- Minimum wage, which disincentivises low-skilled from upskilling themselves
This is a remarkable comment. I mean, if the minimum wage was set a level that say 50% of the population were on it and the lowest skilled/paid had no realistic prospect of ever obtaining a job that was higher paid then I could see the argument. But I know of no companies that have a minimum wage job and then the next job up also at minimum wage - it doesn't work, no one would want the next job up. Instead, pay rises a bit in the next job up to differentiate from the lowest paid job. There's still and incentive to progress and the worst off get something approaching a living wage.
Do you think people have to actually be starving to want to progress (ignoring that if there was no minimum wage we'd probably just have higher benefits to make up the difference). I'd rather employers pay than the state.
I very much approve of the NMW and think the current levels are about right.
But the examples do exist where the gaps between zero responsibility and significant responsibility is less than £1 per hour. An example would be a mini supermarket duty manager and shelf stacker. Little chance of further promotion and a small pay gap makes shelf stacker the better job.
The issues solved by NMW far outweigh the issues around this though.
Funnily enough, I have experience of that scenario - as an 6th form student I had a Saturday job at a small Co-Op. Sunday duty manager job was similar to how you described, barely above shop floor pay. No one wanted to do it, so the real store manager (not duty manager, the person in charge of the shop overall/all decisions in shop) fiddled the books so we put down extra hours and got effectively paid 1.5 times the shop floor pay. Either the pay gap, even if small, is incentive enough or the employer has to find a way to produce the incentive - they need managers, up the pay.
Obviously there comes a point at which some of these stores become non-viable, in theory. But then you look at the Scandinavian countries, which still manage to have coffee shops (with very expensive coffee because the workers get paid more).
The issue with the minimum wage is that as it's increased over the years more and more jobs and skill sets have been caught by it.
To one extent you can solve the issue by automating tasks but you do reach the point which we have where the next level up simple can't pay enough to make it worthwhile.
Johnson might go before the next election but it won't be voluntary. The party will have to remove him and they will not do this unless it becomes clear that he has become a liability rather than an asset electorally. Now if the British public has an iota of self-respect this fundamental shift in sentiment will happen. We will recover our sense of dignity and re-apply some standards regarding who gets to be our PM. At which point the polls will tell the Tory Party to act and they will act. It's the Tory Party. I rate this quite likely to occur before 2024 but less than a 50/50 chance. So Mike's bet for me needs decent odds to be value.
Another batch of mostly excellent polls for Biden overnight bar the Monmouth PA poll. PB really seems in denial over how strong Biden’s chances are, drawing false equivalencies with 2016.
No one has satisfactorily answered the question of why someone who voted for Clinton in 2016 will vote for Trump in 2020. And these people need to exist for Trump to win given the large numbers who have switched in the opposite direction.
I agree with your general take, but I can think of a few reasons:
1) If you're generally conservative, but were never-Trump, you got some conservative stuff - tax cuts, SCOTUS appointments etc, and you annoyed liberals a lot, which pulls you back towards Trump's side with every left-right news cycle. I think quite a few conservatives who went with Hillary, didn't vote or voted for a minor candidate - remember the libertarian got 3.3%, the ex-CIA dude got 0.5% - are now on Team Trump.
2) The economy! OK, the virus screwed things up, but Trump said he'd make the economy strong, and the economy was strong. A lot of people were saying that if Trump got elected the stock market would crash, but the stock market didn't crash - and it carried on not crashing, a lot. Also people were saying the trade wars would wreck the economy, and he did the trade wars, and they didn't wreck the economy.
3) The lockdowns. People have different opinions on the appropriate virus response, and it's not *entirely* polarized on pro-Trump vs anti-Trump. If you think people should be going back to normal, if you think kids should be back in school, if your business is being destroyed by the reaction to the virus - I think you jump to Trump.
4) Law and order. I know I've been saying Trump's stance is unpopular and I think he's onto a net loser. But the number of not-otherwise-Trump voters it will attract will definitely be greater than zero.
5) Minorities. IDK, I haven't looked at it in detail, but there seems to be some polling support for the idea that he's put on black and latino support for whatever reason.
Original premise is wrong I think -> we just need some (dunno how many) Clinton backers not to show up to vote for Biden and then Trump wins.
Potentially some people were just voting to have the first female president. I doubt they'd switch to Trump, but they might not show up for Biden.
Michael Moore's 2016 article on lack of Dem enthusiasm may still hold. I know Dems probably want to beat Trump more than in 2016, but Biden (like Hilary) is not really a pulse-raising candidate.
In 2016 the Dems has held the presidency for two terms, and Hilary was clearly a downgrade from Obama.
Dem voters certainly turned up on 2018 (eg in Wisconsin) so it’s not clear whey they wouldn’t in 2020 as well. Biden may not be an incredibly inspiring candidate, but dislike of Trump is *very* motivating!
The only way that anyone would EVER be motivated to vote for Biden is having Trump as his opponent.
... or any of the other Democrat contenders in the Primaries.
Another batch of mostly excellent polls for Biden overnight bar the Monmouth PA poll. PB really seems in denial over how strong Biden’s chances are, drawing false equivalencies with 2016.
No one has satisfactorily answered the question of why someone who voted for Clinton in 2016 will vote for Trump in 2020. And these people need to exist for Trump to win given the large numbers who have switched in the opposite direction.
I agree with your general take, but I can think of a few reasons:
1) If you're generally conservative, but were never-Trump, you got some conservative stuff - tax cuts, SCOTUS appointments etc, and you annoyed liberals a lot, which pulls you back towards Trump's side with every left-right news cycle. I think quite a few conservatives who went with Hillary, didn't vote or voted for a minor candidate - remember the libertarian got 3.3%, the ex-CIA dude got 0.5% - are now on Team Trump.
2) The economy! OK, the virus screwed things up, but Trump said he'd make the economy strong, and the economy was strong. A lot of people were saying that if Trump got elected the stock market would crash, but the stock market didn't crash - and it carried on not crashing, a lot. Also people were saying the trade wars would wreck the economy, and he did the trade wars, and they didn't wreck the economy.
3) The lockdowns. People have different opinions on the appropriate virus response, and it's not *entirely* polarized on pro-Trump vs anti-Trump. If you think people should be going back to normal, if you think kids should be back in school, if your business is being destroyed by the reaction to the virus - I think you jump to Trump.
4) Law and order. I know I've been saying Trump's stance is unpopular and I think he's onto a net loser. But the number of not-otherwise-Trump voters it will attract will definitely be greater than zero.
5) Minorities. IDK, I haven't looked at it in detail, but there seems to be some polling support for the idea that he's put on black and latino support for whatever reason.
I think that is a very good summary @edmundintokyo. Also re the Libertarian / McMullin votes, in a number of battle ground states, that block is actually very important (e.g. AZ)
Here's Boris floundering and obfuscating about his disgraceful episode with "great chap" Darius Guppy on HIGNFY ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUDEpqyJ-_w
How the hell have Britain and America ended up with leaders who are totally unfit for office?
How Britain ended up with Boris is very simple. The hardcore Remoaners wouldn’t vote for Mrs May’s deal, because they thought they could overturn the vote of the British Public to leave the EU.
And SKS was most at fault for this. Labour could have backed Mays deal, but he loved getting on the BBC rubbishing it. It was a completely hopleless political judgement which led to an 80 seat tory majority. All SKS lovers should remember how badly he played 2019.
Help me out here- I've asked this before, and not got an answer...
Very very many Conservative MPs- lots of them prominent in the current government- really disliked May's plan. (Or, if you're more cynical, affected to dislike it as a wedge to create a vacancy for PM.)
Had it shown any sign of going through on the back of opposition votes, what was to stop them VONCing TM and getting her out of Downing Street faster than you can say "vassal state"?
(Or being less florid, how do you get round the problem that any Brexit plan needed a double majority in practice- a majority in Parliament as a whole and a majority in the Conservative party? And until the 2019 win with MPs signing in blood to Back Boris, that was damn difficult?)
The Tory MPs had the chance to oust her but voted for her in the leadership election. There were more than enough Tory MPs who supported her deal to get it through parliament with Labour's support but SKS (remember he was their Brexit spokesman) enjoyed the Governments difficulties and would not support May's deal. It was the most stupid polititcal judgement in decades. If Labour had supported it, the Tories would have torn themselves apart and Labour would have won the election.
Agree. The government and a majority of MPs preferred a soft Brexit to a hard one but failed to get it through. This is political failure of a high order.
If the Brexit we get proves a catastrophe then Labour's fingerprints are all over the failure to get a softer deal. If all goes well Labour get no credit for it as they have not done anything to make it happen.
The politics of opposition does not work well in a time of national crisis which transcends party.
Abbott is only in the frame because he tickled Boris's ego by lauding Brexit - one of the few 'world statesmen' who did. I feel a bit sorry for Hancock for being forced to pretend it's because of anything else.
It's definitely nothing to do with him being on good terms with all the TPP nations, as the UK seeks to join that trade group.
Abbott is only in the frame because he tickled Boris's ego by lauding Brexit - one of the few 'world statesmen' who did. I feel a bit sorry for Hancock for being forced to pretend it's because of anything else.
No sympathy.
Tickling BoZo's ego (mind bleach) is the only reason Hancock still has a job
I've been talking to friends in the US and they all say the same thing, Biden leads the polls but the feeling on the ground is that Trump has the momentum because he's been gifted a stronger hand by the riots and the Dems lack of condemnation of their own side and the very blatant media bias. This is among all likely Dem voters as well.
The CNN graphic of "Fiery but mostly peaceful protests" in front of burning buildings has become a recruiting tool for Trump among middle class suburban whites, it's team Trump saying "we told you, they'll lie to your face and expect you to accept it" and it's working for them among parents of my friends who were previously in the Dem column.
That's the narrative, and it's one that - for example - Conrad Black and Andrew Sullivan have both written about in the last two weeks.
But I'm a numbers rather than a narrative kind of guy. Let's see if voters are actually changing.
One problem with the polls last time was that in order to make the samples balanced, they compromised on randomness, which meant they failed to pick up on important movements.
A lot is being made of people overcompensating for the 2016 shock by overstating Trump's chances but I'm beginning to wonder whether a closer analogy is 2017 with Biden as May with regards to the polls.
As @MaxPB has pointed out, plus others such as Andrew Sullivan and Conrad Black, people do not like the violence and the fear it is coming to a town near you and it is starting to become a major issue. @rcs1000 pointed out Republican registrations in Florida are running ahead of the Democrats but my understanding is the Republicans have eroded the Democrat's lead since 2016 in PA as well, which also bodes ill for Biden.
