Possibly but for rent a roof scammers it’s Christmas come early.
Would they be able to adapt existing panels? Or would this material only work with new ones?
If the former, then you’re right, it would be.
If the latter, however, they’re facing Reluctant Turkish Conscript times. They will very rapidly be swept out of the market as their panels age and people refuse to replace them.
Is there any data on imported Covid cases and fro which countries, would be good to have this published to support the quarantine requirements.
It'll be insignificant I imagine. The only data I recall is from March, when it accounted for 0.5% of cases. And that was when entry was unrestricted.
No it wasn't, it was a huge source of ongoing infection. The academics were wrong about quarantine and Priti Patel was right, overruling her is going to look very bad during the investigation.
Evidence?
You may be disgreeing about different things.
Originally the virus came to us 100% from abroad via travellers. That much is obvious - it didn`t blow over here. But once it multiplied significantly here the vast majority of further infections came by transmission within the country not from abroad.
Hence, the argument for grounding planes was valid right at the start, but quickly became less valid.
I don't think we are, because MaxPB said it was a huge "ongoing" source of infections.
But if we are, then I agree. Quarantine may have stopped the virus in January/February, though it wasn't politically feasible then. Also, as we don't really bother to enforce it here, even that's questionable.
By the time we locked down, it was too late. It would have been effective to close the borders before February half term (any later would have just stranded hundreds of thousand of Brits abroad). I suspect this is driving current policy. Spain had over 7,000 new cases yesterday, and France about 3,000.
Still the odds of getting infected are low especially if you follow the rules. I’d like to know how many have imported the virus in the last few weeks?
What do you mean? If a person was abroad in the last few weeks in a country with a lower new infection rate than the UK then the "imported" infection will be lower, on average, than if that same person had stayed in the UK.
I have been told that the emphasis on travel *now* is because when you get to a certain level of community infection, re-introduction from abroad goes from being noise in the data, to a major factor.
Who told you that? That makes no sense. It doesn`t matter whether a new infection is foreign or home-grown. Infection in a particular community will be affected by a newly infected person in that community - whether the the new infection came from within that community, from another part of the UK or from Timbuktu.
Infection from holidaymakers will hit all parts of the UK simultaneously, presumably broadly proportionate to population. Homegrown infection will start to grow exponentially in particular areas, so more amenable to local testing, track & trace, and lockdown measures.
Yes, I get all that. The point is that new infections that holidaymakers bring in will be less in number than the new infections that would happen if they have stayed at home! - IF the infection rate where they visited is lower than in their own community at home.
Up to a point Lord Copper. The very act of travelling - trains, airports, planes, buses, coaches aligned with a range of typical holiday activiites in bars, restaurants , beaches you can go on adinfinitum creates a much bigger range of infection possibilities than staying home. Variation in infection rates can be a help but not if you catch it on the bus to the airport, spread it in your hotel and on the plane for the return journey and then on to family and friends. Holidays at all and especially abroad should really have been a no no this year.
We`re going to have to disagree on this one Felix.
Airports are disinfected to heck and mask wearing is 100%. Very minimal risk. Much safer than visiting a UK supermarket, for instance.
As for travel abroad being a no no - I`d argue it the opposite way. Travelling to a lower risk country than the one you live in helps the tourism industry keep afloat and the businesses in the country you are visiting function, not to mention helping the mental health aspects.
On my trip to NL, both Luton and Schiphol airports were bizarrely empty. I drove to the airport, parked my own car and the bus was also fairly empty. Dutch bars, restaurants and museums are following social distancing and the weather was good enough that I mostly drank outside. Dutch people have to wear masks on public transport and it's about 99% observed, but not in shops - but I don't tend to go shopping on holiday. Amsterdam was fairly busy, although I had In De Wildeman to myself one lunchtime. The Hague, Haarlem and Breda were pretty quiet. The riskiest thing I did was travel on a fairly busy Amsterdam tram but then almost everyone was wearing a mask and Dutch people are apparently less infectious than us so you only have to be 1.5m apart anyway. I thoroughly recommend the Orange Hotel museum in Scheveningen.
Is there any data on imported Covid cases and fro which countries, would be good to have this published to support the quarantine requirements.
It'll be insignificant I imagine. The only data I recall is from March, when it accounted for 0.5% of cases. And that was when entry was unrestricted.
No it wasn't, it was a huge source of ongoing infection. The academics were wrong about quarantine and Priti Patel was right, overruling her is going to look very bad during the investigation.
Evidence?
You may be disgreeing about different things.
Originally the virus came to us 100% from abroad via travellers. That much is obvious - it didn`t blow over here. But once it multiplied significantly here the vast majority of further infections came by transmission within the country not from abroad.
Hence, the argument for grounding planes was valid right at the start, but quickly became less valid.
I don't think we are, because MaxPB said it was a huge "ongoing" source of infections.
But if we are, then I agree. Quarantine may have stopped the virus in January/February, though it wasn't politically feasible then. Also, as we don't really bother to enforce it here, even that's questionable.
By the time we locked down, it was too late. It would have been effective to close the borders before February half term (any later would have just stranded hundreds of thousand of Brits abroad). I suspect this is driving current policy. Spain had over 7,000 new cases yesterday, and France about 3,000.
Still the odds of getting infected are low especially if you follow the rules. I’d like to know how many have imported the virus in the last few weeks?
What do you mean? If a person was abroad in the last few weeks in a country with a lower new infection rate than the UK then the "imported" infection will be lower, on average, than if that same person had stayed in the UK.
I have been told that the emphasis on travel *now* is because when you get to a certain level of community infection, re-introduction from abroad goes from being noise in the data, to a major factor.
Who told you that? That makes no sense. It doesn`t matter whether a new infection is foreign or home-grown. Infection in a particular community will be affected by a newly infected person in that community - whether the the new infection came from within that community, from another part of the UK or from Timbuktu.
Perhaps with some there is a feeling that a disease caught in foreign parts and imported here is just that little bit worse than something homegrown.
British bugs for British people.
Exactly! That is exactly what I`m detecting. An utterly illogical prejudice that is coming out of Johnson`s poxy focus groups who`s primary characteristic is xenophobia.
It's far from a perfect overlap but I'm sure you'll find a correlation between people who are firmly in the anti-immigration, anti-globalization camp and those who are gung ho for very tough international travel restrictions and quarantines.
Indeed. May be envy in the mix along with xenophobia, I suspect.
I'm not sure of that. From what I remember, Brexiteers are more sceptical of locking down the country for CV than remainers. I would have thought, in this case, it would be the opposite (though many of the die-hard remainers do have a second home in France, Italy etc so that might influence their opinion...)
Trump is approaching democracy in the same way he approached business. How anyone here remotely defends or provides cover for what he is up to is beyond me. I am looking at you Charles. Trump is beneath whatever foul bile lurks beneath contempt. He needs to be defeated. Trump's brand of skulduggery will take all the energy and ingenuity that the Dems and decent people possess. I give them at best a 50:50 chance.
Meanwhile our government, which has its own taste for skulduggery, is moving through the gears from shambolic to a down right bone fide basket case. How anyone can support it is quite beyond me at the moment. Again, Labour has a ton of work to do to pull itself out of the abyss it dug itself into and being in a position to win.
Bad times.
"How anyone here remotely defends or provides cover for [Trump]?" Hmm. It`s a head-scratcher that one - the loathsome manchild-toad that he is.
Can anyone shed any light? The only thing I can think of is that would dissuade me from voting for Biden with relish is the "taking the knee" stuff and a general concern about a wokey direction - but I`m less concerned about that than I would be if it wasn`t Biden.
Trump has to go. It`s crucial.
It is unthinkable that Trump should win in November
Unreported World on Channel 4 was good last night. It focused on white suburban and rural, also professional women, even particularly in California, who saw themselves, by backing Trump, as part of a backlash against feminism and their right to be traditional homemakers and more feminine women.
I suspect it's the patronising aspect of the elites that presumes to tell all women how they should feel and act that grates - rather than leaving it as their choice.
Frank Lutz says it is women with children of school age who will be the decider in this election.
Shy Trumpsters?
That Unreported World really is an essential programme to watch, on the themes of polarisation and the absence of cultural centre ground. These women appeared to believe every aspect of their right to live as traditional women was being taken away, even as many minorities in the US instinctively feel this is a life-or-death election for them and their democracy.
Mrs America.
Yes indeed, Mrs America is a fine series. It provides a salutary lesson that the "culture war" has been raging for over 50 years, not just around feminism, but also race and sexuality. Things haven't changed as much as many reckon in the toxic battles over these issues. It's just amplified these days by Twitter, and the fact that the opponents of social progress have political power in several regimes, most obviously the USA, Brazil, parts of Eastern Europe and, to a lesser extent actually, the UK.
I really enjoyed the series and found it educational too. Although Gloria Steinem complained that it ignored the structural aspects of the struggle in favour of a personality driven narrative - a kind of catfight between her and Phyllis - in a way that was itself sexist, i.e. if it were men it would not have been presented that way. Not a self-interested comment from her because she was portrayed favourably in the prog.
Has anyone mentioned his diplomatic triumph of the Israel-UAE deal ?
I'm curious as to whether any PBers are big enough to admit Trump has done well in this case.
I did raise this in the context of what is generally a relatively favourable (and unquestionably quite benign) foreign policy record. To liberally paraphrase, the Brain Trust here conclude that only the “gullible” see this deal as good news and it’s actually all about setting up an anti Shia alliance to start world war 3 in Trump’s second term. Or something.
I hope Trump loses because I don’t like his undermining of democratic principles and personal conduct, which sets an appalling example to kids worldwide. But I don’t live in the US so am overall fairly ambivalent to the result if he delivers a second term roughly in keeping with his first with respect to China policy and the economy.
The very best thing about Trump losing now is it reduces the chances of an AOC presidency down the line.
The PB Brain Trust and, for example, the New York Times:
I do actually think there's something to be said for Trump's foreign policy record not being as damaging as his domestic one.
It's a curious mixture of cravenness and negligence on the one hand, and the more limited capacity for that notorious american short-sightedness and unforeseen damage that can come from being an american isolationist. He's been a toady to Netanyahu and Putin but not achieved significantly less than Obama in these areas, for instance, and arguably on Korea more.
However, his change to the rules of engagement on bombing Isis may have resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands more civilians, which may cancel a lot or all of this out.
Meanwhile our government, which has its own taste for skulduggery, is moving through the gears from shambolic to a down right bone fide basket case. How anyone can support it is quite beyond me at the moment.
Max Hasting in the Times this morning is lamenting that sycophancy has replaced talent in cabinet
Is there any data on imported Covid cases and fro which countries, would be good to have this published to support the quarantine requirements.
It'll be insignificant I imagine. The only data I recall is from March, when it accounted for 0.5% of cases. And that was when entry was unrestricted.
No it wasn't, it was a huge source of ongoing infection. The academics were wrong about quarantine and Priti Patel was right, overruling her is going to look very bad during the investigation.
Evidence?
You may be disgreeing about different things.
Originally the virus came to us 100% from abroad via travellers. That much is obvious - it didn`t blow over here. But once it multiplied significantly here the vast majority of further infections came by transmission within the country not from abroad.
Hence, the argument for grounding planes was valid right at the start, but quickly became less valid.
I don't think we are, because MaxPB said it was a huge "ongoing" source of infections.
But if we are, then I agree. Quarantine may have stopped the virus in January/February, though it wasn't politically feasible then. Also, as we don't really bother to enforce it here, even that's questionable.
By the time we locked down, it was too late. It would have been effective to close the borders before February half term (any later would have just stranded hundreds of thousand of Brits abroad). I suspect this is driving current policy. Spain had over 7,000 new cases yesterday, and France about 3,000.
Still the odds of getting infected are low especially if you follow the rules. I’d like to know how many have imported the virus in the last few weeks?
What do you mean? If a person was abroad in the last few weeks in a country with a lower new infection rate than the UK then the "imported" infection will be lower, on average, than if that same person had stayed in the UK.
I have been told that the emphasis on travel *now* is because when you get to a certain level of community infection, re-introduction from abroad goes from being noise in the data, to a major factor.
Who told you that? That makes no sense. It doesn`t matter whether a new infection is foreign or home-grown. Infection in a particular community will be affected by a newly infected person in that community - whether the the new infection came from within that community, from another part of the UK or from Timbuktu.
Infection from holidaymakers will hit all parts of the UK simultaneously, presumably broadly proportionate to population. Homegrown infection will start to grow exponentially in particular areas, so more amenable to local testing, track & trace, and lockdown measures.
Yes, I get all that. The point is that new infections that holidaymakers bring in will be less in number than the new infections that would happen if they have stayed at home! - IF the infection rate where they visited is lower than in their own community at home.
Up to a point Lord Copper. The very act of travelling - trains, airports, planes, buses, coaches aligned with a range of typical holiday activiites in bars, restaurants , beaches you can go on adinfinitum creates a much bigger range of infection possibilities than staying home. Variation in infection rates can be a help but not if you catch it on the bus to the airport, spread it in your hotel and on the plane for the return journey and then on to family and friends. Holidays at all and especially abroad should really have been a no no this year.
We`re going to have to disagree on this one Felix.
Airports are disinfected to heck and mask wearing is 100%. Very minimal risk. Much safer than visiting a UK supermarket, for instance.
As for travel abroad being a no no - I`d argue it the opposite way. Travelling to a lower risk country than the one you live in helps the tourism industry keep afloat and the businesses in the country you are visiting function, not to mention helping the mental health aspects.
My local tourist town had 4 infections before the tourists came - 2 discos later and it is running a currently known 100+. Each day the council puts out pictures showing the disinfections of the streets - a total waste of time and money. I've also seen many posts of airport and plane squabbles over people refusing to wear masks. Unless there are no bars/food shops/restaurants open in airports I do not see how they can be safe.
There were few bars and restaurants open at both Luton or Schiphol, and at Luton the food outlets were takeaway only so you had to go and find a seat somewhere. Your local town needs to ban discos. Multiple people crowding together indoors is the single biggest vector of the virus.
Has anyone mentioned his diplomatic triumph of the Israel-UAE deal ?
I'm curious as to whether any PBers are big enough to admit Trump has done well in this case.
I did raise this in the context of what is generally a relatively favourable (and unquestionably quite benign) foreign policy record. To liberally paraphrase, the Brain Trust here conclude that only the “gullible” see this deal as good news and it’s actually all about setting up an anti Shia alliance to start world war 3 in Trump’s second term. Or something.
I hope Trump loses because I don’t like his undermining of democratic principles and personal conduct, which sets an appalling example to kids worldwide. But I don’t live in the US so am overall fairly ambivalent to the result if he delivers a second term roughly in keeping with his first with respect to China policy and the economy.
The very best thing about Trump losing now is it reduces the chances of an AOC presidency down the line.
The PB Brain Trust and, for example, the New York Times:
I do actually think there's something to be said for Trump's foreign policy record not being as damaging as his domestic one.
It's a curious mixture of cravenness and negligence on the one hand, and the more limited capacity for that notorious american short-sightedness and unforeseen damage that can come from being an american isolationist. He's been a toady to Netanyahu and Putin but not achieved significantly less than Obama in these areas, for instance, and arguably on Korea more.
