If Trump does win in the EC, but loses the national vote by 2-3%, how sustainable is this? In a national vote for a national president, with effectively a 2 party system, that the party that keeps getting millions fewer votes keeps winning?
Add to that the gerrymandered House and Senate, and the highly political judiciary stuffed with increasingly out of touch with majority opinion ultra-conservative judges - isn't it a recipe for the disenfranchised majority getting extremely pissed off?
I agree with you, but have one pedantic point. The senate cannot be gerrymandered, unless state boundaries are redrawn, or significant populations are moved accross state borders. You can complain that Hawaii and Texas both having 2 senators is unfair, but that is not gerrymandering.
The constituency boundaries in the House though, are a disgrace.
If Trump does win in the EC, but loses the national vote by 2-3%, how sustainable is this? In a national vote for a national president, with effectively a 2 party system, that the party that keeps getting millions fewer votes keeps winning?
Add to that the gerrymandered House and Senate, and the highly political judiciary stuffed with increasingly out of touch with majority opinion ultra-conservative judges - isn't it a recipe for the disenfranchised majority getting extremely pissed off?
It's entirely sustainable. The Democrats if that happens will need to target states other than California.
That is the system working by design and not a flaw.
It IS a flaw, and plenty of Americans hate it quite understandably. The fact that you think it is a good system doesn't make it one. None of the better democracies use such a stupid system, and I don't see any country racing to copy it. That might tell you something.
I never said I thought it was a good system, I said it was working by design. There's a difference. I personally don't support the system and am glad we don't have it in this country but I understand why America does.
The other issue is that the method for changing the system requires smaller states to consent to handing away their powers to the larger states. That isn't going to happen.
Oh and incidentally the EU has similar foibles in its voting systems too. They just get less attention as it's less apparent.
You didn't only say it was working by design, you also said there was no flaw. Which certainly doesn't sound like criticism to me.
I was also unaware that the EU is a 2-party state with an EU-wide vote to elect an executive president.
If Trump does win in the EC, but loses the national vote by 2-3%, how sustainable is this? In a national vote for a national president, with effectively a 2 party system, that the party that keeps getting millions fewer votes keeps winning?
Add to that the gerrymandered House and Senate, and the highly political judiciary stuffed with increasingly out of touch with majority opinion ultra-conservative judges - isn't it a recipe for the disenfranchised majority getting extremely pissed off?
It's entirely sustainable. The Democrats if that happens will need to target states other than California.
That is the system working by design and not a flaw.
It IS a flaw, and plenty of Americans hate it quite understandably. The fact that you think it is a good system doesn't make it one. None of the better democracies use such a stupid system, and I don't see any country racing to copy it. That might tell you something.
I never said I thought it was a good system, I said it was working by design. There's a difference. I personally don't support the system and am glad we don't have it in this country but I understand why America does.
The other issue is that the method for changing the system requires smaller states to consent to handing away their powers to the larger states. That isn't going to happen.
Oh and incidentally the EU has similar foibles in its voting systems too. They just get less attention as it's less apparent.
But the swing states are mostly mid-sized states. I don't think that people in Hawaii or Alaska think they get a good deal out of the EC system, even if numerically they do. By giving each voter the same weight then voters in Hawaii, Ohio and New York will know that their votes in the presidential election will have the same level of influence on the result.
To change the system will require two thirds of states to agree to a change. It's not going to happen. Yes there's the Interstate Pact mooted to try and circumvent that though it may not be Constitutional and has the same problem. The numbers aren't there.
Changing the system is not a goer. It's not going to happen. So the Democrats can either whinge from the sidelines, throw fits and complain while letting the GOP win ... Or they can target the states the GOP won last time and try and win them over.
Biden has tried the latter route ... Thank goodness!
Bozo’s Quarantine Hokey Cokey continues as Ministers are considering reimposing quarantine measures for those arriving in the UK from Portugal as coronavirus cases rise, sources have told the BBC.
A change this Thursday would be the fifth affecting travellers and travel companies to Portugal since this whole sorry farce commenced.
Well your choices are:
A) no restrictions blanket ban C) flexible restrictions which change as the facts change
C) seems like a logical approach to me
Why is your data better than the people reviewing the information and making the decision on behalf of the government?
I'm with Charles on this one. Everyone knows that travelling abroad at the moment carries the risk of restrictions changing and at short notice. If you are not prepared to take the risk that you might need to isolate at the end of the trip, or worse cut the trip short, you should not be undertaking foreign travel, not at the moment.
Exactly. I have absolutely zero sympathy for those caught by a change in the regulations. They have taken a very obvious gamble and lost. Tough. The only reasonable alternative is the blanket ban (by which I mean no travel without quarantine) which would be simpler to administer.
Agree, but it would be useful if the govt released its logic for its decisions. Similarly for the internal lockdown decisions. Today's Manchester decisions seem completely irrational. Presumably there are sensible reasons but who knows. It is also in the government's interest as currently they look incompetent.
I am equally bewildered by the new restrictions in Glasgow. I mean, as a general proposition shutting down large parts of Glasgow seems a step forward but the rationale for these particular restrictions escape me.
It does help Nicola play mother of the nation once again I suppose but once again jobs will be lost.
I thought you couldn't meet friends at home, but could meet them in the pub?
Swinney was on R4 saying this is because they're finding transmission is being driven by home visits.
Its been like that in Leicester for a while. I cannot meet Fox jr in his garden, but can go to the pub to do so, or the cinema, or a meal deal, or even sit next to him for a flight...
Bozo’s Quarantine Hokey Cokey continues as Ministers are considering reimposing quarantine measures for those arriving in the UK from Portugal as coronavirus cases rise, sources have told the BBC.
A change this Thursday would be the fifth affecting travellers and travel companies to Portugal since this whole sorry farce commenced.
Well your choices are:
A) no restrictions blanket ban C) flexible restrictions which change as the facts change
C) seems like a logical approach to me
Why is your data better than the people reviewing the information and making the decision on behalf of the government?
I'm with Charles on this one. Everyone knows that travelling abroad at the moment carries the risk of restrictions changing and at short notice. If you are not prepared to take the risk that you might need to isolate at the end of the trip, or worse cut the trip short, you should not be undertaking foreign travel, not at the moment.
Exactly. I have absolutely zero sympathy for those caught by a change in the regulations. They have taken a very obvious gamble and lost. Tough. The only reasonable alternative is the blanket ban (by which I mean no travel without quarantine) which would be simpler to administer.
You're right, but politically people who got quarantined due to a change in the rules are now blaming the government, not themselves or the countries they visited.
Punters have never been convinced on Biden. You could still get on him at 1.05 after he'd got all the delegates, and Hillary was still available at barely 100/1 on the very day he was officially nominated.
They both have to survive nine weeks. I think they're going to manage that.
One or either might fail (I've seen a rumour that some of Biden's senior aides are discussing if he should take the knee in the first presidential debate, for example, which would be a gift to Trump) but they will be the candidates fighting it out on polling day. No question.
The way I look at it is:
1) Some that voted Trump will not vote for him this time (they may vote Biden or more likely abstain) 2) He has virtually no new constituency from which to draw new votes 3) Biden is much more palatable to many than Clinton 4) Anti-Trumpers who didn`t bother voting last time will be super motivated to vote this time. (I think turnout differentials are generally more significant in elections than floating voters.)
I can`t see a flaw in the logic in any of the above, and cannot see any other result than a significant Biden win.
On the national vote, yes.
It's the swing states I'm nervous about. That's why I think Biden should focus on WWC swing voters in those states.
Forget taking the knee stuff and the Bernie bros sledging.
Instead of "taking the knee" he should be saying things like "I want to be very clear about all of this: Rioting is not protesting. Looting is not protesting. Setting fires is not protesting. None of this is protesting. It's lawlessness, plain and simple. And those who do it should be prosecuted. Violence will not bring change, it will only bring destruction. It's wrong in every way."
...oh I see he already has.
Yes, he should, and it's good he finally said so only a few days ago.
He needs to keep saying it too as it's a weak point for him in the campaign that Trump will keep pressing.
Could it be that the key factor in the US election has become law and order?
If that's the case Biden has blown it.
That seems to be the current punditry consensus, and it's what I'd have expected if you'd described the situation a year ago and asked me where the voters would be. But it's not what the polling is showing. This is from August 27 to 28, that's pretty recent. There's loads of interesting stuff in here, but to pick a couple:
Which of these approaches would help get things under control? Law and order 39% Bringing people together 61%
Which comes closest to your view? Police departments don’t need to be reformed: 21% Police departments have a problem with race, but the problem can be fixed by reforming the existing system: 61% Police reform hasn’t worked. We need to defund police and reinvent our approach to public safety: 18%
The fact is that where Biden is is where the voters are.
Yes, these things don't necessarily break for those who want harsher treatment. For example several on here thought that the Manchester Arena bombing would destroy Corbyn in 2017. Instead the narrative was police cuts and it helped him. Similarly the poll tax riots and disorder led to Kinnock having a 25% lead over Thatcher.
Grandpa Joes folksy Americana, harking back to a mythic age when Americans got on with each other hits the sweet spot on this issue.
It is pretty impressive that 18% support defunding the police. That is a major loss of confidence by a big share of the population.
You'd probably get 10-20% saying a similar thing here.
Bozo’s Quarantine Hokey Cokey continues as Ministers are considering reimposing quarantine measures for those arriving in the UK from Portugal as coronavirus cases rise, sources have told the BBC.
A change this Thursday would be the fifth affecting travellers and travel companies to Portugal since this whole sorry farce commenced.
Well your choices are:
A) no restrictions blanket ban C) flexible restrictions which change as the facts change
C) seems like a logical approach to me
Why is your data better than the people reviewing the information and making the decision on behalf of the government?
I'm with Charles on this one. Everyone knows that travelling abroad at the moment carries the risk of restrictions changing and at short notice. If you are not prepared to take the risk that you might need to isolate at the end of the trip, or worse cut the trip short, you should not be undertaking foreign travel, not at the moment.
Exactly. I have absolutely zero sympathy for those caught by a change in the regulations. They have taken a very obvious gamble and lost. Tough. The only reasonable alternative is the blanket ban (by which I mean no travel without quarantine) which would be simpler to administer.
You're right, but politically people who got quarantined due to a change in the rules are now blaming the government, not themselves or the countries they visited.
Its why I would have gone for a mandatory quarantine for all international travel. From about the beginning of March actually. The DoT seems to be a pressure group for the airline industry, not a part of the government.
Boris Johnson has declined to meet members of a campaign group representing families bereaved by coronavirus, despite appearing to promise to do so on live TV last week.
Given that he has 15 working hours in the day, what would this meeting achieve?
The Group have involved solicitors, as soon as they did that there was no way that he would meet them.
Bozo’s Quarantine Hokey Cokey continues as Ministers are considering reimposing quarantine measures for those arriving in the UK from Portugal as coronavirus cases rise, sources have told the BBC.
A change this Thursday would be the fifth affecting travellers and travel companies to Portugal since this whole sorry farce commenced.
Well your choices are:
A) no restrictions blanket ban C) flexible restrictions which change as the facts change
C) seems like a logical approach to me
Why is your data better than the people reviewing the information and making the decision on behalf of the government?
I'm with Charles on this one. Everyone knows that travelling abroad at the moment carries the risk of restrictions changing and at short notice. If you are not prepared to take the risk that you might need to isolate at the end of the trip, or worse cut the trip short, you should not be undertaking foreign travel, not at the moment.
Exactly. I have absolutely zero sympathy for those caught by a change in the regulations. They have taken a very obvious gamble and lost. Tough. The only reasonable alternative is the blanket ban (by which I mean no travel without quarantine) which would be simpler to administer.
You're right, but politically people who got quarantined due to a change in the rules are now blaming the government, not themselves or the countries they visited.
Its why I would have gone for a mandatory quarantine for all international travel. From about the beginning of March actually. The DoT seems to be a pressure group for the airline industry, not a part of the government.
Guernsey has had quarantine for all arrivals since March. And no new cases for over 3 months. Latest system is 7 day quarantine plus test at day 7 for arrivals from low COVID countries, 14 day quarantine for everyone else. And fines up to £10,000 for breaches. Life is completely back to normal, except for the border.