More to the point, both the campaign's actions and what is being seen on the ground doesn't seem to match the polls. Trump has just opened an office in Minnesota and he has visited New Hampshire.
Trump is repeatedly banging the drum linking Biden with the violence and Biden is now running adverts condemning the violence. This is where the NY Times states about the adverts:
"The Biden campaign said the ad would air nationally on cable television and in local markets in nine battleground states: Arizona, Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin."
That doesn't sound like a campaign that is confident it is high single digits ahead.
Ultimately, though, Biden's national polling numbers aren't changing.
Pundits and stories and narrative have very little predictive power compared to hard numbers.
The problem I have is whether the data we are getting from these polls is clean.
If I am dealing with a set of financial numbers on which to make a forecast, I can assume they are clean in that they have been audited, subject to oversight etc.
That is not the case here. As many on here have pointed out, US polling methodology is not as audited as in the UK. More concerning is that the polls are seen as both sides to push their positions so they become used as a political football and used as to rally the troops so it is entirely possible you are getting self-selected samples.
Also, as mentioned on a previous thread, both parties will have continual internal polling going on which is why I am a great believer in looking at their actions as that demonstrates their "true" view.
I think the idea the campaigns have any idea what's going on is not backed by the evidence. Hillary had no idea she was losing in the rust belt. Trump and his advisors thought they had lost. Nigel Farage conceded defeat immediately after EU Referendum polls closed.
Your polling methodology point is a good one. It is entirely possible - maybe even likely - that there are shy Trump supporters, who are not being picked up.
The issue for the President is that (on current polls) there needs to be an unprecedented level of polling error.
And there's one last issue. Why isn't Biden's share moving? If the riots were having an effect, he should still see his share move. Because changes in opinions should be picked up, even if the overall totals are wrong. And we're not seeing any meaningful move in the Biden total.
If they posted their crosstabs they would be a lot easier to analyse.
Nevertheless, their simple "error rate" - i.e. the average amount they were wrong for Dem and Republican candidates - in 2018 was not great, at 5.6 percent.
“When we talk about hidden voters, what we’re talking about is the social-desirability bias, and that is when people basically tell a live-caller what they think will get them judged least harshly,” says Cahaly. “Some races have that, some races don’t.” Cahaly points to the Florida 2018 gubernatorial race as an example. Democrats had branded Republican Ron DeSantis as a racist, and all pollsters, except Trafalgar, showed Democrat Andrew Gillum with a lead in the days before the election. DeSantis won the election by 0.4 points.
“In 2020, the presidential question has social-desirability bias,” says Cahaly. He tries to capture the views of “hidden voters” in several ways. “I start with a voter file that has everything from occupation to incomes to education levels to voting history to likely religion,” says Cahaly. “We give people multiple ways to participate in our polls,” he adds. “We do live calls, we do automated calls, we do texts, we do emails, we do other digital platforms.” Cahaly tries to get a sample of at least 1,000 respondents in any statewide poll: “Big samples are better samples.”
He thinks a lot of pollsters for media outlets simply ask too many questions — if a pollster is asking 30 questions, “you end up with people who really care too much about politics,” says Cahaly. Trafalgar’s surveys ask “no more than nine [questions] and [take] less than three minutes to complete.”
Yes, I've linked to that article myself, about why we shouldn't ignore Trafalgar.
But let me turn it around. Trafalgar didn't do very well in 2018, where they applied these same weightings.
Now, it could be that 2020 is just like 2016. Or it could be that it's more like 2018.
The difference between 2016 and 2018 though was Trump was not on the ballot, many Trump voters in 2016 stayed home in 2018. The question is if they will turn out for him again in 2020 and whether other pollsters are capturing them or missing them unlike Trafalgar
Didn't the GOP congressional vote outperform Trump nationally in 2016?
Trump got a higher voteshare in 2016 than the Republicans did at the 2018 congressional elections
OK, but when Trump was on the ballot in 2016 the GOP candidates out polled him nationally.
Only as they had Trump voters and traditional Republican and independent voters, a few of the latter even vote for Hillary or libertarian at presidential level.
In 2018 though many Trump 2016 voters stayed home
OK so do you think the GOP will out perform Trump nationally or under perform at this forthcoming election?
Here is my prediction, they will out perform Trump.
Quite likely yes because they will get Trump voters again assuming they turn out with Trump on the ballot again as well as traditional Republican voters.
However without Trump voters as 2018 showed they do worse
Here's Boris floundering and obfuscating about his disgraceful episode with "great chap" Darius Guppy on HIGNFY ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUDEpqyJ-_w
How the hell have Britain and America ended up with leaders who are totally unfit for office?
How Britain ended up with Boris is very simple. The hardcore Remoaners wouldn’t vote for Mrs May’s deal, because they thought they could overturn the vote of the British Public to leave the EU.
And SKS was most at fault for this. Labour could have backed Mays deal, but he loved getting on the BBC rubbishing it. It was a completely hopleless political judgement which led to an 80 seat tory majority. All SKS lovers should remember how badly he played 2019.
Umm, Corbyn was the Labour leader who failed miserably at every single stage of Brexit. At least he has gone now, but he's done massive damage to the UK and Europe. He should have resigned the day after the referendum vote in 2016, like Cameron did. But the idiot was always a Brexiteer so he stayed on to make sure we ended up with a hard Brexit. Unforgiveable.
Starmer has a black mark for remaining part of Corbyn's team, but I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt as if he hadn't we might have ended up with a useless Corbynite as Labour leader now.
Ok but don't forget how much SKS enjoyed rubbsihing Mays deal without realising what the obvious outcome was, a huge Tory majority, as SKS thought that he could overturn a democratic vote because he did not agree with it. Boris may be a dick but he played 2019 perfectly. He was ridiculed on this site consistently for losing parliamentary vote after vote but he knew the resentment that was building up in the Country. Something SKS in his London bubble failed to see coming.
Starmer knew perfectly well what was coming - he saw the polling. Luckily for Labour, he managed to get the party to a point where it was able to recoup most of the votes it was in damger of losing to the LibDems. This saved Labour from a far worse defeat than might otherwise have been the case.
Good effort. But Labour had the chance to split the Tories irrevocably and failed to do so. And they would have acted in a principled way at the same time. It's a massive fail.
Another batch of mostly excellent polls for Biden overnight bar the Monmouth PA poll. PB really seems in denial over how strong Biden’s chances are, drawing false equivalencies with 2016.
No one has satisfactorily answered the question of why someone who voted for Clinton in 2016 will vote for Trump in 2020. And these people need to exist for Trump to win given the large numbers who have switched in the opposite direction.
I agree with your general take, but I can think of a few reasons:
1) If you're generally conservative, but were never-Trump, you got some conservative stuff - tax cuts, SCOTUS appointments etc, and you annoyed liberals a lot, which pulls you back towards Trump's side with every left-right news cycle. I think quite a few conservatives who went with Hillary, didn't vote or voted for a minor candidate - remember the libertarian got 3.3%, the ex-CIA dude got 0.5% - are now on Team Trump.
2) The economy! OK, the virus screwed things up, but Trump said he'd make the economy strong, and the economy was strong. A lot of people were saying that if Trump got elected the stock market would crash, but the stock market didn't crash - and it carried on not crashing, a lot. Also people were saying the trade wars would wreck the economy, and he did the trade wars, and they didn't wreck the economy.
3) The lockdowns. People have different opinions on the appropriate virus response, and it's not *entirely* polarized on pro-Trump vs anti-Trump. If you think people should be going back to normal, if you think kids should be back in school, if your business is being destroyed by the reaction to the virus - I think you jump to Trump.
4) Law and order. I know I've been saying Trump's stance is unpopular and I think he's onto a net loser. But the number of not-otherwise-Trump voters it will attract will definitely be greater than zero.
5) Minorities. IDK, I haven't looked at it in detail, but there seems to be some polling support for the idea that he's put on black and latino support for whatever reason.
I think that is a very good summary @edmundintokyo. Also re the Libertarian / McMullin votes, in a number of battle ground states, that block is actually very important (e.g. AZ)
In AZ Biden is consistently leading by 8-9 points which is a swing of over 6% since 2016. So if anything that block is now backing Biden.
Remember that a lot of Trump’s behaviour is anathema to actual libertarians. It’s lazy thinking to assume they will all switch to the GOP.
Here's Boris floundering and obfuscating about his disgraceful episode with "great chap" Darius Guppy on HIGNFY ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUDEpqyJ-_w
How the hell have Britain and America ended up with leaders who are totally unfit for office?
How Britain ended up with Boris is very simple. The hardcore Remoaners wouldn’t vote for Mrs May’s deal, because they thought they could overturn the vote of the British Public to leave the EU.
And SKS was most at fault for this. Labour could have backed Mays deal, but he loved getting on the BBC rubbishing it. It was a completely hopleless political judgement which led to an 80 seat tory majority. All SKS lovers should remember how badly he played 2019.
Umm, Corbyn was the Labour leader who failed miserably at every single stage of Brexit. At least he has gone now, but he's done massive damage to the UK and Europe. He should have resigned the day after the referendum vote in 2016, like Cameron did. But the idiot was always a Brexiteer so he stayed on to make sure we ended up with a hard Brexit. Unforgiveable.
Starmer has a black mark for remaining part of Corbyn's team, but I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt as if he hadn't we might have ended up with a useless Corbynite as Labour leader now.
Ok but don't forget how much SKS enjoyed rubbsihing Mays deal without realising what the obvious outcome was, a huge Tory majority, as SKS thought that he could overturn a democratic vote because he did not agree with it. Boris may be a dick but he played 2019 perfectly. He was ridiculed on this site consistently for losing parliamentary vote after vote but he knew the resentment that was building up in the Country. Something SKS in his London bubble failed to see coming.
I don't know what Starmer did or didn't see coming. Maybe he was making the best of a shit situation, maybe he was ambitious and saw a route to becoming Labour leader (in which case he played a blinder, no?). I just blame Corbyn for Labour's many failures when Corbyn was leader.
Well yes, the key final failure was Jez for not recognising that the idea of him as emergency GNU PM was simply not going to fly. That and the election thing (was it the SNP who fell behind that first?). The other curiosity is that the Indicative Vote process was binned after two cycles; something like that was bound to take longer than that, and was beginning to converge.
There's no question that those who wanted to steer Brexit in a much harder direction played their hand well, and those who didn't didn't. But there's a helluva jump from there to Johnson's Brexit is the Remainer's fault. TM won the party vote of confidence 200-117. Collaborating with the enemy to get a vassal state Brexit through would surely have flipped another 40-odd MPs against her. And then what?