However, his change to the rules of engagement on bombing Isis may have resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands more civilians, which may cancel a lot or all of this out.
There was never going to be a good end to the Isis situation.
Is there any data on imported Covid cases and fro which countries, would be good to have this published to support the quarantine requirements.
It'll be insignificant I imagine. The only data I recall is from March, when it accounted for 0.5% of cases. And that was when entry was unrestricted.
No it wasn't, it was a huge source of ongoing infection. The academics were wrong about quarantine and Priti Patel was right, overruling her is going to look very bad during the investigation.
Evidence?
You may be disgreeing about different things.
Originally the virus came to us 100% from abroad via travellers. That much is obvious - it didn`t blow over here. But once it multiplied significantly here the vast majority of further infections came by transmission within the country not from abroad.
Hence, the argument for grounding planes was valid right at the start, but quickly became less valid.
I don't think we are, because MaxPB said it was a huge "ongoing" source of infections.
But if we are, then I agree. Quarantine may have stopped the virus in January/February, though it wasn't politically feasible then. Also, as we don't really bother to enforce it here, even that's questionable.
By the time we locked down, it was too late. It would have been effective to close the borders before February half term (any later would have just stranded hundreds of thousand of Brits abroad). I suspect this is driving current policy. Spain had over 7,000 new cases yesterday, and France about 3,000.
Still the odds of getting infected are low especially if you follow the rules. I’d like to know how many have imported the virus in the last few weeks?
What do you mean? If a person was abroad in the last few weeks in a country with a lower new infection rate than the UK then the "imported" infection will be lower, on average, than if that same person had stayed in the UK.
I have been told that the emphasis on travel *now* is because when you get to a certain level of community infection, re-introduction from abroad goes from being noise in the data, to a major factor.
Who told you that? That makes no sense. It doesn`t matter whether a new infection is foreign or home-grown. Infection in a particular community will be affected by a newly infected person in that community - whether the the new infection came from within that community, from another part of the UK or from Timbuktu.
Perhaps with some there is a feeling that a disease caught in foreign parts and imported here is just that little bit worse than something homegrown.
British bugs for British people.
Exactly! That is exactly what I`m detecting. An utterly illogical prejudice that is coming out of Johnson`s poxy focus groups who`s primary characteristic is xenophobia.
It's far from a perfect overlap but I'm sure you'll find a correlation between people who are firmly in the anti-immigration, anti-globalization camp and those who are gung ho for very tough international travel restrictions and quarantines.
Indeed. May be envy in the mix along with xenophobia, I suspect.
For sure. There's a read across to "FoM is great for Lucinda's gap year and getting cheap plumbers, but ... etc etc".
A powerful strand of opinion and a driver of Brexit. Has to be faced. So I'm facing it.
Has anyone mentioned his diplomatic triumph of the Israel-UAE deal ?
I'm curious as to whether any PBers are big enough to admit Trump has done well in this case.
I did raise this in the context of what is generally a relatively favourable (and unquestionably quite benign) foreign policy record. To liberally paraphrase, the Brain Trust here conclude that only the “gullible” see this deal as good news and it’s actually all about setting up an anti Shia alliance to start world war 3 in Trump’s second term. Or something.
I hope Trump loses because I don’t like his undermining of democratic principles and personal conduct, which sets an appalling example to kids worldwide. But I don’t live in the US so am overall fairly ambivalent to the result if he delivers a second term roughly in keeping with his first with respect to China policy and the economy.
The very best thing about Trump losing now is it reduces the chances of an AOC presidency down the line.
The PB Brain Trust and, for example, the New York Times:
I do actually think there's something to be said for Trump's foreign policy record not being as damaging as his domestic one.
It's a curious mixture of cravenness and negligence on the one hand, and the more limited capacity for that notorious american short-sightedness and unforeseen damage that can come from being an american isolationist. He's been a toady to Netanyahu and Putin but not achieved significantly less than Obama in these areas, for instance, and arguably on Korea more.
However, his change to the rules of engagement on bombing Isis may have resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands more civilians, which may cancel a lot or all of this out.
There was never going to be a good end to the Isis situation.
Maybe not, but the pushback against Isis was proceeding roughly at the same speed before he decided to abandon all discrimination in targets.
If the environment can be called foreign policy too, though, and his inspiration to Bolsonaro included in it too, the disaster spreads through all his wings of his presidency.
I think Korea is the only indisputable area where he hasn't been given enough credit. The objections of Obama-era politicians and Democrats are curiously hawkish ; that he was taken for a ride. The stakes were much higher than that, in possible nuclear conflagration, though, which his own idiosyncratic combination of aggressive posturing and mobster mateyness seems to have reduced.
After his great comeback to win last night, Ronnie O'Sullivan looks to have a great chance of winning SPOTY this year (assuming the annual award ceremony goes ahead after all the sporting disruption), especially at Wm. Hill's incredible stand-out odds of 8/1, which I very much doubt will last beyond breakfast in a couple of hours time! This price is fully 60% better than the next best odds available of 5/1 and more than double BetVictor's 7/2, whilst on the Betfair Exchange he's on offer at 3.8/1 net. DYOR, but be quick if you want to get on at this price.
Now 5/1 with Hills
ETA 9/1 with Ladbrokes
Many thanks for highlighting Laddies' 9/1 odds against Ronnie O'S winning SPOTY 2020, which are STILL available. I missed these best odds on account of the fact that Ladbrokes no longer feature in Oddschecker's comparison tables, more's the pity.
Surprise, surprise, Ladbrokes have now chopped their odds against Ronnie O'S winning this year's SPOTY from 9/1 to 5/1. Oh well, it was good while it lasted!
"There is one exception to that consensus [that Trump is losing]. The stock market. The record shows that if the bull market stays as strong as it has been, Trump will pull off an unexpected victory."
Only election Norputh has got wrong using his model since 1996 was 2000 and his model would also have got 1960 wrong, in both elections there was less than 1% between Kennedy and Nixon and Bush and Gore in the popular vote
So, is Trump going to win HYUFD? What do you think is his percentage chance?
Weren't there indicators posted here that had reliably predicted previous elections and they were all wrong in 2019 and the polls were more or less spot on.
Remind me of what you were posting and forecasting in the run up,to the 2019 generaL election ?
Oh yes, I got it completely wrong. Assume if I predict something the opposite will happen
Mrs C, someone here deliberately did that to point out that the site was insecure and sought to contact the chaps behind the scenes to remedy the situation.
This page on my screen is still shown as being "Not secure". Perhaps it's just as well that OGH is off on his hols and hopefully it will get fixed prior to his return.
We had a negative death rate according to that: I’m not sure we did that well.
Due to the revision in the death rate calculation on Thursday. The official figures are now based on people who died within 28 days of their test, I think it reduced the overall total by about 15%
What is HYUFD's (does it stand for something?) record like?
Well I got the 2019 election right
Not as right as I did. You predicted a decent working Con majority. I called the landslide - and did so from the get go.
I also called the other big thing - exit the EU with a deal and no Ref2 - correct from the outset.
I'm spooky.
You also don't seem to bring up everyone else's record in an attempt to attack them, which is not only boring but also a bit sad. I like that quality in you.
"Remove The Tory Government" is trending. Perhaps these people should spend more time getting Labour electable so we can actually beat them in the next election.
Voting by mail is not done inalienable democratic right. The Dems are pushing it for partisan reasons (and the GOP are resisting it for the same reason)
Limitations on the number of polling stations is far more serious from a democratic perspective. There is no reasonable argument that can be made as to why that might be acceptable.
I remember a local council election where the (LibDem) town council decided to move some of the polling stations AND "save money" by not sending out polling cards or informing residents of where they'd moved the stations to. People were supposed to read the announcement in modest print affixed to a notice outside the town hall, or read the leaflets put out by parties. On the day, we had to put tellers at the "wrong" stations to redirect voters. It was a safe LD seat and they felt that other parties contesting it was an offensive waste of time and money.
Because it was a town council election and a safe seat, opponents were only midly outraged, and even amused at the effrontery. We teased the LDs about it for years, though. That sort of thing at the level of the US Presidency is less entertaining.
This is not unusual. My town council is run by a group of independents. Despite the council being very wealthy they have decreed that by elections are too expensive and fill any vacancies by co-option.
They can’t do that by choice they can only do it if nobody asks for an election which requires ten signatures. If no candidates are nominated then again they can co-opt
We tried this. The Lib Dems asked for a by-election, the Independents put out a leaflet highlighting the costs of the election and won handsomely.
That’s a failure of the local Lib Dems I’m afraid, if they have a record of year round campaigning and run a good election they should win. Most independents are con dependents and should be exposed as such. It does depend on your precept though, if it’s 5000/pa then spending 2000 on an election is excessive. We always used to budget for at least one by election each year so the cost was covered.
It's a complicated story. When I moved in there were 10 Lib Dems, I Lab, and I Con. In 2003 it became 9 LD ( including me) and 3 Ind ( one of whom was a Lib Dem expelled from the party, and one a former Lab councillor). In 2007 it was 7 LD and 6 Ind, then the disaster of 2011 it was 11 Ind and 1 LD (me). Despite regular leafletting and canvassing we saw our vote slip away. I think one of the reasons ( and this affects Lab and Con as well) is the Independent line that we are controlled by 'the centre' and only the Independents can represent local people.
"There is one exception to that consensus [that Trump is losing]. The stock market. The record shows that if the bull market stays as strong as it has been, Trump will pull off an unexpected victory."
Only election Norputh has got wrong using his model since 1996 was 2000 and his model would also have got 1960 wrong, in both elections there was less than 1% between Kennedy and Nixon and Bush and Gore in the popular vote
So, is Trump going to win HYUFD? What do you think is his percentage chance?
I think it will be as close as 2000 and again all come down to Florida as Biden will pick up Michigan and Pennsylvania and Trump will hold all his other 2016 states
Thanks. I`ve printed that off and it`s going on my noticeboard.
Here is another one for your noticeboard - Trump will win all the states he won in 2016 plus Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire and possibly Virginia.
Wow. And I have his EC spread down at 190/200. Me and you are like a pair of card players both sitting there with what they think is a full house. Wonder who's actually got it and who's got the jack high?
Trump is approaching democracy in the same way he approached business. How anyone here remotely defends or provides cover for what he is up to is beyond me. I am looking at you Charles. Trump is beneath whatever foul bile lurks beneath contempt. He needs to be defeated. Trump's brand of skulduggery will take all the energy and ingenuity that the Dems and decent people possess. I give them at best a 50:50 chance.
Meanwhile our government, which has its own taste for skulduggery, is moving through the gears from shambolic to a down right bone fide basket case. How anyone can support it is quite beyond me at the moment. Again, Labour has a ton of work to do to pull itself out of the abyss it dug itself into and being in a position to win.
Bad times.
"How anyone here remotely defends or provides cover for [Trump]?" Hmm. It`s a head-scratcher that one - the loathsome manchild-toad that he is.
Can anyone shed any light? The only thing I can think of is that would dissuade me from voting for Biden with relish is the "taking the knee" stuff and a general concern about a wokey direction - but I`m less concerned about that than I would be if it wasn`t Biden.
Trump has to go. It`s crucial.
OK I'll bite. The case for Trump: 1) no more Neocon wars 2) he failed to repeal Obamacare 3) lower taxes for rich people 4) anti-China; not anti-Russia
The case against Biden: 1) he's past it 2) Dems want to sieze the people's guns and shoot babies
Despite all the rhetoric Trump has been the least warlike and hawkish US President since Carter, there have been no new US invasions of other nations under Trump and not even any major air strikes.
Domestically apart from being more protectionist than free trade he has not done much different from the average Republican President and the US still has gay marriage and legal abortion.
Trump may be a caricature in rhetoric but in policy terms it is more his cultural anti immigration and anti PC language that annoys the left and liberals
If Democrats wanted to learn from Hillary Clinton's defeat and Trump's victory then they'd note to tone down the culture wars, and take working class American concerns about income, health and immigration seriously - and not patronise them.
Ancient history was never my strong point, but didn't more Americans vote for Hillary than for Trump?
Is there any data on imported Covid cases and fro which countries, would be good to have this published to support the quarantine requirements.
It'll be insignificant I imagine. The only data I recall is from March, when it accounted for 0.5% of cases. And that was when entry was unrestricted.
No it wasn't, it was a huge source of ongoing infection. The academics were wrong about quarantine and Priti Patel was right, overruling her is going to look very bad during the investigation.
Evidence?
You may be disgreeing about different things.
Originally the virus came to us 100% from abroad via travellers. That much is obvious - it didn`t blow over here. But once it multiplied significantly here the vast majority of further infections came by transmission within the country not from abroad.
Hence, the argument for grounding planes was valid right at the start, but quickly became less valid.
I don't think we are, because MaxPB said it was a huge "ongoing" source of infections.
But if we are, then I agree. Quarantine may have stopped the virus in January/February, though it wasn't politically feasible then. Also, as we don't really bother to enforce it here, even that's questionable.
By the time we locked down, it was too late. It would have been effective to close the borders before February half term (any later would have just stranded hundreds of thousand of Brits abroad). I suspect this is driving current policy. Spain had over 7,000 new cases yesterday, and France about 3,000.
Still the odds of getting infected are low especially if you follow the rules. I’d like to know how many have imported the virus in the last few weeks?
What do you mean? If a person was abroad in the last few weeks in a country with a lower new infection rate than the UK then the "imported" infection will be lower, on average, than if that same person had stayed in the UK.
I have been told that the emphasis on travel *now* is because when you get to a certain level of community infection, re-introduction from abroad goes from being noise in the data, to a major factor.
Who told you that? That makes no sense. It doesn`t matter whether a new infection is foreign or home-grown. Infection in a particular community will be affected by a newly infected person in that community - whether the the new infection came from within that community, from another part of the UK or from Timbuktu.
Perhaps with some there is a feeling that a disease caught in foreign parts and imported here is just that little bit worse than something homegrown.
British bugs for British people.
It is rather simple really - if the community infection rate is high, the introductions from abroad is noise.
If the community infection rate drops, but the introduction rate doesn't drop much, then it becomes more significant.
Has anyone mentioned his diplomatic triumph of the Israel-UAE deal ?
I'm curious as to whether any PBers are big enough to admit Trump has done well in this case.
I did raise this in the context of what is generally a relatively favourable (and unquestionably quite benign) foreign policy record. To liberally paraphrase, the Brain Trust here conclude that only the “gullible” see this deal as good news and it’s actually all about setting up an anti Shia alliance to start world war 3 in Trump’s second term. Or something.
I hope Trump loses because I don’t like his undermining of democratic principles and personal conduct, which sets an appalling example to kids worldwide. But I don’t live in the US so am overall fairly ambivalent to the result if he delivers a second term roughly in keeping with his first with respect to China policy and the economy.
The very best thing about Trump losing now is it reduces the chances of an AOC presidency down the line.
The PB Brain Trust and, for example, the New York Times:
I do actually think there's something to be said for Trump's foreign policy record not being as damaging as his domestic one.
It's a curious mixture of cravenness and negligence on the one hand, and the more limited capacity for that notorious american short-sightedness and unforeseen damage that can come from being an american isolationist. He's been a toady to Netanyahu and Putin but not achieved significantly less than Obama in these areas, for instance, and arguably on Korea more.