1) all the focus is on Brits going abroad - sometimes forgotten is on the foreigners coming here (who are on balance less affected by the sudden changes).
2) the numbers game is ridiculous - one would hope there was more serious underlying analysis but there seems little evidence of that. The policy basically arbitrarily penalises travellers to and from countries that, all things being equal, do an enormous amount of testing and rewards those that do very little. It’s not based on a serious risk assessment to the country. In what basis is the level of “20 per 100k” set when the 20 represents not an accurate level of real infection, but simply reflects testing and reporting protocols in other countries?
You do what you can with the data you have
This is a very diplomatically sensitive topic - witness the French throwing their toys out of the pram - so you need a consistent basis even if flawed. I’m sure there are some countries they want to close off and if others get caught in the net then that’s just too bad.
Like the failed coups against Corbyn, however, this threatens the worst of all worlds with a derided and incompetent leader being further damaged but hanging on. When you play the game of thrones etc....
Boris Johnson has declined to meet members of a campaign group representing families bereaved by coronavirus, despite appearing to promise to do so on live TV last week.
Given that he has 15 working hours in the day, what would this meeting achieve?
The Group have involved solicitors, as soon as they did that there was no way that he would meet them.
Could it be that the key factor in the US election has become law and order?
If that's the case Biden has blown it.
That seems to be the current punditry consensus, and it's what I'd have expected if you'd described the situation a year ago and asked me where the voters would be. But it's not what the polling is showing. This is from August 27 to 28, that's pretty recent. There's loads of interesting stuff in here, but to pick a couple:
Which of these approaches would help get things under control? Law and order 39% Bringing people together 61%
Which comes closest to your view? Police departments don’t need to be reformed: 21% Police departments have a problem with race, but the problem can be fixed by reforming the existing system: 61% Police reform hasn’t worked. We need to defund police and reinvent our approach to public safety: 18%
The fact is that where Biden is is where the voters are.
This might be a two peoples divided by a common language thing.
When I saw law & order, I mean law & order. In other words, it's the most basic duty of Government to avoid anarchy and ensure fair and just administration of the law and to maintain public order and safety on the streets. There's nothing political or partisan about it - all lawlessness should be dealt with equally.
It may have more partisan connotations in the States more akin to "sticking the boot in", which might account for that poll.
If Trump does win in the EC, but loses the national vote by 2-3%, how sustainable is this? In a national vote for a national president, with effectively a 2 party system, that the party that keeps getting millions fewer votes keeps winning?
Add to that the gerrymandered House and Senate, and the highly political judiciary stuffed with increasingly out of touch with majority opinion ultra-conservative judges - isn't it a recipe for the disenfranchised majority getting extremely pissed off?
I agree with you, but have one pedantic point. The senate cannot be gerrymandered, unless state boundaries are redrawn, or significant populations are moved accross state borders. You can complain that Hawaii and Texas both having 2 senators is unfair, but that is not gerrymandering.
The constituency boundaries in the House though, are a disgrace.
Although, historically the Republicans did create new states in order to have more Senators: Nevada, Colorado, 2 Dakotas (rather than 1). So the Senate is kind of gerrymandered. Admittedly, as Nevada now has 2 democratic senators, and Colorado 1, that 19th century gerrymandering isn't really working out for them any more.
which argues for splitting California and New York into several states.
"By 2040, according to a University of Virginia analysis of Census population projections, about half of the country will live in just eight states — which means 16 senators for one half of America and 84 for the other half. Meanwhile, according to Stanford political scientist Jonathan Rodden, partisanship closely correlates with population density — “as you go from the center of cities out through the suburbs and into rural areas, you traverse in a linear fashion from Democratic to Republican places.”
So America is fast approaching a tipping point where one party will enjoy a permanent supermajority in the United States Senate — and with it, permanent control over the federal judiciary. Democrats have no choice. They must embrace the Party of Lincoln’s tactic of selectively admitting new states, or they must perish."
Bozo’s Quarantine Hokey Cokey continues as Ministers are considering reimposing quarantine measures for those arriving in the UK from Portugal as coronavirus cases rise, sources have told the BBC.
A change this Thursday would be the fifth affecting travellers and travel companies to Portugal since this whole sorry farce commenced.
Well your choices are:
A) no restrictions blanket ban C) flexible restrictions which change as the facts change
C) seems like a logical approach to me
Why is your data better than the people reviewing the information and making the decision on behalf of the government?
I'm with Charles on this one. Everyone knows that travelling abroad at the moment carries the risk of restrictions changing and at short notice. If you are not prepared to take the risk that you might need to isolate at the end of the trip, or worse cut the trip short, you should not be undertaking foreign travel, not at the moment.
Exactly. I have absolutely zero sympathy for those caught by a change in the regulations. They have taken a very obvious gamble and lost. Tough. The only reasonable alternative is the blanket ban (by which I mean no travel without quarantine) which would be simpler to administer.
You're right, but politically people who got quarantined due to a change in the rules are now blaming the government, not themselves or the countries they visited.
Its why I would have gone for a mandatory quarantine for all international travel. From about the beginning of March actually. The DoT seems to be a pressure group for the airline industry, not a part of the government.
Guernsey has had quarantine for all arrivals since March. And no new cases for over 3 months. Latest system is 7 day quarantine plus test at day 7 for arrivals from low COVID countries, 14 day quarantine for everyone else. And fines up to £10,000 for breaches. Life is completely back to normal, except for the border.
I am confident that if we had done that for the UK from the first week in March the peak of infections would have been lower, the number of deaths significantly less and we would be much further down the track to elimination of the virus now. It was a no brainer and I don't understand why the DoT/Grant Shapps so vociferously opposed it.
If Trump does win in the EC, but loses the national vote by 2-3%, how sustainable is this? In a national vote for a national president, with effectively a 2 party system, that the party that keeps getting millions fewer votes keeps winning?
Add to that the gerrymandered House and Senate, and the highly political judiciary stuffed with increasingly out of touch with majority opinion ultra-conservative judges - isn't it a recipe for the disenfranchised majority getting extremely pissed off?
It’s not a national vote for a national president. It is states voting for their choice (with some weighting to account fir population differences) - the one with greatest support from the states wins
Bozo’s Quarantine Hokey Cokey continues as Ministers are considering reimposing quarantine measures for those arriving in the UK from Portugal as coronavirus cases rise, sources have told the BBC.
A change this Thursday would be the fifth affecting travellers and travel companies to Portugal since this whole sorry farce commenced.
Well your choices are:
A) no restrictions blanket ban C) flexible restrictions which change as the facts change
C) seems like a logical approach to me
Why is your data better than the people reviewing the information and making the decision on behalf of the government?
I'm with Charles on this one. Everyone knows that travelling abroad at the moment carries the risk of restrictions changing and at short notice. If you are not prepared to take the risk that you might need to isolate at the end of the trip, or worse cut the trip short, you should not be undertaking foreign travel, not at the moment.
Exactly. I have absolutely zero sympathy for those caught by a change in the regulations. They have taken a very obvious gamble and lost. Tough. The only reasonable alternative is the blanket ban (by which I mean no travel without quarantine) which would be simpler to administer.
Agree, but it would be useful if the govt released its logic for its decisions. Similarly for the internal lockdown decisions. Today's Manchester decisions seem completely irrational. Presumably there are sensible reasons but who knows. It is also in the government's interest as currently they look incompetent.
I am equally bewildered by the new restrictions in Glasgow. I mean, as a general proposition shutting down large parts of Glasgow seems a step forward but the rationale for these particular restrictions escape me.
It does help Nicola play mother of the nation once again I suppose but once again jobs will be lost.
The positive test rate in Glasgow has shot up over 1%. This is the same reason ABerdeen got locked down.
In pure coincidence 6 days after lockdown was introduced the positive test rate started dropping beneath 1%.
I think that actuarial stats suggest they'll both be around in 2 months. But if one did did, what happens with ballot papers, especially if they've started to go out to postal voters? Do people vote for the deceased, on the basis that his electoral college representatives will choose a similar successor (presumably the VP)? I think that's the case - there have been one or two local races where a dead candidate won (though in those there was no electoral college, so presumably the logic was that even a dead candidate was better than the opponent, or perhaps a gesture of respect to the deceased).
Bozo’s Quarantine Hokey Cokey continues as Ministers are considering reimposing quarantine measures for those arriving in the UK from Portugal as coronavirus cases rise, sources have told the BBC.
A change this Thursday would be the fifth affecting travellers and travel companies to Portugal since this whole sorry farce commenced.
Well your choices are:
A) no restrictions blanket ban C) flexible restrictions which change as the facts change
C) seems like a logical approach to me
Why is your data better than the people reviewing the information and making the decision on behalf of the government?
I'm with Charles on this one. Everyone knows that travelling abroad at the moment carries the risk of restrictions changing and at short notice. If you are not prepared to take the risk that you might need to isolate at the end of the trip, or worse cut the trip short, you should not be undertaking foreign travel, not at the moment.
Exactly. I have absolutely zero sympathy for those caught by a change in the regulations. They have taken a very obvious gamble and lost. Tough. The only reasonable alternative is the blanket ban (by which I mean no travel without quarantine) which would be simpler to administer.
Agree, but it would be useful if the govt released its logic for its decisions. Similarly for the internal lockdown decisions. Today's Manchester decisions seem completely irrational. Presumably there are sensible reasons but who knows. It is also in the government's interest as currently they look incompetent.
I am equally bewildered by the new restrictions in Glasgow. I mean, as a general proposition shutting down large parts of Glasgow seems a step forward but the rationale for these particular restrictions escape me.
It does help Nicola play mother of the nation once again I suppose but once again jobs will be lost.
The positive test rate in Glasgow has shot up over 1%. This is the same reason ABerdeen got locked down.
In pure coincidence 6 days after lockdown was introduced the positive test rate started dropping beneath 1%.
1% when you are actively using track and trace does not equal 1% when you are testing large groups almost at random. And >99% pass rate on tests is a trigger to economically damaging action? I mean, really?
If Trump does win in the EC, but loses the national vote by 2-3%, how sustainable is this? In a national vote for a national president, with effectively a 2 party system, that the party that keeps getting millions fewer votes keeps winning?
Add to that the gerrymandered House and Senate, and the highly political judiciary stuffed with increasingly out of touch with majority opinion ultra-conservative judges - isn't it a recipe for the disenfranchised majority getting extremely pissed off?
It's entirely sustainable. The Democrats if that happens will need to target states other than California.
That is the system working by design and not a flaw.
It IS a flaw, and plenty of Americans hate it quite understandably. The fact that you think it is a good system doesn't make it one. None of the better democracies use such a stupid system, and I don't see any country racing to copy it. That might tell you something.
We use an equivalent one in the U.K.
Fundamentally it represents communities not individuals.
Bozo’s Quarantine Hokey Cokey continues as Ministers are considering reimposing quarantine measures for those arriving in the UK from Portugal as coronavirus cases rise, sources have told the BBC.
A change this Thursday would be the fifth affecting travellers and travel companies to Portugal since this whole sorry farce commenced.
Well your choices are:
A) no restrictions blanket ban C) flexible restrictions which change as the facts change
C) seems like a logical approach to me
Why is your data better than the people reviewing the information and making the decision on behalf of the government?
I'm with Charles on this one. Everyone knows that travelling abroad at the moment carries the risk of restrictions changing and at short notice. If you are not prepared to take the risk that you might need to isolate at the end of the trip, or worse cut the trip short, you should not be undertaking foreign travel, not at the moment.
Exactly. I have absolutely zero sympathy for those caught by a change in the regulations. They have taken a very obvious gamble and lost. Tough. The only reasonable alternative is the blanket ban (by which I mean no travel without quarantine) which would be simpler to administer.
You're right, but politically people who got quarantined due to a change in the rules are now blaming the government, not themselves or the countries they visited.
Yes, but better they do that than rules not be changed in response to changing events in an attempt to go upset them.
In this instance the government had shown a greater willingness to upset people, which it needs to do occasionally.
If Trump does win in the EC, but loses the national vote by 2-3%, how sustainable is this? In a national vote for a national president, with effectively a 2 party system, that the party that keeps getting millions fewer votes keeps winning?
