This claims that the Dems are signing up way more new voters than the GOP, and the difference comes down to differences in the way counties hose out people who have moved from their voter files.
I’ve never, in my entire life, had a canvasser knock on my door. I feel deprived.
Do you live in a marginal seat or marginal council ward? If not that is why
So Gallowgate's vote is worth less than the vote of someone who lives in a marginal. Worth less in an economic sense. Parties think that is is not worthwhile using up their resources knocking on his door.
Under FPTP no, under PR maybe, so he might have got a knock in the European elections or if he lived in London, Scotland and Wales when the Mayoral and Assembly and Scottish Parliament elections were up but otherwise no
Thank you HYUFD.
Some other people on this forum claim that in FPTP everyone's vote carries the same worth.
An excellent article indeed - it all sounds very exciting!
Even in today's revolting climate this article is a bit breathlessly overdone. You wouldn't notice from reading it that we have OMOV elections and a parliamentary democracy or that the Gramsci tactics have not mostly come from the centre right.
Would you do notice is that a good number of elites who have been very used to getting their way are having their noses put out of joint by actual people with actual opinions.
Nor would you notice that but for the extremes and contradictions of the Labour party we could now have a soft Brexit and a centre left government.
The article, correctly, points out that the current government is in the process of dismantlling our current Parliamentary democracy. We will see what it is replaced with.
What they're dismantling, if anything, is the left-wing establishment that has infiltrated so many of our institutions. That's what they were elected to do by our, y'know, Parliamentary democracy.
The Tories have been in power 10 years!
Half the time with the Lib Dems, less than 3 years with any majority of their own. Now that they have received a thumping mandate, it should be exercised to the fullest.
The government lied to win the last election. Of that there is now no doubt.
An excellent article indeed - it all sounds very exciting!
Even in today's revolting climate this article is a bit breathlessly overdone. You wouldn't notice from reading it that we have OMOV elections and a parliamentary democracy or that the Gramsci tactics have not mostly come from the centre right.
Would you do notice is that a good number of elites who have been very used to getting their way are having their noses put out of joint by actual people with actual opinions.
Nor would you notice that but for the extremes and contradictions of the Labour party we could now have a soft Brexit and a centre left government.
The article, correctly, points out that the current government is in the process of dismantlling our current Parliamentary democracy. We will see what it is replaced with.
What they're dismantling, if anything, is the left-wing establishment that has infiltrated so many of our institutions. That's what they were elected to do by our, y'know, Parliamentary democracy.
The Tories have been in power 10 years!
Half the time with the Lib Dems, less than 3 years with any majority of their own. Now that they have received a thumping mandate, it should be exercised to the fullest.
... but preferably to the benefit of the British public. Otherwise the Conservatives will go the way of the US Republicans (if there's any justice).
An excellent article indeed - it all sounds very exciting!
Even in today's revolting climate this article is a bit breathlessly overdone. You wouldn't notice from reading it that we have OMOV elections and a parliamentary democracy or that the Gramsci tactics have not mostly come from the centre right.
Would you do notice is that a good number of elites who have been very used to getting their way are having their noses put out of joint by actual people with actual opinions.
Nor would you notice that but for the extremes and contradictions of the Labour party we could now have a soft Brexit and a centre left government.
The article, correctly, points out that the current government is in the process of dismantlling our current Parliamentary democracy. We will see what it is replaced with.
What they're dismantling, if anything, is the left-wing establishment that has infiltrated so many of our institutions. That's what they were elected to do by our, y'know, Parliamentary democracy.
Do you not think that this is why Boris's latest stupidity is not cutting through to the polling? The vast majority of people simply will not think any more about Brexit under any circumstances. It is just too boring for words.
Rejoining the EU in the next decade is for the birds.
You'd have though so. But I think it was one of the SeanTs who pointed out that Brexit could go so badly that rejoin is a viable manifesto plan for the 2024 election. In which case 2029 is possible.
Had the May and Johnson carefully planted the UK just outside the EU stockade, some variant of EEA with some controls on movement of people, it's likely that would have stuck. Divergence would have happened, as the EU 27 got closer together. Maybe Sweden and some others would have joined us. There are good structural reasons why they didn't go that path, maybe they had no choice even in Autumn 2016. But it would have created a Brexit that stuck, because nobody would really have had much pragmatic cause for complaint.
The Brexit on offer is much more problematic. Even if it works overall (hmm...) the effect on some individuals and sectors will be horrible. There will be people with very valid complaints and Brejoin will be the answer to their problems- even if it comes with horrible strings attached.
Meanwhile the geography and demography won't go away. There's a Brexit Bulge generation; they grew up in the 1950s, were the main source of Out votes in 1975 and Leave votes in 2016. With great respect, they won't be voting forever and there's not much reason to think that the generations below them will become less cosmopolitan as they age.
More voters think Brexit is a bad idea than a good one- and that's before any chickens come home to roost. And Starmer? He's a smart lawyer. He'll ask the public what they think about Brejoin if/when he knows what their answer will be. That's likely to happen, but now is not the time.
Do you think the EU would have us back as full members?
I think the EU are smart enough to distinguish between a country and its former leaders.
Do you not think that this is why Boris's latest stupidity is not cutting through to the polling? The vast majority of people simply will not think any more about Brexit under any circumstances. It is just too boring for words.
An excellent article indeed - it all sounds very exciting!
Even in today's revolting climate this article is a bit breathlessly overdone. You wouldn't notice from reading it that we have OMOV elections and a parliamentary democracy or that the Gramsci tactics have not mostly come from the centre right.
Would you do notice is that a good number of elites who have been very used to getting their way are having their noses put out of joint by actual people with actual opinions.
Nor would you notice that but for the extremes and contradictions of the Labour party we could now have a soft Brexit and a centre left government.
The article, correctly, points out that the current government is in the process of dismantlling our current Parliamentary democracy. We will see what it is replaced with.
What they're dismantling, if anything, is the left-wing establishment that has infiltrated so many of our institutions. That's what they were elected to do by our, y'know, Parliamentary democracy.
Calling something a left-wing establishment because you do not like it for some reason is not the same as it being a left-wing establishment.
However, let's look at the government's decision to by-pass Parliament through reducing its ability to question ministers and scrutinise ministerial decsions. In what way is Parliament a left-wing establishment?
Their love of state aid?
One of the reasons the government is so keen to avoid Parliamentary scrutiny is because it seems to want to give so much public money to people who just so happen to mates with members of the government, and it doesn't want to be questioned about it.
It's good news for sure but I wouldn't call it world beating.
Growth trajectory is down, this month was lower than June
That's not the way it works, especially considering these are month on month figures not year on year ones.
As you get closer to being back to 100% there is less room to catch up so you would expect the MoM growth figures to slow down even if there is a v-shaped recovery. If we had 6.6% growth again in August and September then by end of September the UK economy would be ~100.3% of its pre-COVID amount. The recession would have been eliminated completely.
I'm glad you acknowledge it isn't world-beating.
Who says it isn't?
Who grew faster in July?
Most countries don't publish monthly GDP data so we don't know. I would expect the UK's Q3 GDP growth to be the highest in the G7 on a quarter on quarter basis but the lowest on a year on year basis*. What we do know for sure is that the drop in GDP in Q2 was the largest of any major economy. If we recover sharply in Q3 but remain adrift of pre-Covid levels by more than other major economies I would not class that as a win. * I think Spain could end up down by more than us after Q3, but they are not in the G7.
If. Very hard to predict at the moment but it may be having a services dominated economy means that we bounce back a little better than most. We might only be down 20 years of the alleged effects of Brexit instead of 40. Which would be good(ish), I suppose.
Actually because the UK publishes monthly data we have a decent idea what Q3 GDP will be: I think it's highly likely it is in a 13%-21% kind of range. 17% would be my point estimate. We are a lot more uncertain about other countries. There are unofficial monthly GDP data for the US, and so we have some clarity there, and 7% looks like a reasonable forecast. But their economy was down 9% in Q2 while ours was down 20%, so it is obvious why we are going to have better growth in Q3.
I've been canvassed once, by the Labour Party. I was asked who I'd voted for last time and I said the Tories - and the guy made a note on his clipboard and said they wouldn't knock on my door again. They stuck to their word.
IF you were a savvy, old-school partisan, you'd have invited him in for a spot of tea, then spent next half hour keeping him from knocking on other doors.
The best way to avoid being canvassed is to say you’re a JW they won’t come back.
Do you not think that this is why Boris's latest stupidity is not cutting through to the polling? The vast majority of people simply will not think any more about Brexit under any circumstances. It is just too boring for words.
How many polls have there been since this latest stupidity hit the headlines?
Rejoining the EU in the next decade is for the birds.
You'd have though so. But I think it was one of the SeanTs who pointed out that Brexit could go so badly that rejoin is a viable manifesto plan for the 2024 election. In which case 2029 is possible.
Had the May and Johnson carefully planted the UK just outside the EU stockade, some variant of EEA with some controls on movement of people, it's likely that would have stuck. Divergence would have happened, as the EU 27 got closer together. Maybe Sweden and some others would have joined us. There are good structural reasons why they didn't go that path, maybe they had no choice even in Autumn 2016. But it would have created a Brexit that stuck, because nobody would really have had much pragmatic cause for complaint.