However, his change to the rules of engagement on bombing Isis may have resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands more civilians, which may cancel a lot or all of this out.
He didn't start a nuclear war, which is what I feared most, so he has exceeded my expectations, but then I could hardly have set the bar lower. His betrayal of the Turkish Kurds was probably his most offensive individual act. Apart from that the damage has come mostly in th form of squandering respect and prestige of the US abroad generally. In the long run that may not be a bad thing if only because foreign leaders may be a bit less complacent about joining in US military adventures. (Yes, Tony Blair, we're looking at you.)
What is HYUFD's (does it stand for something?) record like?
Well I got the 2019 election right
Not as right as I did. You predicted a decent working Con majority. I called the landslide - and did so from the get go.
I also called the other big thing - exit the EU with a deal and no Ref2 - correct from the outset.
I'm spooky.
You also don't seem to bring up everyone else's record in an attempt to attack them, which is not only boring but also a bit sad. I like that quality in you.
Hope you're well.
Well I am thank you and ditto. Off to Cornwall on hols shortly.
Re 2019, I recall your bullishness for Labour - for us - and I took it not as a prediction but as an attempted morale lifter.
Like say your niece is about to sit her A level algorithm and she tells you she's worried it will malfunction you don't just agree with her, do you? No, you say, "You'll be fine, sweetie. The computer loves you!""
They made a huge mistake not taking the Mike Ashley buyout. The employees should club together and sue the board for dismissing a cash bailout from someone who has significant retail experience in favour of what was essentially taking on more debt.
"Remove The Tory Government" is trending. Perhaps these people should spend more time getting Labour electable so we can actually beat them in the next election.
But you don't get it, these people are helping. They got something trending on Twitter, that's worth what, 3 million votes.
They made a huge mistake not taking the Mike Ashley buyout. The employees should club together and sue the board for dismissing a cash bailout from someone who has significant retail experience in favour of what was essentially taking on more debt.
Under which law? Would that not be an enormous waste of money and stress for people already suffering from (possible) job losses?
Has anyone mentioned his diplomatic triumph of the Israel-UAE deal ?
I'm curious as to whether any PBers are big enough to admit Trump has done well in this case.
I did raise this in the context of what is generally a relatively favourable (and unquestionably quite benign) foreign policy record. To liberally paraphrase, the Brain Trust here conclude that only the “gullible” see this deal as good news and it’s actually all about setting up an anti Shia alliance to start world war 3 in Trump’s second term. Or something.
I hope Trump loses because I don’t like his undermining of democratic principles and personal conduct, which sets an appalling example to kids worldwide. But I don’t live in the US so am overall fairly ambivalent to the result if he delivers a second term roughly in keeping with his first with respect to China policy and the economy.
The very best thing about Trump losing now is it reduces the chances of an AOC presidency down the line.
The PB Brain Trust and, for example, the New York Times:
I do actually think there's something to be said for Trump's foreign policy record not being as damaging as his domestic one.
It's a curious mixture of cravenness and negligence on the one hand, and the more limited capacity for that notorious american short-sightedness and unforeseen damage that can come from being an american isolationist. He's been a toady to Netanyahu and Putin but not achieved significantly less than Obama in these areas, for instance, and arguably on Korea more.
However, his change to the rules of engagement on bombing Isis may have resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands more civilians, which may cancel a lot or all of this out.
He didn't start a nuclear war, which is what I feared most, so he has exceeded my expectations, but then I could hardly have set the bar lower. His betrayal of the Turkish Kurds was probably his most offensive individual act. Apart from that the damage has come mostly in th form of squandering respect and prestige of the US abroad generally. In the long run that may not be a bad thing if only because foreign leaders may be a bit less complacent about joining in US military adventures. (Yes, Tony Blair, we're looking at you.)
I too had almost the lowest possible expectations of him, and I'm happy to say that he's exceeded them. I wonder if I had such low expectations because the British media had shaped that. I recall having low expectations of Reagan too (admittedly I was just a teenager - I'm sure in his case that it was shaped by 'b movie actor' stories from the bbc and the like)
So anyway with Trump his foreign policy hasn't really been that bad at all - but perhaps that's due to the low expectations all the other nations had of him, and they have done everything to keep out of the way of such a loose cannon.
A terrific biography for a future historian to write at some point.
They made a huge mistake not taking the Mike Ashley buyout. The employees should club together and sue the board for dismissing a cash bailout from someone who has significant retail experience in favour of what was essentially taking on more debt.
Under which law? Would that not be an enormous waste of money and stress for people already suffering from (possible) job losses?
Obviously not realistic, but the employees have been hugely let down because board were too prideful and arrogant to take the money from Ashley.
Is there any data on imported Covid cases and fro which countries, would be good to have this published to support the quarantine requirements.
It'll be insignificant I imagine. The only data I recall is from March, when it accounted for 0.5% of cases. And that was when entry was unrestricted.
No it wasn't, it was a huge source of ongoing infection. The academics were wrong about quarantine and Priti Patel was right, overruling her is going to look very bad during the investigation.
Evidence?
You may be disgreeing about different things.
Originally the virus came to us 100% from abroad via travellers. That much is obvious - it didn`t blow over here. But once it multiplied significantly here the vast majority of further infections came by transmission within the country not from abroad.
Hence, the argument for grounding planes was valid right at the start, but quickly became less valid.
I don't think we are, because MaxPB said it was a huge "ongoing" source of infections.
But if we are, then I agree. Quarantine may have stopped the virus in January/February, though it wasn't politically feasible then. Also, as we don't really bother to enforce it here, even that's questionable.
By the time we locked down, it was too late. It would have been effective to close the borders before February half term (any later would have just stranded hundreds of thousand of Brits abroad). I suspect this is driving current policy. Spain had over 7,000 new cases yesterday, and France about 3,000.
Still the odds of getting infected are low especially if you follow the rules. I’d like to know how many have imported the virus in the last few weeks?
What do you mean? If a person was abroad in the last few weeks in a country with a lower new infection rate than the UK then the "imported" infection will be lower, on average, than if that same person had stayed in the UK.
I have been told that the emphasis on travel *now* is because when you get to a certain level of community infection, re-introduction from abroad goes from being noise in the data, to a major factor.
Who told you that? That makes no sense. It doesn`t matter whether a new infection is foreign or home-grown. Infection in a particular community will be affected by a newly infected person in that community - whether the the new infection came from within that community, from another part of the UK or from Timbuktu.
Perhaps with some there is a feeling that a disease caught in foreign parts and imported here is just that little bit worse than something homegrown.
British bugs for British people.
It is rather simple really - if the community infection rate is high, the introductions from abroad is noise.
If the community infection rate drops, but the introduction rate doesn't drop much, then it becomes more significant.
Yes. That sounds logical. I was about to launch into an analogy with internationalism vs "socialism in one country" - Trotsky vs Stalin- but all will be disappointed to hear that on second thoughts I won't be.
"There is one exception to that consensus [that Trump is losing]. The stock market. The record shows that if the bull market stays as strong as it has been, Trump will pull off an unexpected victory."
Only election Norputh has got wrong using his model since 1996 was 2000 and his model would also have got 1960 wrong, in both elections there was less than 1% between Kennedy and Nixon and Bush and Gore in the popular vote
So, is Trump going to win HYUFD? What do you think is his percentage chance?
I think it will be as close as 2000 and again all come down to Florida as Biden will pick up Michigan and Pennsylvania and Trump will hold all his other 2016 states
Thanks. I`ve printed that off and it`s going on my noticeboard.
Here is another one for your noticeboard - Trump will win all the states he won in 2016 plus Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire and possibly Virginia.
Wow. And I have his EC spread down at 190/200. Me and you are like a pair of card players both sitting there with what they think is a full house. Wonder who's actually got it and who's got the jack high?
You two need to check out Nate Silver's prediction maps, in particular his very helpful 'snake'.
You'll see from that and Nate's own comments that the race is rather more open than is generally imagined, though not quite as good for Trump as Ed would like!
He's an awful corrosive influence, whatever his sometime negligence, quieter isolationism and sole success in Korea have spared us all of in terms of foreign policy.
Voting by mail is not done inalienable democratic right. The Dems are pushing it for partisan reasons (and the GOP are resisting it for the same reason)
Limitations on the number of polling stations is far more serious from a democratic perspective. There is no reasonable argument that can be made as to why that might be acceptable.
I remember a local council election where the (LibDem) town council decided to move some of the polling stations AND "save money" by not sending out polling cards or informing residents of where they'd moved the stations to. People were supposed to read the announcement in modest print affixed to a notice outside the town hall, or read the leaflets put out by parties. On the day, we had to put tellers at the "wrong" stations to redirect voters. It was a safe LD seat and they felt that other parties contesting it was an offensive waste of time and money.
Because it was a town council election and a safe seat, opponents were only midly outraged, and even amused at the effrontery. We teased the LDs about it for years, though. That sort of thing at the level of the US Presidency is less entertaining.
This is not unusual. My town council is run by a group of independents. Despite the council being very wealthy they have decreed that by elections are too expensive and fill any vacancies by co-option.
They can’t do that by choice they can only do it if nobody asks for an election which requires ten signatures. If no candidates are nominated then again they can co-opt
We tried this. The Lib Dems asked for a by-election, the Independents put out a leaflet highlighting the costs of the election and won handsomely.
That’s a failure of the local Lib Dems I’m afraid, if they have a record of year round campaigning and run a good election they should win. Most independents are con dependents and should be exposed as such. It does depend on your precept though, if it’s 5000/pa then spending 2000 on an election is excessive. We always used to budget for at least one by election each year so the cost was covered.
It's a complicated story. When I moved in there were 10 Lib Dems, I Lab, and I Con. In 2003 it became 9 LD ( including me) and 3 Ind ( one of whom was a Lib Dem expelled from the party, and one a former Lab councillor). In 2007 it was 7 LD and 6 Ind, then the disaster of 2011 it was 11 Ind and 1 LD (me). Despite regular leafletting and canvassing we saw our vote slip away. I think one of the reasons ( and this affects Lab and Con as well) is the Independent line that we are controlled by 'the centre' and only the Independents can represent local people.
Do the independents do a good job? Are they a cohesive group with a plan or "proper" independents. I've never lived in a place where independents have done well, I like the idea in principle but no idea how effective it would be in reality.
I sadly think we will see many more like Debenhams go
Debenhams will be missed but the big one would be M & S
M&S should have switched to mostly food a long time ago. Their food is best in class, well ahead of Waitrose and the rest so worthy of a premium. Modern shopping is either premium or value, very few succeed in the middle.
Is there any data on imported Covid cases and fro which countries, would be good to have this published to support the quarantine requirements.
It'll be insignificant I imagine. The only data I recall is from March, when it accounted for 0.5% of cases. And that was when entry was unrestricted.
No it wasn't, it was a huge source of ongoing infection. The academics were wrong about quarantine and Priti Patel was right, overruling her is going to look very bad during the investigation.
Evidence?
You may be disgreeing about different things.
Originally the virus came to us 100% from abroad via travellers. That much is obvious - it didn`t blow over here. But once it multiplied significantly here the vast majority of further infections came by transmission within the country not from abroad.
Hence, the argument for grounding planes was valid right at the start, but quickly became less valid.
I don't think we are, because MaxPB said it was a huge "ongoing" source of infections.
But if we are, then I agree. Quarantine may have stopped the virus in January/February, though it wasn't politically feasible then. Also, as we don't really bother to enforce it here, even that's questionable.
By the time we locked down, it was too late. It would have been effective to close the borders before February half term (any later would have just stranded hundreds of thousand of Brits abroad). I suspect this is driving current policy. Spain had over 7,000 new cases yesterday, and France about 3,000.
Still the odds of getting infected are low especially if you follow the rules. I’d like to know how many have imported the virus in the last few weeks?
What do you mean? If a person was abroad in the last few weeks in a country with a lower new infection rate than the UK then the "imported" infection will be lower, on average, than if that same person had stayed in the UK.
I have been told that the emphasis on travel *now* is because when you get to a certain level of community infection, re-introduction from abroad goes from being noise in the data, to a major factor.
Who told you that? That makes no sense. It doesn`t matter whether a new infection is foreign or home-grown. Infection in a particular community will be affected by a newly infected person in that community - whether the the new infection came from within that community, from another part of the UK or from Timbuktu.
Perhaps with some there is a feeling that a disease caught in foreign parts and imported here is just that little bit worse than something homegrown.
British bugs for British people.
It is rather simple really - if the community infection rate is high, the introductions from abroad is noise.
If the community infection rate drops, but the introduction rate doesn't drop much, then it becomes more significant.
Yes. That sounds logical. I was about to launch into an analogy with internationalism vs "socialism in one country" - Trotsky vs Stalin- but all will be disappointed to hear that on second thoughts I won't be.
If you look at everything through your political biases, then you will miss a great deal.
For example, everyone looking at the MidEast peace deal is trying to frame it as another fuck up by Trump. Because most people don't like him.
The real question is - what is Israel and the UAE getting out of this? Trump is just a bystander. He may try and grab credit, but he didn't drive this.
Has anyone mentioned his diplomatic triumph of the Israel-UAE deal ?
I'm curious as to whether any PBers are big enough to admit Trump has done well in this case.
I did raise this in the context of what is generally a relatively favourable (and unquestionably quite benign) foreign policy record. To liberally paraphrase, the Brain Trust here conclude that only the “gullible” see this deal as good news and it’s actually all about setting up an anti Shia alliance to start world war 3 in Trump’s second term. Or something.
I hope Trump loses because I don’t like his undermining of democratic principles and personal conduct, which sets an appalling example to kids worldwide. But I don’t live in the US so am overall fairly ambivalent to the result if he delivers a second term roughly in keeping with his first with respect to China policy and the economy.
The very best thing about Trump losing now is it reduces the chances of an AOC presidency down the line.
The PB Brain Trust and, for example, the New York Times:
I do actually think there's something to be said for Trump's foreign policy record not being as damaging as his domestic one.
It's a curious mixture of cravenness and negligence on the one hand, and the more limited capacity for that notorious american short-sightedness and unforeseen damage that can come from being an american isolationist. He's been a toady to Netanyahu and Putin but not achieved significantly less than Obama in these areas, for instance, and arguably on Korea more.
However, his change to the rules of engagement on bombing Isis may have resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands more civilians, which may cancel a lot or all of this out.
He didn't start a nuclear war, which is what I feared most, so he has exceeded my expectations, but then I could hardly have set the bar lower. His betrayal of the Turkish Kurds was probably his most offensive individual act. Apart from that the damage has come mostly in th form of squandering respect and prestige of the US abroad generally. In the long run that may not be a bad thing if only because foreign leaders may be a bit less complacent about joining in US military adventures. (Yes, Tony Blair, we're looking at you.)
I too had almost the lowest possible expectations of him, and I'm happy to say that he's exceeded them. I wonder if I had such low expectations because the British media had shaped that. I recall having low expectations of Reagan too (admittedly I was just a teenager - I'm sure in his case that it was shaped by 'b movie actor' stories from the bbc and the like)
So anyway with Trump his foreign policy hasn't really been that bad at all - but perhaps that's due to the low expectations all the other nations had of him, and they have done everything to keep out of the way of such a loose cannon.