Add to that the gerrymandered House and Senate, and the highly political judiciary stuffed with increasingly out of touch with majority opinion ultra-conservative judges - isn't it a recipe for the disenfranchised majority getting extremely pissed off?
It's entirely sustainable. The Democrats if that happens will need to target states other than California.
That is the system working by design and not a flaw.
It IS a flaw, and plenty of Americans hate it quite understandably. The fact that you think it is a good system doesn't make it one. None of the better democracies use such a stupid system, and I don't see any country racing to copy it. That might tell you something.
I never said I thought it was a good system, I said it was working by design. There's a difference. I personally don't support the system and am glad we don't have it in this country but I understand why America does.
The other issue is that the method for changing the system requires smaller states to consent to handing away their powers to the larger states. That isn't going to happen.
Oh and incidentally the EU has similar foibles in its voting systems too. They just get less attention as it's less apparent.
But the swing states are mostly mid-sized states. I don't think that people in Hawaii or Alaska think they get a good deal out of the EC system, even if numerically they do. By giving each voter the same weight then voters in Hawaii, Ohio and New York will know that their votes in the presidential election will have the same level of influence on the result.
To change the system will require two thirds of states to agree to a change. It's not going to happen. Yes there's the Interstate Pact mooted to try and circumvent that though it may not be Constitutional and has the same problem. The numbers aren't there.
Changing the system is not a goer. It's not going to happen. So the Democrats can either whinge from the sidelines, throw fits and complain while letting the GOP win ... Or they can target the states the GOP won last time and try and win them over.
Biden has tried the latter route ... Thank goodness!
But the initial question was not: How easy is it to change the system to something fairer? It was: How pissed off are the majority (in a 2 party system!) going to get if their opinions are repeatedly ignored, and, in the case of Trump and a lot of elected Republicans, not just ignored but repeatedly shat on?
If Trump does win in the EC, but loses the national vote by 2-3%, how sustainable is this? In a national vote for a national president, with effectively a 2 party system, that the party that keeps getting millions fewer votes keeps winning?
Add to that the gerrymandered House and Senate, and the highly political judiciary stuffed with increasingly out of touch with majority opinion ultra-conservative judges - isn't it a recipe for the disenfranchised majority getting extremely pissed off?
It's entirely sustainable. The Democrats if that happens will need to target states other than California.
That is the system working by design and not a flaw.
It IS a flaw, and plenty of Americans hate it quite understandably. The fact that you think it is a good system doesn't make it one. None of the better democracies use such a stupid system, and I don't see any country racing to copy it. That might tell you something.
We use an equivalent one in the U.K.
Fundamentally it represents communities not individuals.
You disagree. Fine. But it’s not stupid
The Electoral College is stupid (if you like it, fine, but it is still stupid). And we do not use an equivalent one in the UK.
If Trump does win in the EC, but loses the national vote by 2-3%, how sustainable is this? In a national vote for a national president, with effectively a 2 party system, that the party that keeps getting millions fewer votes keeps winning?
Add to that the gerrymandered House and Senate, and the highly political judiciary stuffed with increasingly out of touch with majority opinion ultra-conservative judges - isn't it a recipe for the disenfranchised majority getting extremely pissed off?
It's entirely sustainable. The Democrats if that happens will need to target states other than California.
That is the system working by design and not a flaw.
It IS a flaw, and plenty of Americans hate it quite understandably. The fact that you think it is a good system doesn't make it one. None of the better democracies use such a stupid system, and I don't see any country racing to copy it. That might tell you something.
We use an equivalent one in the U.K.
Fundamentally it represents communities not individuals.
You disagree. Fine. But it’s not stupid
But it doesn't represent communities. That's the bizarrest defence of the EC yet.
Could it be that the key factor in the US election has become law and order?
If that's the case Biden has blown it.
That seems to be the current punditry consensus, and it's what I'd have expected if you'd described the situation a year ago and asked me where the voters would be. But it's not what the polling is showing. This is from August 27 to 28, that's pretty recent. There's loads of interesting stuff in here, but to pick a couple:
Which of these approaches would help get things under control? Law and order 39% Bringing people together 61%
Which comes closest to your view? Police departments don’t need to be reformed: 21% Police departments have a problem with race, but the problem can be fixed by reforming the existing system: 61% Police reform hasn’t worked. We need to defund police and reinvent our approach to public safety: 18%
The fact is that where Biden is is where the voters are.
This might be a two peoples divided by a common language thing.
When I saw law & order, I mean law & order. In other words, it's the most basic duty of Government to avoid anarchy and ensure fair and just administration of the law and to maintain public order and safety on the streets. There's nothing political or partisan about it - all lawlessness should be dealt with equally.
It may have more partisan connotations in the States more akin to "sticking the boot in", which might account for that poll.
Blair's best slogan was "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime".
While not depriving people of agency, and their own bad decisions, undeniably social conditions contribute heavily to crime.
Trumps commitment to Law and Order is highly partisan, refusing to condemn Kyle Rittenhouse, for example.
If Trump does win in the EC, but loses the national vote by 2-3%, how sustainable is this? In a national vote for a national president, with effectively a 2 party system, that the party that keeps getting millions fewer votes keeps winning?
Add to that the gerrymandered House and Senate, and the highly political judiciary stuffed with increasingly out of touch with majority opinion ultra-conservative judges - isn't it a recipe for the disenfranchised majority getting extremely pissed off?
It's entirely sustainable. The Democrats if that happens will need to target states other than California.
That is the system working by design and not a flaw.
It IS a flaw, and plenty of Americans hate it quite understandably. The fact that you think it is a good system doesn't make it one. None of the better democracies use such a stupid system, and I don't see any country racing to copy it. That might tell you something.
It's a flaw but an intentional one. I'm not sure, once they win under it, the Democrats will have the will or backing to change it either.
Bozo’s Quarantine Hokey Cokey continues as Ministers are considering reimposing quarantine measures for those arriving in the UK from Portugal as coronavirus cases rise, sources have told the BBC.
A change this Thursday would be the fifth affecting travellers and travel companies to Portugal since this whole sorry farce commenced.
Well your choices are:
A) no restrictions blanket ban C) flexible restrictions which change as the facts change
C) seems like a logical approach to me
Why is your data better than the people reviewing the information and making the decision on behalf of the government?
I'm with Charles on this one. Everyone knows that travelling abroad at the moment carries the risk of restrictions changing and at short notice. If you are not prepared to take the risk that you might need to isolate at the end of the trip, or worse cut the trip short, you should not be undertaking foreign travel, not at the moment.
Exactly. I have absolutely zero sympathy for those caught by a change in the regulations. They have taken a very obvious gamble and lost. Tough. The only reasonable alternative is the blanket ban (by which I mean no travel without quarantine) which would be simpler to administer.
You're right, but politically people who got quarantined due to a change in the rules are now blaming the government, not themselves or the countries they visited.
Yes, but better they do that than rules not be changed in response to changing events in an attempt to go upset them.
In this instance the government had shown a greater willingness to upset people, which it needs to do occasionally.
So when the UK rate doubles do you alter the list?
If Trump does win in the EC, but loses the national vote by 2-3%, how sustainable is this? In a national vote for a national president, with effectively a 2 party system, that the party that keeps getting millions fewer votes keeps winning?
Add to that the gerrymandered House and Senate, and the highly political judiciary stuffed with increasingly out of touch with majority opinion ultra-conservative judges - isn't it a recipe for the disenfranchised majority getting extremely pissed off?
It's entirely sustainable. The Democrats if that happens will need to target states other than California.
That is the system working by design and not a flaw.
It IS a flaw, and plenty of Americans hate it quite understandably. The fact that you think it is a good system doesn't make it one. None of the better democracies use such a stupid system, and I don't see any country racing to copy it. That might tell you something.
We use an equivalent one in the U.K.
Fundamentally it represents communities not individuals.
You disagree. Fine. But it’s not stupid
But it doesn't represent communities. That's the bizarrest defence of the EC yet.
Punters have never been convinced on Biden. You could still get on him at 1.05 after he'd got all the delegates, and Hillary was still available at barely 100/1 on the very day he was officially nominated.
They both have to survive nine weeks. I think they're going to manage that.
One or either might fail (I've seen a rumour that some of Biden's senior aides are discussing if he should take the knee in the first presidential debate, for example, which would be a gift to Trump) but they will be the candidates fighting it out on polling day. No question.
The way I look at it is:
1) Some that voted Trump will not vote for him this time (they may vote Biden or more likely abstain) 2) He has virtually no new constituency from which to draw new votes 3) Biden is much more palatable to many than Clinton 4) Anti-Trumpers who didn`t bother voting last time will be super motivated to vote this time. (I think turnout differentials are generally more significant in elections than floating voters.)
I can`t see a flaw in the logic in any of the above, and cannot see any other result than a significant Biden win.
On the national vote, yes.
It's the swing states I'm nervous about. That's why I think Biden should focus on WWC swing voters in those states.
Forget taking the knee stuff and the Bernie bros sledging.
Instead of "taking the knee" he should be saying things like "I want to be very clear about all of this: Rioting is not protesting. Looting is not protesting. Setting fires is not protesting. None of this is protesting. It's lawlessness, plain and simple. And those who do it should be prosecuted. Violence will not bring change, it will only bring destruction. It's wrong in every way."
...oh I see he already has.
Yes, he should, and it's good he finally said so only a few days ago.
He needs to keep saying it too as it's a weak point for him in the campaign that Trump will keep pressing.
Have you read the text of his June 2nd speech yet?
But there is no place for violence.
No place for looting or destroying property or burning churches, or destroying businesses ‑‑ many of them built by people of color who, for the first time, were beginning to realize their dreams and build wealth for their families.
Bozo’s Quarantine Hokey Cokey continues as Ministers are considering reimposing quarantine measures for those arriving in the UK from Portugal as coronavirus cases rise, sources have told the BBC.
A change this Thursday would be the fifth affecting travellers and travel companies to Portugal since this whole sorry farce commenced.
Definitely a mistake to kowtow to the holiday companies and airlines. They should have imposed a mandatory 14 day quarantine on all incomers, with a buyout clause of a negative (private) test after seven days for those who really needed to get back to work.
The constantly changing guidance can’t be popular with anyone at this point.
Though that would at least be clearer and more consistent, it's really being done just for want of doing something; a tacit admission that we should have done this back in February and March when it would have mattered.
It matters more now. By March the virus was already prevalent in the UK. Keeping it contained now is key to getting back to normal.
No it isn't as the government doesn't enforce it. All it does is inconvenience and annoy the law-abiding, while doing little or nothing to deter rule-breakers, who are exactly those who should be targeted.
More kite-flying. Even the bit of the paywalled story I can see talks about the Treasury "gearing up for a fight". And I'm not even sure I believe Sunak is behind this.
The .07% foreign aid pledge has been unpopular with some on the Tory right for the past couple of decades, and I suspect it is one of these sounding off, rather than our esteemed Chancellor.
The reason is that Rachel Glennerster, the DfiD economist has just been appointed to the combined Foreign Office/DfiD post. A quick glance at Wikipedia places Glennerster at Oxford at the same time as Boris (and Cameron and half the Establishment) but also reveals she is a strong advocate of *testing* the outcomes of aid interventions, which is guaranteed to ring Dominic Cummings' bells. In short, she probably has friends in high places, and Sunak will know this, not to mention that .01% off the aid budget is loose change.
Bozo’s Quarantine Hokey Cokey continues as Ministers are considering reimposing quarantine measures for those arriving in the UK from Portugal as coronavirus cases rise, sources have told the BBC.
A change this Thursday would be the fifth affecting travellers and travel companies to Portugal since this whole sorry farce commenced.
Well your choices are:
A) no restrictions blanket ban C) flexible restrictions which change as the facts change
C) seems like a logical approach to me
Why is your data better than the people reviewing the information and making the decision on behalf of the government?
I'm with Charles on this one. Everyone knows that travelling abroad at the moment carries the risk of restrictions changing and at short notice. If you are not prepared to take the risk that you might need to isolate at the end of the trip, or worse cut the trip short, you should not be undertaking foreign travel, not at the moment.
Exactly. I have absolutely zero sympathy for those caught by a change in the regulations. They have taken a very obvious gamble and lost. Tough. The only reasonable alternative is the blanket ban (by which I mean no travel without quarantine) which would be simpler to administer.