The Brexit on offer is much more problematic. Even if it works overall (hmm...) the effect on some individuals and sectors will be horrible. There will be people with very valid complaints and Brejoin will be the answer to their problems- even if it comes with horrible strings attached.
Meanwhile the geography and demography won't go away. There's a Brexit Bulge generation; they grew up in the 1950s, were the main source of Out votes in 1975 and Leave votes in 2016. With great respect, they won't be voting forever and there's not much reason to think that the generations below them will become less cosmopolitan as they age.
More voters think Brexit is a bad idea than a good one- and that's before any chickens come home to roost. And Starmer? He's a smart lawyer. He'll ask the public what they think about Brejoin if/when he knows what their answer will be. That's likely to happen, but now is not the time.
Do you think the EU would have us back as full members?
Probably yes, but we won't ever get as favourable terms as we had before the referendum.
An excellent article indeed - it all sounds very exciting!
Even in today's revolting climate this article is a bit breathlessly overdone. You wouldn't notice from reading it that we have OMOV elections and a parliamentary democracy or that the Gramsci tactics have not mostly come from the centre right.
Would you do notice is that a good number of elites who have been very used to getting their way are having their noses put out of joint by actual people with actual opinions.
Nor would you notice that but for the extremes and contradictions of the Labour party we could now have a soft Brexit and a centre left government.
The article, correctly, points out that the current government is in the process of dismantlling our current Parliamentary democracy. We will see what it is replaced with.
What they're dismantling, if anything, is the left-wing establishment that has infiltrated so many of our institutions. That's what they were elected to do by our, y'know, Parliamentary democracy.
Calling something a left-wing establishment because you do not like it for some reason is not the same as it being a left-wing establishment.
However, let's look at the government's decision to by-pass Parliament through reducing its ability to question ministers and scrutinise ministerial decsions. In what way is Parliament a left-wing establishment?
Their love of state aid?
One of the reasons the government is so keen to avoid Parliamentary scrutiny is because it seems to want to give so much public money to people who just so happen to mates with members of the government, and it doesn't want to be questioned about it.
Any more non-tendered contracts for cronies first this week?
Do you think the EU would have us back as full members?
Definitely, it would be a vindication, and hopefully still a net budget contribution assuming the damage to the economy isn't too bad.
However a harder question is whether the British could get back in on the same terms as before; I expect the rebate would be gone, and although the Swedish cheat codes would probably still work for the Euro and nobody would want to complicate an already complicated situation, the British may not be able to get an *official* statement to that effect, which may make a Brejoin referendum harder to win.
It's good news for sure but I wouldn't call it world beating.
Growth trajectory is down, this month was lower than June
That's not the way it works, especially considering these are month on month figures not year on year ones.
As you get closer to being back to 100% there is less room to catch up so you would expect the MoM growth figures to slow down even if there is a v-shaped recovery. If we had 6.6% growth again in August and September then by end of September the UK economy would be ~100.3% of its pre-COVID amount. The recession would have been eliminated completely.
I'm glad you acknowledge it isn't world-beating.
Who says it isn't?
Who grew faster in July?
Most countries don't publish monthly GDP data so we don't know. I would expect the UK's Q3 GDP growth to be the highest in the G7 on a quarter on quarter basis but the lowest on a year on year basis*. What we do know for sure is that the drop in GDP in Q2 was the largest of any major economy. If we recover sharply in Q3 but remain adrift of pre-Covid levels by more than other major economies I would not class that as a win. * I think Spain could end up down by more than us after Q3, but they are not in the G7.
If. Very hard to predict at the moment but it may be having a services dominated economy means that we bounce back a little better than most. We might only be down 20 years of the alleged effects of Brexit instead of 40. Which would be good(ish), I suppose.
Actually because the UK publishes monthly data we have a decent idea what Q3 GDP will be: I think it's highly likely it is in a 13%-21% kind of range. 17% would be my point estimate. We are a lot more uncertain about other countries. There are unofficial monthly GDP data for the US, and so we have some clarity there, and 7% looks like a reasonable forecast. But their economy was down 9% in Q2 while ours was down 20%, so it is obvious why we are going to have better growth in Q3.
I agree with that but if you are estimating a 7% range in GDP growth for a single quarter I think my observation that things are hard to predict has merit! That's normally about 2.5 years worth!
Do you not think that this is why Boris's latest stupidity is not cutting through to the polling? The vast majority of people simply will not think any more about Brexit under any circumstances. It is just too boring for words.
How many polls have there been since this latest stupidity hit the headlines?
DavidL is right, though. As noted member of the left-wing establishment David Herdson says: "Democracy tends to be as fragile or robust as the desire of its practitioners to maintain it. The public understands neither the 'what' nor the 'why' of a lot of the essential system that supports it."
An excellent article indeed - it all sounds very exciting!
Even in today's revolting climate this article is a bit breathlessly overdone. You wouldn't notice from reading it that we have OMOV elections and a parliamentary democracy or that the Gramsci tactics have not mostly come from the centre right.
Would you do notice is that a good number of elites who have been very used to getting their way are having their noses put out of joint by actual people with actual opinions.
Nor would you notice that but for the extremes and contradictions of the Labour party we could now have a soft Brexit and a centre left government.
The article, correctly, points out that the current government is in the process of dismantlling our current Parliamentary democracy. We will see what it is replaced with.
What they're dismantling, if anything, is the left-wing establishment that has infiltrated so many of our institutions. That's what they were elected to do by our, y'know, Parliamentary democracy.
To you the left starts at Gengis Kan
Well, Genghis Khan, but I take your point. He was a bit of a wet, really
I don't want to bore people with my family circumstances but I think that they are a good example of the problems. My daughter went to the restaurant (now closed) in Glasgow on Wednesday night. Yesterday she met her brother's girlfriend in another restaurant in Dundee for 3 hours without masks. Today that girlfriend will have gone into school...
What can we draw from this? The most obvious point is that my daughter has a much better social life than me but more fundamentally and generally track and trace is just never going to keep up with these contacts and possible trails of infection. It's just impossible. T&T may identify some of the potential infection and thus reduce the R number but it cannot be the answer. It's always going to be too slow.
I think its this conclusion which has driven the government to the mass testing talked about yesterday. It is logistically challenging and frighteningly expensive but nothing else is going to work.
An app, that is much more likely to be used by young people, would certainly help...
Germany too had problems implementing a track and trace app and did a U-turn in the tracking method to implement. The "Corona-Warn" app was eventually released in mid-June. WTF is going on in the UK so that 3 months after Germany finally got the app working, the UK still has no widely available app. That is a disgrace.
Is there any data on whether the German app actually did any good? We have one here but I doubt enough people are using it to make a dent, and you don't hear much about it any more.
I don't know about Germany, but in Ireland they released something a while ago about a handful of contacts being traced by the app. It was distinctly underwhelming.
There just aren't enough people using it. Take up has crept up to 36% (at best) which means about one-eighth of contacts could be traced using it, if it worked perfectly.
30% of new cases in Ireland have no known source of transmission, which is even worse than it looks given that when one person in a household catches it you will identify when they pass it on to the rest of the family. So it's almost certain that the majority of inter-household transmission is via unknown means.
Even six months on from lockdown we still haven't got a handle on how it's spreading.
Rejoining the EU in the next decade is for the birds.
You'd have though so. But I think it was one of the SeanTs who pointed out that Brexit could go so badly that rejoin is a viable manifesto plan for the 2024 election. In which case 2029 is possible.
Had the May and Johnson carefully planted the UK just outside the EU stockade, some variant of EEA with some controls on movement of people, it's likely that would have stuck. Divergence would have happened, as the EU 27 got closer together. Maybe Sweden and some others would have joined us. There are good structural reasons why they didn't go that path, maybe they had no choice even in Autumn 2016. But it would have created a Brexit that stuck, because nobody would really have had much pragmatic cause for complaint.
The Brexit on offer is much more problematic. Even if it works overall (hmm...) the effect on some individuals and sectors will be horrible. There will be people with very valid complaints and Brejoin will be the answer to their problems- even if it comes with horrible strings attached.
Meanwhile the geography and demography won't go away. There's a Brexit Bulge generation; they grew up in the 1950s, were the main source of Out votes in 1975 and Leave votes in 2016. With great respect, they won't be voting forever and there's not much reason to think that the generations below them will become less cosmopolitan as they age.
More voters think Brexit is a bad idea than a good one- and that's before any chickens come home to roost. And Starmer? He's a smart lawyer. He'll ask the public what they think about Brejoin if/when he knows what their answer will be. That's likely to happen, but now is not the time.
Do you think the EU would have us back as full members?
I think the EU are smart enough to distinguish between a country and its former leaders.
The reality is the country is and has always been divided on this and either side can have a majority at a given point in time. Its not just our leaders.
Not sure why that would change in the 2030s, and its way too disruptive for everyone to turn the UK-EU relationship into hokey-cokey. Some form of associate membership feels much more likely to be palatable to the EU than full membership, even if the UK wants to rejoin at a particular point of time.
Do you not think that this is why Boris's latest stupidity is not cutting through to the polling? The vast majority of people simply will not think any more about Brexit under any circumstances. It is just too boring for words.