A terrific biography for a future historian to write at some point.
Funnily enough I had much the same view of Reagan at first although I fairly soon began to recognise that he wasn't a bad President at all. He is now widely regarded as one of the better ones, and coreectly so in my opinion.
I don't agree about Trump's foreign policy though. How would anybody know what it is? I think he's given a lot of encouragement to some very dangerous forces and nurtured a wild anti-americanism in some dangerous spots. That can't have a good outcome.
I'm tempted to buy Mary Trump's book. That might be as good as any biography. Any PBers read it and prepared to comment?
"There is one exception to that consensus [that Trump is losing]. The stock market. The record shows that if the bull market stays as strong as it has been, Trump will pull off an unexpected victory."
Only election Norputh has got wrong using his model since 1996 was 2000 and his model would also have got 1960 wrong, in both elections there was less than 1% between Kennedy and Nixon and Bush and Gore in the popular vote
So, is Trump going to win HYUFD? What do you think is his percentage chance?
I think it will be as close as 2000 and again all come down to Florida as Biden will pick up Michigan and Pennsylvania and Trump will hold all his other 2016 states
Thanks. I`ve printed that off and it`s going on my noticeboard.
Here is another one for your noticeboard - Trump will win all the states he won in 2016 plus Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire and possibly Virginia.
Wow. And I have his EC spread down at 190/200. Me and you are like a pair of card players both sitting there with what they think is a full house. Wonder who's actually got it and who's got the jack high?
You two need to check out Nate Silver's prediction maps, in particular his very helpful 'snake'.
You'll see from that and Nate's own comments that the race is rather more open than is generally imagined, though not quite as good for Trump as Ed would like!
Yes, I've looked at that. It's a nice piece of work but it's conclusions are the opposite of what you're saying.
His weighted average EC for Trump is similar to mine - around the 200 mark.
And his overall probability for a Trump win is 27% - much lower than the 40% implied by the betting markets.
So per him - and me - the race is LESS open than is generally imagined.
There's a bit of a quandary for the Democrats appearing over the horizon ; to combat Trump's efforts both apparently to delegitimise and make mail voting practically more difficult, they may have to go all-out to encourage in-person voting ; which in turn would heavily prioritise a message of make-or-break freedoms over their previous one of public health and science, and so be a reversal of the main Republican-Democrat dynamic since the virus hit.
I sadly think we will see many more like Debenhams go
Retail as we know it has been doomed for some time. Debenhams has also been on its uppers for some time, and the pandemic has hastened the decline, for example I have discovered how easy it is to import Belgian small brewery beers from a shop in Antwerp*. It's adapt or die. I'm not sure about the future of old fashioned department stores, even John Lewis says it won't be reopening all its stores.
* this might change after the transition period so I can see myself putting in a big order for Christmas
Has anyone mentioned his diplomatic triumph of the Israel-UAE deal ?
I'm curious as to whether any PBers are big enough to admit Trump has done well in this case.
I did raise this in the context of what is generally a relatively favourable (and unquestionably quite benign) foreign policy record. To liberally paraphrase, the Brain Trust here conclude that only the “gullible” see this deal as good news and it’s actually all about setting up an anti Shia alliance to start world war 3 in Trump’s second term. Or something.
I hope Trump loses because I don’t like his undermining of democratic principles and personal conduct, which sets an appalling example to kids worldwide. But I don’t live in the US so am overall fairly ambivalent to the result if he delivers a second term roughly in keeping with his first with respect to China policy and the economy.
The very best thing about Trump losing now is it reduces the chances of an AOC presidency down the line.
The PB Brain Trust and, for example, the New York Times:
I do actually think there's something to be said for Trump's foreign policy record not being as damaging as his domestic one.
It's a curious mixture of cravenness and negligence on the one hand, and the more limited capacity for that notorious american short-sightedness and unforeseen damage that can come from being an american isolationist. He's been a toady to Netanyahu and Putin but not achieved significantly less than Obama in these areas, for instance, and arguably on Korea more.
However, his change to the rules of engagement on bombing Isis may have resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands more civilians, which may cancel a lot or all of this out.
He didn't start a nuclear war, which is what I feared most, so he has exceeded my expectations, but then I could hardly have set the bar lower. His betrayal of the Turkish Kurds was probably his most offensive individual act. Apart from that the damage has come mostly in th form of squandering respect and prestige of the US abroad generally. In the long run that may not be a bad thing if only because foreign leaders may be a bit less complacent about joining in US military adventures. (Yes, Tony Blair, we're looking at you.)
I too had almost the lowest possible expectations of him, and I'm happy to say that he's exceeded them. I wonder if I had such low expectations because the British media had shaped that. I recall having low expectations of Reagan too (admittedly I was just a teenager - I'm sure in his case that it was shaped by 'b movie actor' stories from the bbc and the like)
So anyway with Trump his foreign policy hasn't really been that bad at all - but perhaps that's due to the low expectations all the other nations had of him, and they have done everything to keep out of the way of such a loose cannon.
A terrific biography for a future historian to write at some point.
Funnily enough I had much the same view of Reagan at first although I fairly soon began to recognise that he wasn't a bad President at all. He is now widely regarded as one of the better ones, and coreectly so in my opinion.
I don't agree about Trump's foreign policy though. How would anybody know what it is? I think he's given a lot of encouragement to some very dangerous forces and nurtured a wild anti-americanism in some dangerous spots. That can't have a good outcome.
I'm tempted to buy Mary Trump's book. That might be as good as any biography. Any PBers read it and prepared to comment?
Reagan wasn't just an actor. He had a complex and surprisingly intellectual background - he wrote many of his own speeches over the years. The acting was just his career before he moved into politics full time. Where he became a popular and successful Governor of California for 2 terms.
As opposed to Trump. Who after a lifetime of staggering from one shitty business deal to another....
Is there any data on imported Covid cases and fro which countries, would be good to have this published to support the quarantine requirements.
It'll be insignificant I imagine. The only data I recall is from March, when it accounted for 0.5% of cases. And that was when entry was unrestricted.
No it wasn't, it was a huge source of ongoing infection. The academics were wrong about quarantine and Priti Patel was right, overruling her is going to look very bad during the investigation.
Evidence?
You may be disgreeing about different things.
Originally the virus came to us 100% from abroad via travellers. That much is obvious - it didn`t blow over here. But once it multiplied significantly here the vast majority of further infections came by transmission within the country not from abroad.
Hence, the argument for grounding planes was valid right at the start, but quickly became less valid.
I don't think we are, because MaxPB said it was a huge "ongoing" source of infections.
But if we are, then I agree. Quarantine may have stopped the virus in January/February, though it wasn't politically feasible then. Also, as we don't really bother to enforce it here, even that's questionable.
By the time we locked down, it was too late. It would have been effective to close the borders before February half term (any later would have just stranded hundreds of thousand of Brits abroad). I suspect this is driving current policy. Spain had over 7,000 new cases yesterday, and France about 3,000.
Still the odds of getting infected are low especially if you follow the rules. I’d like to know how many have imported the virus in the last few weeks?
What do you mean? If a person was abroad in the last few weeks in a country with a lower new infection rate than the UK then the "imported" infection will be lower, on average, than if that same person had stayed in the UK.
I have been told that the emphasis on travel *now* is because when you get to a certain level of community infection, re-introduction from abroad goes from being noise in the data, to a major factor.
Who told you that? That makes no sense. It doesn`t matter whether a new infection is foreign or home-grown. Infection in a particular community will be affected by a newly infected person in that community - whether the the new infection came from within that community, from another part of the UK or from Timbuktu.
Infection from holidaymakers will hit all parts of the UK simultaneously, presumably broadly proportionate to population. Homegrown infection will start to grow exponentially in particular areas, so more amenable to local testing, track & trace, and lockdown measures.
Yes, I get all that. The point is that new infections that holidaymakers bring in will be less in number than the new infections that would happen if they have stayed at home! - IF the infection rate where they visited is lower than in their own community at home.
Up to a point Lord Copper. The very act of travelling - trains, airports, planes, buses, coaches aligned with a range of typical holiday activiites in bars, restaurants , beaches you can go on adinfinitum creates a much bigger range of infection possibilities than staying home. Variation in infection rates can be a help but not if you catch it on the bus to the airport, spread it in your hotel and on the plane for the return journey and then on to family and friends. Holidays at all and especially abroad should really have been a no no this year.
We`re going to have to disagree on this one Felix.
Airports are disinfected to heck and mask wearing is 100%. Very minimal risk. Much safer than visiting a UK supermarket, for instance.
As for travel abroad being a no no - I`d argue it the opposite way. Travelling to a lower risk country than the one you live in helps the tourism industry keep afloat and the businesses in the country you are visiting function, not to mention helping the mental health aspects.
My local tourist town had 4 infections before the tourists came - 2 discos later and it is running a currently known 100+. Each day the council puts out pictures showing the disinfections of the streets - a total waste of time and money. I've also seen many posts of airport and plane squabbles over people refusing to wear masks. Unless there are no bars/food shops/restaurants open in airports I do not see how they can be safe.
We’ve had 10 cases in the last month, 4 in the last two weeks in our seaside town with 21000 registered residents. Not sure what this works out as an infection rate.
Is there any data on imported Covid cases and fro which countries, would be good to have this published to support the quarantine requirements.
It'll be insignificant I imagine. The only data I recall is from March, when it accounted for 0.5% of cases. And that was when entry was unrestricted.
No it wasn't, it was a huge source of ongoing infection. The academics were wrong about quarantine and Priti Patel was right, overruling her is going to look very bad during the investigation.
Evidence?
You may be disgreeing about different things.
Originally the virus came to us 100% from abroad via travellers. That much is obvious - it didn`t blow over here. But once it multiplied significantly here the vast majority of further infections came by transmission within the country not from abroad.
Hence, the argument for grounding planes was valid right at the start, but quickly became less valid.
I don't think we are, because MaxPB said it was a huge "ongoing" source of infections.
But if we are, then I agree. Quarantine may have stopped the virus in January/February, though it wasn't politically feasible then. Also, as we don't really bother to enforce it here, even that's questionable.
By the time we locked down, it was too late. It would have been effective to close the borders before February half term (any later would have just stranded hundreds of thousand of Brits abroad). I suspect this is driving current policy. Spain had over 7,000 new cases yesterday, and France about 3,000.
Still the odds of getting infected are low especially if you follow the rules. I’d like to know how many have imported the virus in the last few weeks?
What do you mean? If a person was abroad in the last few weeks in a country with a lower new infection rate than the UK then the "imported" infection will be lower, on average, than if that same person had stayed in the UK.
I have been told that the emphasis on travel *now* is because when you get to a certain level of community infection, re-introduction from abroad goes from being noise in the data, to a major factor.
Who told you that? That makes no sense. It doesn`t matter whether a new infection is foreign or home-grown. Infection in a particular community will be affected by a newly infected person in that community - whether the the new infection came from within that community, from another part of the UK or from Timbuktu.
Perhaps with some there is a feeling that a disease caught in foreign parts and imported here is just that little bit worse than something homegrown.
British bugs for British people.
It is rather simple really - if the community infection rate is high, the introductions from abroad is noise.
If the community infection rate drops, but the introduction rate doesn't drop much, then it becomes more significant.
Yes. That sounds logical. I was about to launch into an analogy with internationalism vs "socialism in one country" - Trotsky vs Stalin- but all will be disappointed to hear that on second thoughts I won't be.
If you look at everything through your political biases, then you will miss a great deal.
For example, everyone looking at the MidEast peace deal is trying to frame it as another fuck up by Trump. Because most people don't like him.
The real question is - what is Israel and the UAE getting out of this? Trump is just a bystander. He may try and grab credit, but he didn't drive this.
Agreed. Which is why I don't and thus miss nothing.
Trump and the "Deal", also agree. It may be serious and good or serious and bad or just a load of nothing much except smoke and mirrors - dunno, above my paygrade - but he will indeed and undoubtedly be a passenger only. He is not capable of driving anything other than ill-informed and divisive discourse.
Has anyone mentioned his diplomatic triumph of the Israel-UAE deal ?
I'm curious as to whether any PBers are big enough to admit Trump has done well in this case.
I did raise this in the context of what is generally a relatively favourable (and unquestionably quite benign) foreign policy record. To liberally paraphrase, the Brain Trust here conclude that only the “gullible” see this deal as good news and it’s actually all about setting up an anti Shia alliance to start world war 3 in Trump’s second term. Or something.
I hope Trump loses because I don’t like his undermining of democratic principles and personal conduct, which sets an appalling example to kids worldwide. But I don’t live in the US so am overall fairly ambivalent to the result if he delivers a second term roughly in keeping with his first with respect to China policy and the economy.
The very best thing about Trump losing now is it reduces the chances of an AOC presidency down the line.
I would seriously question the idea that Trump's foreign policy has been "quite benign". So definitely not "unquestionably". Even without global overheating there is a lot to criticise in foreign policy terms.
When you take his pro catastrophic global overheating policies into account, his foreign policy is unquestionably by far the worst of any US president ever. There isn't going to be any kind of peaceful world if we carry on burning fossil fuels like Trump wants.
Solar power is already competitive with fossil fuels without having to be subsided in many parts of the world and the article I linked to above suggests that it’s going to get substantially (about a third) better In the next few years. Wind generated power is on a similar track. This means that coal is rapidly turning into an expensive as well as dirty option which is the point where all the money grubbing capitalists abandon it without having to be told to.
Not all of them - those that own coal plants and mines will be lobbying hard for taxes and regulation on renewables so that they can slow down the transition as much as possible, and make as much money as possible in the interim.
This process has already been seen in the US and Australia, with attempts to charge people with solar panels a tax to "support the electricity grid" - aka subsidise coal.
And this is only about electricity generation. People are still *buying* diesel and petrol vehicles, for example, by the millions. Leaving it to the industrialists is one of the most stupid ideas I've seen on here. Leaving it to the industrialists has got us to the terrible situation we are in today, 30 years after the science of global warming was clear and almost no progress made since. Even US emissions are higher than in 1990, the country that should be leading the way.
We basically need to decarbonise extremely rapidly to have a reasonable chance of avoiding catastrophe. This is just not going to happen quickly enough without strong political action.
I see the 'Trump hasn't been quite as terrible as everyone said he would be' meme is taking hold. Presumably that wouldn't include those people saying that Trump's term would end up being unremarkable in the wider historical view of US presidents, or that he was probably more an instinctive Dem than a Republican, or after his first excesses that he was going to pivot to the centre any minute now. I believe some of these people even said such stuff on here.
He's a malignant cancer from which only the most radical surgery* will have a chance of saving the body politic, and with likely years of very slow convalescence even on the best prognosis. It's not only US politics that's been poisoned either.
*for the avoidance of doubt, that's a Dem landslide not assassination.
"There is one exception to that consensus [that Trump is losing]. The stock market. The record shows that if the bull market stays as strong as it has been, Trump will pull off an unexpected victory."
Only election Norputh has got wrong using his model since 1996 was 2000 and his model would also have got 1960 wrong, in both elections there was less than 1% between Kennedy and Nixon and Bush and Gore in the popular vote
So, is Trump going to win HYUFD? What do you think is his percentage chance?
