The tweet before says she can't understand how it has come to this.
Because we are being led by a ship of fools.
The reason is because preparing for Brexit has been done for just over 12 months.
Under Theresa May and Phil Hammond no money for serious planning was put up and no decisions made. So now its all being done quickly, but its getting done.
I know you're just a Boris Fanboy who's drunk on Brexit Kool-Aid but this is incoherent given that you also think that brinkmanship is the only negotiating strategy, which means you actively want uncertainty up until the last possible moment.
Curious to know if Douglas Ross is a net positive or net negative for Tory Party prospects in Scotland. He is energetic/abrasive_and_irritating in his boosterism for the Gove/Cummings/Johnson rhetoric on Scotland. But it's all a bit Addams Family. Which is a shame because I think he's a decent guy whose community spirit is being held in check by this nonsense.
The tweet before says she can't understand how it has come to this.
Because we are being led by a ship of fools.
The reason is because preparing for Brexit has been done for just over 12 months.
Under Theresa May and Phil Hammond no money for serious planning was put up and no decisions made. So now its all being done quickly, but its getting done.
I know you're just a Boris Fanboy who's drunk on Brexit Kool-Aid but this is incoherent given that you also think that brinkmanship is the only negotiating strategy, which means you actively want uncertainty up until the last possible moment.
Uncertainty yes but you also need to be taken seriously in your brinkmanship. So it is better to overprepare and carry a big stick. If you put in too many preparations and a deal renders some of them redundant then you write that off and move on, but if there is no deal you are ready.
Hammond refusing to fund preparations was neglect. May letting him was just one of her litany of atrocious mistakes.
The tweet before says she can't understand how it has come to this.
Because we are being led by a ship of fools.
The reason is because preparing for Brexit has been done for just over 12 months.
Under Theresa May and Phil Hammond no money for serious planning was put up and no decisions made. So now its all being done quickly, but its getting done.
Even taking the notion that this is a new government and separate from the previous government - which is rampant bollocks - the current lot have done fuck all as well.
Ever since the referendum the Tories said no to a Customs Union and the EEA. Which means a border. Which means we need a border system. That they haven't even bothered to start development work on the bloody computer system in any of that time is almost as laughable as you making excuses for it.
Not sure that’s what SKS said. He said they would go into the next Scottish election opposed to any such referendum. His position thereafter depends on the result.
The Conservative line seems to be that any vote against the Conservatives is a vote for independence. It's a kamikaze strategy.
They certainly want to set themselves up as the Unionist Party par excellence. That worked well with Ruth. Pot shots at other Unionist parties is somewhat unproductive.
The tweet before says she can't understand how it has come to this.
Because we are being led by a ship of fools.
The reason is because preparing for Brexit has been done for just over 12 months.
Under Theresa May and Phil Hammond no money for serious planning was put up and no decisions made. So now its all being done quickly, but its getting done.
Hammond in particular’s failure to prepare was deeply scandalous. I am astonished that he is thought worthy of the Tory whip in the Lords.
The tweet before says she can't understand how it has come to this.
Because we are being led by a ship of fools.
The reason is because preparing for Brexit has been done for just over 12 months.
Under Theresa May and Phil Hammond no money for serious planning was put up and no decisions made. So now its all being done quickly, but its getting done.
How could they start planning when the ERG and Boris wouldn't agree to a deal to start planning from?
They're trying to make him sound posh, but his working class, one of the lads credentials are bang on - violin lessons at Private school are on every white van man's CV
The problem isn’t that. The problem is that you don’t want to be weaponising class when your own party leader is a thick posho transparently only there because daddy pulled the right strings.
I don’t buy Keir Starmer’s proletarian schtick, but compared to Boris Johnson or indeed Jeremy Corbyn he’s a veritable Worzel Gummidge.
Maybe so, but Boris schtick is that he is a posho. I think that working class people are more inclined to be alright with that than a middle class, slightly woke, human rights lawyer. But maybe that's just the kind of people I know
The Johnson schtick is that he’s a posho who understands ordinary people.
As lies go, this is as unconvincing as Cummings’ claim he needed childcare. And I don’t think it fools anybody. It’s just that people happen to like what they see - the bumbling, slightly shady, clown who makes them all laugh.