Nothing in the popular press about Boris' car crash yesterday. We worry about it more than the public does. Of course it's the sort of thing that won't impinge until he does it on TV. If he ever gets himself on TV again, other than doing something 'clever'.
Also, allow for the media habit of enjoying dramatic swings. In a week or two we'll be reading that "Boris bounces back" at PMQs, and then a week or two later "Boris slumps again".
What matters is more that the perception that the Government is incompetent has cut through. That makes it harder for Rishi to argue that tax rises are necessary (though they may well be), because people will say "They wouldn't be if if you weren't all so useless".
Wait until the total meltdown at Dover in January cuts through.
We'll be looking at omni-incompetent.
It will be very interesting to see how businesses exporting into the UK from Europe react to having their truckers logjamed for miles on the opposite side of the channel and in Ireland
There is going to be a lot of anger on all sides and total failure by both the EU and UK negotiators
How is it a total failure by the EU? Their rules on external borders are clear and longstanding - one of the arguments for us leaving was that their rules weren't enforced harshly enough.
The EU has a system and process for its side of the external border. Its side will work. The UK does not have a system nor indeed have we even made any preparations. The queues will be from our side of the border. How is that the fault of EU negotiators?
It’s the EU’s fault for not realising we hold all the cards, or something.
I don't know how exporters/importers to/from the UK are going to feel, but I am pretty confident that the vast majority of people here in Germany are going to give the UK approximately 100% of the blame for any problems caused by Brexit. Unsurprisingly.
But they're still gonna want to sell stuff to the UK, no?
Who? The vast majority of people are not directly involved in selling stuff to the UK.
In any case, in political terms, people are just going to blame the UK for any problems caused by Brexit, whether or not EU negotiators/other European governments should share the blame. This shouldn't come as news.
Sure they will. I'm only reporting that the vast majority of people will blame the UK for any problems caused by Brexit. I'm not sure why anybody would want to dispute this.
It wasn't the UK that called off this week's talks.
OK, just to spell this out: most people here are not following the negotiations at all. The ins and outs of what happens during the negotiations will have no effect on how people feel about whatever problems are caused by the UK deciding to leave the EU.
Another batch of mostly excellent polls for Biden overnight bar the Monmouth PA poll. PB really seems in denial over how strong Biden’s chances are, drawing false equivalencies with 2016.
No one has satisfactorily answered the question of why someone who voted for Clinton in 2016 will vote for Trump in 2020. And these people need to exist for Trump to win given the large numbers who have switched in the opposite direction.
I agree with your general take, but I can think of a few reasons:
1) If you're generally conservative, but were never-Trump, you got some conservative stuff - tax cuts, SCOTUS appointments etc, and you annoyed liberals a lot, which pulls you back towards Trump's side with every left-right news cycle. I think quite a few conservatives who went with Hillary, didn't vote or voted for a minor candidate - remember the libertarian got 3.3%, the ex-CIA dude got 0.5% - are now on Team Trump.
2) The economy! OK, the virus screwed things up, but Trump said he'd make the economy strong, and the economy was strong. A lot of people were saying that if Trump got elected the stock market would crash, but the stock market didn't crash - and it carried on not crashing, a lot. Also people were saying the trade wars would wreck the economy, and he did the trade wars, and they didn't wreck the economy.
3) The lockdowns. People have different opinions on the appropriate virus response, and it's not *entirely* polarized on pro-Trump vs anti-Trump. If you think people should be going back to normal, if you think kids should be back in school, if your business is being destroyed by the reaction to the virus - I think you jump to Trump.
4) Law and order. I know I've been saying Trump's stance is unpopular and I think he's onto a net loser. But the number of not-otherwise-Trump voters it will attract will definitely be greater than zero.
5) Minorities. IDK, I haven't looked at it in detail, but there seems to be some polling support for the idea that he's put on black and latino support for whatever reason.
Original premise is wrong I think -> we just need some (dunno how many) Clinton backers not to show up to vote for Biden and then Trump wins.
Potentially some people were just voting to have the first female president. I doubt they'd switch to Trump, but they might not show up for Biden.
Michael Moore's 2016 article on lack of Dem enthusiasm may still hold. I know Dems probably want to beat Trump more than in 2016, but Biden (like Hilary) is not really a pulse-raising candidate.
In 2016 the Dems has held the presidency for two terms, and Hilary was clearly a downgrade from Obama.
Dem voters certainly turned up on 2018 (eg in Wisconsin) so it’s not clear whey they wouldn’t in 2020 as well. Biden may not be an incredibly inspiring candidate, but dislike of Trump is *very* motivating!
The only way that anyone would EVER be motivated to vote for Biden is having Trump as his opponent.
... or any of the other Democrat contenders in the Primaries.
The Democrats had a dozen reasonable candidates to choose from six months ago.
Why did they all drop out to leave the going-demented septuagenarian as the last man just about standing and trying to talk?
They're making many of the same mistakes they made four years ago, if they're not careful they'll finish with the same result as Hilary come November.
Nothing in the popular press about Boris' car crash yesterday. We worry about it more than the public does. Of course it's the sort of thing that won't impinge until he does it on TV. If he ever gets himself on TV again, other than doing something 'clever'.
Also, allow for the media habit of enjoying dramatic swings. In a week or two we'll be reading that "Boris bounces back" at PMQs, and then a week or two later "Boris slumps again".
What matters is more that the perception that the Government is incompetent has cut through. That makes it harder for Rishi to argue that tax rises are necessary (though they may well be), because people will say "They wouldn't be if if you weren't all so useless".
Wait until the total meltdown at Dover in January cuts through.
We'll be looking at omni-incompetent.
It will be very interesting to see how businesses exporting into the UK from Europe react to having their truckers logjamed for miles on the opposite side of the channel and in Ireland
There is going to be a lot of anger on all sides and total failure by both the EU and UK negotiators
How is it a total failure by the EU? Their rules on external borders are clear and longstanding - one of the arguments for us leaving was that their rules weren't enforced harshly enough.
The EU has a system and process for its side of the external border. Its side will work. The UK does not have a system nor indeed have we even made any preparations. The queues will be from our side of the border. How is that the fault of EU negotiators?
It’s the EU’s fault for not realising we hold all the cards, or something.
I don't know how exporters/importers to/from the UK are going to feel, but I am pretty confident that the vast majority of people here in Germany are going to give the UK approximately 100% of the blame for any problems caused by Brexit. Unsurprisingly.
But they're still gonna want to sell stuff to the UK, no?
Who? The vast majority of people are not directly involved in selling stuff to the UK.
In any case, in political terms, people are just going to blame the UK for any problems caused by Brexit, whether or not EU negotiators/other European governments should share the blame. This shouldn't come as news.
Sure they will. I'm only reporting that the vast majority of people will blame the UK for any problems caused by Brexit. I'm not sure why anybody would want to dispute this.
It wasn't the UK that called off this week's talks.
OK, just to spell this out: most people here are not following the negotiations at all. The ins and outs of what happens during the negotiations will have no effect on how people feel about whatever problems are caused by the UK deciding to leave the EU.
52% will blame the EU 48% will blame the government 60% won’t give a toss until it affects them.
Here's Boris floundering and obfuscating about his disgraceful episode with "great chap" Darius Guppy on HIGNFY ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUDEpqyJ-_w
How the hell have Britain and America ended up with leaders who are totally unfit for office?
How Britain ended up with Boris is very simple. The hardcore Remoaners wouldn’t vote for Mrs May’s deal, because they thought they could overturn the vote of the British Public to leave the EU.
And SKS was most at fault for this. Labour could have backed Mays deal, but he loved getting on the BBC rubbishing it. It was a completely hopleless political judgement which led to an 80 seat tory majority. All SKS lovers should remember how badly he played 2019.
Umm, Corbyn was the Labour leader who failed miserably at every single stage of Brexit. At least he has gone now, but he's done massive damage to the UK and Europe. He should have resigned the day after the referendum vote in 2016, like Cameron did. But the idiot was always a Brexiteer so he stayed on to make sure we ended up with a hard Brexit. Unforgiveable.
Starmer has a black mark for remaining part of Corbyn's team, but I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt as if he hadn't we might have ended up with a useless Corbynite as Labour leader now.
I have maintained for a very long time that Corbyn facilitated Brexit
Starmer leading labour would have seen a Norway style deal
The next few months are going to be very rocky.
Enobling Claire Fox, appointing Tony Abbott and Boris 's own shambolic way would normally be very detrimental to the government but covid and how it plays out will be the defining moment for the conservative party and of course so will Brexit
However, soon the ECHR report will land in the public domain and Starmer has to remove Corbyn and his cabal from the party otherwise Starmer will be seen as continuing his appeasement that he showed whilst in the shadow cabinet
Furthermore, Brexit will itself be a challenge for him , as will Scotland as without Scotland he is unlikely to become PM
Overall politics is a complete mess and I do look forward to Boris standing down in the first 6 months of 2021, fingers crossed
A “capacity” of 350,000 doesn’t mean very much if the system is jammed up at half that rate.
Coronavirus testing rationed amid outbreaks https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-53990068 ...The government has pledged to increase its capacity to 500,000 tests a day by the end of October. Currently, it says, testing capacity is about 350,000 a day - but only just over half of that is being used. Daily testing has only broken 200,000 on one day, despite the government hailing reaching its target of having that level of capacity at the end of May. The DHSC stressed that booking slots were added in the evening for morning appointments and in the morning for afternoon appointments, so more local slots might become available through the day. The website states: "This service is currently very busy. If you are unable to book a test now or the location and time is not convenient for you, please try again in a few hours when more tests should be available...
These cheap, rapid mass tests need deployed as soon as possible. They don’t have to be 100% accurate. ... The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said it was investing £500m in existing trials of new tests including a rapid 20 minute test and a saliva-based test. These will be trialled on groups of people including staff and students at the University of Southampton and four Southampton schools...
Actually they do have to be 100% accurate. Any significant number of false positives and areas will be unnecessarily put into local lockdown.
No, they don't. As has been pointed out, with the newly developed rapid tests, they fail to detect infection (or at least PCR positive individuals, which isn't necessarily the same as active infection) somewhere around 5-10% of the time. The number of false positives much lower. Detecting 90% of those who might currently be infectious in real time (as opposed to the current 1-2 days) is obviously better than not testing at all.
These are cheap and easily administered tests, and could potentially be used in schools, workplaces, airports etc. Their mass use could be transformative in terms of returning to something close to normal life.
I think that is a very good summary @edmundintokyo. Also re the Libertarian / McMullin votes, in a number of battle ground states, that block is actually very important (e.g. AZ)
Yes, Trump should get some libertarian support this time since the main libertarian issue is related to virus response, where he's on their side.