They will be thinking about in January.
Thinking, weird the sea has not caught fire, the hills have not melted, my first born is still alive. Is that it? An extra 50p on my bottle of chablis?
It's good news for sure but I wouldn't call it world beating.
Growth trajectory is down, this month was lower than June
That's not the way it works, especially considering these are month on month figures not year on year ones.
As you get closer to being back to 100% there is less room to catch up so you would expect the MoM growth figures to slow down even if there is a v-shaped recovery. If we had 6.6% growth again in August and September then by end of September the UK economy would be ~100.3% of its pre-COVID amount. The recession would have been eliminated completely.
I'm glad you acknowledge it isn't world-beating.
Who says it isn't?
Who grew faster in July?
Most countries don't publish monthly GDP data so we don't know. I would expect the UK's Q3 GDP growth to be the highest in the G7 on a quarter on quarter basis but the lowest on a year on year basis*. What we do know for sure is that the drop in GDP in Q2 was the largest of any major economy. If we recover sharply in Q3 but remain adrift of pre-Covid levels by more than other major economies I would not class that as a win. * I think Spain could end up down by more than us after Q3, but they are not in the G7.
If. Very hard to predict at the moment but it may be having a services dominated economy means that we bounce back a little better than most. We might only be down 20 years of the alleged effects of Brexit instead of 40. Which would be good(ish), I suppose.
Actually because the UK publishes monthly data we have a decent idea what Q3 GDP will be: I think it's highly likely it is in a 13%-21% kind of range. 17% would be my point estimate. We are a lot more uncertain about other countries. There are unofficial monthly GDP data for the US, and so we have some clarity there, and 7% looks like a reasonable forecast. But their economy was down 9% in Q2 while ours was down 20%, so it is obvious why we are going to have better growth in Q3.
I agree with that but if you are estimating a 7% range in GDP growth for a single quarter I think my observation that things are hard to predict has merit! That's normally about 2.5 years worth!
Do you not think that this is why Boris's latest stupidity is not cutting through to the polling? The vast majority of people simply will not think any more about Brexit under any circumstances. It is just too boring for words.
They will be thinking about in January.
Thinking, weird the sea has not caught fire, the hills have not melted, my first born is still alive. Is that it? An extra 50p on my bottle of chablis?
It’s not looking too good in California on the first two points though
Do you not think that this is why Boris's latest stupidity is not cutting through to the polling? The vast majority of people simply will not think any more about Brexit under any circumstances. It is just too boring for words.
They will be thinking about in January.
Thinking, weird the sea has not caught fire, the hills have not melted, my first born is still alive. Is that it? An extra 50p on my bottle of chablis?
It’s not looking too good in California on the first two points though
Do you not think that this is why Boris's latest stupidity is not cutting through to the polling? The vast majority of people simply will not think any more about Brexit under any circumstances. It is just too boring for words.
They will be thinking about in January.
Thinking, weird the sea has not caught fire, the hills have not melted, my first born is still alive. Is that it? An extra 50p on my bottle of chablis?
I prefer Australian wine over French wine anyway. Hopefully we can agree a deal to remove tariffs from those.
Do you not think that this is why Boris's latest stupidity is not cutting through to the polling? The vast majority of people simply will not think any more about Brexit under any circumstances. It is just too boring for words.
They will be thinking about in January.
Thinking, weird the sea has not caught fire, the hills have not melted, my first born is still alive. Is that it? An extra 50p on my bottle of chablis?
They may be thinking that the great trade deal they were promised has not materialised and that things are even shitter than they have been. We'll see.
@Casino_Royale can I ask you a question please - notwithstanding the "international law" elements which I can understand being a concern on their own right . . . you seem very keen on the idea of compromising to get a deal, even if it means compromising on the LPF.
Would you be OK with the EU telling the UK's Chancellor of the Exchequer that a tax cut that Parliament had passed in the Budget was unacceptable "state aid"? Is that in your view an acceptable price worth paying in order to get a deal, or does the idea of that disturb you?
Where's the evidence we wouldn't be able to do that in a no deal scenario without these retrograde measures?
We might be able to in a no deal scenario. There's multiple reports it could have been an issue, but that's murky and not what I was trying to get at.
That's why I said notwithstanding that, he seems to want a deal even if we weren't doing these measures whereas you seem to be against both these measures and against compromising on the LPF - he seems (if I understand correctly) to be happy to compromise on the LPF itself in order to get a deal which is why I wanted to ask the question. Does that make sense?
Again, that's not evidence. It's bullshit chatter from overzealous Eurocrats. We're in a position where we've use first strike capability and in doing so handed the initiative to the opposing side.
Just because we have the ability to go for a first strike, it doesn't mean we should. The fact is neither of us know what the EU would do if we cut corporation tax to 10% in a no deal scenario. Chances are they would just live with it and the theoretical ability to block it via the NI protocol remains theoretical because they wouldn't want to be in a first strike position either.
Nevermind.
I wasn't trying to discuss this 'strike' as you put it. Just ask the question in isolation as to whether handing the EU power to determine that a UK tax cut passed by the Chancellor is acceptable in exchange for a deal, or if that is troublesome.
Once again, there's no evidence that we've handed this power over in the WA. Them asking for it in the FTA isn't the same thing. That they are asking for it is pretty good evidence that they don't think they'd have it under a no deal scenario.
This is similar to what I said yesterday evening - why make it an issue now - why not just break it when we have to? The fact that they are making it an issue now, indicates politics, and it looks very like Doris's tactics during the prorogation fuss that led to Boris's landslide.
I don't know what they are hoping to do, but the fact is that nobody on PB has ventured to predict any of the future 'moves'. We've responded to one move with outrage or disgust, we've seen some response from the EU, but we're just reporting what is, not trying to predict what will happen.
Do you not think that this is why Boris's latest stupidity is not cutting through to the polling? The vast majority of people simply will not think any more about Brexit under any circumstances. It is just too boring for words.
They will be thinking about in January.
Thinking, weird the sea has not caught fire, the hills have not melted, my first born is still alive. Is that it? An extra 50p on my bottle of chablis?
Now, now, one has to be reasonable and state the catastrophizers' position fairly, and in their own words:
Do you not think that this is why Boris's latest stupidity is not cutting through to the polling? The vast majority of people simply will not think any more about Brexit under any circumstances. It is just too boring for words.
They will be thinking about in January.
Thinking, weird the sea has not caught fire, the hills have not melted, my first born is still alive. Is that it? An extra 50p on my bottle of chablis?
I prefer Australian wine over French wine anyway. Hopefully we can agree a deal to remove tariffs from those.
Do you not think that this is why Boris's latest stupidity is not cutting through to the polling? The vast majority of people simply will not think any more about Brexit under any circumstances. It is just too boring for words.
They will be thinking about in January.
Thinking, weird the sea has not caught fire, the hills have not melted, my first born is still alive. Is that it? An extra 50p on my bottle of chablis?
Yes, the vast majority in Dundee are definitely chablis drinkers insulated by their wealth from rises in the cost of living. It's a bit harsher outwith the hard rock candy mountain belt, though.
Do you not think that this is why Boris's latest stupidity is not cutting through to the polling? The vast majority of people simply will not think any more about Brexit under any circumstances. It is just too boring for words.
How many polls have there been since this latest stupidity hit the headlines?
DavidL is right, though. As noted member of the left-wing establishment David Herdson says: "Democracy tends to be as fragile or robust as the desire of its practitioners to maintain it. The public understands neither the 'what' nor the 'why' of a lot of the essential system that supports it."
I have a great deal of time and respect for Mr Herdson.
But to be fair that would be the same Mr Herdson who campaigned for the party when it nearly put Corbyn into Downing Street in 2017, then quit the party before it went on to get an 80 seat majority right?
@Casino_Royale can I ask you a question please - notwithstanding the "international law" elements which I can understand being a concern on their own right . . . you seem very keen on the idea of compromising to get a deal, even if it means compromising on the LPF.
Would you be OK with the EU telling the UK's Chancellor of the Exchequer that a tax cut that Parliament had passed in the Budget was unacceptable "state aid"? Is that in your view an acceptable price worth paying in order to get a deal, or does the idea of that disturb you?
Where's the evidence we wouldn't be able to do that in a no deal scenario without these retrograde measures?
We might be able to in a no deal scenario. There's multiple reports it could have been an issue, but that's murky and not what I was trying to get at.
That's why I said notwithstanding that, he seems to want a deal even if we weren't doing these measures whereas you seem to be against both these measures and against compromising on the LPF - he seems (if I understand correctly) to be happy to compromise on the LPF itself in order to get a deal which is why I wanted to ask the question. Does that make sense?
Again, that's not evidence. It's bullshit chatter from overzealous Eurocrats. We're in a position where we've use first strike capability and in doing so handed the initiative to the opposing side.
Just because we have the ability to go for a first strike, it doesn't mean we should. The fact is neither of us know what the EU would do if we cut corporation tax to 10% in a no deal scenario. Chances are they would just live with it and the theoretical ability to block it via the NI protocol remains theoretical because they wouldn't want to be in a first strike position either.
Nevermind.
