully higher turnout too.
1996/97 the deficit was falling as the economy recovered after the last recession. Perfectly appropriate with cyclical economics.
2002-07 the deficit was increased and not falling.
Do you see the difference or do I need to resort to pictures instead of words?
MISTER GARFIELD
Rambling Jack Elliott
Mr Garfield been shot down shot down shot down Mr Garfield been shot down low
Me and my brother was down close to the depot when I heard the report of a pistol
My brother run out and come back in all excited
And I said what was it and he said it was the report of a pistol and then he said
Mr Garfield been shot down shot down shot down Mr Garfield been shot down low
Lord I knew the President was supposed to be at the depot that day
And we just wouldn't believe that he's shot
But we'd run over there and there was so many folks around
That we couldn't see him but some lady was standin' there cryin'
And I said mam what was it that happened mam and she said
Mr Garfield been shot down shot down shot down Mr Garfield been shot down low
Well everybody drifted off toward home finally
And they looked like they felt about as bad as I did
But in a few weeks I heard that the President was still alive
And I told my brother I said let's get on that train and go to where he's laid up hurt
Well when we got to his big house up there I asked the fellow
I said who was it that did it who was it that shoot the President
And he said it was Charlie Guiteau that shoot Mr Garfield and I said
Charlie Guiteau done shot down a good man good man
Charlie Guiteau done shot down a good man low
I heard some fellow there that had been in the house to see the President
And I sidled up him to listen to what he was tellin' and he said
Mrs Lucretia Garfield was always at his side
In the heat of the day fannin' him when he was hot
He said that just that day the President said to Mrs Lucretia
He said Crete honey (he called her Crete)
Said if somethin' worse happens to me after awhile you get yourself a good man
And Mrs Lucretia said James (she called him James)
She said I won't hear to that now she said I love you too much but he said
You'll make some good man a good wife good wife
You'll make some man a good good good wife
(Don't pull in single harness all your life good gal
Don't pull in single harness all your life)
That's what he said don't pull in single harness all your life
Well a few days later I come back to where the President was restin'
And it seems everybody was cryin'
The flag was hangin' halfway up to the flagpole in front of the house
And everybody looked so sad and I asked a soldier boy there
And I said is is is Mr Garfield and he said yeah he's gone
Gonna lay him in that cold lonesome ground down low
Gonna lay him in that cold lonesome ground
Well they laid the President by that long cold branch Mr Garfield's been laid down low
More importantly, though, a sensible supervisory regime would have been looking at the systemic risks from multiple banks taking on highly-correlated risks. There was, literally, no-one tasked with doing that under Brown's tripartite mash-up. If there had been - if the BoE had been left in charge as it had been for 150 years - then it is very highly likely that the over-exposure would have been spotted and reined in. It still beggars belief that no-one in all the massive regulatory apparatus bothered to ask whether RBS was maybe over-doing things a tad with its takeover of ABN-Amro. IIRC the FSA board spent just a few minutes rubber-stamping the takeover. Of course they did - it was their job to check that all the boxes had been ticked, that all the bank employees had passed the utterly stupid FSA exams, that all the paperwork was properly filed, etc. It wasn't their job to check that the takeover wasn't going to crash the economy.
Thousands of compliance officers and regulators checking the minor details, no-one looking at the stability of the overall banking system. Thanks a bunch, Gordon.
That being said, the problem the UK had was not its government finances. The problem was that, as boom and bust had been "abolished", people felt free to borrow to the hilt. We had a private debt, not a public debt, problem going into the GFC.
Those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Until Labour is prepared to acknowledge where Brown went catastrophically wrong, they're not fit to be trusted with the economy again.
Sorta like how it turned out multi-racial Barack Obama WAS "Black enough" for Black folk.
Worst of all worlds. Abolishing boom and bust was the most Icarus like moment in modern politics.
But I also think you are optimistic. The reality is that the Governor of the Bank of England would have been under enormous pressure to "back" British banks. The argument, which politicians would have heard and believed would have gone something like this:
We - as a country - live on our invisible earnings from services like banking. If national champions like RBS want to expand by acquiring poorly run European firms, therefore bringing jobs and profits to London, the Bank of England should be backing them, not standing in their way.