Also according to my Twitter feed, which is rarely wrong, the current Libertarian candidate is a bit meh. It might all have been different if John McAfee had run, but sadly he couldn't make the hustings because he had that prior engagement at a whale fucking contest.
Here's Boris floundering and obfuscating about his disgraceful episode with "great chap" Darius Guppy on HIGNFY ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUDEpqyJ-_w
How the hell have Britain and America ended up with leaders who are totally unfit for office?
How Britain ended up with Boris is very simple. The hardcore Remoaners wouldn’t vote for Mrs May’s deal, because they thought they could overturn the vote of the British Public to leave the EU.
And SKS was most at fault for this. Labour could have backed Mays deal, but he loved getting on the BBC rubbishing it. It was a completely hopleless political judgement which led to an 80 seat tory majority. All SKS lovers should remember how badly he played 2019.
Umm, Corbyn was the Labour leader who failed miserably at every single stage of Brexit. At least he has gone now, but he's done massive damage to the UK and Europe. He should have resigned the day after the referendum vote in 2016, like Cameron did. But the idiot was always a Brexiteer so he stayed on to make sure we ended up with a hard Brexit. Unforgiveable.
Starmer has a black mark for remaining part of Corbyn's team, but I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt as if he hadn't we might have ended up with a useless Corbynite as Labour leader now.
I have maintained for a very long time that Corbyn facilitated Brexit
Starmer leading labour would have seen a Norway style deal
The next few months are going to be very rocky.
Enobling Claire Fox, appointing Tony Abbott and Boris 's own shambolic way would normally be very detrimental to the government but covid and how it plays out will be the defining moment for the conservative party and of course so will Brexit
However, soon the ECHR report will land in the public domain and Starmer has to remove Corbyn and his cabal from the party otherwise Starmer will be seen as continuing his appeasement that he showed whilst in the shadow cabinet
Furthermore, Brexit will itself be a challenge for him , as will Scotland as without Scotland he is unlikely to become PM
Overall politics is a complete mess and I do look forward to Boris standing down in the first 6 months of 2021, fingers crossed
I find it quite amusing how Donald Trump can survive collaborating with foreign powers, being impeached, banning entire religions from the US, imprisoning children in cages, tacitly supporting fascism, opening rejecting the outcome of democratic elections, cuddling up to foreign dictators, and suggesting people drink bleach as a cure for Covid, and still leave everyone guessing about whether or not he's going to be re-elected just two months from now, and yet for some on here Boris' fate over the next 4 years of his premiership has been decided by a half hour of questions from Mr. Boring.
It's really very silly. Boris will never be more vulnerable than he is this year - the pandemic, recovering his own health, a potential No Deal. If his enemies don't get him in the next 6 months, then you're going to be stuck with him for a long time. And if he gets to 2024, are you really certain he can't win again? Betting against him has not worked out entirely to his critics' advantage.
Here's Boris floundering and obfuscating about his disgraceful episode with "great chap" Darius Guppy on HIGNFY ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUDEpqyJ-_w
How the hell have Britain and America ended up with leaders who are totally unfit for office?
How Britain ended up with Boris is very simple. The hardcore Remoaners wouldn’t vote for Mrs May’s deal, because they thought they could overturn the vote of the British Public to leave the EU.
And SKS was most at fault for this. Labour could have backed Mays deal, but he loved getting on the BBC rubbishing it. It was a completely hopleless political judgement which led to an 80 seat tory majority. All SKS lovers should remember how badly he played 2019.
Umm, Corbyn was the Labour leader who failed miserably at every single stage of Brexit. At least he has gone now, but he's done massive damage to the UK and Europe. He should have resigned the day after the referendum vote in 2016, like Cameron did. But the idiot was always a Brexiteer so he stayed on to make sure we ended up with a hard Brexit. Unforgiveable.
Starmer has a black mark for remaining part of Corbyn's team, but I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt as if he hadn't we might have ended up with a useless Corbynite as Labour leader now.
Ok but don't forget how much SKS enjoyed rubbsihing Mays deal without realising what the obvious outcome was, a huge Tory majority, as SKS thought that he could overturn a democratic vote because he did not agree with it. Boris may be a dick but he played 2019 perfectly. He was ridiculed on this site consistently for losing parliamentary vote after vote but he knew the resentment that was building up in the Country. Something SKS in his London bubble failed to see coming.
Starmer knew perfectly well what was coming - he saw the polling. Luckily for Labour, he managed to get the party to a point where it was able to recoup most of the votes it was in damger of losing to the LibDems. This saved Labour from a far worse defeat than might otherwise have been the case.
So SKS was happy with a 80 seat tory majority and a potential hard Brexit?. I think SKS thought he could prevent Brexit. He thought that he could go against a democratic vote. It did not take a rocket scientist to realise the resentment that was building up. SKS was fuelled by a compliant media which loved hearing his views on why Brexit was bad, while all the time people were shouting at the TV with anger that their vote to leave was not being respected. The Tories were completely split, if he had agreed to Mays deal the tories would have split in two. Boris would not be PM. As I said earlier it was the worst piece of political judgement in decades, all fueled by his ego and blinkered view.
Abbott is only in the frame because he tickled Boris's ego by lauding Brexit - one of the few 'world statesmen' who did. I feel a bit sorry for Hancock for being forced to pretend it's because of anything else.
It's definitely nothing to do with him being on good terms with all the TPP nations, as the UK seeks to join that trade group.
We're in the middle of the North Sea.
We are no further away from the TPP nations than Canada and the opportunities would be enormous
I think that is a very good summary @edmundintokyo. Also re the Libertarian / McMullin votes, in a number of battle ground states, that block is actually very important (e.g. AZ)
Yes, Trump should get some libertarian support this time since the main libertarian issue is related to virus response, where he's on their side.
Also according to my Twitter feed, which is rarely wrong, the current Libertarian candidate is a bit meh. It might all have been different if John McAfee had run, but sadly he couldn't make the hustings because he had that prior engagement at a whale fucking contest.
Johnson might go before the next election but it won't be voluntary. The party will have to remove him and they will not do this unless it becomes clear that he has become a liability rather than an asset electorally. Now if the British public has an iota of self-respect this fundamental shift in sentiment will happen. We will recover our sense of dignity and re-apply some standards regarding who gets to be our PM. At which point the polls will tell the Tory Party to act and they will act. It's the Tory Party. I rate this quite likely to occur before 2024 but less than a 50/50 chance. So Mike's bet for me needs decent odds to be value.
At the moment the Tories lead most polls and are tied at worst so Boris is going nowhere.
If however Labour build a clear poll lead, likely after a recession as furlough ends and following a WTO terms Brexit then Boris will be in danger.
Yet the Tories would still need to consider whether picking Sunak for instance and a softer Brexit and deal with the EU to win Remainers lost to Starmer Labour and the LDs will win more votes than Leavers who would go back to Farage and the Brexit Party
- Minimum wage, which disincentivises low-skilled from upskilling themselves
This is a remarkable comment. I mean, if the minimum wage was set a level that say 50% of the population were on it and the lowest skilled/paid had no realistic prospect of ever obtaining a job that was higher paid then I could see the argument. But I know of no companies that have a minimum wage job and then the next job up also at minimum wage - it doesn't work, no one would want the next job up. Instead, pay rises a bit in the next job up to differentiate from the lowest paid job. There's still and incentive to progress and the worst off get something approaching a living wage.
Do you think people have to actually be starving to want to progress (ignoring that if there was no minimum wage we'd probably just have higher benefits to make up the difference). I'd rather employers pay than the state.
I very much approve of the NMW and think the current levels are about right.
But the examples do exist where the gaps between zero responsibility and significant responsibility is less than £1 per hour. An example would be a mini supermarket duty manager and shelf stacker. Little chance of further promotion and a small pay gap makes shelf stacker the better job.
The issues solved by NMW far outweigh the issues around this though.
Funnily enough, I have experience of that scenario - as an 6th form student I had a Saturday job at a small Co-Op. Sunday duty manager job was similar to how you described, barely above shop floor pay. No one wanted to do it, so the real store manager (not duty manager, the person in charge of the shop overall/all decisions in shop) fiddled the books so we put down extra hours and got effectively paid 1.5 times the shop floor pay. Either the pay gap, even if small, is incentive enough or the employer has to find a way to produce the incentive - they need managers, up the pay.
Obviously there comes a point at which some of these stores become non-viable, in theory. But then you look at the Scandinavian countries, which still manage to have coffee shops (with very expensive coffee because the workers get paid more).
The issue with the minimum wage is that as it's increased over the years more and more jobs and skill sets have been caught by it.
To one extent you can solve the issue by automating tasks but you do reach the point which we have where the next level up simple can't pay enough to make it worthwhile.
Round here a supermarket stacker gets nearly £10 per hour. Now if you are at a point in your life where money is not everything and you are fed up with the constant responsibility and pressure of a job where you never really have holidays as you check your emails all the time its a brilliant job to have. Go to work do your job go home no worries. Its my plan for 3 years time.
Actually whilst I am mostly being snarky that tracking data if you follow the link is REALLY interesting.
On July 20th the national polling average was approx a 9 point lead, the best Biden has had since getting the nom and mostly based on Trump's polling being at his nadir. However in Morning Consult Wisconsin data on the 20th of July the gap was at it's smallest 2 points with Trump at his highest polling in the state, and based on a consistent climb over the preceding 10 days.
That is hugely important. There is a fundamental assumption built into most analysis that there is some form of universal swing even if it is dampened/enhanced across the states.
If there is counter-national swing then that chucks it all out of the window,
Abbott is only in the frame because he tickled Boris's ego by lauding Brexit - one of the few 'world statesmen' who did. I feel a bit sorry for Hancock for being forced to pretend it's because of anything else.
It's definitely nothing to do with him being on good terms with all the TPP nations, as the UK seeks to join that trade group.
We're in the middle of the North Sea.
We are no further away from the TPP nations than Canada and the opportunities would be enormous
Another batch of mostly excellent polls for Biden overnight bar the Monmouth PA poll. PB really seems in denial over how strong Biden’s chances are, drawing false equivalencies with 2016.
No one has satisfactorily answered the question of why someone who voted for Clinton in 2016 will vote for Trump in 2020. And these people need to exist for Trump to win given the large numbers who have switched in the opposite direction.