I wasn't trying to discuss this 'strike' as you put it. Just ask the question in isolation as to whether handing the EU power to determine that a UK tax cut passed by the Chancellor is acceptable in exchange for a deal, or if that is troublesome.
Once again, there's no evidence that we've handed this power over in the WA. Them asking for it in the FTA isn't the same thing. That they are asking for it is pretty good evidence that they don't think they'd have it under a no deal scenario.
This is similar to what I said yesterday evening - why make it an issue now - why not just break it when we have to? The fact that they are making it an issue now, indicates politics, and it looks very like Doris's tactics during the prorogation fuss that led to Boris's landslide.
I don't know what they are hoping to do, but the fact is that nobody on PB has ventured to predict any of the future 'moves'. We've responded to one move with outrage or disgust, we've seen some response from the EU, but we're just reporting what is, not trying to predict what will happen.
Thinking, weird the sea has not caught fire, the hills have not melted, my first born is still alive. Is that it? An extra 50p on my bottle of chablis?
Put 50p on every item in your shopping basket. An extra £15 or £20 a shop will soon be noticed.
I've always thought there was a bit of a cop-out with the plot of Falling Down, when you learn at the end that the Michael Douglas character had been driven nuts several months before. They should have stuck with the idea that he was a perfectly sane and rational guy until the traffic jam, and the realization of the tedium of the modern existence, caused him to flip.
Rejoining the EU in the next decade is for the birds.
You'd have though so. But I think it was one of the SeanTs who pointed out that Brexit could go so badly that rejoin is a viable manifesto plan for the 2024 election. In which case 2029 is possible.
Had the May and Johnson carefully planted the UK just outside the EU stockade, some variant of EEA with some controls on movement of people, it's likely that would have stuck. Divergence would have happened, as the EU 27 got closer together. Maybe Sweden and some others would have joined us. There are good structural reasons why they didn't go that path, maybe they had no choice even in Autumn 2016. But it would have created a Brexit that stuck, because nobody would really have had much pragmatic cause for complaint.
The Brexit on offer is much more problematic. Even if it works overall (hmm...) the effect on some individuals and sectors will be horrible. There will be people with very valid complaints and Brejoin will be the answer to their problems- even if it comes with horrible strings attached.
Meanwhile the geography and demography won't go away. There's a Brexit Bulge generation; they grew up in the 1950s, were the main source of Out votes in 1975 and Leave votes in 2016. With great respect, they won't be voting forever and there's not much reason to think that the generations below them will become less cosmopolitan as they age.
More voters think Brexit is a bad idea than a good one- and that's before any chickens come home to roost. And Starmer? He's a smart lawyer. He'll ask the public what they think about Brejoin if/when he knows what their answer will be. That's likely to happen, but now is not the time.
Do you think the EU would have us back as full members?
I think the EU are smart enough to distinguish between a country and its former leaders.
I think they'd want to see rejoining as being the settled will of a political consensus. So it would need to be the policy of the government and the opposition. Otherwise it would seem unlikely to stick.
I don't know what they are hoping to do, but the fact is that nobody on PB has ventured to predict any of the future 'moves'. We've responded to one move with outrage or disgust, we've seen some response from the EU, but we're just reporting what is, not trying to predict what will happen.
Predictions are based on a set of rules of behaviour that allow you to make informed judgements about likely outcomes.
An excellent article indeed - it all sounds very exciting!
Even in today's revolting climate this article is a bit breathlessly overdone. You wouldn't notice from reading it that we have OMOV elections and a parliamentary democracy or that the Gramsci tactics have not mostly come from the centre right.
Would you do notice is that a good number of elites who have been very used to getting their way are having their noses put out of joint by actual people with actual opinions.
Nor would you notice that but for the extremes and contradictions of the Labour party we could now have a soft Brexit and a centre left government.
The article, correctly, points out that the current government is in the process of dismantlling our current Parliamentary democracy. We will see what it is replaced with.
I have a bridge to sell you. The foundations of our democracy are multi party free OMOV elections, and freedom of thought, political campaigning and opinion. All intact last time I looked.
The foundation of our democracy is actually the rule of law. All else springs from that. Without it, there is no guarantee of anything else.
I agree with this of course. You will either have both or neither generally.
Do you not think that this is why Boris's latest stupidity is not cutting through to the polling? The vast majority of people simply will not think any more about Brexit under any circumstances. It is just too boring for words.
They will be thinking about in January.
Thinking, weird the sea has not caught fire, the hills have not melted, my first born is still alive. Is that it? An extra 50p on my bottle of chablis?
Extra costs on Chablis are in the UK government's gift as they decide tariffs. The problem is that when damage is done, it needs to be rowed back. And it will eventually.
In the meantime the damage has got bigger, longer and requiring a more humiliating row back, thanks to the Cummings-Johnson shenanigans.
Incidentally. That the Internal Market Bill is another nail in the coffin of the Union is a more concerning cost to me than the price of Chablis.
I've been canvassed once, by the Labour Party. I was asked who I'd voted for last time and I said the Tories - and the guy made a note on his clipboard and said they wouldn't knock on my door again. They stuck to their word.
I hope he gave you a disapproving look.
He looked bored actually. I was surprised they didn't ask more questions like "why" or "what might make you change your vote" etc, especially considering it was an extremely marginal seat.
As you are aware, canvassing isn't to change anyone's mind (although many on the doorstep like a discussion/argument). It is to ensure that everyone who says they support your team is still of that view and that they will come out to vote for you on the day.
The only time I have ever been called a nazi on the doorstep, btw, was the 2017 Brexit GE for Brexit in general and in particular on account of the proposed registration of foreigners.
I’ve never, in my entire life, had a canvasser knock on my door. I feel deprived.
Do you live in a marginal seat or marginal council ward? If not that is why
So Gallowgate's vote is worth less than the vote of someone who lives in a marginal. Worth less in an economic sense. Parties think that is is not worthwhile using up their resources knocking on his door.
Exactly, the only reason the tories canvas safevseats is to find new members and deliverers, the presence of an active Lib Dem campaign in council elections tends to wake them up though.
Indeed, although the Tories won over 60% in Epping Forest last December at the general election in my ward they got only 32% in the local elections last May and the LDs got 63%
It must have been very disappointing for you that the Conservatives did so badly. Clearly the Lib Dems are the way to go in your part of the world.
Rejoining the EU in the next decade is for the birds.
You'd have though so. But I think it was one of the SeanTs who pointed out that Brexit could go so badly that rejoin is a viable manifesto plan for the 2024 election. In which case 2029 is possible.
Had the May and Johnson carefully planted the UK just outside the EU stockade, some variant of EEA with some controls on movement of people, it's likely that would have stuck. Divergence would have happened, as the EU 27 got closer together. Maybe Sweden and some others would have joined us. There are good structural reasons why they didn't go that path, maybe they had no choice even in Autumn 2016. But it would have created a Brexit that stuck, because nobody would really have had much pragmatic cause for complaint.
The Brexit on offer is much more problematic. Even if it works overall (hmm...) the effect on some individuals and sectors will be horrible. There will be people with very valid complaints and Brejoin will be the answer to their problems- even if it comes with horrible strings attached.
Meanwhile the geography and demography won't go away. There's a Brexit Bulge generation; they grew up in the 1950s, were the main source of Out votes in 1975 and Leave votes in 2016. With great respect, they won't be voting forever and there's not much reason to think that the generations below them will become less cosmopolitan as they age.
More voters think Brexit is a bad idea than a good one- and that's before any chickens come home to roost. And Starmer? He's a smart lawyer. He'll ask the public what they think about Brejoin if/when he knows what their answer will be. That's likely to happen, but now is not the time.
Do you think the EU would have us back as full members?
I think the EU are smart enough to distinguish between a country and its former leaders.
The reality is the country is and has always been divided on this and either side can have a majority at a given point in time. Its not just our leaders.
Not sure why that would change in the 2030s, and its way too disruptive for everyone to turn the UK-EU relationship into hokey-cokey. Some form of associate membership feels much more likely to be palatable to the EU than full membership, even if the UK wants to rejoin at a particular point of time.
I think I count as an arch-Remainer... but I would accept EEA
I really, really hope November looks like this. It would be the best thing for America. For both the left and the right.
Like a horror film a stake needs to be driven through the heart of Trumpism to prevent it returning. Hopefully some semblance of sanity can be restored to the GOP if this result happens, like 2019 driving away the Corbynistas.
As for the left this is perhaps the last chance for a dry and dull moderate like Biden to be put up. If he loses then expect the Democrats to veer sharply left in a "get out the vote" drive and put up someone in the AOC/Sanders ultra-left, ultra-woke mode . . . and they might go on to win after eight years of Trump in the Oval Office.
We don't need Trumpism or Wokism. This is a time for dull and dry Biden.
Do you not think that this is why Boris's latest stupidity is not cutting through to the polling? The vast majority of people simply will not think any more about Brexit under any circumstances. It is just too boring for words.
They will be thinking about in January.
Thinking, weird the sea has not caught fire, the hills have not melted, my first born is still alive. Is that it? An extra 50p on my bottle of chablis?
It’s not looking too good in California on the first two points though
Because of Brexit? Interesting.
I think the images in the news this morning must have stayed in my head and I reacted to the hills melting without thinking,.