I think it will be as close as 2000 and again all come down to Florida as Biden will pick up Michigan and Pennsylvania and Trump will hold all his other 2016 states
Thanks. I`ve printed that off and it`s going on my noticeboard.
Here is another one for your noticeboard - Trump will win all the states he won in 2016 plus Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire and possibly Virginia.
Wow. And I have his EC spread down at 190/200. Me and you are like a pair of card players both sitting there with what they think is a full house. Wonder who's actually got it and who's got the jack high?
You two need to check out Nate Silver's prediction maps, in particular his very helpful 'snake'.
You'll see from that and Nate's own comments that the race is rather more open than is generally imagined, though not quite as good for Trump as Ed would like!
Yes, I've looked at that. It's a nice piece of work but it's conclusions are the opposite of what you're saying.
His weighted average EC for Trump is similar to mine - around the 200 mark.
And his overall probability for a Trump win is 27% - much lower than the 40% implied by the betting markets.
So per him - and me - the race is LESS open than is generally imagined.
Well I wouldn't equate the betting fraternity with the genaral public. Punters have other considerations to bear in mind.
Note that Nate points out Hillary was at about 70% probability on the eve of the election, so Trump at 27% now is by no means out of it.
Is there any data on imported Covid cases and fro which countries, would be good to have this published to support the quarantine requirements.
It'll be insignificant I imagine. The only data I recall is from March, when it accounted for 0.5% of cases. And that was when entry was unrestricted.
No it wasn't, it was a huge source of ongoing infection. The academics were wrong about quarantine and Priti Patel was right, overruling her is going to look very bad during the investigation.
Evidence?
You may be disgreeing about different things.
Originally the virus came to us 100% from abroad via travellers. That much is obvious - it didn`t blow over here. But once it multiplied significantly here the vast majority of further infections came by transmission within the country not from abroad.
Hence, the argument for grounding planes was valid right at the start, but quickly became less valid.
I don't think we are, because MaxPB said it was a huge "ongoing" source of infections.
But if we are, then I agree. Quarantine may have stopped the virus in January/February, though it wasn't politically feasible then. Also, as we don't really bother to enforce it here, even that's questionable.
By the time we locked down, it was too late. It would have been effective to close the borders before February half term (any later would have just stranded hundreds of thousand of Brits abroad). I suspect this is driving current policy. Spain had over 7,000 new cases yesterday, and France about 3,000.
Still the odds of getting infected are low especially if you follow the rules. I’d like to know how many have imported the virus in the last few weeks?
What do you mean? If a person was abroad in the last few weeks in a country with a lower new infection rate than the UK then the "imported" infection will be lower, on average, than if that same person had stayed in the UK.
I have been told that the emphasis on travel *now* is because when you get to a certain level of community infection, re-introduction from abroad goes from being noise in the data, to a major factor.
Who told you that? That makes no sense. It doesn`t matter whether a new infection is foreign or home-grown. Infection in a particular community will be affected by a newly infected person in that community - whether the the new infection came from within that community, from another part of the UK or from Timbuktu.
Perhaps with some there is a feeling that a disease caught in foreign parts and imported here is just that little bit worse than something homegrown.
British bugs for British people.
It is rather simple really - if the community infection rate is high, the introductions from abroad is noise.
If the community infection rate drops, but the introduction rate doesn't drop much, then it becomes more significant.
Yes. That sounds logical. I was about to launch into an analogy with internationalism vs "socialism in one country" - Trotsky vs Stalin- but all will be disappointed to hear that on second thoughts I won't be.
If you look at everything through your political biases, then you will miss a great deal.
For example, everyone looking at the MidEast peace deal is trying to frame it as another fuck up by Trump. Because most people don't like him.
The real question is - what is Israel and the UAE getting out of this? Trump is just a bystander. He may try and grab credit, but he didn't drive this.
Agreed. Which is why I don't and thus miss nothing.
Trump and the "Deal", also agree. It may be serious and good or serious and bad or just a load of nothing much except smoke and mirrors - dunno, above my paygrade - but he will indeed and undoubtedly be a passenger only. He is not capable of driving anything other than ill-informed and divisive discourse.
No, he is capable of driving such things - his relationship with the current Saudi Government, for example. Which is a serious cause for concern.
Just because he is a loathsome fool, doesn't make him incapable of doing anything.
Is there any data on imported Covid cases and fro which countries, would be good to have this published to support the quarantine requirements.
It'll be insignificant I imagine. The only data I recall is from March, when it accounted for 0.5% of cases. And that was when entry was unrestricted.
No it wasn't, it was a huge source of ongoing infection. The academics were wrong about quarantine and Priti Patel was right, overruling her is going to look very bad during the investigation.
Evidence?
You may be disgreeing about different things.
Originally the virus came to us 100% from abroad via travellers. That much is obvious - it didn`t blow over here. But once it multiplied significantly here the vast majority of further infections came by transmission within the country not from abroad.
Hence, the argument for grounding planes was valid right at the start, but quickly became less valid.
I don't think we are, because MaxPB said it was a huge "ongoing" source of infections.
But if we are, then I agree. Quarantine may have stopped the virus in January/February, though it wasn't politically feasible then. Also, as we don't really bother to enforce it here, even that's questionable.
By the time we locked down, it was too late. It would have been effective to close the borders before February half term (any later would have just stranded hundreds of thousand of Brits abroad). I suspect this is driving current policy. Spain had over 7,000 new cases yesterday, and France about 3,000.
Still the odds of getting infected are low especially if you follow the rules. I’d like to know how many have imported the virus in the last few weeks?
What do you mean? If a person was abroad in the last few weeks in a country with a lower new infection rate than the UK then the "imported" infection will be lower, on average, than if that same person had stayed in the UK.
I have been told that the emphasis on travel *now* is because when you get to a certain level of community infection, re-introduction from abroad goes from being noise in the data, to a major factor.
Who told you that? That makes no sense. It doesn`t matter whether a new infection is foreign or home-grown. Infection in a particular community will be affected by a newly infected person in that community - whether the the new infection came from within that community, from another part of the UK or from Timbuktu.
Infection from holidaymakers will hit all parts of the UK simultaneously, presumably broadly proportionate to population. Homegrown infection will start to grow exponentially in particular areas, so more amenable to local testing, track & trace, and lockdown measures.
Yes, I get all that. The point is that new infections that holidaymakers bring in will be less in number than the new infections that would happen if they have stayed at home! - IF the infection rate where they visited is lower than in their own community at home.
Up to a point Lord Copper. The very act of travelling - trains, airports, planes, buses, coaches aligned with a range of typical holiday activiites in bars, restaurants , beaches you can go on adinfinitum creates a much bigger range of infection possibilities than staying home. Variation in infection rates can be a help but not if you catch it on the bus to the airport, spread it in your hotel and on the plane for the return journey and then on to family and friends. Holidays at all and especially abroad should really have been a no no this year.
We`re going to have to disagree on this one Felix.
Airports are disinfected to heck and mask wearing is 100%. Very minimal risk. Much safer than visiting a UK supermarket, for instance.
As for travel abroad being a no no - I`d argue it the opposite way. Travelling to a lower risk country than the one you live in helps the tourism industry keep afloat and the businesses in the country you are visiting function, not to mention helping the mental health aspects.
My local tourist town had 4 infections before the tourists came - 2 discos later and it is running a currently known 100+. Each day the council puts out pictures showing the disinfections of the streets - a total waste of time and money. I've also seen many posts of airport and plane squabbles over people refusing to wear masks. Unless there are no bars/food shops/restaurants open in airports I do not see how they can be safe.
We’ve had 10 cases in the last month, 4 in the last two weeks in our seaside town with 21000 registered residents. Not sure what this works out as an infection rate.
Has anyone mentioned his diplomatic triumph of the Israel-UAE deal ?
I'm curious as to whether any PBers are big enough to admit Trump has done well in this case.
I did raise this in the context of what is generally a relatively favourable (and unquestionably quite benign) foreign policy record. To liberally paraphrase, the Brain Trust here conclude that only the “gullible” see this deal as good news and it’s actually all about setting up an anti Shia alliance to start world war 3 in Trump’s second term. Or something.
I hope Trump loses because I don’t like his undermining of democratic principles and personal conduct, which sets an appalling example to kids worldwide. But I don’t live in the US so am overall fairly ambivalent to the result if he delivers a second term roughly in keeping with his first with respect to China policy and the economy.
The very best thing about Trump losing now is it reduces the chances of an AOC presidency down the line.
I would seriously question the idea that Trump's foreign policy has been "quite benign". So definitely not "unquestionably". Even without global overheating there is a lot to criticise in foreign policy terms.
When you take his pro catastrophic global overheating policies into account, his foreign policy is unquestionably by far the worst of any US president ever. There isn't going to be any kind of peaceful world if we carry on burning fossil fuels like Trump wants.
Solar power is already competitive with fossil fuels without having to be subsided in many parts of the world and the article I linked to above suggests that it’s going to get substantially (about a third) better In the next few years. Wind generated power is on a similar track. This means that coal is rapidly turning into an expensive as well as dirty option which is the point where all the money grubbing capitalists abandon it without having to be told to.
Not all of them - those that own coal plants and mines will be lobbying hard for taxes and regulation on renewables so that they can slow down the transition as much as possible, and make as much money as possible in the interim.
This process has already been seen in the US and Australia, with attempts to charge people with solar panels a tax to "support the electricity grid" - aka subsidise coal.
And this is only about electricity generation. People are still *buying* diesel and petrol vehicles, for example, by the millions. Leaving it to the industrialists is one of the most stupid ideas I've seen on here. Leaving it to the industrialists has got us to the terrible situation we are in today, 30 years after the science of global warming was clear and almost no progress made since. Even US emissions are higher than in 1990, the country that should be leading the way.
We basically need to decarbonise extremely rapidly to have a reasonable chance of avoiding catastrophe. This is just not going to happen quickly enough without strong political action.
Just getting out of the way of renewables would have a massive effect. Though what is actually happening now is interesting -
"Remove The Tory Government" is trending. Perhaps these people should spend more time getting Labour electable so we can actually beat them in the next election.
But you don't get it, these people are helping. They got something trending on Twitter, that's worth what, 3 million votes.
These people register to vote and then can't be bothered to actually turn out. Frankly then can sod off, they don't help us.
I sadly think we will see many more like Debenhams go
Retail as we know it has been doomed for some time. Debenhams has also been on its uppers for some time, and the pandemic has hastened the decline, for example I have discovered how easy it is to import Belgian small brewery beers from a shop in Antwerp*. It's adapt or die. I'm not sure about the future of old fashioned department stores, even John Lewis says it won't be reopening all its stores.
* this might change after the transition period so I can see myself putting in a big order for Christmas
On the big UK department stores, they dont seem to leverage their size very well. For clothes, for example, obvious way to differentiate from smaller specific clothes shops would be to have more sizes available, at least for order or online. In the UK its very hard to find "odd" inch jeans i.e 31/33/35/37 waist or 29/31/33/35 legs - in the US nearly every shop will have the full range as standard so they are being manufactured somewhere, probably the same place that makes the clothes here, just they are never (very rarely) stocked in the UK. (To be fair M&S do this but not Debenhams, HoF or John Lewis.) Similarly wide or narrow shoes are available in the US for most shoes, here there will just be a couple of options per shop for wide or narrow. Even Amazon dont offer the wide/narrow ranges of shoes on their co.uk site, when they do in the .com site. Presumably 75% of people would get a better fit if the odd inch ranges were available (only 50% waist x 50% leg served properly now) so it seems an obvious point of differentiation.
What is HYUFD's (does it stand for something?) record like?
Well I got the 2019 election right
Not as right as I did. You predicted a decent working Con majority. I called the landslide - and did so from the get go.
I also called the other big thing - exit the EU with a deal and no Ref2 - correct from the outset.
I'm spooky.
You also don't seem to bring up everyone else's record in an attempt to attack them, which is not only boring but also a bit sad. I like that quality in you.
Hope you're well.
Well I am thank you and ditto. Off to Cornwall on hols shortly.
Re 2019, I recall your bullishness for Labour - for us - and I took it not as a prediction but as an attempted morale lifter.
Like say your niece is about to sit her A level algorithm and she tells you she's worried it will malfunction you don't just agree with her, do you? No, you say, "You'll be fine, sweetie. The computer loves you!""
And then you just hope it does.
There was certainly an element of that, unfortunately I've become more and more angry with Corbyn since.
Interesting header graphic on top of the page. "Palatial Betting"
Have we been hacked again?
Earlier if I Googled the main PB mobile classic site, I got much Japanese script in the middle of which was VW Polo. I have erred on the side of caution and am back on Vanilla.
Is there any data on imported Covid cases and fro which countries, would be good to have this published to support the quarantine requirements.
It'll be insignificant I imagine. The only data I recall is from March, when it accounted for 0.5% of cases. And that was when entry was unrestricted.
No it wasn't, it was a huge source of ongoing infection. The academics were wrong about quarantine and Priti Patel was right, overruling her is going to look very bad during the investigation.
Evidence?
You may be disgreeing about different things.
Originally the virus came to us 100% from abroad via travellers. That much is obvious - it didn`t blow over here. But once it multiplied significantly here the vast majority of further infections came by transmission within the country not from abroad.
Hence, the argument for grounding planes was valid right at the start, but quickly became less valid.
I don't think we are, because MaxPB said it was a huge "ongoing" source of infections.
But if we are, then I agree. Quarantine may have stopped the virus in January/February, though it wasn't politically feasible then. Also, as we don't really bother to enforce it here, even that's questionable.
By the time we locked down, it was too late. It would have been effective to close the borders before February half term (any later would have just stranded hundreds of thousand of Brits abroad). I suspect this is driving current policy. Spain had over 7,000 new cases yesterday, and France about 3,000.
Still the odds of getting infected are low especially if you follow the rules. I’d like to know how many have imported the virus in the last few weeks?
What do you mean? If a person was abroad in the last few weeks in a country with a lower new infection rate than the UK then the "imported" infection will be lower, on average, than if that same person had stayed in the UK.
I have been told that the emphasis on travel *now* is because when you get to a certain level of community infection, re-introduction from abroad goes from being noise in the data, to a major factor.
Who told you that? That makes no sense. It doesn`t matter whether a new infection is foreign or home-grown. Infection in a particular community will be affected by a newly infected person in that community - whether the the new infection came from within that community, from another part of the UK or from Timbuktu.
Perhaps with some there is a feeling that a disease caught in foreign parts and imported here is just that little bit worse than something homegrown.
British bugs for British people.
It is rather simple really - if the community infection rate is high, the introductions from abroad is noise.
If the community infection rate drops, but the introduction rate doesn't drop much, then it becomes more significant.
Yes. That sounds logical. I was about to launch into an analogy with internationalism vs "socialism in one country" - Trotsky vs Stalin- but all will be disappointed to hear that on second thoughts I won't be.
If you look at everything through your political biases, then you will miss a great deal.
For example, everyone looking at the MidEast peace deal is trying to frame it as another fuck up by Trump. Because most people don't like him.
The real question is - what is Israel and the UAE getting out of this? Trump is just a bystander. He may try and grab credit, but he didn't drive this.
Agreed. Which is why I don't and thus miss nothing.