You're right, but politically people who got quarantined due to a change in the rules are now blaming the government, not themselves or the countries they visited.
Yes, but better they do that than rules not be changed in response to changing events in an attempt to go upset them.
In this instance the government had shown a greater willingness to upset people, which it needs to do occasionally.
So when the UK rate doubles do you alter the list?
Probably, I dont know. I'm not interested enough to analyse every facet of their decision making, I merely accept the principal of changing in response to changes and that they appear willing not to decide based on upsetting people or not. Mistakes might be made but they are following a process at least.
There are some good picks on that list, but a remarkable number of has-beens.
IDS back at work & pensions and May at the home office? I mean, really?
OK, it's ConHome (which implies a certain sort of Conservative) and Just A Bit Of Fun, but it does highlight the damaging effects of the purges of 2019-20.
No party has enough talent in it to casually throw a load of ministers on the bonfire, and that's something that Johnson has repeatedly done.
I had a quick look at the article, hoping to learn about some bright young things bubbling under the cabinet, ready to take the government into the future. Instead of which, we have suggestions like May and Hunt (can you really see them serving under this PM?) and IDS (really?).
It's the other reason that people who really ought to go (let's start with WIlliamson and Jenrick) don't go... there isn't really anyone to replace them.
Could it be that the key factor in the US election has become law and order?
If that's the case Biden has blown it.
That seems to be the current punditry consensus, and it's what I'd have expected if you'd described the situation a year ago and asked me where the voters would be. But it's not what the polling is showing. This is from August 27 to 28, that's pretty recent. There's loads of interesting stuff in here, but to pick a couple:
Which of these approaches would help get things under control? Law and order 39% Bringing people together 61%
Which comes closest to your view? Police departments don’t need to be reformed: 21% Police departments have a problem with race, but the problem can be fixed by reforming the existing system: 61% Police reform hasn’t worked. We need to defund police and reinvent our approach to public safety: 18%
The fact is that where Biden is is where the voters are.
This might be a two peoples divided by a common language thing.
When I saw law & order, I mean law & order. In other words, it's the most basic duty of Government to avoid anarchy and ensure fair and just administration of the law and to maintain public order and safety on the streets. There's nothing political or partisan about it - all lawlessness should be dealt with equally.
It may have more partisan connotations in the States more akin to "sticking the boot in", which might account for that poll.
Yes, that may be right, and even as I'd understand it it's a slightly weird question. But whatever American voters think "law and order" means, it's the thing that Trump is explicitly running on, and also the thing that the punditry are currently suggesting might win it for Trump, if he can raise its salience. I think it's important that the available data - and there are quite a lot of polls showing similar things in different ways - suggests that this is not at all a winning message. It's an issue where Trump's opponent's message is more popular than his own, by quite a margin.
He's be better off running on the economy IMHO; I know the whole thing went to hell with the virus, but it was going pretty well until that happened, and there's room for an optimistic story about how much better it'll get once everybody's vaccinated.
Bozo’s Quarantine Hokey Cokey continues as Ministers are considering reimposing quarantine measures for those arriving in the UK from Portugal as coronavirus cases rise, sources have told the BBC.
A change this Thursday would be the fifth affecting travellers and travel companies to Portugal since this whole sorry farce commenced.
Definitely a mistake to kowtow to the holiday companies and airlines. They should have imposed a mandatory 14 day quarantine on all incomers, with a buyout clause of a negative (private) test after seven days for those who really needed to get back to work.
The constantly changing guidance can’t be popular with anyone at this point.
Though that would at least be clearer and more consistent, it's really being done just for want of doing something; a tacit admission that we should have done this back in February and March when it would have mattered.
It matters more now. By March the virus was already prevalent in the UK. Keeping it contained now is key to getting back to normal.
No it isn't as the government doesn't enforce it. All it does is inconvenience and annoy the law-abiding, while doing little or nothing to deter rule-breakers, who are exactly those who should be targeted.
Classic gesture politics.
How much longer before we all get an Oxford Uni branded quasi-placebo in our arm and we can all go back to normal? This relatively minor health event has brought out the very worst in British risk aversion, high horseness and over officiousness.
Could it be that the key factor in the US election has become law and order?
If that's the case Biden has blown it.
That seems to be the current punditry consensus, and it's what I'd have expected if you'd described the situation a year ago and asked me where the voters would be. But it's not what the polling is showing. This is from August 27 to 28, that's pretty recent. There's loads of interesting stuff in here, but to pick a couple:
Which of these approaches would help get things under control? Law and order 39% Bringing people together 61%
Which comes closest to your view? Police departments don’t need to be reformed: 21% Police departments have a problem with race, but the problem can be fixed by reforming the existing system: 61% Police reform hasn’t worked. We need to defund police and reinvent our approach to public safety: 18%
The fact is that where Biden is is where the voters are.
This might be a two peoples divided by a common language thing.
When I saw law & order, I mean law & order. In other words, it's the most basic duty of Government to avoid anarchy and ensure fair and just administration of the law and to maintain public order and safety on the streets. There's nothing political or partisan about it - all lawlessness should be dealt with equally.
It may have more partisan connotations in the States more akin to "sticking the boot in", which might account for that poll.
Blair's best slogan was "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime".
While not depriving people of agency, and their own bad decisions, undeniably social conditions contribute heavily to crime.
Trumps commitment to Law and Order is highly partisan, refusing to condemn Kyle Rittenhouse, for example.
I think what was so good about that slogan is that it left "the causes of crime" in the eye of the beholder, and thus appealed to the broadest possible audience.
Could it be that the key factor in the US election has become law and order?
If that's the case Biden has blown it.
That seems to be the current punditry consensus, and it's what I'd have expected if you'd described the situation a year ago and asked me where the voters would be. But it's not what the polling is showing. This is from August 27 to 28, that's pretty recent. There's loads of interesting stuff in here, but to pick a couple:
Which of these approaches would help get things under control? Law and order 39% Bringing people together 61%
Which comes closest to your view? Police departments don’t need to be reformed: 21% Police departments have a problem with race, but the problem can be fixed by reforming the existing system: 61% Police reform hasn’t worked. We need to defund police and reinvent our approach to public safety: 18%
The fact is that where Biden is is where the voters are.
This might be a two peoples divided by a common language thing.
When I saw law & order, I mean law & order. In other words, it's the most basic duty of Government to avoid anarchy and ensure fair and just administration of the law and to maintain public order and safety on the streets. There's nothing political or partisan about it - all lawlessness should be dealt with equally.
It may have more partisan connotations in the States more akin to "sticking the boot in", which might account for that poll.
Blair's best slogan was "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime".
While not depriving people of agency, and their own bad decisions, undeniably social conditions contribute heavily to crime.
Trumps commitment to Law and Order is highly partisan, refusing to condemn Kyle Rittenhouse, for example.
No, it is the same as we saw in our 2017 election. Law and order helps the right *except* when voters turn round and say to the President or Prime Minister, this is happening on your watch; you clearly can't stop it; in fact you are making things worse"
You might say Heath's Who Governs Britain? election was the same thing. In any case, I do not see this helping Trump and it is lazy punditry to assume it will do so.
More kite-flying. Even the bit of the paywalled story I can see talks about the Treasury "gearing up for a fight". And I'm not even sure I believe Sunak is behind this.
The .07% foreign aid pledge has been unpopular with some on the Tory right for the past couple of decades, and I suspect it is one of these sounding off, rather than our esteemed Chancellor.
The reason is that Rachel Glennerster, the DfiD economist has just been appointed to the combined Foreign Office/DfiD post. A quick glance at Wikipedia places Glennerster at Oxford at the same time as Boris (and Cameron and half the Establishment) but also reveals she is a strong advocate of *testing* the outcomes of aid interventions, which is guaranteed to ring Dominic Cummings' bells. In short, she probably has friends in high places, and Sunak will know this, not to mention that .01% off the aid budget is loose change.
It's all kite flying - it's how this Government operates - but it will take the path of least resistance.
It's pretty obvious to me that they will claim the 0.7% target has been nominally met whilst reclassifying some spending within it into essential defence upgrades on the premise that this will benefit others globally.
Could it be that the key factor in the US election has become law and order?
If that's the case Biden has blown it.
That seems to be the current punditry consensus, and it's what I'd have expected if you'd described the situation a year ago and asked me where the voters would be. But it's not what the polling is showing. This is from August 27 to 28, that's pretty recent. There's loads of interesting stuff in here, but to pick a couple:
Which of these approaches would help get things under control? Law and order 39% Bringing people together 61%
Which comes closest to your view? Police departments don’t need to be reformed: 21% Police departments have a problem with race, but the problem can be fixed by reforming the existing system: 61% Police reform hasn’t worked. We need to defund police and reinvent our approach to public safety: 18%
The fact is that where Biden is is where the voters are.
This might be a two peoples divided by a common language thing.
When I saw law & order, I mean law & order. In other words, it's the most basic duty of Government to avoid anarchy and ensure fair and just administration of the law and to maintain public order and safety on the streets. There's nothing political or partisan about it - all lawlessness should be dealt with equally.
It may have more partisan connotations in the States more akin to "sticking the boot in", which might account for that poll.
I think that's close, but it's perhaps also a reflection of the extraordinarily entrenched partisanship in the US (which Trump has a lot to do with). If you heard that Corbyn passionately favoured something you liked, or I heard that Nick Griffin was dead keen on something I support, we'd both have a queasy moment, I expect - but in the US, it's magnified way beyond that. "Trump keeps going on about law and order, so I'm against law and order, because what he means is..."
Also, of course, in the poll it's up against the innocuous "bring people together", and everyone is pretty much for that.
If Trump does win in the EC, but loses the national vote by 2-3%, how sustainable is this? In a national vote for a national president, with effectively a 2 party system, that the party that keeps getting millions fewer votes keeps winning?
Add to that the gerrymandered House and Senate, and the highly political judiciary stuffed with increasingly out of touch with majority opinion ultra-conservative judges - isn't it a recipe for the disenfranchised majority getting extremely pissed off?
It's entirely sustainable. The Democrats if that happens will need to target states other than California.
That is the system working by design and not a flaw.
It IS a flaw, and plenty of Americans hate it quite understandably. The fact that you think it is a good system doesn't make it one. None of the better democracies use such a stupid system, and I don't see any country racing to copy it. That might tell you something.
We use an equivalent one in the U.K.
Fundamentally it represents communities not individuals.
You disagree. Fine. But it’s not stupid
The Electoral College is stupid (if you like it, fine, but it is still stupid). And we do not use an equivalent one in the UK.
I agree. The electoral college is stupid. I don't know anybody who would set it up as it is now if they were starting from scratch.
Our electoral system is not perfect either, as constituencies are not equal-sized. The Outer Hebridies has 21k and the Isle of Wight has 105k. So an OH vote is worth 5x what an Isle of Wight vote is worth.
But Wyoming has one EC vote per 190k people while CA has one per 1.4m, a 7x disparity. So our system is better, from tha point of view.
If we finally get around to eqalising constituency sizes, of course, that's another matter.
Bozo’s Quarantine Hokey Cokey continues as Ministers are considering reimposing quarantine measures for those arriving in the UK from Portugal as coronavirus cases rise, sources have told the BBC.
A change this Thursday would be the fifth affecting travellers and travel companies to Portugal since this whole sorry farce commenced.
Well your choices are:
A) no restrictions blanket ban C) flexible restrictions which change as the facts change
C) seems like a logical approach to me
Why is your data better than the people reviewing the information and making the decision on behalf of the government?
I'm with Charles on this one. Everyone knows that travelling abroad at the moment carries the risk of restrictions changing and at short notice. If you are not prepared to take the risk that you might need to isolate at the end of the trip, or worse cut the trip short, you should not be undertaking foreign travel, not at the moment.
Exactly. I have absolutely zero sympathy for those caught by a change in the regulations. They have taken a very obvious gamble and lost. Tough. The only reasonable alternative is the blanket ban (by which I mean no travel without quarantine) which would be simpler to administer.
Agree, but it would be useful if the govt released its logic for its decisions. Similarly for the internal lockdown decisions. Today's Manchester decisions seem completely irrational. Presumably there are sensible reasons but who knows. It is also in the government's interest as currently they look incompetent.