I watched the footage and it is totally incident and usuage in context. Also, watched a video from somebody who lived in China for over 10 years, married to a Chinese lady and lectured at a Chinese university (and obviously fluent Chiness speaker) and said everything the academic was saying is 100% true.
I dont quite understand what people who take such an international communication expect, are they going to be outraged if they go to China and demand they stop using this word? Good luck with that. Besides, they should be aware of far more offensive terms like Baizuo, Gweilo or Laowai, cos they will unapologeticly hear those fired in their direction.
Do you not think that this is why Boris's latest stupidity is not cutting through to the polling? The vast majority of people simply will not think any more about Brexit under any circumstances. It is just too boring for words.
How many polls have there been since this latest stupidity hit the headlines?
DavidL is right, though. As noted member of the left-wing establishment David Herdson says: "Democracy tends to be as fragile or robust as the desire of its practitioners to maintain it. The public understands neither the 'what' nor the 'why' of a lot of the essential system that supports it."
I have a great deal of time and respect for Mr Herdson.
But to be fair that would be the same Mr Herdson who campaigned for the party when it nearly put Corbyn into Downing Street in 2017, then quit the party before it went on to get an 80 seat majority right?
He is a Conservative so is obviously very uncomfortable with any association with the party in its current form. I believe he also campaigned in 2010 and 2015
An excellent article indeed - it all sounds very exciting!
Even in today's revolting climate this article is a bit breathlessly overdone. You wouldn't notice from reading it that we have OMOV elections and a parliamentary democracy or that the Gramsci tactics have not mostly come from the centre right.
Would you do notice is that a good number of elites who have been very used to getting their way are having their noses put out of joint by actual people with actual opinions.
Nor would you notice that but for the extremes and contradictions of the Labour party we could now have a soft Brexit and a centre left government.
The article, correctly, points out that the current government is in the process of dismantlling our current Parliamentary democracy. We will see what it is replaced with.
I have a bridge to sell you. The foundations of our democracy are multi party free OMOV elections, and freedom of thought, political campaigning and opinion. All intact last time I looked.
The foundation of our democracy is actually the rule of law. All else springs from that. Without it, there is no guarantee of anything else.
I agree with this of course. You will either have both or neither generally.
Do you not think that this is why Boris's latest stupidity is not cutting through to the polling? The vast majority of people simply will not think any more about Brexit under any circumstances. It is just too boring for words.
How many polls have there been since this latest stupidity hit the headlines?
DavidL is right, though. As noted member of the left-wing establishment David Herdson says: "Democracy tends to be as fragile or robust as the desire of its practitioners to maintain it. The public understands neither the 'what' nor the 'why' of a lot of the essential system that supports it."
I have a great deal of time and respect for Mr Herdson.
But to be fair that would be the same Mr Herdson who campaigned for the party when it nearly put Corbyn into Downing Street in 2017, then quit the party before it went on to get an 80 seat majority right?</blockquote
@Casino_Royale can I ask you a question please - notwithstanding the "international law" elements which I can understand being a concern on their own right . . . you seem very keen on the idea of compromising to get a deal, even if it means compromising on the LPF.
Would you be OK with the EU telling the UK's Chancellor of the Exchequer that a tax cut that Parliament had passed in the Budget was unacceptable "state aid"? Is that in your view an acceptable price worth paying in order to get a deal, or does the idea of that disturb you?
Where's the evidence we wouldn't be able to do that in a no deal scenario without these retrograde measures?
We might be able to in a no deal scenario. There's multiple reports it could have been an issue, but that's murky and not what I was trying to get at.
That's why I said notwithstanding that, he seems to want a deal even if we weren't doing these measures whereas you seem to be against both these measures and against compromising on the LPF - he seems (if I understand correctly) to be happy to compromise on the LPF itself in order to get a deal which is why I wanted to ask the question. Does that make sense?
Again, that's not evidence. It's bullshit chatter from overzealous Eurocrats. We're in a position where we've use first strike capability and in doing so handed the initiative to the opposing side.
Just because we have the ability to go for a first strike, it doesn't mean we should. The fact is neither of us know what the EU would do if we cut corporation tax to 10% in a no deal scenario. Chances are they would just live with it and the theoretical ability to block it via the NI protocol remains theoretical because they wouldn't want to be in a first strike position either.
Nevermind.
I wasn't trying to discuss this 'strike' as you put it. Just ask the question in isolation as to whether handing the EU power to determine that a UK tax cut passed by the Chancellor is acceptable in exchange for a deal, or if that is troublesome.
Once again, there's no evidence that we've handed this power over in the WA. Them asking for it in the FTA isn't the same thing. That they are asking for it is pretty good evidence that they don't think they'd have it under a no deal scenario.
This is similar to what I said yesterday evening - why make it an issue now - why not just break it when we have to? The fact that they are making it an issue now, indicates politics, and it looks very like Doris's tactics during the prorogation fuss that led to Boris's landslide.
I don't know what they are hoping to do, but the fact is that nobody on PB has ventured to predict any of the future 'moves'. We've responded to one move with outrage or disgust, we've seen some response from the EU, but we're just reporting what is, not trying to predict what will happen.
To be fair, several people have tried to work out what might be going on- usually along the lines of "something bad is about to happen, and No 10 intended to use the row to be able to pin the blame for the something on Remoaners/Brussels/both. Sort of like the Didn't Die In A Ditch situation."
The curious thing is the way that Starmer hasn't risen to the bait at all, and the EU haven't much; their deadline to sort the Internal Market Bill is pretty much the same mid-October date that everyone agrees is the point of no return.
And that's the bit that's baffling. Something that is nasty, ruthless but clever politics in one branch of history is stupid in another. It's why game theory is hard, and hardly ever generates useful results. The outcomes depend too much on how aware the other player is of the game being played and the strategy being used.
Do you not think that this is why Boris's latest stupidity is not cutting through to the polling? The vast majority of people simply will not think any more about Brexit under any circumstances. It is just too boring for words.
How many polls have there been since this latest stupidity hit the headlines?
DavidL is right, though. As noted member of the left-wing establishment David Herdson says: "Democracy tends to be as fragile or robust as the desire of its practitioners to maintain it. The public understands neither the 'what' nor the 'why' of a lot of the essential system that supports it."
Perhaps the 'practitioners' of democracy are voters. The fact that the general voting public are not experts on arcane matters of how to run a state machine does not mean they are dim, nor that democracy is in their hands.
In the last election voters had a choice between two party leaders neither of whom had a record suggesting they were safe pairs of hands on the tiller of 'the essential system that supports it'. Just as in the EU Referendum there was no good option on the table!
Dr Anthony Fauci, the top infectious disease expert in the US, has told Americans they will need to “hunker down” through autumn and winter months.
"Don't ever, ever underestimate the potential of the pandemic. And don't try and look at the rosy side of things," Fauci told a panel discussion on Thursday
This claims that the Dems are signing up way more new voters than the GOP, and the difference comes down to differences in the way counties hose out people who have moved from their voter files.
Dunno who's right.
Politico: The GOP has added almost 198,000 registered voters to the books compared to this time four years ago, whereas Democrats have gained an extra 29,000.
Medium: If we look just at those voters who have registered to vote in Pennsylvania since the 2016 election (including those voters who may have relocated to the state), Democrats have added 414,483 new voters, a significant advantage over the 281,788 GOP registrations added since Trump narrowly carried the state.
Also Medium So why does the favored GOP analytical approach of net registration paint such a different picture? The answer is relatively mundane, and points to the weaknesses in the GOP argument: voter file hygiene. Local election officials will often clean their voter rolls at varying cadences. Some may go years without striking old voter records from their files, while other jurisdictions will make those changes much more frequently. Those varying cadences can produce misleading statistics, when viewed statewide. Let’s look at the voters who were on the file on Election Day, 2016 in Pennsylvania, and are no longer on the file, and have not re-registered elsewhere.
I’ve never, in my entire life, had a canvasser knock on my door. I feel deprived.
Do you live in a marginal seat or marginal council ward? If not that is why
So Gallowgate's vote is worth less than the vote of someone who lives in a marginal. Worth less in an economic sense. Parties think that is is not worthwhile using up their resources knocking on his door.
Exactly, the only reason the tories canvas safevseats is to find new members and deliverers, the presence of an active Lib Dem campaign in council elections tends to wake them up though.
Indeed, although the Tories won over 60% in Epping Forest last December at the general election in my ward they got only 32% in the local elections last May and the LDs got 63%
It must have been very disappointing for you that the Conservatives did so badly. Clearly the Lib Dems are the way to go in your part of the world.
He probably understands differential turnout in relatively low, 35/40% elections but in case he doesn’t ......
I watched the footage and it is totally incident and usuage in context. Also, watched a video from somebody who lived in China for over 10 years, married to a Chinese lady and lectured at a Chinese university (and obviously fluent Chiness speaker) and said everything the academic was saying is 100% true.
I dont quite understand what people who take such an international communication expect, are they going to be outraged if they go to China and demand they stop using this word? Good luck with that. Besides, they should be aware of far more offensive terms like Baizuo, Gweilo or Laowai, cos they will unapologeticly hear those fired in their direction.