Trump and the "Deal", also agree. It may be serious and good or serious and bad or just a load of nothing much except smoke and mirrors - dunno, above my paygrade - but he will indeed and undoubtedly be a passenger only. He is not capable of driving anything other than ill-informed and divisive discourse.
No, he is capable of driving such things - his relationship with the current Saudi Government, for example. Which is a serious cause for concern.
Just because he is a loathsome fool, doesn't make him incapable of doing anything.
I meant "driving" as in plotting out and navigating a complex geopolitical journey with a destination in the interests of the American people and of the wider world. That is (sadly) no can do. And (even more sadly) no want to do. But I do totally agree that he is capable of creeping around the assholes of other autocrats. Loves a "Strongman". Thinks he is one. And yes, that is a matter of serious concern.
"There is one exception to that consensus [that Trump is losing]. The stock market. The record shows that if the bull market stays as strong as it has been, Trump will pull off an unexpected victory."
Only election Norputh has got wrong using his model since 1996 was 2000 and his model would also have got 1960 wrong, in both elections there was less than 1% between Kennedy and Nixon and Bush and Gore in the popular vote
So, is Trump going to win HYUFD? What do you think is his percentage chance?
I think it will be as close as 2000 and again all come down to Florida as Biden will pick up Michigan and Pennsylvania and Trump will hold all his other 2016 states
Thanks. I`ve printed that off and it`s going on my noticeboard.
Here is another one for your noticeboard - Trump will win all the states he won in 2016 plus Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire and possibly Virginia.
This appears more like a Belarusian election as the day progresses. What (insider?) information do you base this "tip" on?
Trump is approaching democracy in the same way he approached business. How anyone here remotely defends or provides cover for what he is up to is beyond me. I am looking at you Charles. Trump is beneath whatever foul bile lurks beneath contempt. He needs to be defeated. Trump's brand of skulduggery will take all the energy and ingenuity that the Dems and decent people possess. I give them at best a 50:50 chance.
Meanwhile our government, which has its own taste for skulduggery, is moving through the gears from shambolic to a down right bone fide basket case. How anyone can support it is quite beyond me at the moment. Again, Labour has a ton of work to do to pull itself out of the abyss it dug itself into and being in a position to win.
Bad times.
"How anyone here remotely defends or provides cover for [Trump]?" Hmm. It`s a head-scratcher that one - the loathsome manchild-toad that he is.
Can anyone shed any light? The only thing I can think of is that would dissuade me from voting for Biden with relish is the "taking the knee" stuff and a general concern about a wokey direction - but I`m less concerned about that than I would be if it wasn`t Biden.
Trump has to go. It`s crucial.
OK I'll bite. The case for Trump: 1) no more Neocon wars 2) he failed to repeal Obamacare 3) lower taxes for rich people 4) anti-China; not anti-Russia
The case against Biden: 1) he's past it 2) Dems want to sieze the people's guns and shoot babies
Despite all the rhetoric Trump has been the least warlike and hawkish US President since Carter, there have been no new US invasions of other nations under Trump and not even any major air strikes.
Domestically apart from being more protectionist than free trade he has not done much different from the average Republican President and the US still has gay marriage and legal abortion.
Trump may be a caricature in rhetoric but in policy terms it is more his cultural anti immigration and anti PC language that annoys the left and liberals
Metimes HYUFD the Right aren't always right. Voter suppression by peaceful or violent means is certainly not right in a bone fide democracy.
Voting by mail is not done inalienable democratic right. The Dems are pushing it for partisan reasons (and the GOP are resisting it for the same reason)
Limitations on the number of polling stations is far more serious from a democratic perspective. There is no reasonable argument that can be made as to why that might be acceptable.
What a bizarre and frankly antidemocratic comment. So many people rely on postal voting. You nay as well say the same about polling stations.
In the UK postal voting has not been a readily available option until fairly recent years - the 1990s I believe.Prior tothat any postal vote application had to be backed by a doctor's signature or a statement by the applicant that their job could require them to be absent on the day of an election. Those away on holiday had no entitlement to a postal vote.
Trump is approaching democracy in the same way he approached business. How anyone here remotely defends or provides cover for what he is up to is beyond me. I am looking at you Charles. Trump is beneath whatever foul bile lurks beneath contempt. He needs to be defeated. Trump's brand of skulduggery will take all the energy and ingenuity that the Dems and decent people possess. I give them at best a 50:50 chance.
Meanwhile our government, which has its own taste for skulduggery, is moving through the gears from shambolic to a down right bone fide basket case. How anyone can support it is quite beyond me at the moment. Again, Labour has a ton of work to do to pull itself out of the abyss it dug itself into and being in a position to win.
Bad times.
"How anyone here remotely defends or provides cover for [Trump]?" Hmm. It`s a head-scratcher that one - the loathsome manchild-toad that he is.
Can anyone shed any light? The only thing I can think of is that would dissuade me from voting for Biden with relish is the "taking the knee" stuff and a general concern about a wokey direction - but I`m less concerned about that than I would be if it wasn`t Biden.
Trump has to go. It`s crucial.
OK I'll bite. The case for Trump: 1) no more Neocon wars 2) he failed to repeal Obamacare 3) lower taxes for rich people 4) anti-China; not anti-Russia
The case against Biden: 1) he's past it 2) Dems want to sieze the people's guns and shoot babies
Despite all the rhetoric Trump has been the least warlike and hawkish US President since Carter, there have been no new US invasions of other nations under Trump and not even any major air strikes.
Domestically apart from being more protectionist than free trade he has not done much different from the average Republican President and the US still has gay marriage and legal abortion.
Trump may be a caricature in rhetoric but in policy terms it is more his cultural anti immigration and anti PC language that annoys the left and liberals
Exactly. As a non-US citizen, the effect has been neutral bordering on benign - had Hillary won, we could have been elbow deep in a Middle East war costing billions AND Covid by now. As a US citizen, I can strongly understand them wanting someone less cringey and just more pleasant, but I'm not, so I don't mind one way or t'other.
Has anyone mentioned his diplomatic triumph of the Israel-UAE deal ?
I'm curious as to whether any PBers are big enough to admit Trump has done well in this case.
I did raise this in the context of what is generally a relatively favourable (and unquestionably quite benign) foreign policy record. To liberally paraphrase, the Brain Trust here conclude that only the “gullible” see this deal as good news and it’s actually all about setting up an anti Shia alliance to start world war 3 in Trump’s second term. Or something.
I hope Trump loses because I don’t like his undermining of democratic principles and personal conduct, which sets an appalling example to kids worldwide. But I don’t live in the US so am overall fairly ambivalent to the result if he delivers a second term roughly in keeping with his first with respect to China policy and the economy.
The very best thing about Trump losing now is it reduces the chances of an AOC presidency down the line.
The PB Brain Trust and, for example, the New York Times:
I do actually think there's something to be said for Trump's foreign policy record not being as damaging as his domestic one.
It's a curious mixture of cravenness and negligence on the one hand, and the more limited capacity for that notorious american short-sightedness and unforeseen damage that can come from being an american isolationist. He's been a toady to Netanyahu and Putin but not achieved significantly less than Obama in these areas, for instance, and arguably on Korea more.
However, his change to the rules of engagement on bombing Isis may have resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands more civilians, which may cancel a lot or all of this out.
He didn't start a nuclear war, which is what I feared most, so he has exceeded my expectations, but then I could hardly have set the bar lower. His betrayal of the Turkish Kurds was probably his most offensive individual act. Apart from that the damage has come mostly in th form of squandering respect and prestige of the US abroad generally. In the long run that may not be a bad thing if only because foreign leaders may be a bit less complacent about joining in US military adventures. (Yes, Tony Blair, we're looking at you.)
I too had almost the lowest possible expectations of him, and I'm happy to say that he's exceeded them. I wonder if I had such low expectations because the British media had shaped that. I recall having low expectations of Reagan too (admittedly I was just a teenager - I'm sure in his case that it was shaped by 'b movie actor' stories from the bbc and the like)
So anyway with Trump his foreign policy hasn't really been that bad at all - but perhaps that's due to the low expectations all the other nations had of him, and they have done everything to keep out of the way of such a loose cannon.
A terrific biography for a future historian to write at some point.
Funnily enough I had much the same view of Reagan at first although I fairly soon began to recognise that he wasn't a bad President at all. He is now widely regarded as one of the better ones, and coreectly so in my opinion.
I don't agree about Trump's foreign policy though. How would anybody know what it is? I think he's given a lot of encouragement to some very dangerous forces and nurtured a wild anti-americanism in some dangerous spots. That can't have a good outcome.
I'm tempted to buy Mary Trump's book. That might be as good as any biography. Any PBers read it and prepared to comment?
My wife got access to the audio book and I've been through some excerpts. It's quite compelling. She seems to see the Trump family as the model of a common psychological progress in abusive families wherein a scapegoated sensitive child is the victim, and the one who learns to show least empathy for that sibling, and thus the world in general, is promoted.
It's interesting and usual in that it's both almost a work of theory and a raw, first-hand family account, with a sort of white-knuckle bravery about it.
I sadly think we will see many more like Debenhams go
Retail as we know it has been doomed for some time. Debenhams has also been on its uppers for some time, and the pandemic has hastened the decline, for example I have discovered how easy it is to import Belgian small brewery beers from a shop in Antwerp*. It's adapt or die. I'm not sure about the future of old fashioned department stores, even John Lewis says it won't be reopening all its stores.
* this might change after the transition period so I can see myself putting in a big order for Christmas
On the big UK department stores, they dont seem to leverage their size very well. For clothes, for example, obvious way to differentiate from smaller specific clothes shops would be to have more sizes available, at least for order or online. In the UK its very hard to find "odd" inch jeans i.e 31/33/35/37 waist or 29/31/33/35 legs - in the US nearly every shop will have the full range as standard so they are being manufactured somewhere, probably the same place that makes the clothes here, just they are never (very rarely) stocked in the UK. (To be fair M&S do this but not Debenhams, HoF or John Lewis.) Similarly wide or narrow shoes are available in the US for most shoes, here there will just be a couple of options per shop for wide or narrow. Even Amazon dont offer the wide/narrow ranges of shoes on their co.uk site, when they do in the .com site. Presumably 75% of people would get a better fit if the odd inch ranges were available (only 50% waist x 50% leg served properly now) so it seems an obvious point of differentiation.
That is a good point. I prefer to buy clothes in a shop, as I'm a bit of an odd size, 5'4" and a BMI under 21, so I like to be able to try things or at least shop around and see what comes up big and/or long (the width of trousers makes a difference too, about whether they will sit on your shoes or drag on the floor). But for some time I have thought I ought to put on a bit of weight. You can't get trousers with under a 30" waist for example, or an inside leg less than 28, and there's usually very little choice. I also have small feet and although mens' shoes start at 6 there is often none in stock. I recall trying on a pair of 7s, in John Lewis Oxford Street I believe, and saying they'e too loose. The assistant said we do stock everything in size 6 and went off to the stockroom but there were none in stock. At that time I worked in London so was happy to come back another day so I asked if they could get some in. Yes, but it would take 2 weeks. 2 weeks! Have you not heard of just-in-time?
Voting by mail is not done inalienable democratic right. The Dems are pushing it for partisan reasons (and the GOP are resisting it for the same reason)
Limitations on the number of polling stations is far more serious from a democratic perspective. There is no reasonable argument that can be made as to why that might be acceptable.
I remember a local council election where the (LibDem) town council decided to move some of the polling stations AND "save money" by not sending out polling cards or informing residents of where they'd moved the stations to. People were supposed to read the announcement in modest print affixed to a notice outside the town hall, or read the leaflets put out by parties. On the day, we had to put tellers at the "wrong" stations to redirect voters. It was a safe LD seat and they felt that other parties contesting it was an offensive waste of time and money.
Because it was a town council election and a safe seat, opponents were only midly outraged, and even amused at the effrontery. We teased the LDs about it for years, though. That sort of thing at the level of the US Presidency is less entertaining.
This is not unusual. My town council is run by a group of independents. Despite the council being very wealthy they have decreed that by elections are too expensive and fill any vacancies by co-option.
They can’t do that by choice they can only do it if nobody asks for an election which requires ten signatures. If no candidates are nominated then again they can co-opt
We tried this. The Lib Dems asked for a by-election, the Independents put out a leaflet highlighting the costs of the election and won handsomely.
That’s a failure of the local Lib Dems I’m afraid, if they have a record of year round campaigning and run a good election they should win. Most independents are con dependents and should be exposed as such. It does depend on your precept though, if it’s 5000/pa then spending 2000 on an election is excessive. We always used to budget for at least one by election each year so the cost was covered.
It's a complicated story. When I moved in there were 10 Lib Dems, I Lab, and I Con. In 2003 it became 9 LD ( including me) and 3 Ind ( one of whom was a Lib Dem expelled from the party, and one a former Lab councillor). In 2007 it was 7 LD and 6 Ind, then the disaster of 2011 it was 11 Ind and 1 LD (me). Despite regular leafletting and canvassing we saw our vote slip away. I think one of the reasons ( and this affects Lab and Con as well) is the Independent line that we are controlled by 'the centre' and only the Independents can represent local people.
Do the independents do a good job? Are they a cohesive group with a plan or "proper" independents. I've never lived in a place where independents have done well, I like the idea in principle but no idea how effective it would be in reality.
Politically they are a diverse group. The original group were linked to the local sports and community centre. They wanted financial support for that. As it happened the Lib Dem run council had previously arranged a fantastic deal. The council owned land which was sold to a developer for £800,000. With a precept of around 45,000 we were alleged to be the richest town/parish council in the country. The Independents gave grants to the sports centre and can continue to do so and for anybody else who asks. They run on a single common ticket at elections which are held at large. Difficult to beat that.
Voting by mail is not done inalienable democratic right. The Dems are pushing it for partisan reasons (and the GOP are resisting it for the same reason)
Limitations on the number of polling stations is far more serious from a democratic perspective. There is no reasonable argument that can be made as to why that might be acceptable.
What a bizarre and frankly antidemocratic comment. So many people rely on postal voting. You nay as well say the same about polling stations.
In the UK postal voting has not been a readily available option until fairly recent years - the 1990s I believe.Prior tothat any postal vote application had to be backed by a doctor's signature or a statement by the applicant that their job could require them to be absent on the day of an election. Those away on holiday had no entitlement to a postal vote.
I would like to see early voting in person, as in the US. I prefer to leave it to the last minute before voting, as something significant might happen late in the campaign, and on two occasions I can remember I have made up my mind on the way to the polling station. So if going away just before the election, or if something came up at short notice, you could just pop into your local council offices at the last possible minute and vote.
I sadly think we will see many more like Debenhams go
Retail as we know it has been doomed for some time. Debenhams has also been on its uppers for some time, and the pandemic has hastened the decline, for example I have discovered how easy it is to import Belgian small brewery beers from a shop in Antwerp*. It's adapt or die. I'm not sure about the future of old fashioned department stores, even John Lewis says it won't be reopening all its stores.