The reason for apparently irrational government decisions to remove lockdown in Bolton and Trafford, I understand, is that those places have high profile Conservative MPs, while the rest of Greater Manchester doesn't. This is despite a particularly big increase in cases in Bolton. Cases have also increased in Trafford
Could it be that the key factor in the US election has become law and order?
If that's the case Biden has blown it.
That seems to be the current punditry consensus, and it's what I'd have expected if you'd described the situation a year ago and asked me where the voters would be. But it's not what the polling is showing. This is from August 27 to 28, that's pretty recent. There's loads of interesting stuff in here, but to pick a couple:
Which of these approaches would help get things under control? Law and order 39% Bringing people together 61%
Which comes closest to your view? Police departments don’t need to be reformed: 21% Police departments have a problem with race, but the problem can be fixed by reforming the existing system: 61% Police reform hasn’t worked. We need to defund police and reinvent our approach to public safety: 18%
The fact is that where Biden is is where the voters are.
This might be a two peoples divided by a common language thing.
When I saw law & order, I mean law & order. In other words, it's the most basic duty of Government to avoid anarchy and ensure fair and just administration of the law and to maintain public order and safety on the streets. There's nothing political or partisan about it - all lawlessness should be dealt with equally.
It may have more partisan connotations in the States more akin to "sticking the boot in", which might account for that poll.
Blair's best slogan was "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime".
While not depriving people of agency, and their own bad decisions, undeniably social conditions contribute heavily to crime.
Trumps commitment to Law and Order is highly partisan, refusing to condemn Kyle Rittenhouse, for example.
I think what was so good about that slogan is that it left "the causes of crime" in the eye of the beholder, and thus appealed to the broadest possible audience.
Trivia: it was Gordon Brown who wrote the slogan for Blair.
Could it be that the key factor in the US election has become law and order?
If that's the case Biden has blown it.
That seems to be the current punditry consensus, and it's what I'd have expected if you'd described the situation a year ago and asked me where the voters would be. But it's not what the polling is showing. This is from August 27 to 28, that's pretty recent. There's loads of interesting stuff in here, but to pick a couple:
Which of these approaches would help get things under control? Law and order 39% Bringing people together 61%
Which comes closest to your view? Police departments don’t need to be reformed: 21% Police departments have a problem with race, but the problem can be fixed by reforming the existing system: 61% Police reform hasn’t worked. We need to defund police and reinvent our approach to public safety: 18%
The fact is that where Biden is is where the voters are.
This might be a two peoples divided by a common language thing.
When I saw law & order, I mean law & order. In other words, it's the most basic duty of Government to avoid anarchy and ensure fair and just administration of the law and to maintain public order and safety on the streets. There's nothing political or partisan about it - all lawlessness should be dealt with equally.
It may have more partisan connotations in the States more akin to "sticking the boot in", which might account for that poll.
Yes, that may be right, and even as I'd understand it it's a slightly weird question. But whatever American voters think "law and order" means, it's the thing that Trump is explicitly running on, and also the thing that the punditry are currently suggesting might win it for Trump, if he can raise its salience. I think it's important that the available data - and there are quite a lot of polls showing similar things in different ways - suggests that this is not at all a winning message. It's an issue where Trump's opponent's message is more popular than his own, by quite a margin.
He's be better off running on the economy IMHO; I know the whole thing went to hell with the virus, but it was going pretty well until that happened, and there's room for an optimistic story about how much better it'll get once everybody's vaccinated.
I am not sure that even in America "Law and Order" means supporting out of state teenage vigilantes toting assault rifles, shooting people, getting tacit police approval and presidential support.
Could it be that the key factor in the US election has become law and order?
If that's the case Biden has blown it.
That seems to be the current punditry consensus, and it's what I'd have expected if you'd described the situation a year ago and asked me where the voters would be. But it's not what the polling is showing. This is from August 27 to 28, that's pretty recent. There's loads of interesting stuff in here, but to pick a couple:
Which of these approaches would help get things under control? Law and order 39% Bringing people together 61%
Which comes closest to your view? Police departments don’t need to be reformed: 21% Police departments have a problem with race, but the problem can be fixed by reforming the existing system: 61% Police reform hasn’t worked. We need to defund police and reinvent our approach to public safety: 18%
The fact is that where Biden is is where the voters are.
This might be a two peoples divided by a common language thing.
When I saw law & order, I mean law & order. In other words, it's the most basic duty of Government to avoid anarchy and ensure fair and just administration of the law and to maintain public order and safety on the streets. There's nothing political or partisan about it - all lawlessness should be dealt with equally.
It may have more partisan connotations in the States more akin to "sticking the boot in", which might account for that poll.
Blair's best slogan was "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime".
While not depriving people of agency, and their own bad decisions, undeniably social conditions contribute heavily to crime.
Trumps commitment to Law and Order is highly partisan, refusing to condemn Kyle Rittenhouse, for example.
No, it is the same as we saw in our 2017 election. Law and order helps the right *except* when voters turn round and say to the President or Prime Minister, this is happening on your watch; you clearly can't stop it; in fact you are making things worse"
You might say Heath's Who Governs Britain? election was the same thing. In any case, I do not see this helping Trump and it is lazy punditry to assume it will do so.
It is the laziest of echo chamber punditry. Any evidence that doesn't match the preconception is dismissed. At the peak of the George Floyd protests everyone was going "BLM is really. Unpopular this will be great for Trump" and when a poll was released showing BLM had absolute majority of support amongst Americans it was consigned straight to the memory hole.
Bozo’s Quarantine Hokey Cokey continues as Ministers are considering reimposing quarantine measures for those arriving in the UK from Portugal as coronavirus cases rise, sources have told the BBC.
A change this Thursday would be the fifth affecting travellers and travel companies to Portugal since this whole sorry farce commenced.
Definitely a mistake to kowtow to the holiday companies and airlines. They should have imposed a mandatory 14 day quarantine on all incomers, with a buyout clause of a negative (private) test after seven days for those who really needed to get back to work.
The constantly changing guidance can’t be popular with anyone at this point.
Though that would at least be clearer and more consistent, it's really being done just for want of doing something; a tacit admission that we should have done this back in February and March when it would have mattered.
It matters more now. By March the virus was already prevalent in the UK. Keeping it contained now is key to getting back to normal.
No it isn't as the government doesn't enforce it. All it does is inconvenience and annoy the law-abiding, while doing little or nothing to deter rule-breakers, who are exactly those who should be targeted.
Classic gesture politics.
How much longer before we all get an Oxford Uni branded quasi-placebo in our arm and we can all go back to normal? This relatively minor health event has brought out the very worst in British risk aversion, high horseness and over officiousness.
Nope what it's brought on is the next 20 years of economic changes in a very short period of time and highlighted that a lot of people can't think through the initial solution to identify the consequences of their actions.
Which is why Boris's Go back to the Office plan is actually very good. It shows that the Government is trying to sort things out while actually knowing that it isn't going to change anything. But at least when Pret and co scream the Government can say we did everything we could.
Punters have never been convinced on Biden. You could still get on him at 1.05 after he'd got all the delegates, and Hillary was still available at barely 100/1 on the very day he was officially nominated.
They both have to survive nine weeks. I think they're going to manage that.
One or either might fail (I've seen a rumour that some of Biden's senior aides are discussing if he should take the knee in the first presidential debate, for example, which would be a gift to Trump) but they will be the candidates fighting it out on polling day. No question.
The way I look at it is:
1) Some that voted Trump will not vote for him this time (they may vote Biden or more likely abstain) 2) He has virtually no new constituency from which to draw new votes 3) Biden is much more palatable to many than Clinton 4) Anti-Trumpers who didn`t bother voting last time will be super motivated to vote this time. (I think turnout differentials are generally more significant in elections than floating voters.)
I can`t see a flaw in the logic in any of the above, and cannot see any other result than a significant Biden win.
On the national vote, yes.
It's the swing states I'm nervous about. That's why I think Biden should focus on WWC swing voters in those states.
Forget taking the knee stuff and the Bernie bros sledging.
Instead of "taking the knee" he should be saying things like "I want to be very clear about all of this: Rioting is not protesting. Looting is not protesting. Setting fires is not protesting. None of this is protesting. It's lawlessness, plain and simple. And those who do it should be prosecuted. Violence will not bring change, it will only bring destruction. It's wrong in every way."
...oh I see he already has.
Yes, he should, and it's good he finally said so only a few days ago.
He needs to keep saying it too as it's a weak point for him in the campaign that Trump will keep pressing.
Have you read the text of his June 2nd speech yet?
But there is no place for violence.
No place for looting or destroying property or burning churches, or destroying businesses ‑‑ many of them built by people of color who, for the first time, were beginning to realize their dreams and build wealth for their families.
Yes, I've seen it, I've read it and you've posted it multiple times. It really is getting rather boring, Alastair.
As I've told you umpteen times it's not enough for Biden to have made one speech a few days after George Floyd back in June and then leave it at that. He has to address the sustained disorder and changed political situation where this is becoming of dangerous salience for him, and he might be perceived to be slightly soft on lawlessness.
His speech over the weekend was far stronger and more unequivocal (as the words above show) and he needs to keep doing this throughout the campaign to defend himself.
I see no point in going round and round in circles on this with you.
You're simply interested in trying to win a very narrow debating point with me for your own personal satisfaction; I'm interested in Biden winning the general.
Could it be that the key factor in the US election has become law and order?
If that's the case Biden has blown it.
That seems to be the current punditry consensus, and it's what I'd have expected if you'd described the situation a year ago and asked me where the voters would be. But it's not what the polling is showing. This is from August 27 to 28, that's pretty recent. There's loads of interesting stuff in here, but to pick a couple:
Which of these approaches would help get things under control? Law and order 39% Bringing people together 61%
Which comes closest to your view? Police departments don’t need to be reformed: 21% Police departments have a problem with race, but the problem can be fixed by reforming the existing system: 61% Police reform hasn’t worked. We need to defund police and reinvent our approach to public safety: 18%
The fact is that where Biden is is where the voters are.
This might be a two peoples divided by a common language thing.
When I saw law & order, I mean law & order. In other words, it's the most basic duty of Government to avoid anarchy and ensure fair and just administration of the law and to maintain public order and safety on the streets. There's nothing political or partisan about it - all lawlessness should be dealt with equally.
It may have more partisan connotations in the States more akin to "sticking the boot in", which might account for that poll.
Blair's best slogan was "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime".
While not depriving people of agency, and their own bad decisions, undeniably social conditions contribute heavily to crime.
Trumps commitment to Law and Order is highly partisan, refusing to condemn Kyle Rittenhouse, for example.
No, it is the same as we saw in our 2017 election. Law and order helps the right *except* when voters turn round and say to the President or Prime Minister, this is happening on your watch; you clearly can't stop it; in fact you are making things worse"
You might say Heath's Who Governs Britain? election was the same thing. In any case, I do not see this helping Trump and it is lazy punditry to assume it will do so.
It is the laziest of echo chamber punditry. Any evidence that doesn't match the preconception is dismissed. At the peak of the George Floyd protests everyone was going "BLM is really. Unpopular this will be great for Trump" and when a poll was released showing BLM had absolute majority of support amongst Americans it was consigned straight to the memory hole.
Lazy punditry? Can't be. Dan Hodges is a subscriber.
Bozo’s Quarantine Hokey Cokey continues as Ministers are considering reimposing quarantine measures for those arriving in the UK from Portugal as coronavirus cases rise, sources have told the BBC.
A change this Thursday would be the fifth affecting travellers and travel companies to Portugal since this whole sorry farce commenced.
Definitely a mistake to kowtow to the holiday companies and airlines. They should have imposed a mandatory 14 day quarantine on all incomers, with a buyout clause of a negative (private) test after seven days for those who really needed to get back to work.
The constantly changing guidance can’t be popular with anyone at this point.
Though that would at least be clearer and more consistent, it's really being done just for want of doing something; a tacit admission that we should have done this back in February and March when it would have mattered.
It matters more now. By March the virus was already prevalent in the UK. Keeping it contained now is key to getting back to normal.
No it isn't as the government doesn't enforce it. All it does is inconvenience and annoy the law-abiding, while doing little or nothing to deter rule-breakers, who are exactly those who should be targeted.
Classic gesture politics.