The spanish for black is next on the chopping block. Not to mention a certain country in the Balkans.
Thinking, weird the sea has not caught fire, the hills have not melted, my first born is still alive. Is that it? An extra 50p on my bottle of chablis?
Put 50p on every item in your shopping basket. An extra £15 or £20 a shop will soon be noticed.
Only if you insist on buying everything from the EU in some fit of solidarity. Otherwise you may substitute some items from there with alternatives that have become cheaper once EU protectionism no longer applies.
Rejoining the EU in the next decade is for the birds.
You'd have though so. But I think it was one of the SeanTs who pointed out that Brexit could go so badly that rejoin is a viable manifesto plan for the 2024 election. In which case 2029 is possible.
Had the May and Johnson carefully planted the UK just outside the EU stockade, some variant of EEA with some controls on movement of people, it's likely that would have stuck. Divergence would have happened, as the EU 27 got closer together. Maybe Sweden and some others would have joined us. There are good structural reasons why they didn't go that path, maybe they had no choice even in Autumn 2016. But it would have created a Brexit that stuck, because nobody would really have had much pragmatic cause for complaint.
The Brexit on offer is much more problematic. Even if it works overall (hmm...) the effect on some individuals and sectors will be horrible. There will be people with very valid complaints and Brejoin will be the answer to their problems- even if it comes with horrible strings attached.
Meanwhile the geography and demography won't go away. There's a Brexit Bulge generation; they grew up in the 1950s, were the main source of Out votes in 1975 and Leave votes in 2016. With great respect, they won't be voting forever and there's not much reason to think that the generations below them will become less cosmopolitan as they age.
More voters think Brexit is a bad idea than a good one- and that's before any chickens come home to roost. And Starmer? He's a smart lawyer. He'll ask the public what they think about Brejoin if/when he knows what their answer will be. That's likely to happen, but now is not the time.
Do you think the EU would have us back as full members?
I think the EU are smart enough to distinguish between a country and its former leaders.
The reality is the country is and has always been divided on this and either side can have a majority at a given point in time. Its not just our leaders.
Not sure why that would change in the 2030s, and its way too disruptive for everyone to turn the UK-EU relationship into hokey-cokey. Some form of associate membership feels much more likely to be palatable to the EU than full membership, even if the UK wants to rejoin at a particular point of time.
I think I count as an arch-Remainer... but I would accept EEA
From the EU perspective I think a tiered membership structure with paths for members to move both up and down is far more robust long term. 3 or 4 different tiers, those wanting the most integration can press ahead, without having to drag others along who are more sceptical.
I've been canvassed once, by the Labour Party. I was asked who I'd voted for last time and I said the Tories - and the guy made a note on his clipboard and said they wouldn't knock on my door again. They stuck to their word.
I hope he gave you a disapproving look.
He looked bored actually. I was surprised they didn't ask more questions like "why" or "what might make you change your vote" etc, especially considering it was an extremely marginal seat.
He was probably dissuaded from further questions by the "I LUV BORIS - MEGA!" cap you were wearing.
I watched the footage and it is totally incident and usuage in context. Also, watched a video from somebody who lived in China for over 10 years, married to a Chinese lady and lectured at a Chinese university (and obviously fluent Chiness speaker) and said everything the academic was saying is 100% true.
I dont quite understand what people who take such an international communication expect, are they going to be outraged if they go to China and demand they stop using this word? Good luck with that. Besides, they should be aware of far more offensive terms like Baizuo, Gweilo or Laowai, cos they will unapologeticly hear those fired in their direction.
The spanish for black is next on the chopping block. Not to mention a certain country in the Balkans.
Given they are in Southern California the offended students must hear the outrageous Spanish word all the time, but somehow not sent into meltdown.
The guy with all the Chinese experience whose video I watched actually points out loads of words in one langauge that are or sound very similar to terrible words in others.
The most ridiculous thing about this incident was it was filmed, you can watch the footage, there isnt any he said, she said about it. Makes the university decision even more incredible.
@Casino_Royale can I ask you a question please - notwithstanding the "international law" elements which I can understand being a concern on their own right . . . you seem very keen on the idea of compromising to get a deal, even if it means compromising on the LPF.
Would you be OK with the EU telling the UK's Chancellor of the Exchequer that a tax cut that Parliament had passed in the Budget was unacceptable "state aid"? Is that in your view an acceptable price worth paying in order to get a deal, or does the idea of that disturb you?
Where's the evidence we wouldn't be able to do that in a no deal scenario without these retrograde measures?
We might be able to in a no deal scenario. There's multiple reports it could have been an issue, but that's murky and not what I was trying to get at.
That's why I said notwithstanding that, he seems to want a deal even if we weren't doing these measures whereas you seem to be against both these measures and against compromising on the LPF - he seems (if I understand correctly) to be happy to compromise on the LPF itself in order to get a deal which is why I wanted to ask the question. Does that make sense?
Again, that's not evidence. It's bullshit chatter from overzealous Eurocrats. We're in a position where we've use first strike capability and in doing so handed the initiative to the opposing side.
Just because we have the ability to go for a first strike, it doesn't mean we should. The fact is neither of us know what the EU would do if we cut corporation tax to 10% in a no deal scenario. Chances are they would just live with it and the theoretical ability to block it via the NI protocol remains theoretical because they wouldn't want to be in a first strike position either.
Nevermind.
I wasn't trying to discuss this 'strike' as you put it. Just ask the question in isolation as to whether handing the EU power to determine that a UK tax cut passed by the Chancellor is acceptable in exchange for a deal, or if that is troublesome.
Once again, there's no evidence that we've handed this power over in the WA. Them asking for it in the FTA isn't the same thing. That they are asking for it is pretty good evidence that they don't think they'd have it under a no deal scenario.
This is similar to what I said yesterday evening - why make it an issue now - why not just break it when we have to? The fact that they are making it an issue now, indicates politics, and it looks very like Doris's tactics during the prorogation fuss that led to Boris's landslide.
I don't know what they are hoping to do, but the fact is that nobody on PB has ventured to predict any of the future 'moves'. We've responded to one move with outrage or disgust, we've seen some response from the EU, but we're just reporting what is, not trying to predict what will happen.
To be fair, several people have tried to work out what might be going on- usually along the lines of "something bad is about to happen, and No 10 intended to use the row to be able to pin the blame for the something on Remoaners/Brussels/both. Sort of like the Didn't Die In A Ditch situation."
The curious thing is the way that Starmer hasn't risen to the bait at all, and the EU haven't much; their deadline to sort the Internal Market Bill is pretty much the same mid-October date that everyone agrees is the point of no return.
And that's the bit that's baffling. Something that is nasty, ruthless but clever politics in one branch of history is stupid in another. It's why game theory is hard, and hardly ever generates useful results. The outcomes depend too much on how aware the other player is of the game being played and the strategy being used.
The Internal Market Bill is a very aggressive piece of legislation. Not only does it ride roughshod over international law and treat the EU with extreme bad faith. It undermines the devolution settlement for Wales and Scotland as well as the very fragile situation in Northern Ireland.
Do you not think that this is why Boris's latest stupidity is not cutting through to the polling? The vast majority of people simply will not think any more about Brexit under any circumstances. It is just too boring for words.
They will be thinking about in January.
Thinking, weird the sea has not caught fire, the hills have not melted, my first born is still alive. Is that it? An extra 50p on my bottle of chablis?
I'm old enough to remember when Unionists were outraged at the thought of an extra 50p gong on a bottle of bevvy.
Do you not think that this is why Boris's latest stupidity is not cutting through to the polling? The vast majority of people simply will not think any more about Brexit under any circumstances. It is just too boring for words.
How many polls have there been since this latest stupidity hit the headlines?
DavidL is right, though. As noted member of the left-wing establishment David Herdson says: "Democracy tends to be as fragile or robust as the desire of its practitioners to maintain it. The public understands neither the 'what' nor the 'why' of a lot of the essential system that supports it."
Perhaps the 'practitioners' of democracy are voters. The fact that the general voting public are not experts on arcane matters of how to run a state machine does not mean they are dim, nor that democracy is in their hands.
In the last election voters had a choice between two party leaders neither of whom had a record suggesting they were safe pairs of hands on the tiller of 'the essential system that supports it'. Just as in the EU Referendum there was no good option on the table!
Voters are participants in democracy. They trust others to run it as they have their lives to get on with. If those others no longer wish to run a democracy in which Parliament is sovereign in fact as well in name, and the judiciary can prevent the government acting illegally, then there is little voters can do about it short of rebellion.
That's all well and good, but how are we ensuring the staff, many of which float between different homes, aren't bringing it in? Regardless of where on the severity of required lockdown required experts sit, they are all pretty 100% that care homes need to be "secured".
This claims that the Dems are signing up way more new voters than the GOP, and the difference comes down to differences in the way counties hose out people who have moved they from their voter files.
Dunno who's right.
Politico: The GOP has added almost 198,000 registered voters to the books compared to this time four years ago, whereas Democrats have gained an extra 29,000.
Medium: If we look just at those voters who have registered to vote in Pennsylvania since the 2016 election (including those voters who may have relocated to the state), Democrats have added 414,483 new voters, a significant advantage over the 281,788 GOP registrations added since Trump narrowly carried the state.