Therefore, as that persona is remorselessly peeled away in office, he doesn’t want any bright lights shone on the relative background of the Tories and Labour. Such a comparison is still not to the Tories’ advantage if it matters - and if it doesn’t matter, he’s wasting time and energy that could be better used.
They're trying to make him sound posh, but his working class, one of the lads credentials are bang on - violin lessons at Private school are on every white van man's CV
The problem isn’t that. The problem is that you don’t want to be weaponising class when your own party leader is a thick posho transparently only there because daddy pulled the right strings.
I don’t buy Keir Starmer’s proletarian schtick, but compared to Boris Johnson or indeed Jeremy Corbyn he’s a veritable Worzel Gummidge.
Maybe so, but Boris schtick is that he is a posho. I think that working class people are more inclined to be alright with that than a middle class, slightly woke, human rights lawyer. But maybe that's just the kind of people I know
The Johnson schtick is that he’s a posho who understands ordinary people.
As lies go, this is as unconvincing as Cummings’ claim he needed childcare. And I don’t think it fools anybody. It’s just that people happen to like what they see - the bumbling, slightly shady, clown who makes them all laugh.
Therefore, as that persona is remorselessly peeled away in office, he doesn’t want any bright lights shone on the relative background of the Tories and Labour. Such a comparison is still not to the Tories’ advantage if it matters - and if it doesn’t matter, he’s wasting time and energy that could be better used.
No-one’s going to be playing the violin for Boris, that’s for sure. Well, almost no-one.
The tweet before says she can't understand how it has come to this.
Because we are being led by a ship of fools.
The reason is because preparing for Brexit has been done for just over 12 months.
Under Theresa May and Phil Hammond no money for serious planning was put up and no decisions made. So now its all being done quickly, but its getting done.
Hammond in particular’s failure to prepare was deeply scandalous. I am astonished that he is thought worthy of the Tory whip in the Lords.
Cameron's was the worst of the lot. Not only because he didn't prepare, but because he resigned immediately after losing.
They're trying to make him sound posh, but his working class, one of the lads credentials are bang on - violin lessons at Private school are on every white van man's CV
The problem isn’t that. The problem is that you don’t want to be weaponising class when your own party leader is a thick posho transparently only there because daddy pulled the right strings.
I don’t buy Keir Starmer’s proletarian schtick, but compared to Boris Johnson or indeed Jeremy Corbyn he’s a veritable Worzel Gummidge.
Maybe so, but Boris schtick is that he is a posho. I think that working class people are more inclined to be alright with that than a middle class, slightly woke, human rights lawyer. But maybe that's just the kind of people I know
The Johnson schtick is that he’s a posho who understands ordinary people.
As lies go, this is as unconvincing as Cummings’ claim he needed childcare. And I don’t think it fools anybody. It’s just that people happen to like what they see - the bumbling, slightly shady, clown who makes them all laugh.
Therefore, as that persona is remorselessly peeled away in office, he doesn’t want any bright lights shone on the relative background of the Tories and Labour. Such a comparison is still not to the Tories’ advantage if it matters - and if it doesn’t matter, he’s wasting time and energy that could be better used.
Starmer is a member of the meritocracy. Whereas Johnson is a member of the lumpen bourgeoisie.
The tweet before says she can't understand how it has come to this.
Because we are being led by a ship of fools.
The reason is because preparing for Brexit has been done for just over 12 months.
Under Theresa May and Phil Hammond no money for serious planning was put up and no decisions made. So now its all being done quickly, but its getting done.
How could they start planning when the ERG and Boris wouldn't agree to a deal to start planning from?
Easy: Plan for No Deal as a baseline.
If you get a Deal then treat that as something that simplifies your life and you can remove some of your preparations if necessary - you won't need more than No Deal preparations so do that as a base case scenario.
The tweet before says she can't understand how it has come to this.
Because we are being led by a ship of fools.
The reason is because preparing for Brexit has been done for just over 12 months.
Under Theresa May and Phil Hammond no money for serious planning was put up and no decisions made. So now its all being done quickly, but its getting done.