How much longer before we all get an Oxford Uni branded quasi-placebo in our arm and we can all go back to normal? This relatively minor health event has brought out the very worst in British risk aversion, high horseness and over officiousness.
Quasi-placebo? What? Do you understand the science behind vaccines at all?
Bozo’s Quarantine Hokey Cokey continues as Ministers are considering reimposing quarantine measures for those arriving in the UK from Portugal as coronavirus cases rise, sources have told the BBC.
A change this Thursday would be the fifth affecting travellers and travel companies to Portugal since this whole sorry farce commenced.
Well your choices are:
A) no restrictions blanket ban C) flexible restrictions which change as the facts change
C) seems like a logical approach to me
Why is your data better than the people reviewing the information and making the decision on behalf of the government?
I'm with Charles on this one. Everyone knows that travelling abroad at the moment carries the risk of restrictions changing and at short notice. If you are not prepared to take the risk that you might need to isolate at the end of the trip, or worse cut the trip short, you should not be undertaking foreign travel, not at the moment.
Exactly. I have absolutely zero sympathy for those caught by a change in the regulations. They have taken a very obvious gamble and lost. Tough. The only reasonable alternative is the blanket ban (by which I mean no travel without quarantine) which would be simpler to administer.
I agree with your general point. However as quarantine updates appear to be happening weekly it doesn't seem a massive organisational burden to announce the changes midweek for implementation at the weekend. That would give people a couple of days to trigger their contingency rather than be caught out by the shutters coming down the same evening.
Could it be that the key factor in the US election has become law and order?
If that's the case Biden has blown it.
That seems to be the current punditry consensus, and it's what I'd have expected if you'd described the situation a year ago and asked me where the voters would be. But it's not what the polling is showing. This is from August 27 to 28, that's pretty recent. There's loads of interesting stuff in here, but to pick a couple:
Which of these approaches would help get things under control? Law and order 39% Bringing people together 61%
Which comes closest to your view? Police departments don’t need to be reformed: 21% Police departments have a problem with race, but the problem can be fixed by reforming the existing system: 61% Police reform hasn’t worked. We need to defund police and reinvent our approach to public safety: 18%
The fact is that where Biden is is where the voters are.
This might be a two peoples divided by a common language thing.
When I saw law & order, I mean law & order. In other words, it's the most basic duty of Government to avoid anarchy and ensure fair and just administration of the law and to maintain public order and safety on the streets. There's nothing political or partisan about it - all lawlessness should be dealt with equally.
It may have more partisan connotations in the States more akin to "sticking the boot in", which might account for that poll.
Blair's best slogan was "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime".
While not depriving people of agency, and their own bad decisions, undeniably social conditions contribute heavily to crime.
Trumps commitment to Law and Order is highly partisan, refusing to condemn Kyle Rittenhouse, for example.
No, it is the same as we saw in our 2017 election. Law and order helps the right *except* when voters turn round and say to the President or Prime Minister, this is happening on your watch; you clearly can't stop it; in fact you are making things worse"
You might say Heath's Who Governs Britain? election was the same thing. In any case, I do not see this helping Trump and it is lazy punditry to assume it will do so.
It is the laziest of echo chamber punditry. Any evidence that doesn't match the preconception is dismissed. At the peak of the George Floyd protests everyone was going "BLM is really. Unpopular this will be great for Trump" and when a poll was released showing BLM had absolute majority of support amongst Americans it was consigned straight to the memory hole.
The legitimate concerns that the BLM movement was channelling are different to the political objectives of the official BLM movement.
The former has majority support whilst I very much doubt the latter does.
Could it be that the key factor in the US election has become law and order?
If that's the case Biden has blown it.
That seems to be the current punditry consensus, and it's what I'd have expected if you'd described the situation a year ago and asked me where the voters would be. But it's not what the polling is showing. This is from August 27 to 28, that's pretty recent. There's loads of interesting stuff in here, but to pick a couple:
Which of these approaches would help get things under control? Law and order 39% Bringing people together 61%
Which comes closest to your view? Police departments don’t need to be reformed: 21% Police departments have a problem with race, but the problem can be fixed by reforming the existing system: 61% Police reform hasn’t worked. We need to defund police and reinvent our approach to public safety: 18%
The fact is that where Biden is is where the voters are.
This might be a two peoples divided by a common language thing.
When I saw law & order, I mean law & order. In other words, it's the most basic duty of Government to avoid anarchy and ensure fair and just administration of the law and to maintain public order and safety on the streets. There's nothing political or partisan about it - all lawlessness should be dealt with equally.
It may have more partisan connotations in the States more akin to "sticking the boot in", which might account for that poll.
Blair's best slogan was "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime".
While not depriving people of agency, and their own bad decisions, undeniably social conditions contribute heavily to crime.
Trumps commitment to Law and Order is highly partisan, refusing to condemn Kyle Rittenhouse, for example.
I think what was so good about that slogan is that it left "the causes of crime" in the eye of the beholder, and thus appealed to the broadest possible audience.
You have to ask yourself, if a Trump supporter was shot in riots would the 'other side' be pleased about it. Fear not, the question has been answered.
Bozo’s Quarantine Hokey Cokey continues as Ministers are considering reimposing quarantine measures for those arriving in the UK from Portugal as coronavirus cases rise, sources have told the BBC.
A change this Thursday would be the fifth affecting travellers and travel companies to Portugal since this whole sorry farce commenced.
Well your choices are:
A) no restrictions blanket ban C) flexible restrictions which change as the facts change
C) seems like a logical approach to me
Why is your data better than the people reviewing the information and making the decision on behalf of the government?
I'm with Charles on this one. Everyone knows that travelling abroad at the moment carries the risk of restrictions changing and at short notice. If you are not prepared to take the risk that you might need to isolate at the end of the trip, or worse cut the trip short, you should not be undertaking foreign travel, not at the moment.
Exactly. I have absolutely zero sympathy for those caught by a change in the regulations. They have taken a very obvious gamble and lost. Tough. The only reasonable alternative is the blanket ban (by which I mean no travel without quarantine) which would be simpler to administer.
You're right, but politically people who got quarantined due to a change in the rules are now blaming the government, not themselves or the countries they visited.
Yepp. One of the burdens of governing is taking the blame for various things that really are outwith your control.
The key factor is *how* you take the blow:
- roll with it, like the SNP - or take bloody punches on the nose, like the Conservatives
You’d have thought the Tories would have got the hang of government by now, after a fair few goes over the centuries. But this is, of course, the first-ever Brave New UKIP Party government, so they haven’t got the hang of it yet.
Could it be that the key factor in the US election has become law and order?
If that's the case Biden has blown it.
That seems to be the current punditry consensus, and it's what I'd have expected if you'd described the situation a year ago and asked me where the voters would be. But it's not what the polling is showing. This is from August 27 to 28, that's pretty recent. There's loads of interesting stuff in here, but to pick a couple:
Which of these approaches would help get things under control? Law and order 39% Bringing people together 61%
Which comes closest to your view? Police departments don’t need to be reformed: 21% Police departments have a problem with race, but the problem can be fixed by reforming the existing system: 61% Police reform hasn’t worked. We need to defund police and reinvent our approach to public safety: 18%
The fact is that where Biden is is where the voters are.
This might be a two peoples divided by a common language thing.
When I saw law & order, I mean law & order. In other words, it's the most basic duty of Government to avoid anarchy and ensure fair and just administration of the law and to maintain public order and safety on the streets. There's nothing political or partisan about it - all lawlessness should be dealt with equally.
It may have more partisan connotations in the States more akin to "sticking the boot in", which might account for that poll.
I think that's close, but it's perhaps also a reflection of the extraordinarily entrenched partisanship in the US (which Trump has a lot to do with). If you heard that Corbyn passionately favoured something you liked, or I heard that Nick Griffin was dead keen on something I support, we'd both have a queasy moment, I expect - but in the US, it's magnified way beyond that. "Trump keeps going on about law and order, so I'm against law and order, because what he means is..."
Also, of course, in the poll it's up against the innocuous "bring people together", and everyone is pretty much for that.
Yes, good point. It's a loaded poll.
I suspect most people are in favour of law & order in a way that doesn't divide the community but is backed by all sides of it.
Bozo’s Quarantine Hokey Cokey continues as Ministers are considering reimposing quarantine measures for those arriving in the UK from Portugal as coronavirus cases rise, sources have told the BBC.
A change this Thursday would be the fifth affecting travellers and travel companies to Portugal since this whole sorry farce commenced.
Definitely a mistake to kowtow to the holiday companies and airlines. They should have imposed a mandatory 14 day quarantine on all incomers, with a buyout clause of a negative (private) test after seven days for those who really needed to get back to work.
The constantly changing guidance can’t be popular with anyone at this point.
Though that would at least be clearer and more consistent, it's really being done just for want of doing something; a tacit admission that we should have done this back in February and March when it would have mattered.
It matters more now. By March the virus was already prevalent in the UK. Keeping it contained now is key to getting back to normal.
No it isn't as the government doesn't enforce it. All it does is inconvenience and annoy the law-abiding, while doing little or nothing to deter rule-breakers, who are exactly those who should be targeted.
Classic gesture politics.
How much longer before we all get an Oxford Uni branded quasi-placebo in our arm and we can all go back to normal? This relatively minor health event has brought out the very worst in British risk aversion, high horseness and over officiousness.
Quasi-placebo? What? Do you understand the science behind vaccines at all?
Do you understand the concept of a joke?
Everybody knows how vaccines work, you put 1 part in 10 million of the virus in a jar of water and hit it with a leather thing.
Cummings does have a vision of central control by committed apparatchiks, backed by information on all citizens and iron discipline that whiffs more than a bit of Stalinism.
I think his suspicion of the traditional institutions of state, including Civil Service, Journalists, Universities and even Armed Forces very reminiscent too. Purges and showtrials are all part of his 5 year plan.
Could it be that the key factor in the US election has become law and order?
If that's the case Biden has blown it.
That seems to be the current punditry consensus, and it's what I'd have expected if you'd described the situation a year ago and asked me where the voters would be. But it's not what the polling is showing. This is from August 27 to 28, that's pretty recent. There's loads of interesting stuff in here, but to pick a couple:
Which of these approaches would help get things under control? Law and order 39% Bringing people together 61%
Which comes closest to your view? Police departments don’t need to be reformed: 21% Police departments have a problem with race, but the problem can be fixed by reforming the existing system: 61% Police reform hasn’t worked. We need to defund police and reinvent our approach to public safety: 18%
The fact is that where Biden is is where the voters are.
This might be a two peoples divided by a common language thing.
When I saw law & order, I mean law & order. In other words, it's the most basic duty of Government to avoid anarchy and ensure fair and just administration of the law and to maintain public order and safety on the streets. There's nothing political or partisan about it - all lawlessness should be dealt with equally.
It may have more partisan connotations in the States more akin to "sticking the boot in", which might account for that poll.
I think that's close, but it's perhaps also a reflection of the extraordinarily entrenched partisanship in the US (which Trump has a lot to do with). If you heard that Corbyn passionately favoured something you liked, or I heard that Nick Griffin was dead keen on something I support, we'd both have a queasy moment, I expect - but in the US, it's magnified way beyond that. "Trump keeps going on about law and order, so I'm against law and order, because what he means is..."
Also, of course, in the poll it's up against the innocuous "bring people together", and everyone is pretty much for that.
Morning all - and not a great start to it with the ghastly Donald Trump going fav on Betfair. I think it's mug money talking but still I don't like to see it. I've got my opening spread bets on now (as of yesterday) and so I want to see Trump on the drift from this point onwards. My main bet is a buy of Biden EC supremacy at 28.5. That's gone up a point, the spreads not moving in line with Betfair as yet.
Anyway, not to worry, the more interesting story is the lack of right wing comedy on the BBC. That's a scandal, there being so much brilliant right wing comedy out there. To illustrate and to cheer everyone up here's a very good one I heard just the other day -
How many socialists does it take to change a light bulb?
None, because socialists haven't got a fucking clue and in any case they can't buy a new one because as per usual they've run out of other people's money.
Bozo’s Quarantine Hokey Cokey continues as Ministers are considering reimposing quarantine measures for those arriving in the UK from Portugal as coronavirus cases rise, sources have told the BBC.