Also Medium So why does the favored GOP analytical approach of net registration paint such a different picture? The answer is relatively mundane, and points to the weaknesses in the GOP argument: voter file hygiene. Local election officials will often clean their voter rolls at varying cadences. Some may go years without striking old voter records from their files, while other jurisdictions will make those changes much more frequently. Those varying cadences can produce misleading statistics, when viewed statewide. Let’s look at the voters who were on the file on Election Day, 2016 in Pennsylvania, and are no longer on the file, and have not re-registered elsewhere.
Might be a way to square up the numbers ?
Yup, although also I imagine that Dem voters are much more mobile, ie there are always young people showing up and then moving away to other states, so they need to keep signing up new voters at a fair old pace just to stay level.
Do you not think that this is why Boris's latest stupidity is not cutting through to the polling? The vast majority of people simply will not think any more about Brexit under any circumstances. It is just too boring for words.
How many polls have there been since this latest stupidity hit the headlines?
DavidL is right, though. As noted member of the left-wing establishment David Herdson says: "Democracy tends to be as fragile or robust as the desire of its practitioners to maintain it. The public understands neither the 'what' nor the 'why' of a lot of the essential system that supports it."
Perhaps the 'practitioners' of democracy are voters. The fact that the general voting public are not experts on arcane matters of how to run a state machine does not mean they are dim, nor that democracy is in their hands.
In the last election voters had a choice between two party leaders neither of whom had a record suggesting they were safe pairs of hands on the tiller of 'the essential system that supports it'. Just as in the EU Referendum there was no good option on the table!
Voters are participants in democracy. They trust others to run it as they have their lives to get on with. If those others no longer wish to run a democracy in which Parliament is sovereign in fact as well in name, and the judiciary can prevent the government acting illegally, then there is little voters can do about it short of rebellion.
Rejoining the EU in the next decade is for the birds.
You'd have though so. But I think it was one of the SeanTs who pointed out that Brexit could go so badly that rejoin is a viable manifesto plan for the 2024 election. In which case 2029 is possible.
Had the May and Johnson carefully planted the UK just outside the EU stockade, some variant of EEA with some controls on movement of people, it's likely that would have stuck. Divergence would have happened, as the EU 27 got closer together. Maybe Sweden and some others would have joined us. There are good structural reasons why they didn't go that path, maybe they had no choice even in Autumn 2016. But it would have created a Brexit that stuck, because nobody would really have had much pragmatic cause for complaint.
The Brexit on offer is much more problematic. Even if it works overall (hmm...) the effect on some individuals and sectors will be horrible. There will be people with very valid complaints and Brejoin will be the answer to their problems- even if it comes with horrible strings attached.
Meanwhile the geography and demography won't go away. There's a Brexit Bulge generation; they grew up in the 1950s, were the main source of Out votes in 1975 and Leave votes in 2016. With great respect, they won't be voting forever and there's not much reason to think that the generations below them will become less cosmopolitan as they age.
More voters think Brexit is a bad idea than a good one- and that's before any chickens come home to roost. And Starmer? He's a smart lawyer. He'll ask the public what they think about Brejoin if/when he knows what their answer will be. That's likely to happen, but now is not the time.
Do you think the EU would have us back as full members?
I think the EU are smart enough to distinguish between a country and its former leaders.
The reality is the country is and has always been divided on this and either side can have a majority at a given point in time. Its not just our leaders.
Not sure why that would change in the 2030s, and its way too disruptive for everyone to turn the UK-EU relationship into hokey-cokey. Some form of associate membership feels much more likely to be palatable to the EU than full membership, even if the UK wants to rejoin at a particular point of time.
I think I count as an arch-Remainer... but I would accept EEA
From the EU perspective I think a tiered membership structure with paths for members to move both up and down is far more robust long term. 3 or 4 different tiers, those wanting the most integration can press ahead, without having to drag others along who are more sceptical.
If the EU had made this simple move there would be no problem. It is obvious (though only to Brexit supporters) that the EU intended to have the characteristics of a nation state not a big trade agreement. Remainers are still often in denial about the direction of travel for the EU.
Thinking, weird the sea has not caught fire, the hills have not melted, my first born is still alive. Is that it? An extra 50p on my bottle of chablis?
Put 50p on every item in your shopping basket. An extra £15 or £20 a shop will soon be noticed.
Only if you insist on buying everything from the EU in some fit of solidarity. Otherwise you may substitute some items from there with alternatives that have become cheaper once EU protectionism no longer applies.
You hope........
With Boris and WTO some things might get a lot more expensive
This claims that the Dems are signing up way more new voters than the GOP, and the difference comes down to differences in the way counties hose out people who have moved from their voter files.
Dunno who's right.
Politico: The GOP has added almost 198,000 registered voters to the books compared to this time four years ago, whereas Democrats have gained an extra 29,000.
Medium: If we look just at those voters who have registered to vote in Pennsylvania since the 2016 election (including those voters who may have relocated to the state), Democrats have added 414,483 new voters, a significant advantage over the 281,788 GOP registrations added since Trump narrowly carried the state.
Also Medium So why does the favored GOP analytical approach of net registration paint such a different picture? The answer is relatively mundane, and points to the weaknesses in the GOP argument: voter file hygiene. Local election officials will often clean their voter rolls at varying cadences. Some may go years without striking old voter records from their files, while other jurisdictions will make those changes much more frequently. Those varying cadences can produce misleading statistics, when viewed statewide. Let’s look at the voters who were on the file on Election Day, 2016 in Pennsylvania, and are no longer on the file, and have not re-registered elsewhere.
Might be a way to square up the numbers ?
Another to add to the 'How can the US really claim to be a democracy' file.
Off topic, perhaps, but possibly office-worker related. At the gym, which has an associated golf club, this morning the car park was fuller than usual..... always go about the same time....,.. and very much so when I came out. There were also quite a few people.... mainly but not exclusively male ...... of working age dressed in golfing clothes. And they were of working age. Has Friday ceased to be an 'in the office' day? And I left at about 9.45, so time for people to play 9 holes before settling down in front of their computers.
I really, really hope November looks like this. It would be the best thing for America. For both the left and the right.
Like a horror film a stake needs to be driven through the heart of Trumpism to prevent it returning. Hopefully some semblance of sanity can be restored to the GOP if this result happens, like 2019 driving away the Corbynistas.
As for the left this is perhaps the last chance for a dry and dull moderate like Biden to be put up. If he loses then expect the Democrats to veer sharply left in a "get out the vote" drive and put up someone in the AOC/Sanders ultra-left, ultra-woke mode . . . and they might go on to win after eight years of Trump in the Oval Office.
We don't need Trumpism or Wokism. This is a time for dull and dry Biden.
This result is at the high end of expectations for Biden, but is just as likely as Trump managing to eek out a win. Biden's chances continue to be vastly understated on here IMHO.
The other important aspect for November is what happens in the Senate, given teh high likelihood of there being one, possibly two liberal Supreme Court justices retiring in the next two years (Ginsburg and Breyer)
Rejoining the EU in the next decade is for the birds.
You'd have though so. But I think it was one of the SeanTs who pointed out that Brexit could go so badly that rejoin is a viable manifesto plan for the 2024 election. In which case 2029 is possible.
Had the May and Johnson carefully planted the UK just outside the EU stockade, some variant of EEA with some controls on movement of people, it's likely that would have stuck. Divergence would have happened, as the EU 27 got closer together. Maybe Sweden and some others would have joined us. There are good structural reasons why they didn't go that path, maybe they had no choice even in Autumn 2016. But it would have created a Brexit that stuck, because nobody would really have had much pragmatic cause for complaint.
The Brexit on offer is much more problematic. Even if it works overall (hmm...) the effect on some individuals and sectors will be horrible. There will be people with very valid complaints and Brejoin will be the answer to their problems- even if it comes with horrible strings attached.
Meanwhile the geography and demography won't go away. There's a Brexit Bulge generation; they grew up in the 1950s, were the main source of Out votes in 1975 and Leave votes in 2016. With great respect, they won't be voting forever and there's not much reason to think that the generations below them will become less cosmopolitan as they age.
More voters think Brexit is a bad idea than a good one- and that's before any chickens come home to roost. And Starmer? He's a smart lawyer. He'll ask the public what they think about Brejoin if/when he knows what their answer will be. That's likely to happen, but now is not the time.
Do you think the EU would have us back as full members?
I think the EU are smart enough to distinguish between a country and its former leaders.
The reality is the country is and has always been divided on this and either side can have a majority at a given point in time. Its not just our leaders.
Not sure why that would change in the 2030s, and its way too disruptive for everyone to turn the UK-EU relationship into hokey-cokey. Some form of associate membership feels much more likely to be palatable to the EU than full membership, even if the UK wants to rejoin at a particular point of time.
I think I count as an arch-Remainer... but I would accept EEA
From the EU perspective I think a tiered membership structure with paths for members to move both up and down is far more robust long term. 3 or 4 different tiers, those wanting the most integration can press ahead, without having to drag others along who are more sceptical.
If the EU had made this simple move there would be no problem. It is obvious (though only to Brexit supporters) that the EU intended to have the characteristics of a nation state not a big trade agreement. Remainers are still often in denial about the direction of travel for the EU.