* this might change after the transition period so I can see myself putting in a big order for Christmas
On the big UK department stores, they dont seem to leverage their size very well. For clothes, for example, obvious way to differentiate from smaller specific clothes shops would be to have more sizes available, at least for order or online. In the UK its very hard to find "odd" inch jeans i.e 31/33/35/37 waist or 29/31/33/35 legs - in the US nearly every shop will have the full range as standard so they are being manufactured somewhere, probably the same place that makes the clothes here, just they are never (very rarely) stocked in the UK. (To be fair M&S do this but not Debenhams, HoF or John Lewis.) Similarly wide or narrow shoes are available in the US for most shoes, here there will just be a couple of options per shop for wide or narrow. Even Amazon dont offer the wide/narrow ranges of shoes on their co.uk site, when they do in the .com site. Presumably 75% of people would get a better fit if the odd inch ranges were available (only 50% waist x 50% leg served properly now) so it seems an obvious point of differentiation.
That is a good point. I prefer to buy clothes in a shop, as I'm a bit of an odd size, 5'4" and a BMI under 21, so I like to be able to try things or at least shop around and see what comes up big and/or long (the width of trousers makes a difference too, about whether they will sit on your shoes or drag on the floor). But for some time I have thought I ought to put on a bit of weight. You can't get trousers with under a 30" waist for example, or an inside leg less than 28, and there's usually very little choice. I also have small feet and although mens' shoes start at 6 there is often none in stock. I recall trying on a pair of 7s, in John Lewis Oxford Street I believe, and saying they'e too loose. The assistant said we do stock everything in size 6 and went off to the stockroom but there were none in stock. At that time I worked in London so was happy to come back another day so I asked if they could get some in. Yes, but it would take 2 weeks. 2 weeks! Have you not heard of just-in-time?
Sadly we are also paying about double the price for this service compared to the much wider choice available in the US. Makes it hard to have much sympathy for these stores.
"There is one exception to that consensus [that Trump is losing]. The stock market. The record shows that if the bull market stays as strong as it has been, Trump will pull off an unexpected victory."
Only election Norputh has got wrong using his model since 1996 was 2000 and his model would also have got 1960 wrong, in both elections there was less than 1% between Kennedy and Nixon and Bush and Gore in the popular vote
So, is Trump going to win HYUFD? What do you think is his percentage chance?
I think it will be as close as 2000 and again all come down to Florida as Biden will pick up Michigan and Pennsylvania and Trump will hold all his other 2016 states
Thanks. I`ve printed that off and it`s going on my noticeboard.
Here is another one for your noticeboard - Trump will win all the states he won in 2016 plus Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire and possibly Virginia.
Wow. And I have his EC spread down at 190/200. Me and you are like a pair of card players both sitting there with what they think is a full house. Wonder who's actually got it and who's got the jack high?
You two need to check out Nate Silver's prediction maps, in particular his very helpful 'snake'.
You'll see from that and Nate's own comments that the race is rather more open than is generally imagined, though not quite as good for Trump as Ed would like!
Yes, I've looked at that. It's a nice piece of work but it's conclusions are the opposite of what you're saying.
His weighted average EC for Trump is similar to mine - around the 200 mark.
And his overall probability for a Trump win is 27% - much lower than the 40% implied by the betting markets.
So per him - and me - the race is LESS open than is generally imagined.
Well I wouldn't equate the betting fraternity with the genaral public. Punters have other considerations to bear in mind.
Note that Nate points out Hillary was at about 70% probability on the eve of the election, so Trump at 27% now is by no means out of it.
Oh definitely. 27% is not out of it. Not by a long chalk. And that's right about the public not being the same as the betting fraternity. But we must be picking up different vibes on this because what I'm hearing around the tracks from (non betting) people is sentiments along the lines of, "yeah, polls, but they said that last time, and Biden's so old, I think Trump's going to win again."
So my perception is that almost everybody - media, betting, public - are overrating Trump's chances and as for the margin I struggle to find a single ally on here to support my view that it will not be close, even though the hard evidence right now suggests a big loss is a very distinct possibility.
And I'm not moaning about this btw, I like it and I hope the false consensus (that it will be close and Trump has a great chance) stays in place until the opening SPIN EC spreads come out. I want to see that Trump sell price at about 250 so I can sell the absolute arse out of it!
Trump is approaching democracy in the same way he approached business. How anyone here remotely defends or provides cover for what he is up to is beyond me. I am looking at you Charles. Trump is beneath whatever foul bile lurks beneath contempt. He needs to be defeated. Trump's brand of skulduggery will take all the energy and ingenuity that the Dems and decent people possess. I give them at best a 50:50 chance.
Meanwhile our government, which has its own taste for skulduggery, is moving through the gears from shambolic to a down right bone fide basket case. How anyone can support it is quite beyond me at the moment. Again, Labour has a ton of work to do to pull itself out of the abyss it dug itself into and being in a position to win.
Bad times.
"How anyone here remotely defends or provides cover for [Trump]?" Hmm. It`s a head-scratcher that one - the loathsome manchild-toad that he is.
Can anyone shed any light? The only thing I can think of is that would dissuade me from voting for Biden with relish is the "taking the knee" stuff and a general concern about a wokey direction - but I`m less concerned about that than I would be if it wasn`t Biden.
Trump has to go. It`s crucial.
OK I'll bite. The case for Trump: 1) no more Neocon wars 2) he failed to repeal Obamacare 3) lower taxes for rich people 4) anti-China; not anti-Russia
The case against Biden: 1) he's past it 2) Dems want to sieze the people's guns and shoot babies
Despite all the rhetoric Trump has been the least warlike and hawkish US President since Carter, there have been no new US invasions of other nations under Trump and not even any major air strikes.
Domestically apart from being more protectionist than free trade he has not done much different from the average Republican President and the US still has gay marriage and legal abortion.
Trump may be a caricature in rhetoric but in policy terms it is more his cultural anti immigration and anti PC language that annoys the left and liberals
Exactly. As a non-US citizen, the effect has been neutral bordering on benign - had Hillary won, we could have been elbow deep in a Middle East war costing billions AND Covid by now. As a US citizen, I can strongly understand them wanting someone less cringey and just more pleasant, but I'm not, so I don't mind one way or t'other.
I do tend to agree that Trump's caution relative dovishness has some benefits. His bone spurs were no bad thing... I think he shies away from that sort of area partly because he know's he's particularly vulnerable to the charge he's sending young people to die when he dodged service.
But I don't agree he's been benign on the international stage at all - being (to an extent rightly) cautious on commiting troops isn't what makes someone benign by itself. He's allowed - indeed helped - Putin massively to expand his influence in a way that is hugely harmful. He's undermined international bodies like the UN and NATO at every opportunity. He's disengaged completely from global action on climate change. He's set a template for a generation of populists who tend to be damaging to their own countries and distabilising to the world more broadly. These are no small matters.
I sadly think we will see many more like Debenhams go
Debenhams will be missed but the big one would be M & S
M&S should have switched to mostly food a long time ago. Their food is best in class, well ahead of Waitrose and the rest so worthy of a premium. Modern shopping is either premium or value, very few succeed in the middle.
"There is one exception to that consensus [that Trump is losing]. The stock market. The record shows that if the bull market stays as strong as it has been, Trump will pull off an unexpected victory."
Only election Norputh has got wrong using his model since 1996 was 2000 and his model would also have got 1960 wrong, in both elections there was less than 1% between Kennedy and Nixon and Bush and Gore in the popular vote
So, is Trump going to win HYUFD? What do you think is his percentage chance?
I think it will be as close as 2000 and again all come down to Florida as Biden will pick up Michigan and Pennsylvania and Trump will hold all his other 2016 states
Thanks. I`ve printed that off and it`s going on my noticeboard.
Here is another one for your noticeboard - Trump will win all the states he won in 2016 plus Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire and possibly Virginia.
Wow. And I have his EC spread down at 190/200. Me and you are like a pair of card players both sitting there with what they think is a full house. Wonder who's actually got it and who's got the jack high?
You two need to check out Nate Silver's prediction maps, in particular his very helpful 'snake'.
You'll see from that and Nate's own comments that the race is rather more open than is generally imagined, though not quite as good for Trump as Ed would like!
Yes, I've looked at that. It's a nice piece of work but it's conclusions are the opposite of what you're saying.
His weighted average EC for Trump is similar to mine - around the 200 mark.
And his overall probability for a Trump win is 27% - much lower than the 40% implied by the betting markets.
So per him - and me - the race is LESS open than is generally imagined.
Well I wouldn't equate the betting fraternity with the genaral public. Punters have other considerations to bear in mind.
Note that Nate points out Hillary was at about 70% probability on the eve of the election, so Trump at 27% now is by no means out of it.
Oh definitely. 27% is not out of it. Not by a long chalk. And that's right about the public not being the same as the betting fraternity. But we must be picking up different vibes on this because what I'm hearing around the tracks from (non betting) people is sentiments along the lines of, "yeah, polls, but they said that last time, and Biden's so old, I think Trump's going to win again."
So my perception is that almost everybody - media, betting, public - are overrating Trump's chances and as for the margin I struggle to find a single ally on here to support my view that it will not be close, even though the hard evidence right now suggests a big loss is a very distinct possibility.
And I'm not moaning about this btw, I like it and I hope the false consensus (that it will be close and Trump has a great chance) stays in place until the opening SPIN EC spreads come out. I want to see that Trump sell price at about 250 so I can sell the absolute arse out of it!
I think there's a general view that things 'trend back to the norm'.
And that's because in general things do trend back to the norm.
So if we had a 'standard' President I would expect him to win.
But with Trump nothing is standard.
So there's a greater chance that things will not 'trend back to the norm'.
I see the 'Trump hasn't been quite as terrible as everyone said he would be' meme is taking hold. Presumably that wouldn't include those people saying that Trump's term would end up being unremarkable in the wider historical view of US presidents, or that he was probably more an instinctive Dem than a Republican, or after his first excesses that he was going to pivot to the centre any minute now. I believe some of these people even said such stuff on here.
He's a malignant cancer from which only the most radical surgery* will have a chance of saving the body politic, and with likely years of very slow convalescence even on the best prognosis. It's not only US politics that's been poisoned either.
*for the avoidance of doubt, that's a Dem landslide not assassination.
I'm not normally an authoritarian - let a thousand flowers bloom - but I'm afraid this is the only acceptable view on this one. And it really has nothing to do with left/right or lab/con or leave/remain or any of that stuff. Exorcising Trump and his baleful influence brings together all people of sound mind and good character. If you dissent from this assertion you are by definition missing at least one of those things.
O/T: just translating the latest Danish Health Ministry regs - extending the power (which they said they have already needed) to direct all pharma companies and pharmacies on the pricing, stockpiling, distribution and rationing of all COVID-related medicnes and ingredients, in view of the international supply situation: they say they will be unable to guarantee supplies to those in greatest need without the emergency regs. Serious stuff. Has the British Government taken similar powers?
What is HYUFD's (does it stand for something?) record like?
Well I got the 2019 election right
Not as right as I did. You predicted a decent working Con majority. I called the landslide - and did so from the get go.
I also called the other big thing - exit the EU with a deal and no Ref2 - correct from the outset.
I'm spooky.
You also don't seem to bring up everyone else's record in an attempt to attack them, which is not only boring but also a bit sad. I like that quality in you.
Hope you're well.
Well I am thank you and ditto. Off to Cornwall on hols shortly.
Re 2019, I recall your bullishness for Labour - for us - and I took it not as a prediction but as an attempted morale lifter.
Like say your niece is about to sit her A level algorithm and she tells you she's worried it will malfunction you don't just agree with her, do you? No, you say, "You'll be fine, sweetie. The computer loves you!""
And then you just hope it does.
There was certainly an element of that, unfortunately I've become more and more angry with Corbyn since.
Yes, I've noticed. I'm not angry with him but I probably should be. I think it's maybe because with Johnson and Trump on the go I'm all angered out.
That’s bizarre. Even Lukashenko wasn’t thick enough to admit he’d rigged the elections in advance.
It's not even about rigging, which may actually prove quite hard to pull off in the end. It would suit Trump's ends merely to cast enough doubt on the result, due to postal voting being a total mess; that is if you ignore everything about the man and his history and the fact that he's already said what he's up to.
Trump probably can't win, but he can certianly steal the election if enough people are willing to turn a blind eye.
I sadly think we will see many more like Debenhams go
Debenhams will be missed but the big one would be M & S
M&S should have switched to mostly food a long time ago. Their food is best in class, well ahead of Waitrose and the rest so worthy of a premium. Modern shopping is either premium or value, very few succeed in the middle.
Interesting post, Mr. Max. Any stats/graphs etc on the GDP decline, regarding the quarterly splits perhaps meaning the drop was spread across two quarters in other European countries but focused in just one here? [We discussed this briefly the other day and I was interested to find out more].
Not yet, still no laptop! I think the Telegraph had a useful H1 comparison, but again it's probably not valid given the timing of the UK lockdown compared to most of mainland Europe. I've set my team a task of doing some realtime nowcasta for the main European economies using a similar model which got the June growth rate correct for the UK (we had +8% vs the City consensus of +6% and it was +8.7% in the data) hopefully it will spit out some data before I'm back to work next Monday.
The interesting question is whether these travel restrictions will still be in place on the 1st January 2021 and beyond
There will be until there's a vaccine.
They'll probably be replaced by testing on arrival at some point. Which is what they should have been in the first place.
You miss some cases, but it's safer than a quarantine which you don't bother to enforce.
I'm not so sure. Soon we're about to have an army of door knocking contact tracers, the government has set the maximum fine for not wearing a mask to £3200 - bring quarantine breaking to the same level and allow the council to keep a large portion of the revenue. Suddenly you have a system in place where councils will be able to benefit from policing the quarantine with the same team as they already have for contact tracing.
This would be a better system than testing on arrival, I'd also allow for people to pay for a test privately after day 5 (gives enough time for the virus to incubate properly if it is present), I think the going rate is currently £70 for a PCR test.
No obligation to answer the door though - or pick up the phone!
Trump is approaching democracy in the same way he approached business. How anyone here remotely defends or provides cover for what he is up to is beyond me. I am looking at you Charles. Trump is beneath whatever foul bile lurks beneath contempt. He needs to be defeated. Trump's brand of skulduggery will take all the energy and ingenuity that the Dems and decent people possess. I give them at best a 50:50 chance.
Meanwhile our government, which has its own taste for skulduggery, is moving through the gears from shambolic to a down right bone fide basket case. How anyone can support it is quite beyond me at the moment. Again, Labour has a ton of work to do to pull itself out of the abyss it dug itself into and being in a position to win.
Bad times.
"How anyone here remotely defends or provides cover for [Trump]?" Hmm. It`s a head-scratcher that one - the loathsome manchild-toad that he is.
Can anyone shed any light? The only thing I can think of is that would dissuade me from voting for Biden with relish is the "taking the knee" stuff and a general concern about a wokey direction - but I`m less concerned about that than I would be if it wasn`t Biden.
Trump has to go. It`s crucial.
OK I'll bite. The case for Trump: 1) no more Neocon wars 2) he failed to repeal Obamacare 3) lower taxes for rich people 4) anti-China; not anti-Russia
The case against Biden: 1) he's past it 2) Dems want to sieze the people's guns and shoot babies
Despite all the rhetoric Trump has been the least warlike and hawkish US President since Carter, there have been no new US invasions of other nations under Trump and not even any major air strikes.
Domestically apart from being more protectionist than free trade he has not done much different from the average Republican President and the US still has gay marriage and legal abortion.