I agree with your general take, but I can think of a few reasons:
1) If you're generally conservative, but were never-Trump, you got some conservative stuff - tax cuts, SCOTUS appointments etc, and you annoyed liberals a lot, which pulls you back towards Trump's side with every left-right news cycle. I think quite a few conservatives who went with Hillary, didn't vote or voted for a minor candidate - remember the libertarian got 3.3%, the ex-CIA dude got 0.5% - are now on Team Trump.
2) The economy! OK, the virus screwed things up, but Trump said he'd make the economy strong, and the economy was strong. A lot of people were saying that if Trump got elected the stock market would crash, but the stock market didn't crash - and it carried on not crashing, a lot. Also people were saying the trade wars would wreck the economy, and he did the trade wars, and they didn't wreck the economy.
3) The lockdowns. People have different opinions on the appropriate virus response, and it's not *entirely* polarized on pro-Trump vs anti-Trump. If you think people should be going back to normal, if you think kids should be back in school, if your business is being destroyed by the reaction to the virus - I think you jump to Trump.
4) Law and order. I know I've been saying Trump's stance is unpopular and I think he's onto a net loser. But the number of not-otherwise-Trump voters it will attract will definitely be greater than zero.
5) Minorities. IDK, I haven't looked at it in detail, but there seems to be some polling support for the idea that he's put on black and latino support for whatever reason.
I think that is a very good summary @edmundintokyo. Also re the Libertarian / McMullin votes, in a number of battle ground states, that block is actually very important (e.g. AZ)
Abbott is only in the frame because he tickled Boris's ego by lauding Brexit - one of the few 'world statesmen' who did. I feel a bit sorry for Hancock for being forced to pretend it's because of anything else.
It's definitely nothing to do with him being on good terms with all the TPP nations, as the UK seeks to join that trade group.
We're in the middle of the North Sea.
We are no further away from the TPP nations than Canada and the opportunities would be enormous
Another batch of mostly excellent polls for Biden overnight bar the Monmouth PA poll. PB really seems in denial over how strong Biden’s chances are, drawing false equivalencies with 2016.
No one has satisfactorily answered the question of why someone who voted for Clinton in 2016 will vote for Trump in 2020. And these people need to exist for Trump to win given the large numbers who have switched in the opposite direction.
I agree with your general take, but I can think of a few reasons:
1) If you're generally conservative, but were never-Trump, you got some conservative stuff - tax cuts, SCOTUS appointments etc, and you annoyed liberals a lot, which pulls you back towards Trump's side with every left-right news cycle. I think quite a few conservatives who went with Hillary, didn't vote or voted for a minor candidate - remember the libertarian got 3.3%, the ex-CIA dude got 0.5% - are now on Team Trump.
2) The economy! OK, the virus screwed things up, but Trump said he'd make the economy strong, and the economy was strong. A lot of people were saying that if Trump got elected the stock market would crash, but the stock market didn't crash - and it carried on not crashing, a lot. Also people were saying the trade wars would wreck the economy, and he did the trade wars, and they didn't wreck the economy.
3) The lockdowns. People have different opinions on the appropriate virus response, and it's not *entirely* polarized on pro-Trump vs anti-Trump. If you think people should be going back to normal, if you think kids should be back in school, if your business is being destroyed by the reaction to the virus - I think you jump to Trump.
4) Law and order. I know I've been saying Trump's stance is unpopular and I think he's onto a net loser. But the number of not-otherwise-Trump voters it will attract will definitely be greater than zero.
5) Minorities. IDK, I haven't looked at it in detail, but there seems to be some polling support for the idea that he's put on black and latino support for whatever reason.
Wanted to give this a more detailed response. These are good points, and reasons why I do not regard Biden as a certainty. But most of them are long-term factors - if they influenced people to switch to Trump, they would have done so by now and be shwoing up in the polls.
But it just seems like PB is over-analysing and being too-clever-by half about what is actually a fairly straightforward situation: Trump is a weak incumbent facing a reasonable challenger in Biden. He is consistently 6-8 points under water in the polls and also behind in the states that matter. His behaviour has repelled a large number of swing voters and his base is not enough on its own to win.
To me it feels like much of the commentariat is being influenced by both the polling errors in 2016 (despite a very strong performance by the 2018 opinion polls) and their personal biases - e.g. several right wing posters expecting a negative reaction to the Wisconsin violence, which appears to have actually had no impact on the polling.
Trump is not out of this, but he's a clear underdog and there is still plenty of potential downside for him, most obviously form another COVID resurgence as the weather starts to cool. It's just as likely (perhaps more likely) that Biden wins in a 2008-level landslide than Trump wins.
Don't know how true that is - but it's definitely made me chuckle this morning.
It's very similar to the EU-Japan agreement, in fact. Another example of the EU good, UK bad meme.
The UK produces a lot less cheese than Germany, Italy and France. Holland exports 5 times as much as we do. Small countries like Ireland, Belgium and Denmark export more than we do.
A deal around cheese for cars might make sense for the EU but be bad for the UK. Not a trade, cheese or car expert so no idea if it is or not but a good deal for EU-Japan will be different to a good deal for UK-Japan.
Actually whilst I am mostly being snarky that tracking data if you follow the link is REALLY interesting.
On July 20th the national polling average was approx a 9 point lead, the best Biden has had since getting the nom and mostly based on Trump's polling being at his nadir. However in Morning Consult Wisconsin data on the 20th of July the gap was at it's smallest 2 points with Trump at his highest polling in the state, and based on a consistent climb over the preceding 10 days.
That is hugely important. There is a fundamental assumption built into most analysis that there is some form of universal swing even if it is dampened/enhanced across the states.
If there is counter-national swing then that chucks it all out of the window,
A point I keep making. Trump could suffer massive loss of votes in California and New York - but if people in the swing states still have a muted intention to vote for Trump, it could be much closer than headline polls suggest.
I still think the debates could yet make the difference. One incoherent response from Biden and he is sunk. (Yes, I know, Trump will only give incoherent responses....but that is in the price of a chunky Biden lead. People want BETTER.)
which is where he was when they introduced the forecast about 3 weeks ago
I think it's a shame they aren't doing a nowcast this year, which would give us an idea of what the model would say if the polls are like they are today on election day. This is the more robust part of the model, compared to the "uncertainty" they add because of the time til the election which is basically informed guesswork.
Nate Silver tweeted when the model was launched that if the polls were saying the same thing the night before the election, Biden would have a 93% chance of winning. Probably slightly lower now given Trump has improved somewhat
Having time left means the polls can go either way, half the potential movement helps whoever is behind - so there'll always be some reversion to 50:50 in a forecast. I think Biden would likely be ~ 85% to win if the election was tomorrow ?
Wanted to give this a more detailed response. These are good points, and reasons why I do not regard Biden as a certainty
But it just seems like PB is over-analysing and being too-clever-by half about what is actually a fairly straightforward situation: Trump is a weak incumbent facing a reasonable challenger in Biden. He is consistently 6-8 points under water in the polls and also behind in the states that matter. His behaviour has repelled a large number of swing voters and his base is not enough on its own to win.
It just feels like much of the commentariat is being influenced by both the polling errors in 2016 (despite a very strong performance by the 2018 opinion polls) and their personal biases - e.g. several right wing posters expecting a negative reaction to the Wisconsin violence, which appears to have actually had no impact on the polling.
Trump is not out of this, but he's a clear underdog and there is still plenty of potential downside for him, most obviously form another COVID resurgence as the weather starts to cool. It's just as likely (perhaps more likely) that Biden wins in a 2008-level landslide than Trump wins.
Yes, I totally agree. Evens is ridiculous - I think the market is just attracting a lot of dumb money. Fill your boots.
Another batch of mostly excellent polls for Biden overnight bar the Monmouth PA poll. PB really seems in denial over how strong Biden’s chances are, drawing false equivalencies with 2016.
No one has satisfactorily answered the question of why someone who voted for Clinton in 2016 will vote for Trump in 2020. And these people need to exist for Trump to win given the large numbers who have switched in the opposite direction.
I agree with your general take, but I can think of a few reasons:
1) If you're generally conservative, but were never-Trump, you got some conservative stuff - tax cuts, SCOTUS appointments etc, and you annoyed liberals a lot, which pulls you back towards Trump's side with every left-right news cycle. I think quite a few conservatives who went with Hillary, didn't vote or voted for a minor candidate - remember the libertarian got 3.3%, the ex-CIA dude got 0.5% - are now on Team Trump.
2) The economy! OK, the virus screwed things up, but Trump said he'd make the economy strong, and the economy was strong. A lot of people were saying that if Trump got elected the stock market would crash, but the stock market didn't crash - and it carried on not crashing, a lot. Also people were saying the trade wars would wreck the economy, and he did the trade wars, and they didn't wreck the economy.
3) The lockdowns. People have different opinions on the appropriate virus response, and it's not *entirely* polarized on pro-Trump vs anti-Trump. If you think people should be going back to normal, if you think kids should be back in school, if your business is being destroyed by the reaction to the virus - I think you jump to Trump.
4) Law and order. I know I've been saying Trump's stance is unpopular and I think he's onto a net loser. But the number of not-otherwise-Trump voters it will attract will definitely be greater than zero.
5) Minorities. IDK, I haven't looked at it in detail, but there seems to be some polling support for the idea that he's put on black and latino support for whatever reason.
Original premise is wrong I think -> we just need some (dunno how many) Clinton backers not to show up to vote for Biden and then Trump wins.
Potentially some people were just voting to have the first female president. I doubt they'd switch to Trump, but they might not show up for Biden.
Michael Moore's 2016 article on lack of Dem enthusiasm may still hold. I know Dems probably want to beat Trump more than in 2016, but Biden (like Hilary) is not really a pulse-raising candidate.
In 2016 the Dems has held the presidency for two terms, and Hilary was clearly a downgrade from Obama.
Dem voters certainly turned up on 2018 (eg in Wisconsin) so it’s not clear whey they wouldn’t in 2020 as well. Biden may not be an incredibly inspiring candidate, but dislike of Trump is *very* motivating!
The only way that anyone would EVER be motivated to vote for Biden is having Trump as his opponent.
... or any of the other Democrat contenders in the Primaries.
The Democrats had a dozen reasonable candidates to choose from six months ago.
Why did they all drop out to leave the going-demented septuagenarian as the last man just about standing and trying to talk?
They're making many of the same mistakes they made four years ago, if they're not careful they'll finish with the same result as Hilary come November.
Biden polled the best of all of them against Trump, that is why
Trump willing to destroy vaccine credibility by rushing through release before completion of tests just to possibly enhance his election chances. This could result in millions of deaths either through the under tested vaccine or those who are put off from getting it. He should be hauled before the court in The Hague for crimes against humanity.
Actually whilst I am mostly being snarky that tracking data if you follow the link is REALLY interesting.