But it is at least possible, though ultimately unprovable, that our own financial system would not have contributed to the disaster.
At any rate, the Conservatives, had they been in power in 1997-2007, could hardly have done worse than Brown did in those years.
In 2020, many of these voters are planning to vote for Biden, while others who voted for Trumpsky last time this election will opt for none-of-the-above.
Of course some lefties will do this, but more of 3rd party & falloff will come out of Trumpsky's hide.
Words of Garfield's assassin Charles Guiteau just after he shot the President, in reference to the bitter political battle between two factions of the Republican Party in 1881 - the Stalwarts who supported former Pres. Ulysses S. Grant, including Chester Arthur; and the Half Breeds led (until his death) by James Garfield.
For what it's worth Zogby is rated by 538 as a C+ pollster with a mild (0.6 pp) Republican lean.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8572061/Coronavirus-outbreak-pub-200-drinkers-crammed-in.html
But, ok, so we got stuck with a 10% deficit post crash rather than - I suppose we're saying - a 7 to 8% deficit if we'd had little or no deficit going into it.
Well done. That is a good hyperbole buster. Trouble is, it's your own on the receiving end.
I would have almost certainly voted Johnson in 2016.
For much of this Presidency, I have wanted Trump to be re-elected, because I felt it was right that he (and not his successor) should face the consequences of his pro-cyclical economic policies.
Now, I believe that we need to see Biden elected. Not because I like Biden (I think he'll be a terrible President), but because a good system is better than a great person.
And it's essential that the US system of checks and balances, with a relatively weak Presidency, continues. President Trump has shown us how little he cares for the US system of government. Preserving that good system matters more than any particular choice of leader, and I say this without hyperbole, that President Trump is a threat to the US constitution. His bullying of the Supreme Court and the judiciary, his use of Executive Orders to overrule the Houses of Congress, his requirement for personal loyalty among subordinates rather than to the United States of America.
All these strike at the heart of the US system. And that's why, while I have no love for Biden, it's imperative that President Trump must be defeated in 2020.
It's worth remembering that Trump got a smaller share of the electorate to vote for him that Romney, and Hillary got a smaller share than Kerry.
That's right. They both did worse in exciting the electorate than serial losers Romney and Kerry.
His "hubristic" - and now "pretentious" - boasting about abolishing busts? Foolish. Not as foolish as the far more influential Alun Greenspan but foolish nonetheless. But let's not let irritation at the man cloud our judgement and lead us into Tory Story propaganda. It often seems as if you have swallowed the Cons 2010 GE campaign rhetoric whole and are now all these years later unable to burp it up even though its authors have long done so.
The relative size of our financial sector was a big part of why we were hit so hard. Hosting the City of London - the Square Mile - turned from blessing to curse on a sixpence.
Wonder which it is now?
1992-1997 under the Tories the deficit was going down 📉
2002-2007 under Labour the deficit went up 📈
Do you understand the difference between 📉 and 📈 ?
Interesting to see that the proposal is for calorie information only to be required for chains with over 250 employees.
That's entirely logical to me. A chain restaurant following chain procedures and supplies should easily be able to get exact details and simply print them.
A small independent restaurant with a chef making fresh food using fresh produce shouldn't need to have the chef spend his time calculating the calorific data of what goes in to the food.
Reasonable compromise. McDonalds already have the data on their menus, other chains largely already have it on their websites too. Reasonable for chains to do this but exemption for the independents seems smart.
The Texas Republican received the diagnosis during a pre-screening procedure at the White House on Wednesday morning.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/29/louis-gohmert-who-refused-to-wear-a-mask-tests-positive-for-coronavirus-386076
If such coronaviruses are endemic in wild bat populations, which they are, the number of human exposures to them is large and ongoing. The chances of this particular virus emerging from a bat taken to the lab, and then emerging to infect humans, is infinitesimal in comparison to the likelihood of it's being an encounter with a wold bat.
But thanks for the kindly thought!
It had also been suggested to invade Agrabah but polling has suggested that wouldn't be popular.
Also, President Trump is likely to announce a vaccine, whether one exists or not.
https://twitter.com/KrutikaKuppalli/status/1288471726230102018