Trump may be a caricature in rhetoric but in policy terms it is more his cultural anti immigration and anti PC language that annoys the left and liberals
Exactly. As a non-US citizen, the effect has been neutral bordering on benign - had Hillary won, we could have been elbow deep in a Middle East war costing billions AND Covid by now. As a US citizen, I can strongly understand them wanting someone less cringey and just more pleasant, but I'm not, so I don't mind one way or t'other.
I do tend to agree that Trump's caution relative dovishness has some benefits. His bone spurs were no bad thing... I think he shies away from that sort of area partly because he know's he's particularly vulnerable to the charge he's sending young people to die when he dodged service.
But I don't agree he's been benign on the international stage at all - being (to an extent rightly) cautious on commiting troops isn't what makes someone benign by itself. He's allowed - indeed helped - Putin massively to expand his influence in a way that is hugely harmful. He's undermined international bodies like the UN and NATO at every opportunity. He's disengaged completely from global action on climate change. He's set a template for a generation of populists who tend to be damaging to their own countries and distabilising to the world more broadly. These are no small matters.
Trump is fundamentally against any supranational organisation. He sees it as contradicting "America first".
"There is one exception to that consensus [that Trump is losing]. The stock market. The record shows that if the bull market stays as strong as it has been, Trump will pull off an unexpected victory."
Only election Norputh has got wrong using his model since 1996 was 2000 and his model would also have got 1960 wrong, in both elections there was less than 1% between Kennedy and Nixon and Bush and Gore in the popular vote
So, is Trump going to win HYUFD? What do you think is his percentage chance?
I think it will be as close as 2000 and again all come down to Florida as Biden will pick up Michigan and Pennsylvania and Trump will hold all his other 2016 states
Thanks. I`ve printed that off and it`s going on my noticeboard.
Here is another one for your noticeboard - Trump will win all the states he won in 2016 plus Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire and possibly Virginia.
Wow. And I have his EC spread down at 190/200. Me and you are like a pair of card players both sitting there with what they think is a full house. Wonder who's actually got it and who's got the jack high?
You two need to check out Nate Silver's prediction maps, in particular his very helpful 'snake'.
You'll see from that and Nate's own comments that the race is rather more open than is generally imagined, though not quite as good for Trump as Ed would like!
Yes, I've looked at that. It's a nice piece of work but it's conclusions are the opposite of what you're saying.
His weighted average EC for Trump is similar to mine - around the 200 mark.
And his overall probability for a Trump win is 27% - much lower than the 40% implied by the betting markets.
So per him - and me - the race is LESS open than is generally imagined.
Well I wouldn't equate the betting fraternity with the genaral public. Punters have other considerations to bear in mind.
Note that Nate points out Hillary was at about 70% probability on the eve of the election, so Trump at 27% now is by no means out of it.
Oh definitely. 27% is not out of it. Not by a long chalk. And that's right about the public not being the same as the betting fraternity. But we must be picking up different vibes on this because what I'm hearing around the tracks from (non betting) people is sentiments along the lines of, "yeah, polls, but they said that last time, and Biden's so old, I think Trump's going to win again."
So my perception is that almost everybody - media, betting, public - are overrating Trump's chances and as for the margin I struggle to find a single ally on here to support my view that it will not be close, even though the hard evidence right now suggests a big loss is a very distinct possibility.
And I'm not moaning about this btw, I like it and I hope the false consensus (that it will be close and Trump has a great chance) stays in place until the opening SPIN EC spreads come out. I want to see that Trump sell price at about 250 so I can sell the absolute arse out of it!
I think there's a general view that things 'trend back to the norm'.
And that's because in general things do trend back to the norm.
So if we had a 'standard' President I would expect him to win.
But with Trump nothing is standard.
So there's a greater chance that things will not 'trend back to the norm'.
If Trump were not Trump you'd expect him to win but because he IS Trump there's a big chance he will win?
I see the 'Trump hasn't been quite as terrible as everyone said he would be' meme is taking hold. Presumably that wouldn't include those people saying that Trump's term would end up being unremarkable in the wider historical view of US presidents, or that he was probably more an instinctive Dem than a Republican, or after his first excesses that he was going to pivot to the centre any minute now. I believe some of these people even said such stuff on here.
He's a malignant cancer from which only the most radical surgery* will have a chance of saving the body politic, and with likely years of very slow convalescence even on the best prognosis. It's not only US politics that's been poisoned either.
*for the avoidance of doubt, that's a Dem landslide not assassination.
I'm not normally an authoritarian - let a thousand flowers bloom - but I'm afraid this is the only acceptable view on this one. And it really has nothing to do with left/right or lab/con or leave/remain or any of that stuff. Exorcising Trump and his baleful influence brings together all people of sound mind and good character. If you dissent from this assertion you are by definition missing at least one of those things.
Yep, by their equivocation shall ye know them.
I see a distinct possibility that even if the Dems win the EC vote narrowly that Trump will use his own and GOP vote suppression shenanigans (which will have kept the Dem win narrow) as justification for challenging the result. That's just the sort of shameless crooks that they are.
That’s bizarre. Even Lukashenko wasn’t thick enough to admit he’d rigged the elections in advance.
It's not even about rigging, which may actually prove quite hard to pull off in the end. It would suit Trump's ends merely to cast enough doubt on the result, due to postal voting being a total mess; that is if you ignore everything about the man and his history and the fact that he's already said what he's up to.
Trump probably can't win, but he can certianly steal the election if enough people are willing to turn a blind eye.
I suppose it worked for the Republicans in Tilden v Hayes.
But then, the Dems were offered the end of reconstruction in exchange for caving in the presidency.
Possibly but for rent a roof scammers it’s Christmas come early.
Would they be able to adapt existing panels? Or would this material only work with new ones?
If the former, then you’re right, it would be.
If the latter, however, they’re facing Reluctant Turkish Conscript times. They will very rapidly be swept out of the market as their panels age and people refuse to replace them.
"Reluctant Turkish Conscript"? Intriguing expression - any hope of an explanation please?
Possibly but for rent a roof scammers it’s Christmas come early.
Would they be able to adapt existing panels? Or would this material only work with new ones?
If the former, then you’re right, it would be.
If the latter, however, they’re facing Reluctant Turkish Conscript times. They will very rapidly be swept out of the market as their panels age and people refuse to replace them.
"Reluctant Turkish Conscript"? Intriguing expression - any hope of an explanation please?
"There is one exception to that consensus [that Trump is losing]. The stock market. The record shows that if the bull market stays as strong as it has been, Trump will pull off an unexpected victory."
Only election Norputh has got wrong using his model since 1996 was 2000 and his model would also have got 1960 wrong, in both elections there was less than 1% between Kennedy and Nixon and Bush and Gore in the popular vote
So, is Trump going to win HYUFD? What do you think is his percentage chance?
I think it will be as close as 2000 and again all come down to Florida as Biden will pick up Michigan and Pennsylvania and Trump will hold all his other 2016 states
Thanks. I`ve printed that off and it`s going on my noticeboard.
Here is another one for your noticeboard - Trump will win all the states he won in 2016 plus Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire and possibly Virginia.
Wow. And I have his EC spread down at 190/200. Me and you are like a pair of card players both sitting there with what they think is a full house. Wonder who's actually got it and who's got the jack high?
You two need to check out Nate Silver's prediction maps, in particular his very helpful 'snake'.
You'll see from that and Nate's own comments that the race is rather more open than is generally imagined, though not quite as good for Trump as Ed would like!
Yes, I've looked at that. It's a nice piece of work but it's conclusions are the opposite of what you're saying.
His weighted average EC for Trump is similar to mine - around the 200 mark.
And his overall probability for a Trump win is 27% - much lower than the 40% implied by the betting markets.
So per him - and me - the race is LESS open than is generally imagined.
Well I wouldn't equate the betting fraternity with the genaral public. Punters have other considerations to bear in mind.
Note that Nate points out Hillary was at about 70% probability on the eve of the election, so Trump at 27% now is by no means out of it.
Oh definitely. 27% is not out of it. Not by a long chalk. And that's right about the public not being the same as the betting fraternity. But we must be picking up different vibes on this because what I'm hearing around the tracks from (non betting) people is sentiments along the lines of, "yeah, polls, but they said that last time, and Biden's so old, I think Trump's going to win again."
So my perception is that almost everybody - media, betting, public - are overrating Trump's chances and as for the margin I struggle to find a single ally on here to support my view that it will not be close, even though the hard evidence right now suggests a big loss is a very distinct possibility.
And I'm not moaning about this btw, I like it and I hope the false consensus (that it will be close and Trump has a great chance) stays in place until the opening SPIN EC spreads come out. I want to see that Trump sell price at about 250 so I can sell the absolute arse out of it!
I think there's a general view that things 'trend back to the norm'.
And that's because in general things do trend back to the norm.
So if we had a 'standard' President I would expect him to win.
But with Trump nothing is standard.
So there's a greater chance that things will not 'trend back to the norm'.
If Trump were not Trump you'd expect him to win but because he IS Trump there's a big chance he will win?
Not keen on that.
No, because Trump is so non-standard I think there's a bigger chance that he will lose and a far bigger chance that he will heavily.
Comments
If the former, then you’re right, it would be.
If the latter, however, they’re facing Reluctant Turkish Conscript times. They will very rapidly be swept out of the market as their panels age and people refuse to replace them.
It's a curious mixture of cravenness and negligence on the one hand, and the more limited capacity for that notorious american short-sightedness and unforeseen damage that can come from being an american isolationist. He's been a toady to Netanyahu and Putin but not achieved significantly less than Obama in these areas, for instance, and arguably on Korea more.
However, his change to the rules of engagement on bombing Isis may have resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands more civilians, which may cancel a lot or all of this out.
A powerful strand of opinion and a driver of Brexit. Has to be faced. So I'm facing it.
If the environment can be called foreign policy too, though, and his inspiration to Bolsonaro included in it too, the disaster spreads through all his wings of his presidency.
I think Korea is the only indisputable area where he hasn't been given enough credit. The objections of Obama-era politicians and Democrats are curiously hawkish ; that he was taken for a ride. The stakes were much higher than that, in possible nuclear conflagration, though, which his own idiosyncratic combination of aggressive posturing and mobster mateyness seems to have reduced.
It's a shame so many are not.
I also called the other big thing - exit the EU with a deal and no Ref2 - correct from the outset.
I'm spooky.
@Fysics_Teacher hope your weekend is going well so far.
Hope you're well.
It’s August though, so the concept of “weekend” gats a bit fuzzy...
If the community infection rate drops, but the introduction rate doesn't drop much, then it becomes more significant.
https://enormo-haddock.blogspot.com/2020/08/spain-pre-qualifying-2020.html
I think that, once again, we are seeing the COVID19 epidemic accelerating an underlying situation.
Re 2019, I recall your bullishness for Labour - for us - and I took it not as a prediction but as an attempted morale lifter.
Like say your niece is about to sit her A level algorithm and she tells you she's worried it will malfunction you don't just agree with her, do you? No, you say, "You'll be fine, sweetie. The computer loves you!""
And then you just hope it does.
So anyway with Trump his foreign policy hasn't really been that bad at all - but perhaps that's due to the low expectations all the other nations had of him, and they have done everything to keep out of the way of such a loose cannon.
A terrific biography for a future historian to write at some point.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-election-forecast/
You'll see from that and Nate's own comments that the race is rather more open than is generally imagined, though not quite as good for Trump as Ed would like!
https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1294601307068735488?s=21
For example, everyone looking at the MidEast peace deal is trying to frame it as another fuck up by Trump. Because most people don't like him.
The real question is - what is Israel and the UAE getting out of this? Trump is just a bystander. He may try and grab credit, but he didn't drive this.
I don't agree about Trump's foreign policy though. How would anybody know what it is? I think he's given a lot of encouragement to some very dangerous forces and nurtured a wild anti-americanism in some dangerous spots. That can't have a good outcome.
I'm tempted to buy Mary Trump's book. That might be as good as any biography.
Any PBers read it and prepared to comment?
His weighted average EC for Trump is similar to mine - around the 200 mark.
And his overall probability for a Trump win is 27% - much lower than the 40% implied by the betting markets.
So per him - and me - the race is LESS open than is generally imagined.
* this might change after the transition period so I can see myself putting in a big order for Christmas
As opposed to Trump. Who after a lifetime of staggering from one shitty business deal to another....
Trump and the "Deal", also agree. It may be serious and good or serious and bad or just a load of nothing much except smoke and mirrors - dunno, above my paygrade - but he will indeed and undoubtedly be a passenger only. He is not capable of driving anything other than ill-informed and divisive discourse.
Leaving it to the industrialists is one of the most stupid ideas I've seen on here. Leaving it to the industrialists has got us to the terrible situation we are in today, 30 years after the science of global warming was clear and almost no progress made since. Even US emissions are higher than in 1990, the country that should be leading the way.
We basically need to decarbonise extremely rapidly to have a reasonable chance of avoiding catastrophe. This is just not going to happen quickly enough without strong political action.
He's a malignant cancer from which only the most radical surgery* will have a chance of saving the body politic, and with likely years of very slow convalescence even on the best prognosis. It's not only US politics that's been poisoned either.
*for the avoidance of doubt, that's a Dem landslide not assassination.
Note that Nate points out Hillary was at about 70% probability on the eve of the election, so Trump at 27% now is by no means out of it.
Just because he is a loathsome fool, doesn't make him incapable of doing anything.
It's interesting and usual in that it's both almost a work of theory and a raw, first-hand family account, with a sort of white-knuckle bravery about it.
So my perception is that almost everybody - media, betting, public - are overrating Trump's chances and as for the margin I struggle to find a single ally on here to support my view that it will not be close, even though the hard evidence right now suggests a big loss is a very distinct possibility.
And I'm not moaning about this btw, I like it and I hope the false consensus (that it will be close and Trump has a great chance) stays in place until the opening SPIN EC spreads come out. I want to see that Trump sell price at about 250 so I can sell the absolute arse out of it!
But I don't agree he's been benign on the international stage at all - being (to an extent rightly) cautious on commiting troops isn't what makes someone benign by itself. He's allowed - indeed helped - Putin massively to expand his influence in a way that is hugely harmful. He's undermined international bodies like the UN and NATO at every opportunity. He's disengaged completely from global action on climate change. He's set a template for a generation of populists who tend to be damaging to their own countries and distabilising to the world more broadly. These are no small matters.
And that's because in general things do trend back to the norm.
So if we had a 'standard' President I would expect him to win.
But with Trump nothing is standard.
So there's a greater chance that things will not 'trend back to the norm'.
https://twitter.com/michaelgove/status/1294596006001160192?s=20
https://twitter.com/arthistorynews/status/1294609878770647041?s=20
https://twitter.com/Nigel_Farage/status/1294607887956934656?s=20
Trump probably can't win, but he can certianly steal the election if enough people are willing to turn a blind eye.
Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime.
Not keen on that.
I see a distinct possibility that even if the Dems win the EC vote narrowly that Trump will use his own and GOP vote suppression shenanigans (which will have kept the Dem win narrow) as justification for challenging the result. That's just the sort of shameless crooks that they are.
But then, the Dems were offered the end of reconstruction in exchange for caving in the presidency.
What could Trump offer them now?
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