On July 20th the national polling average was approx a 9 point lead, the best Biden has had since getting the nom and mostly based on Trump's polling being at his nadir. However in Morning Consult Wisconsin data on the 20th of July the gap was at it's smallest 2 points with Trump at his highest polling in the state, and based on a consistent climb over the preceding 10 days.
That is hugely important. There is a fundamental assumption built into most analysis that there is some form of universal swing even if it is dampened/enhanced across the states.
If there is counter-national swing then that chucks it all out of the window,
Yes, there's likely to be swings in many different directions in different States. For example a focus on law and order will see certain states move to Trump and others to Biden, ditto if the economy or virus is the main focus of the short campaign.
The danger for those of us betting, is that the national polls don't pick up the nuances of the swings in the key states. We know Biden is piling up votes in California, even more so than Hilary did, but he only needs a 1% swing in the Mid West to take a number of states there.
Traditionally, state-level polling has been rubbish in the USA, with key demographics missed and political activists over-represented in online samples.
There's also an ongoing issue with spam phone calls and political robocalls in the US, most people won't pick up the phone to an unknown number and those that do are unrepresentative of the population.
Here's Boris floundering and obfuscating about his disgraceful episode with "great chap" Darius Guppy on HIGNFY ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUDEpqyJ-_w
How the hell have Britain and America ended up with leaders who are totally unfit for office?
How Britain ended up with Boris is very simple. The hardcore Remoaners wouldn’t vote for Mrs May’s deal, because they thought they could overturn the vote of the British Public to leave the EU.
And SKS was most at fault for this. Labour could have backed Mays deal, but he loved getting on the BBC rubbishing it. It was a completely hopleless political judgement which led to an 80 seat tory majority. All SKS lovers should remember how badly he played 2019.
Umm, Corbyn was the Labour leader who failed miserably at every single stage of Brexit. At least he has gone now, but he's done massive damage to the UK and Europe. He should have resigned the day after the referendum vote in 2016, like Cameron did. But the idiot was always a Brexiteer so he stayed on to make sure we ended up with a hard Brexit. Unforgiveable.
Starmer has a black mark for remaining part of Corbyn's team, but I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt as if he hadn't we might have ended up with a useless Corbynite as Labour leader now.
Ok but don't forget how much SKS enjoyed rubbsihing Mays deal without realising what the obvious outcome was, a huge Tory majority, as SKS thought that he could overturn a democratic vote because he did not agree with it. Boris may be a dick but he played 2019 perfectly. He was ridiculed on this site consistently for losing parliamentary vote after vote but he knew the resentment that was building up in the Country. Something SKS in his London bubble failed to see coming.
Starmer knew perfectly well what was coming - he saw the polling. Luckily for Labour, he managed to get the party to a point where it was able to recoup most of the votes it was in damger of losing to the LibDems. This saved Labour from a far worse defeat than might otherwise have been the case.
So SKS was happy with a 80 seat tory majority and a potential hard Brexit?. I think SKS thought he could prevent Brexit. He thought that he could go against a democratic vote. It did not take a rocket scientist to realise the resentment that was building up. SKS was fuelled by a compliant media which loved hearing his views on why Brexit was bad, while all the time people were shouting at the TV with anger that their vote to leave was not being respected. The Tories were completely split, if he had agreed to Mays deal the tories would have split in two. Boris would not be PM. As I said earlier it was the worst piece of political judgement in decades, all fueled by his ego and blinkered view.
I imagine Starmer was devestated by an 80-seat Tory majority. I also imagine he knows it could have been a whole lot worse. The decsion to back May's deal was not his to make, it was the party leader's. My guess is that Starmer's judgement on Brexit will come to be seen as the right one.
- Minimum wage, which disincentivises low-skilled from upskilling themselves
This is a remarkable comment. I mean, if the minimum wage was set a level that say 50% of the population were on it and the lowest skilled/paid had no realistic prospect of ever obtaining a job that was higher paid then I could see the argument. But I know of no companies that have a minimum wage job and then the next job up also at minimum wage - it doesn't work, no one would want the next job up. Instead, pay rises a bit in the next job up to differentiate from the lowest paid job. There's still and incentive to progress and the worst off get something approaching a living wage.
Do you think people have to actually be starving to want to progress (ignoring that if there was no minimum wage we'd probably just have higher benefits to make up the difference). I'd rather employers pay than the state.
I very much approve of the NMW and think the current levels are about right.
But the examples do exist where the gaps between zero responsibility and significant responsibility is less than £1 per hour. An example would be a mini supermarket duty manager and shelf stacker. Little chance of further promotion and a small pay gap makes shelf stacker the better job.
The issues solved by NMW far outweigh the issues around this though.
Funnily enough, I have experience of that scenario - as an 6th form student I had a Saturday job at a small Co-Op. Sunday duty manager job was similar to how you described, barely above shop floor pay. No one wanted to do it, so the real store manager (not duty manager, the person in charge of the shop overall/all decisions in shop) fiddled the books so we put down extra hours and got effectively paid 1.5 times the shop floor pay. Either the pay gap, even if small, is incentive enough or the employer has to find a way to produce the incentive - they need managers, up the pay.
Obviously there comes a point at which some of these stores become non-viable, in theory. But then you look at the Scandinavian countries, which still manage to have coffee shops (with very expensive coffee because the workers get paid more).
The opposite of this is to minimise the number of hours paid for with minimum wage jobs. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing as long as total employment holds up.
The real reason for higher minimum wages however is that governments can outsource their social security obligations to employers. Landing employers with this charge was one of Johnson's big claims at the last election (he didn't quite put it that way ... lol)
I have a similar anecdote with car rental. Car rental agent is an attractive minimum wage job if you are a people person. You deal with an interesting product and interact with customers in a much more engaging way than, say, in a call centre. Car rental manager is a shitty job. You have to deal with staffing and turn up if you can't get someone for a shift; you have to face angry customers when something goes wrong and deal with them crashing the cars and so on. Most of your additional pay is the form of bonus, which depends on your staff selling enough upgrades. So people come in as counter clerks, enjoy it and do a good job, get promoted to manager and leave within six months.
Don't forget the tariff-free import of British cars into Japan, helping support thousands of British jobs.
Hondas? Nissans? Or has my irony meter crashed?
Are they still making Land Rovers in Britain because there's definitely a market for those. Probably not a *huge* one, but a win's a win.
According to Wikipedia 'JLR currently build Land Rovers in Brazil, China, India, Slovakia, and the United Kingdom' UK probably has the biggest plants at the moment.
Don't know how true that is - but it's definitely made me chuckle this morning.
It's very similar to the EU-Japan agreement, in fact. Another example of the EU good, UK bad meme.
The UK produces a lot less cheese than Germany, Italy and France. Holland exports 5 times as much as we do. Small countries like Ireland, Belgium and Denmark export more than we do.
A deal around cheese for cars might make sense for the EU but be bad for the UK. Not a trade, cheese or car expert so no idea if it is or not but a good deal for EU-Japan will be different to a good deal for UK-Japan.
Yes, a deal that only involved cheeses and cars would likely be one sided. The person tweeting this was clearly mocking the apparent disparity between trading cheeses for cars, even making the point that a large fraction of population of Japan was lactose intolerant, yet one of the highlights of the EU's deal was the removal of the tariffs on cheeses.
Timetable will not be helped by the PM standing down.
In Japan.
I doubt it'll make any difference. It's much more important to the UK than it is to Japan, it's definitely not the kind of thing where you wouldn't want to bind your successor.
Wanted to give this a more detailed response. These are good points, and reasons why I do not regard Biden as a certainty
But it just seems like PB is over-analysing and being too-clever-by half about what is actually a fairly straightforward situation: Trump is a weak incumbent facing a reasonable challenger in Biden. He is consistently 6-8 points under water in the polls and also behind in the states that matter. His behaviour has repelled a large number of swing voters and his base is not enough on its own to win.
It just feels like much of the commentariat is being influenced by both the polling errors in 2016 (despite a very strong performance by the 2018 opinion polls) and their personal biases - e.g. several right wing posters expecting a negative reaction to the Wisconsin violence, which appears to have actually had no impact on the polling.
Trump is not out of this, but he's a clear underdog and there is still plenty of potential downside for him, most obviously form another COVID resurgence as the weather starts to cool. It's just as likely (perhaps more likely) that Biden wins in a 2008-level landslide than Trump wins.
Yes, I totally agree. Evens is ridiculous - I think the market is just attracting a lot of dumb money. Fill your boots.
I was happily green and feeling smug. But the evens on offer tempted me - so now I'm back in at close to the limit on Biden.
Still hoping to cash out before the election though.
- Minimum wage, which disincentivises low-skilled from upskilling themselves
This is a remarkable comment. I mean, if the minimum wage was set a level that say 50% of the population were on it and the lowest skilled/paid had no realistic prospect of ever obtaining a job that was higher paid then I could see the argument. But I know of no companies that have a minimum wage job and then the next job up also at minimum wage - it doesn't work, no one would want the next job up. Instead, pay rises a bit in the next job up to differentiate from the lowest paid job. There's still and incentive to progress and the worst off get something approaching a living wage.
Do you think people have to actually be starving to want to progress (ignoring that if there was no minimum wage we'd probably just have higher benefits to make up the difference). I'd rather employers pay than the state.
I very much approve of the NMW and think the current levels are about right.
But the examples do exist where the gaps between zero responsibility and significant responsibility is less than £1 per hour. An example would be a mini supermarket duty manager and shelf stacker. Little chance of further promotion and a small pay gap makes shelf stacker the better job.
The issues solved by NMW far outweigh the issues around this though.
Funnily enough, I have experience of that scenario - as an 6th form student I had a Saturday job at a small Co-Op. Sunday duty manager job was similar to how you described, barely above shop floor pay. No one wanted to do it, so the real store manager (not duty manager, the person in charge of the shop overall/all decisions in shop) fiddled the books so we put down extra hours and got effectively paid 1.5 times the shop floor pay. Either the pay gap, even if small, is incentive enough or the employer has to find a way to produce the incentive - they need managers, up the pay.
Obviously there comes a point at which some of these stores become non-viable, in theory. But then you look at the Scandinavian countries, which still manage to have coffee shops (with very expensive coffee because the workers get paid more).
The opposite of this is to minimise the number of hours paid for with minimum wage jobs. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing as long as total employment holds up.