A change this Thursday would be the fifth affecting travellers and travel companies to Portugal since this whole sorry farce commenced.
Definitely a mistake to kowtow to the holiday companies and airlines. They should have imposed a mandatory 14 day quarantine on all incomers, with a buyout clause of a negative (private) test after seven days for those who really needed to get back to work.
The constantly changing guidance can’t be popular with anyone at this point.
Though that would at least be clearer and more consistent, it's really being done just for want of doing something; a tacit admission that we should have done this back in February and March when it would have mattered.
It matters more now. By March the virus was already prevalent in the UK. Keeping it contained now is key to getting back to normal.
No it isn't as the government doesn't enforce it. All it does is inconvenience and annoy the law-abiding, while doing little or nothing to deter rule-breakers, who are exactly those who should be targeted.
Classic gesture politics.
How much longer before we all get an Oxford Uni branded quasi-placebo in our arm and we can all go back to normal? This relatively minor health event has brought out the very worst in British risk aversion, high horseness and over officiousness.
Quasi-placebo? What? Do you understand the science behind vaccines at all?
Do you understand the concept of a joke?
Everybody knows how vaccines work, you put 1 part in 10 million of the virus in a jar of water and hit it with a leather thing.
Boris Johnson has declined to meet members of a campaign group representing families bereaved by coronavirus, despite appearing to promise to do so on live TV last week.
Given that he has 15 working hours in the day, what would this meeting achieve?
The Group have involved solicitors, as soon as they did that there was no way that he would meet them.
The point is that Boris said that he would. Once again, as with the border down the Irish Sea and the investigation into Tory islamophobia, he just tells people whatever they want to hear and his word is worthless.
Cummings does have a vision of central control by committed apparatchiks, backed by information on all citizens and iron discipline that whiffs more than a bit of Stalinism.
I think his suspicion of the traditional institutions of state, including Civil Service, Journalists, Universities and even Armed Forces very reminiscent too. Purges and showtrials are all part of his 5 year plan.
Bozo’s Quarantine Hokey Cokey continues as Ministers are considering reimposing quarantine measures for those arriving in the UK from Portugal as coronavirus cases rise, sources have told the BBC.
A change this Thursday would be the fifth affecting travellers and travel companies to Portugal since this whole sorry farce commenced.
Well your choices are:
A) no restrictions blanket ban C) flexible restrictions which change as the facts change
C) seems like a logical approach to me
Why is your data better than the people reviewing the information and making the decision on behalf of the government?
We would be better off not bothering at all. Which would be D.
If Trump does win in the EC, but loses the national vote by 2-3%, how sustainable is this? In a national vote for a national president, with effectively a 2 party system, that the party that keeps getting millions fewer votes keeps winning?
Add to that the gerrymandered House and Senate, and the highly political judiciary stuffed with increasingly out of touch with majority opinion ultra-conservative judges - isn't it a recipe for the disenfranchised majority getting extremely pissed off?
It's entirely sustainable. The Democrats if that happens will need to target states other than California.
That is the system working by design and not a flaw.
It IS a flaw, and plenty of Americans hate it quite understandably. The fact that you think it is a good system doesn't make it one. None of the better democracies use such a stupid system, and I don't see any country racing to copy it. That might tell you something.
We use an equivalent one in the U.K.
Fundamentally it represents communities not individuals.
You disagree. Fine. But it’s not stupid
The Electoral College is stupid (if you like it, fine, but it is still stupid). And we do not use an equivalent one in the UK.
Churchill in 1951 and Wilson in February 1974 both lost the popular vote but won most MPs
Could it be that the key factor in the US election has become law and order?
If that's the case Biden has blown it.
That seems to be the current punditry consensus, and it's what I'd have expected if you'd described the situation a year ago and asked me where the voters would be. But it's not what the polling is showing. This is from August 27 to 28, that's pretty recent. There's loads of interesting stuff in here, but to pick a couple:
Which of these approaches would help get things under control? Law and order 39% Bringing people together 61%
Which comes closest to your view? Police departments don’t need to be reformed: 21% Police departments have a problem with race, but the problem can be fixed by reforming the existing system: 61% Police reform hasn’t worked. We need to defund police and reinvent our approach to public safety: 18%
The fact is that where Biden is is where the voters are.
This might be a two peoples divided by a common language thing.
When I saw law & order, I mean law & order. In other words, it's the most basic duty of Government to avoid anarchy and ensure fair and just administration of the law and to maintain public order and safety on the streets. There's nothing political or partisan about it - all lawlessness should be dealt with equally.
It may have more partisan connotations in the States more akin to "sticking the boot in", which might account for that poll.
I think that's close, but it's perhaps also a reflection of the extraordinarily entrenched partisanship in the US (which Trump has a lot to do with). If you heard that Corbyn passionately favoured something you liked, or I heard that Nick Griffin was dead keen on something I support, we'd both have a queasy moment, I expect - but in the US, it's magnified way beyond that. "Trump keeps going on about law and order, so I'm against law and order, because what he means is..."
Also, of course, in the poll it's up against the innocuous "bring people together", and everyone is pretty much for that.
Could it be that the key factor in the US election has become law and order?
If that's the case Biden has blown it.
That seems to be the current punditry consensus, and it's what I'd have expected if you'd described the situation a year ago and asked me where the voters would be. But it's not what the polling is showing. This is from August 27 to 28, that's pretty recent. There's loads of interesting stuff in here, but to pick a couple:
Which of these approaches would help get things under control? Law and order 39% Bringing people together 61%
Which comes closest to your view? Police departments don’t need to be reformed: 21% Police departments have a problem with race, but the problem can be fixed by reforming the existing system: 61% Police reform hasn’t worked. We need to defund police and reinvent our approach to public safety: 18%
The fact is that where Biden is is where the voters are.
This might be a two peoples divided by a common language thing.
When I saw law & order, I mean law & order. In other words, it's the most basic duty of Government to avoid anarchy and ensure fair and just administration of the law and to maintain public order and safety on the streets. There's nothing political or partisan about it - all lawlessness should be dealt with equally.
It may have more partisan connotations in the States more akin to "sticking the boot in", which might account for that poll.
Blair's best slogan was "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime".
While not depriving people of agency, and their own bad decisions, undeniably social conditions contribute heavily to crime.
Trumps commitment to Law and Order is highly partisan, refusing to condemn Kyle Rittenhouse, for example.
No, it is the same as we saw in our 2017 election. Law and order helps the right *except* when voters turn round and say to the President or Prime Minister, this is happening on your watch; you clearly can't stop it; in fact you are making things worse"
You might say Heath's Who Governs Britain? election was the same thing. In any case, I do not see this helping Trump and it is lazy punditry to assume it will do so.
It is the laziest of echo chamber punditry. Any evidence that doesn't match the preconception is dismissed. At the peak of the George Floyd protests everyone was going "BLM is really. Unpopular this will be great for Trump" and when a poll was released showing BLM had absolute majority of support amongst Americans it was consigned straight to the memory hole.
The legitimate concerns that the BLM movement was channelling are different to the political objectives of the official BLM movement.
The former has majority support whilst I very much doubt the latter does.
The "official" BLM group is not something most of the protesters consider, it is only a small minority of the protesters combined with the views of people against the protests that keep it vaguely in the news at all.
If asked do they support BLM, most supporters are answering yes because they dont identify BLM with a few radical anarchists searching for publicity. It is about social justice and equality, and the recognition that we dont have it for all.
Bozo’s Quarantine Hokey Cokey continues as Ministers are considering reimposing quarantine measures for those arriving in the UK from Portugal as coronavirus cases rise, sources have told the BBC.
A change this Thursday would be the fifth affecting travellers and travel companies to Portugal since this whole sorry farce commenced.
Definitely a mistake to kowtow to the holiday companies and airlines. They should have imposed a mandatory 14 day quarantine on all incomers, with a buyout clause of a negative (private) test after seven days for those who really needed to get back to work.
The constantly changing guidance can’t be popular with anyone at this point.
Though that would at least be clearer and more consistent, it's really being done just for want of doing something; a tacit admission that we should have done this back in February and March when it would have mattered.
It matters more now. By March the virus was already prevalent in the UK. Keeping it contained now is key to getting back to normal.
No it isn't as the government doesn't enforce it. All it does is inconvenience and annoy the law-abiding, while doing little or nothing to deter rule-breakers, who are exactly those who should be targeted.
Classic gesture politics.
We aren't an authoritarian state demanding papers please, the law doesn't need vigorous enforcement to be effective. The British public have shown themselves quite capable of following the law because they're told to do so not out of fear of a knock on the door from the Police. Do you think if there's not US-style armed goons beating down on the door that there's no law?
If it "inconveniences" the law-abiding then it is effective. That "inconvenience" is the quarantine. Get over it.
If Trump does win in the EC, but loses the national vote by 2-3%, how sustainable is this? In a national vote for a national president, with effectively a 2 party system, that the party that keeps getting millions fewer votes keeps winning?
Add to that the gerrymandered House and Senate, and the highly political judiciary stuffed with increasingly out of touch with majority opinion ultra-conservative judges - isn't it a recipe for the disenfranchised majority getting extremely pissed off?
It's entirely sustainable. The Democrats if that happens will need to target states other than California.
That is the system working by design and not a flaw.
It IS a flaw, and plenty of Americans hate it quite understandably. The fact that you think it is a good system doesn't make it one. None of the better democracies use such a stupid system, and I don't see any country racing to copy it. That might tell you something.
We use an equivalent one in the U.K.
Fundamentally it represents communities not individuals.
You disagree. Fine. But it’s not stupid
The Electoral College is stupid (if you like it, fine, but it is still stupid). And we do not use an equivalent one in the UK.
I agree. The electoral college is stupid. I don't know anybody who would set it up as it is now if they were starting from scratch.
Our electoral system is not perfect either, as constituencies are not equal-sized. The Outer Hebridies has 21k and the Isle of Wight has 105k. So an OH vote is worth 5x what an Isle of Wight vote is worth.
But Wyoming has one EC vote per 190k people while CA has one per 1.4m, a 7x disparity. So our system is better, from tha point of view.
If we finally get around to equalising constituency sizes, of course, that's another matter.
Of course with STV we wouldn't have to get so worked up over constituency sizes. Equally, 'just' lumping the Outer Hebrides in with, for example, North Scotland wouldn't necessarily be fair, either. Although they don't seem to vote significantly differently from the rest of that area.
Cummings does have a vision of central control by committed apparatchiks, backed by information on all citizens and iron discipline that whiffs more than a bit of Stalinism.
I think his suspicion of the traditional institutions of state, including Civil Service, Journalists, Universities and even Armed Forces very reminiscent too. Purges and showtrials are all part of his 5 year plan.
The psychologically (maybe even psychiatrically) interesting thing is what happens next.
The Cummings thesis is that government can run better- to the tune of picking up billion pound notes off the street- with a Mission Control office packed with the right people and a fat pipe of real-time data projected onto big screens.
It's possible that he's right. Almost everything is possible. But there are reasonable reasons to think that he's wrong, and this model is going to make lots of things worse.
If that happens- if Cummings's Control Room buttons are connected to a tangle of wet string- what does he do next?
On topic, the odds on Harris and Pence should be the other way around, the one that is the incumbent Vice President should be the shortest odds.
Anyhoo aren't we in the window where as per Betfair's terms and conditions the winner can only be either Trump or Biden*, as they will be the ones on the ballot papers/electoral college electors**
Could it be that the key factor in the US election has become law and order?
If that's the case Biden has blown it.
That seems to be the current punditry consensus, and it's what I'd have expected if you'd described the situation a year ago and asked me where the voters would be. But it's not what the polling is showing. This is from August 27 to 28, that's pretty recent. There's loads of interesting stuff in here, but to pick a couple:
Which of these approaches would help get things under control? Law and order 39% Bringing people together 61%
Which comes closest to your view? Police departments don’t need to be reformed: 21% Police departments have a problem with race, but the problem can be fixed by reforming the existing system: 61% Police reform hasn’t worked. We need to defund police and reinvent our approach to public safety: 18%
The fact is that where Biden is is where the voters are.
This might be a two peoples divided by a common language thing.