Rejoining the EU in the next decade is for the birds.
You'd have though so. But I think it was one of the SeanTs who pointed out that Brexit could go so badly that rejoin is a viable manifesto plan for the 2024 election. In which case 2029 is possible.
Had the May and Johnson carefully planted the UK just outside the EU stockade, some variant of EEA with some controls on movement of people, it's likely that would have stuck. Divergence would have happened, as the EU 27 got closer together. Maybe Sweden and some others would have joined us. There are good structural reasons why they didn't go that path, maybe they had no choice even in Autumn 2016. But it would have created a Brexit that stuck, because nobody would really have had much pragmatic cause for complaint.
The Brexit on offer is much more problematic. Even if it works overall (hmm...) the effect on some individuals and sectors will be horrible. There will be people with very valid complaints and Brejoin will be the answer to their problems- even if it comes with horrible strings attached.
Meanwhile the geography and demography won't go away. There's a Brexit Bulge generation; they grew up in the 1950s, were the main source of Out votes in 1975 and Leave votes in 2016. With great respect, they won't be voting forever and there's not much reason to think that the generations below them will become less cosmopolitan as they age.
More voters think Brexit is a bad idea than a good one- and that's before any chickens come home to roost. And Starmer? He's a smart lawyer. He'll ask the public what they think about Brejoin if/when he knows what their answer will be. That's likely to happen, but now is not the time.
Do you think the EU would have us back as full members?
I think the EU are smart enough to distinguish between a country and its former leaders.
The reality is the country is and has always been divided on this and either side can have a majority at a given point in time. Its not just our leaders.
Not sure why that would change in the 2030s, and its way too disruptive for everyone to turn the UK-EU relationship into hokey-cokey. Some form of associate membership feels much more likely to be palatable to the EU than full membership, even if the UK wants to rejoin at a particular point of time.
I think I count as an arch-Remainer... but I would accept EEA
From the EU perspective I think a tiered membership structure with paths for members to move both up and down is far more robust long term. 3 or 4 different tiers, those wanting the most integration can press ahead, without having to drag others along who are more sceptical.
If the EU had made this simple move there would be no problem. It is obvious (though only to Brexit supporters) that the EU intended to have the characteristics of a nation state not a big trade agreement. Remainers are still often in denial about the direction of travel for the EU.
It is obvious that some people and politicians in the EU want that. But its far from a clear majority across the board and even further from a clear majority in every state.
Forgetting the UK and its place in the EU, my suggestion would give the EU more cohesion, success and longevity by allowing space for dissenting countries. If the benefits from being closer to a super state eventually are clear cut, then most countries would eventually choose that. If the more federalist independent nation state option is better, then most countries would end up there instead.
Comments
https://medium.com/@tombonier/the-gops-claims-about-a-voter-registration-advantage-in-pa-aren-t-true-here-are-the-facts-471010a2cd74
This claims that the Dems are signing up way more new voters than the GOP, and the difference comes down to differences in the way counties hose out people who have moved from their voter files.
Dunno who's right.
Some other people on this forum claim that in FPTP everyone's vote carries the same worth.
Otherwise the Conservatives will go the way of the US Republicans (if there's any justice).
However a harder question is whether the British could get back in on the same terms as before; I expect the rebate would be gone, and although the Swedish cheat codes would probably still work for the Euro and nobody would want to complicate an already complicated situation, the British may not be able to get an *official* statement to that effect, which may make a Brejoin referendum harder to win.
There just aren't enough people using it. Take up has crept up to 36% (at best) which means about one-eighth of contacts could be traced using it, if it worked perfectly.
30% of new cases in Ireland have no known source of transmission, which is even worse than it looks given that when one person in a household catches it you will identify when they pass it on to the rest of the family. So it's almost certain that the majority of inter-household transmission is via unknown means.
Even six months on from lockdown we still haven't got a handle on how it's spreading.
Not sure why that would change in the 2030s, and its way too disruptive for everyone to turn the UK-EU relationship into hokey-cokey. Some form of associate membership feels much more likely to be palatable to the EU than full membership, even if the UK wants to rejoin at a particular point of time.
I don't know what they are hoping to do, but the fact is that nobody on PB has ventured to predict any of the future 'moves'. We've responded to one move with outrage or disgust, we've seen some response from the EU, but we're just reporting what is, not trying to predict what will happen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SA1SxZoFmOU
But to be fair that would be the same Mr Herdson who campaigned for the party when it nearly put Corbyn into Downing Street in 2017, then quit the party before it went on to get an 80 seat majority right?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NL76UyJPCv4
https://apnews.com/ad96548245e186382225818d8dc416eb?fbclid=IwAR11pyVQbUypCYnYITh6QLDQhN0ifzA2B7q8dwk5VFLlWBMqwEab-StweZo
When there are no rules you either
1) comment on what happened last, or
2) make random guesses
Since Boris & Co have torn up the rules.......
In the meantime the damage has got bigger, longer and requiring a more humiliating row back, thanks to the Cummings-Johnson shenanigans.
Incidentally. That the Internal Market Bill is another nail in the coffin of the Union is a more concerning cost to me than the price of Chablis.
The only time I have ever been called a nazi on the doorstep, btw, was the 2017 Brexit GE for Brexit in general and in particular on account of the proposed registration of foreigners.
Like a horror film a stake needs to be driven through the heart of Trumpism to prevent it returning. Hopefully some semblance of sanity can be restored to the GOP if this result happens, like 2019 driving away the Corbynistas.
As for the left this is perhaps the last chance for a dry and dull moderate like Biden to be put up. If he loses then expect the Democrats to veer sharply left in a "get out the vote" drive and put up someone in the AOC/Sanders ultra-left, ultra-woke mode . . . and they might go on to win after eight years of Trump in the Oval Office.
We don't need Trumpism or Wokism. This is a time for dull and dry Biden.
I dont quite understand what people who take such an international communication expect, are they going to be outraged if they go to China and demand they stop using this word? Good luck with that. Besides, they should be aware of far more offensive terms like Baizuo, Gweilo or Laowai, cos they will unapologeticly hear those fired in their direction.
The curious thing is the way that Starmer hasn't risen to the bait at all, and the EU haven't much; their deadline to sort the Internal Market Bill is pretty much the same mid-October date that everyone agrees is the point of no return.
And that's the bit that's baffling. Something that is nasty, ruthless but clever politics in one branch of history is stupid in another. It's why game theory is hard, and hardly ever generates useful results. The outcomes depend too much on how aware the other player is of the game being played and the strategy being used.
In the last election voters had a choice between two party leaders neither of whom had a record suggesting they were safe pairs of hands on the tiller of 'the essential system that supports it'. Just as in the EU Referendum there was no good option on the table!
"Don't ever, ever underestimate the potential of the pandemic. And don't try and look at the rosy side of things," Fauci told a panel discussion on Thursday
The GOP has added almost 198,000 registered voters to the books compared to this time four years ago, whereas Democrats have gained an extra 29,000.
Medium:
If we look just at those voters who have registered to vote in Pennsylvania since the 2016 election (including those voters who may have relocated to the state), Democrats have added 414,483 new voters, a significant advantage over the 281,788 GOP registrations added since Trump narrowly carried the state.
Also Medium
So why does the favored GOP analytical approach of net registration paint such a different picture? The answer is relatively mundane, and points to the weaknesses in the GOP argument: voter file hygiene. Local election officials will often clean their voter rolls at varying cadences. Some may go years without striking old voter records from their files, while other jurisdictions will make those changes much more frequently. Those varying cadences can produce misleading statistics, when viewed statewide.
Let’s look at the voters who were on the file on Election Day, 2016 in Pennsylvania, and are no longer on the file, and have not re-registered elsewhere.
Might be a way to square up the numbers ?
The guy with all the Chinese experience whose video I watched actually points out loads of words in one langauge that are or sound very similar to terrible words in others.
The most ridiculous thing about this incident was it was filmed, you can watch the footage, there isnt any he said, she said about it. Makes the university decision even more incredible.
Just awful
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;
Become unpopular, call snap election, hope to lose and let Labour deal with Brexit
Even in a worst case scenario I can't see it being worse than keeping everyone locked at home for several months.
With Boris and WTO some things might get a lot more expensive
Off topic, perhaps, but possibly office-worker related. At the gym, which has an associated golf club, this morning the car park was fuller than usual..... always go about the same time....,.. and very much so when I came out. There were also quite a few people.... mainly but not exclusively male ...... of working age dressed in golfing clothes. And they were of working age. Has Friday ceased to be an 'in the office' day?
And I left at about 9.45, so time for people to play 9 holes before settling down in front of their computers.
The other important aspect for November is what happens in the Senate, given teh high likelihood of there being one, possibly two liberal Supreme Court justices retiring in the next two years (Ginsburg and Breyer)
https://twitter.com/Survation/status/1304367144491266049
Labour now second in Scotland for Westminster
Forgetting the UK and its place in the EU, my suggestion would give the EU more cohesion, success and longevity by allowing space for dissenting countries. If the benefits from being closer to a super state eventually are clear cut, then most countries would eventually choose that. If the more federalist independent nation state option is better, then most countries would end up there instead.
Zhis family.