The real reason for higher minimum wages however is that governments can outsource their social security obligations to employers. Landing employers with this charge was one of Johnson's big claims at the last election (he didn't quite put it that way ... lol)
I have a similar anecdote with car rental. Car rental agent is an attractive minimum wage job if you are a people person. You deal with an interesting product and interact with customers in a much more engaging way than, say, in a call centre. Car rental manager is a shitty job. You have to deal with staffing and turn up if you can't get someone for a shift; you have to face angry customers when something goes wrong and deal with them crashing the cars and so on. Most of your additional pay is the form of bonus, which depends on your staff selling enough upgrades. So people come in as counter clerks, enjoy it and do a good job, get promoted to manager and leave within six months.
Younger son spent some of his Uni vacations as a car rental counter clerk. As you say, plenty of people interaction and if anything goes wrong you call in someone else.
Abbott is only in the frame because he tickled Boris's ego by lauding Brexit - one of the few 'world statesmen' who did. I feel a bit sorry for Hancock for being forced to pretend it's because of anything else.
It's definitely nothing to do with him being on good terms with all the TPP nations, as the UK seeks to join that trade group.
We're in the middle of the North Sea.
We are no further away from the TPP nations than Canada and the opportunities would be enormous
I love the ease and functionality of Amazon, but they really are gaining too much power.
I know the Chancellor wants to ensure the high street can compete on a level playing field tax wise with Amazon but otherwise would leave the market to decide how much power Amazon get, I know as I asked him yesterday evening on a Zoom call with Chingford association and ours
I find it quite amusing how Donald Trump can survive collaborating with foreign powers, being impeached, banning entire religions from the US, imprisoning children in cages, tacitly supporting fascism, opening rejecting the outcome of democratic elections, cuddling up to foreign dictators, and suggesting people drink bleach as a cure for Covid, and still leave everyone guessing about whether or not he's going to be re-elected just two months from now, and yet for some on here Boris' fate over the next 4 years of his premiership has been decided by a half hour of questions from Mr. Boring.
It's really very silly. Boris will never be more vulnerable than he is this year - the pandemic, recovering his own health, a potential No Deal. If his enemies don't get him in the next 6 months, then you're going to be stuck with him for a long time. And if he gets to 2024, are you really certain he can't win again? Betting against him has not worked out entirely to his critics' advantage.
Most of us can separate our views from our wallet. Lost on him in the leadership contest and won backing a bigger Tory majority than expected in the GE. Current betfair prices not quite enough to take him on for me, but could drift towards value. Best value way to take him leaving in 2021 imo is backing Patel as next PM. Sunak obvious and correct fav, think Gove's had his time, Raab looks weak and the party not ready for Hunt (or Javid).
Don't forget the tariff-free import of British cars into Japan, helping support thousands of British jobs.
Hondas? Nissans? Or has my irony meter crashed?
Are they still making Land Rovers in Britain because there's definitely a market for those. Probably not a *huge* one, but a win's a win.
From Da Wiki:
Jaguar Land Rover manufactures Land Rover cars in plants in five countries.[37] In the United Kingdom the Range Rover, Range Rover Sport and Range Rover Velar are built at their Solihull plant near Birmingham and the Discovery Sport and Evoque are built at their Halewood plant near Liverpool. In October 2018 JLR openend a new plant in Nitra, Slovakia to build the Discovery,[37] and are now also building the 2020 Defender there.[38] In Brazil the company builds both the Discovery Sport and Evoque in their plant in Itatiaia which was opened in June 2016.[37] JLR has been building cars since 2011 in Pune, India and currently builds the Discovery Sport and Evoque there.[37] Under a 50/50 joint venture with Chery at Changshu in China Discovery Sports and Evoques are also built.[37]
Historically Land Rovers were manufactured primarily at the Solihull plant until production of the Freelander was moved to the Halewood plant. The Freelander was also assembled in CKD form at Land Rover's facility in Pune, India.[39] As of 2015, the company continued to expand by building locally in India as well as increasing the number of models made at JLR’s Chikhali facility near Pune to include the Discovery Sport and Evoque.[40]
Defender models were assembled under licence in several locations worldwide, including Spain (Santana Motors), Iran (Pazhan Morattab), Brazil (Karmann), and Turkey (Otokar).[41]
I see Biden Trump are basically back at level pegging again.
I assumed Trump backers were looking for a good set of polls to justify their betting with the hope of further tightening down the stretch. Aside from a single moderately good PA poll for Trump (He's still 4 points behind on this poll but hey ho) there doesn't seem to be much sign of that - but they're continuing to plough in anyway ?
Don't forget the tariff-free import of British cars into Japan, helping support thousands of British jobs.
There are already no import tariffs on foreign cars into Japan.
The British "premium" brands are never going to sell more than tiny numbers in Japan because they are simply too big for most Japanese roads and garages (3 Series come with different door handles in Japan to make them 20mm narrower) and they won't invest the money to provide the sort of dealership experience expected in Japan.
What's your logic here, that it's good for the EU but laughable for the UK?
If it's the deal we already have, it's not a HUGE win...
You may have missed it, but we are leaving the EU. So making deals like this on a country-by-country basis will be necessary.
I'm still not sure what your point is though. If you think it was a good deal while we are in the EU, why did you share a tweet with a picture of EU leaders laughing at a deal that trades cars for cheeses, when they themselves have almost the same deal?
What's your logic here, that it's good for the EU but laughable for the UK?
If it's the deal we already have, it's not a HUGE win...
I don't know how to break it to you but at the moment actually getting a deal that is identical to what we already have is better than what we will achieve in a lot of other places.
We are not negotiating from a position of strength no matter what Boris and co have led you to believe.
I love the ease and functionality of Amazon, but they really are gaining too much power.
I know the Chancellor wants to ensure the high street can compete on a level playing field tax wise with Amazon but otherwise would leave the market to decide how much power Amazon get, I know as I asked him yesterday evening on a Zoom call with Chingford association and ours
I look forward to seeing how he taxes Amazon's warehouses in a way that is equivalent to the high street business rates.
Timetable will not be helped by the PM standing down.
In Japan.
I doubt it'll make any difference. It's much more important to the UK than it is to Japan, it's definitely not the kind of thing where you wouldn't want to bind your successor.
Brexit Britain doesn't have many obvious allies it shares close interests with, once it rejects the entirety of Europe. Japan is one of the more likely ones. I would say this deal is relatively important. I mean Brexit is nonsense, but as we are going ahead with it in a particularly ideological way, we have to take the breaks where we can.
Don't forget the tariff-free import of British cars into Japan, helping support thousands of British jobs.
There are already no import tariffs on foreign cars into Japan.
The British "premium" brands are never going to sell more than tiny numbers in Japan because they are simply too big for most Japanese roads and garages (3 Series come with different door handles in Japan to make them 20mm narrower) and they won't invest the money to provide the sort of dealership experience expected in Japan.
Plenty of Jap-spec S-classes and G-Wagens end up in the sandpit, so the space issue can't be too bad for the purchasers of premium cars. Weirdly, they're left hand drive too! I agree it's probably more of a problem at the 3-series level, where the average Japanese middle-class garage is too small. No European or American manufacturers make the JDM kai cars that make up the majority of Japanese sales.
Don't know how true that is - but it's definitely made me chuckle this morning.
It's very similar to the EU-Japan agreement, in fact. Another example of the EU good, UK bad meme.
The UK produces a lot less cheese than Germany, Italy and France. Holland exports 5 times as much as we do. Small countries like Ireland, Belgium and Denmark export more than we do.
A deal around cheese for cars might make sense for the EU but be bad for the UK. Not a trade, cheese or car expert so no idea if it is or not but a good deal for EU-Japan will be different to a good deal for UK-Japan.
One of the points of Brexit was supposed to be that our trade deals would be different, tailored to our economy rather than the EU as a whole.
If they're the same as the EU's then where is the advantage?
Abbott is only in the frame because he tickled Boris's ego by lauding Brexit - one of the few 'world statesmen' who did. I feel a bit sorry for Hancock for being forced to pretend it's because of anything else.
It's definitely nothing to do with him being on good terms with all the TPP nations, as the UK seeks to join that trade group.
I would challenge Abbot being on good terms with TPP nations. AIUI he's not even on good terms with Australia.
This government is making a lot of very dodgy appointments. Abbott is a level beyond. This is pure trolling.
Here's Boris floundering and obfuscating about his disgraceful episode with "great chap" Darius Guppy on HIGNFY ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUDEpqyJ-_w
How the hell have Britain and America ended up with leaders who are totally unfit for office?
How Britain ended up with Boris is very simple. The hardcore Remoaners wouldn’t vote for Mrs May’s deal, because they thought they could overturn the vote of the British Public to leave the EU.
And SKS was most at fault for this. Labour could have backed Mays deal, but he loved getting on the BBC rubbishing it. It was a completely hopleless political judgement which led to an 80 seat tory majority. All SKS lovers should remember how badly he played 2019.
Umm, Corbyn was the Labour leader who failed miserably at every single stage of Brexit. At least he has gone now, but he's done massive damage to the UK and Europe. He should have resigned the day after the referendum vote in 2016, like Cameron did. But the idiot was always a Brexiteer so he stayed on to make sure we ended up with a hard Brexit. Unforgiveable.
Starmer has a black mark for remaining part of Corbyn's team, but I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt as if he hadn't we might have ended up with a useless Corbynite as Labour leader now.
Ok but don't forget how much SKS enjoyed rubbsihing Mays deal without realising what the obvious outcome was, a huge Tory majority, as SKS thought that he could overturn a democratic vote because he did not agree with it. Boris may be a dick but he played 2019 perfectly. He was ridiculed on this site consistently for losing parliamentary vote after vote but he knew the resentment that was building up in the Country. Something SKS in his London bubble failed to see coming.
Starmer knew perfectly well what was coming - he saw the polling. Luckily for Labour, he managed to get the party to a point where it was able to recoup most of the votes it was in damger of losing to the LibDems. This saved Labour from a far worse defeat than might otherwise have been the case.
So SKS was happy with a 80 seat tory majority and a potential hard Brexit?. I think SKS thought he could prevent Brexit. He thought that he could go against a democratic vote. It did not take a rocket scientist to realise the resentment that was building up. SKS was fuelled by a compliant media which loved hearing his views on why Brexit was bad, while all the time people were shouting at the TV with anger that their vote to leave was not being respected. The Tories were completely split, if he had agreed to Mays deal the tories would have split in two. Boris would not be PM. As I said earlier it was the worst piece of political judgement in decades, all fueled by his ego and blinkered view.
I imagine Starmer was devestated by an 80-seat Tory majority. I also imagine he knows it could have been a whole lot worse. The decsion to back May's deal was not his to make, it was the party leader's. My guess is that Starmer's judgement on Brexit will come to be seen as the right one.