When I saw law & order, I mean law & order. In other words, it's the most basic duty of Government to avoid anarchy and ensure fair and just administration of the law and to maintain public order and safety on the streets. There's nothing political or partisan about it - all lawlessness should be dealt with equally.
It may have more partisan connotations in the States more akin to "sticking the boot in", which might account for that poll.
Yes, that may be right, and even as I'd understand it it's a slightly weird question. But whatever American voters think "law and order" means, it's the thing that Trump is explicitly running on, and also the thing that the punditry are currently suggesting might win it for Trump, if he can raise its salience. I think it's important that the available data - and there are quite a lot of polls showing similar things in different ways - suggests that this is not at all a winning message. It's an issue where Trump's opponent's message is more popular than his own, by quite a margin.
He's be better off running on the economy IMHO; I know the whole thing went to hell with the virus, but it was going pretty well until that happened, and there's room for an optimistic story about how much better it'll get once everybody's vaccinated.
I am not sure that even in America "Law and Order" means supporting out of state teenage vigilantes toting assault rifles, shooting people, getting tacit police approval and presidential support.
With a few months between the start of the protests and the election, those with concerns on law and order will also have time to come around to the question: "Will there be more violence under Trump or Biden?". Some who may traditionally prefer an authoritarian approach will switch to Bidens side based on this question.
On topic, the odds on Harris and Pence should be the other way around, the one that is the incumbent Vice President should be the shortest odds.
Anyhoo aren't we in the window where as per Betfair's terms and conditions the winner can only be either Trump or Biden*, as they will be the ones on the ballot papers/electoral college electors**
*I'm excluding third party candidates
**Faithless voters won't count.
I can't believe you're writing off Kanye West so quickly.
Bozo’s Quarantine Hokey Cokey continues as Ministers are considering reimposing quarantine measures for those arriving in the UK from Portugal as coronavirus cases rise, sources have told the BBC.
A change this Thursday would be the fifth affecting travellers and travel companies to Portugal since this whole sorry farce commenced.
Definitely a mistake to kowtow to the holiday companies and airlines. They should have imposed a mandatory 14 day quarantine on all incomers, with a buyout clause of a negative (private) test after seven days for those who really needed to get back to work.
The constantly changing guidance can’t be popular with anyone at this point.
Though that would at least be clearer and more consistent, it's really being done just for want of doing something; a tacit admission that we should have done this back in February and March when it would have mattered.
It matters more now. By March the virus was already prevalent in the UK. Keeping it contained now is key to getting back to normal.
No it isn't as the government doesn't enforce it. All it does is inconvenience and annoy the law-abiding, while doing little or nothing to deter rule-breakers, who are exactly those who should be targeted.
Classic gesture politics.
How much longer before we all get an Oxford Uni branded quasi-placebo in our arm and we can all go back to normal? This relatively minor health event has brought out the very worst in British risk aversion, high horseness and over officiousness.
Quasi-placebo? What? Do you understand the science behind vaccines at all?
Do you understand the concept of a joke?
Everybody knows how vaccines work, you put 1 part in 10 million of the virus in a jar of water and hit it with a leather thing.
Comments
The constituency boundaries in the House though, are a disgrace.
I was also unaware that the EU is a 2-party state with an EU-wide vote to elect an executive president.
Changing the system is not a goer. It's not going to happen. So the Democrats can either whinge from the sidelines, throw fits and complain while letting the GOP win ... Or they can target the states the GOP won last time and try and win them over.
Biden has tried the latter route ... Thank goodness!
Actually, don't answer that.
If they want Trump out of the White House, it is in their interests to show some restraint over the next few months."
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/09/01/baying-blm-mob-wants-get-trump-needs-show-restraint/
He needs to keep saying it too as it's a weak point for him in the campaign that Trump will keep pressing.
This is a very diplomatically sensitive topic - witness the French throwing their toys out of the pram - so you need a consistent basis even if flawed. I’m sure there are some countries they want to close off and if others get caught in the net then that’s just too bad.
When I saw law & order, I mean law & order. In other words, it's the most basic duty of Government to avoid anarchy and ensure fair and just administration of the law and to maintain public order and safety on the streets. There's nothing political or partisan about it - all lawlessness should be dealt with equally.
It may have more partisan connotations in the States more akin to "sticking the boot in", which might account for that poll.
https://archive.thinkprogress.org/how-abraham-lincoln-rigged-the-senate-for-republicans/
which argues for splitting California and New York into several states.
"By 2040, according to a University of Virginia analysis of Census population projections, about half of the country will live in just eight states — which means 16 senators for one half of America and 84 for the other half. Meanwhile, according to Stanford political scientist Jonathan Rodden, partisanship closely correlates with population density — “as you go from the center of cities out through the suburbs and into rural areas, you traverse in a linear fashion from Democratic to Republican places.”
So America is fast approaching a tipping point where one party will enjoy a permanent supermajority in the United States Senate — and with it, permanent control over the federal judiciary. Democrats have no choice. They must embrace the Party of Lincoln’s tactic of selectively admitting new states, or they must perish."
IDS back at work & pensions and May at the home office? I mean, really?
In pure coincidence 6 days after lockdown was introduced the positive test rate started dropping beneath 1%.
If Corbyn had become PM, we would still be in a full, national lockdown.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-53995878
Yes he has a hell of a to do list. Yes it would be a stretch for any PM in history. Yes he may well fail.
But she’s implying that he’s stupid, which he certainly isn’t
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/foreign-aid-billions-to-be-spent-on-british-spies-p5vc3zhzl
I'd just make Gordon Brown special emissary for the Union and give him carte blanche in Scotland and a big budget.
Fundamentally it represents communities not individuals.
You disagree. Fine. But it’s not stupid
In this instance the government had shown a greater willingness to upset people, which it needs to do occasionally.
It was: How pissed off are the majority (in a 2 party system!) going to get if their opinions are repeatedly ignored, and, in the case of Trump and a lot of elected Republicans, not just ignored but repeatedly shat on?
While not depriving people of agency, and their own bad decisions, undeniably social conditions contribute heavily to crime.
Trumps commitment to Law and Order is highly partisan, refusing to condemn Kyle Rittenhouse, for example.
https://twitter.com/politico/status/1300972302746689537?s=09
But there is no place for violence.
No place for looting or destroying property or burning churches, or destroying businesses ‑‑ many of them built by people of color who, for the first time, were beginning to realize their dreams and build wealth for their families.
Classic gesture politics.
The .07% foreign aid pledge has been unpopular with some on the Tory right for the past couple of decades, and I suspect it is one of these sounding off, rather than our esteemed Chancellor.
The reason is that Rachel Glennerster, the DfiD economist has just been appointed to the combined Foreign Office/DfiD post. A quick glance at Wikipedia places Glennerster at Oxford at the same time as Boris (and Cameron and half the Establishment) but also reveals she is a strong advocate of *testing* the outcomes of aid interventions, which is guaranteed to ring Dominic Cummings' bells. In short, she probably has friends in high places, and Sunak will know this, not to mention that .01% off the aid budget is loose change.
No party has enough talent in it to casually throw a load of ministers on the bonfire, and that's something that Johnson has repeatedly done.
I had a quick look at the article, hoping to learn about some bright young things bubbling under the cabinet, ready to take the government into the future. Instead of which, we have suggestions like May and Hunt (can you really see them serving under this PM?) and IDS (really?).
It's the other reason that people who really ought to go (let's start with WIlliamson and Jenrick) don't go... there isn't really anyone to replace them.
He's be better off running on the economy IMHO; I know the whole thing went to hell with the virus, but it was going pretty well until that happened, and there's room for an optimistic story about how much better it'll get once everybody's vaccinated.
You might say Heath's Who Governs Britain? election was the same thing. In any case, I do not see this helping Trump and it is lazy punditry to assume it will do so.
It's pretty obvious to me that they will claim the 0.7% target has been nominally met whilst reclassifying some spending within it into essential defence upgrades on the premise that this will benefit others globally.
They might even be right.
https://twitter.com/VinnyMcAv/status/1301066760167329792
Also, of course, in the poll it's up against the innocuous "bring people together", and everyone is pretty much for that.
Our electoral system is not perfect either, as constituencies are not equal-sized. The Outer Hebridies has 21k and the Isle of Wight has 105k. So an OH vote is worth 5x what an Isle of Wight vote is worth.
But Wyoming has one EC vote per 190k people while CA has one per 1.4m, a 7x disparity. So our system is better, from tha point of view.
If we finally get around to eqalising constituency sizes, of course, that's another matter.
Which is why Boris's Go back to the Office plan is actually very good. It shows that the Government is trying to sort things out while actually knowing that it isn't going to change anything. But at least when Pret and co scream the Government can say we did everything we could.
As I've told you umpteen times it's not enough for Biden to have made one speech a few days after George Floyd back in June and then leave it at that. He has to address the sustained disorder and changed political situation where this is becoming of dangerous salience for him, and he might be perceived to be slightly soft on lawlessness.
His speech over the weekend was far stronger and more unequivocal (as the words above show) and he needs to keep doing this throughout the campaign to defend himself.
I see no point in going round and round in circles on this with you.
You're simply interested in trying to win a very narrow debating point with me for your own personal satisfaction; I'm interested in Biden winning the general.
The former has majority support whilst I very much doubt the latter does.
https://www.theblaze.com/news/portland-shooting-crowd-cheering-patriot-prayer-th
Both cases have a self defence defence (From watching the various videos) to argue in court I think. Both sides cheering what happened is grotesque.
The key factor is *how* you take the blow:
- roll with it, like the SNP
- or take bloody punches on the nose, like the Conservatives
You’d have thought the Tories would have got the hang of government by now, after a fair few goes over the centuries. But this is, of course, the first-ever Brave New UKIP Party government, so they haven’t got the hang of it yet.
I suspect most people are in favour of law & order in a way that doesn't divide the community but is backed by all sides of it.
Everybody knows how vaccines work, you put 1 part in 10 million of the virus in a jar of water and hit it with a leather thing.
I think his suspicion of the traditional institutions of state, including Civil Service, Journalists, Universities and even Armed Forces very reminiscent too. Purges and showtrials are all part of his 5 year plan.
https://twitter.com/NickGriffinBU/status/983356106020880385
Still a mystery to this day why the well known antisemite and holocaust denier would ever contemplate voting for Corbyn's Labour.
Tweet from Herman Cain (R.I.P) account says 'Covid-19 isn't as deadly as the media makes out'
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/herman-cain-coronavirus-not-as-deadly_n_5f4ca08fc5b64f17e13fc8b4?ri18n=true&guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucXVvcmEuY29tLw&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAALZcP4OOuitXyPzq7LG6aP0AQQNCy1LKz96U_kSDNXjWVkmTdKJfe-R71Ne6VH3M7yAMBKjhwM5V1KNyS8HknCqGxKSBXhL6Th6oQi1ED9ZhvQUD8OBnpzDR7RwwU4dUoKpk3e5nK6GBfIRlS7vVs_s3UnE_ADGTfy-E5L64RY7B
Anyway, not to worry, the more interesting story is the lack of right wing comedy on the BBC. That's a scandal, there being so much brilliant right wing comedy out there. To illustrate and to cheer everyone up here's a very good one I heard just the other day -
How many socialists does it take to change a light bulb?
None, because socialists haven't got a fucking clue and in any case they can't buy a new one because as per usual they've run out of other people's money.
If asked do they support BLM, most supporters are answering yes because they dont identify BLM with a few radical anarchists searching for publicity. It is about social justice and equality, and the recognition that we dont have it for all.
If it "inconveniences" the law-abiding then it is effective. That "inconvenience" is the quarantine. Get over it.
The Cummings thesis is that government can run better- to the tune of picking up billion pound notes off the street- with a Mission Control office packed with the right people and a fat pipe of real-time data projected onto big screens.
It's possible that he's right. Almost everything is possible. But there are reasonable reasons to think that he's wrong, and this model is going to make lots of things worse.
If that happens- if Cummings's Control Room buttons are connected to a tangle of wet string- what does he do next?
Anyhoo aren't we in the window where as per Betfair's terms and conditions the winner can only be either Trump or Biden*, as they will be the ones on the ballot papers/electoral college electors**
*I'm excluding third party candidates
**Faithless voters won't count.
https://twitter.com/existentialcoms/status/1300946924258779137?s=20