No European or American manufacturers make the JDM kai cars that make up the majority of Japanese sales.
Smart made a kei car model in France for Japan. I think they sold two.
Somebody once told me that a Caterham Seven is technically a kei car too but the person who told me owns a Seven so he is obviously brain damaged and can be ignored.
No European or American manufacturers make the JDM kai cars that make up the majority of Japanese sales.
Smart made a kei car model in France for Japan. I think they sold two.
Somebody once told me that a Caterham Seven is technically a kei car too but the person who told me owns a Seven so he is obviously brain damaged and can be ignored.
Doesn't it have to have a 600cc engine to be a kei car? Maybe you can get a kit Seven and put a bike engine in it, it's probably small enough to qualify, if a rather mad choice!
Interesting article on this. Point is, people who vote Conservative don't care about integrity and competence. Should be uncomfortable for Conservatives and non-Conservatives alike.
Comments
To one extent you can solve the issue by automating tasks but you do reach the point which we have where the next level up simple can't pay enough to make it worthwhile.
If the Brexit we get proves a catastrophe then Labour's fingerprints are all over the failure to get a softer deal. If all goes well Labour get no credit for it as they have not done anything to make it happen.
The politics of opposition does not work well in a time of national crisis which transcends party.
Tickling BoZo's ego (mind bleach) is the only reason Hancock still has a job
However without Trump voters as 2018 showed they do worse
Remember that a lot of Trump’s behaviour is anathema to actual libertarians. It’s lazy thinking to assume they will all switch to the GOP.
There's no question that those who wanted to steer Brexit in a much harder direction played their hand well, and those who didn't didn't. But there's a helluva jump from there to Johnson's Brexit is the Remainer's fault. TM won the party vote of confidence 200-117. Collaborating with the enemy to get a vassal state Brexit through would surely have flipped another 40-odd MPs against her. And then what?
The rebuttal was "it's all an act, he'll calm down when he gets in". I wonder how those people feel today.
Of course I feel a great responsibility for this situation as if we had not put up such a poor alternative, he wouldn't be PM today.
Why did they all drop out to leave the going-demented septuagenarian as the last man just about standing and trying to talk?
They're making many of the same mistakes they made four years ago, if they're not careful they'll finish with the same result as Hilary come November.
48% will blame the government
60% won’t give a toss until it affects them.
Starmer leading labour would have seen a Norway style deal
The next few months are going to be very rocky.
Enobling Claire Fox, appointing Tony Abbott and Boris 's own shambolic way would normally be very detrimental to the government but covid and how it plays out will be the defining moment for the conservative party and of course so will Brexit
However, soon the ECHR report will land in the public domain and Starmer has to remove Corbyn and his cabal from the party otherwise Starmer will be seen as continuing his appeasement that he showed whilst in the shadow cabinet
Furthermore, Brexit will itself be a challenge for him , as will Scotland as without Scotland he is unlikely to become PM
Overall politics is a complete mess and I do look forward to Boris standing down in the first 6 months of 2021, fingers crossed
As has been pointed out, with the newly developed rapid tests, they fail to detect infection (or at least PCR positive individuals, which isn't necessarily the same as active infection) somewhere around 5-10% of the time. The number of false positives much lower.
Detecting 90% of those who might currently be infectious in real time (as opposed to the current 1-2 days) is obviously better than not testing at all.
These are cheap and easily administered tests, and could potentially be used in schools, workplaces, airports etc. Their mass use could be transformative in terms of returning to something close to normal life.
Also according to my Twitter feed, which is rarely wrong, the current Libertarian candidate is a bit meh. It might all have been different if John McAfee had run, but sadly he couldn't make the hustings because he had that prior engagement at a whale fucking contest.
https://twitter.com/Politics_Polls/status/1301323585957621760?s=19
https://www.tokyoreview.net/2019/02/cars-for-cheese-a-look-at-the-eu-japan-epa/
It's really very silly. Boris will never be more vulnerable than he is this year - the pandemic, recovering his own health, a potential No Deal. If his enemies don't get him in the next 6 months, then you're going to be stuck with him for a long time. And if he gets to 2024, are you really certain he can't win again? Betting against him has not worked out entirely to his critics' advantage.
Or has my irony meter crashed?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Libertarian_Party_presidential_primaries
That might be worth a point to Trump, if Jorgensen gets nowhere in the campaign.
If however Labour build a clear poll lead, likely after a recession as furlough ends and following a WTO terms Brexit then Boris will be in danger.
Yet the Tories would still need to consider whether picking Sunak for instance and a softer Brexit and deal with the EU to win Remainers lost to Starmer Labour and the LDs will win more votes than Leavers who would go back to Farage and the Brexit Party
EU 54.8%
US 18.9%
China 5.3%
Japan 3.2%
Canada 2.2%
Australia 1.9%
Israel 1.2%
Ukraine 1.2%
South Korea 1.2%
Russia 1.0%
https://www.smmt.co.uk/industry-topics/europe-and-international-trade/key-exports-data/
And yes, maybe a few Nissans from Sunderland.
On July 20th the national polling average was approx a 9 point lead, the best Biden has had since getting the nom and mostly based on Trump's polling being at his nadir. However in Morning Consult Wisconsin data on the 20th of July the gap was at it's smallest 2 points with Trump at his highest polling in the state, and based on a consistent climb over the preceding 10 days.
That is hugely important. There is a fundamental assumption built into most analysis that there is some form of universal swing even if it is dampened/enhanced across the states.
If there is counter-national swing then that chucks it all out of the window,
https://www.gtreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/News-Story_Map_No-stickers.jpg
Trump to win: @2.04
GOP to get majority in the house: @4.3
Does not compute
But it just seems like PB is over-analysing and being too-clever-by half about what is actually a fairly straightforward situation: Trump is a weak incumbent facing a reasonable challenger in Biden. He is consistently 6-8 points under water in the polls and also behind in the states that matter. His behaviour has repelled a large number of swing voters and his base is not enough on its own to win.
To me it feels like much of the commentariat is being influenced by both the polling errors in 2016 (despite a very strong performance by the 2018 opinion polls) and their personal biases - e.g. several right wing posters expecting a negative reaction to the Wisconsin violence, which appears to have actually had no impact on the polling.
Trump is not out of this, but he's a clear underdog and there is still plenty of potential downside for him, most obviously form another COVID resurgence as the weather starts to cool. It's just as likely (perhaps more likely) that Biden wins in a 2008-level landslide than Trump wins.
A deal around cheese for cars might make sense for the EU but be bad for the UK. Not a trade, cheese or car expert so no idea if it is or not but a good deal for EU-Japan will be different to a good deal for UK-Japan.
I still think the debates could yet make the difference. One incoherent response from Biden and he is sunk. (Yes, I know, Trump will only give incoherent responses....but that is in the price of a chunky Biden lead. People want BETTER.)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-54009484
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-trade-japan/britain-is-optimistic-about-reaching-trade-deal-with-japan-says-pms-spokesman-idUKKBN25S50U
In Japan.
The danger for those of us betting, is that the national polls don't pick up the nuances of the swings in the key states. We know Biden is piling up votes in California, even more so than Hilary did, but he only needs a 1% swing in the Mid West to take a number of states there.
Traditionally, state-level polling has been rubbish in the USA, with key demographics missed and political activists over-represented in online samples.
There's also an ongoing issue with spam phone calls and political robocalls in the US, most people won't pick up the phone to an unknown number and those that do are unrepresentative of the population.
The real reason for higher minimum wages however is that governments can outsource their social security obligations to employers. Landing employers with this charge was one of Johnson's big claims at the last election (he didn't quite put it that way ... lol)
I have a similar anecdote with car rental. Car rental agent is an attractive minimum wage job if you are a people person. You deal with an interesting product and interact with customers in a much more engaging way than, say, in a call centre. Car rental manager is a shitty job. You have to deal with staffing and turn up if you can't get someone for a shift; you have to face angry customers when something goes wrong and deal with them crashing the cars and so on. Most of your additional pay is the form of bonus, which depends on your staff selling enough upgrades. So people come in as counter clerks, enjoy it and do a good job, get promoted to manager and leave within six months.
UK probably has the biggest plants at the moment.
Still hoping to cash out before the election though.
This isn't to say that TPP wouldn't be nice to have, but it's geographically a long way away.
Also don't forget Japan could tariff free export cars to the EU too.
Of all Scott's stupid retweets this has to be the stupidest yet.
Jaguar Land Rover manufactures Land Rover cars in plants in five countries.[37] In the United Kingdom the Range Rover, Range Rover Sport and Range Rover Velar are built at their Solihull plant near Birmingham and the Discovery Sport and Evoque are built at their Halewood plant near Liverpool. In October 2018 JLR openend a new plant in Nitra, Slovakia to build the Discovery,[37] and are now also building the 2020 Defender there.[38] In Brazil the company builds both the Discovery Sport and Evoque in their plant in Itatiaia which was opened in June 2016.[37] JLR has been building cars since 2011 in Pune, India and currently builds the Discovery Sport and Evoque there.[37] Under a 50/50 joint venture with Chery at Changshu in China Discovery Sports and Evoques are also built.[37]
Historically Land Rovers were manufactured primarily at the Solihull plant until production of the Freelander was moved to the Halewood plant. The Freelander was also assembled in CKD form at Land Rover's facility in Pune, India.[39] As of 2015, the company continued to expand by building locally in India as well as increasing the number of models made at JLR’s Chikhali facility near Pune to include the Discovery Sport and Evoque.[40]
Defender models were assembled under licence in several locations worldwide, including Spain (Santana Motors), Iran (Pazhan Morattab), Brazil (Karmann), and Turkey (Otokar).[41]
Swapping 4 cars for cheese they can't eat really isn't the deal of a lifetime guys.
The British "premium" brands are never going to sell more than tiny numbers in Japan because they are simply too big for most Japanese roads and garages (3 Series come with different door handles in Japan to make them 20mm narrower) and they won't invest the money to provide the sort of dealership experience expected in Japan.
I'm still not sure what your point is though. If you think it was a good deal while we are in the EU, why did you share a tweet with a picture of EU leaders laughing at a deal that trades cars for cheeses, when they themselves have almost the same deal?
We are not negotiating from a position of strength no matter what Boris and co have led you to believe.
If that is the path we are on, it's the best news all summer.
If they're the same as the EU's then where is the advantage?
This government is making a lot of very dodgy appointments. Abbott is a level beyond. This is pure trolling.
Somebody once told me that a Caterham Seven is technically a kei car too but the person who told me owns a Seven so he is obviously brain damaged and can be ignored.
https://twitter.com/jamesjohnson252/status/1301187599864864771