Hammond in particular’s failure to prepare was deeply scandalous. I am astonished that he is thought worthy of the Tory whip in the Lords.
The fundamental reason why the government under both May and Johnson have failed to prepare is because no-one has been honest about what Brexit entails. Leavers didn't intend to vote for massive boosts in bureaucracy, to make things more difficult, more costly, more time-consuming and in some cases impossible. Even though that's what they actually did vote for.
So is Hammond more disgraceful for knowing exactly what Brexit would result in - he voted Remain after all - but doing nothing about it after the vote. Or is Johnson the worse culprit for being dishonest in the first place?
The tweet before says she can't understand how it has come to this.
Because we are being led by a ship of fools.
The reason is because preparing for Brexit has been done for just over 12 months.
Under Theresa May and Phil Hammond no money for serious planning was put up and no decisions made. So now its all being done quickly, but its getting done.
Hammond in particular’s failure to prepare was deeply scandalous. I am astonished that he is thought worthy of the Tory whip in the Lords.
Cameron's was the worst of the lot. Not only because he didn't prepare, but because he resigned immediately after losing.
Presumably in the counter-factual, he would have been forced out by the Tory party for delaying invoking Article 50.
They're trying to make him sound posh, but his working class, one of the lads credentials are bang on - violin lessons at Private school are on every white van man's CV
The problem isn’t that. The problem is that you don’t want to be weaponising class when your own party leader is a thick posho transparently only there because daddy pulled the right strings.
I don’t buy Keir Starmer’s proletarian schtick, but compared to Boris Johnson or indeed Jeremy Corbyn he’s a veritable Worzel Gummidge.
Maybe so, but Boris schtick is that he is a posho. I think that working class people are more inclined to be alright with that than a middle class, slightly woke, human rights lawyer. But maybe that's just the kind of people I know
The Johnson schtick is that he’s a posho who understands ordinary people.
As lies go, this is as unconvincing as Cummings’ claim he needed childcare. And I don’t think it fools anybody. It’s just that people happen to like what they see - the bumbling, slightly shady, clown who makes them all laugh.
Therefore, as that persona is remorselessly peeled away in office, he doesn’t want any bright lights shone on the relative background of the Tories and Labour. Such a comparison is still not to the Tories’ advantage if it matters - and if it doesn’t matter, he’s wasting time and energy that could be better used.
Starmer is a member of the meritocracy. Whereas Johnson is a member of the lumpen bourgeoisie.
Back to George Orwell: he says in Down & Out that tramps don't envy the successful middle classes (because of all that hard work), but the inheritors of money.
The tweet before says she can't understand how it has come to this.
Because we are being led by a ship of fools.
The reason is because preparing for Brexit has been done for just over 12 months.
Under Theresa May and Phil Hammond no money for serious planning was put up and no decisions made. So now its all being done quickly, but its getting done.
How could they start planning when the ERG and Boris wouldn't agree to a deal to start planning from?
Easy: Plan for No Deal as a baseline.
If you get a Deal then treat that as something that simplifies your life and you can remove some of your preparations if necessary - you won't need more than No Deal preparations so do that as a base case scenario.
You can't plan for No Deal while denying the consequences of No Deal.
It's a five year fixed term parliament. There is time to discuss independence and education and loads of other stuff.
I'm old enough to remember when the Ruth Davidson party talked of little else other than indy ref II. When education actually did crop up in Holyrood they managed to vote against their own manifesto policy.
They're trying to make him sound posh, but his working class, one of the lads credentials are bang on - violin lessons at Private school are on every white van man's CV
The problem isn’t that. The problem is that you don’t want to be weaponising class when your own party leader is a thick posho transparently only there because daddy pulled the right strings.
I don’t buy Keir Starmer’s proletarian schtick, but compared to Boris Johnson or indeed Jeremy Corbyn he’s a veritable Worzel Gummidge.
Maybe so, but Boris schtick is that he is a posho. I think that working class people are more inclined to be alright with that than a middle class, slightly woke, human rights lawyer. But maybe that's just the kind of people I know
The Johnson schtick is that he’s a posho who understands ordinary people.
As lies go, this is as unconvincing as Cummings’ claim he needed childcare. And I don’t think it fools anybody. It’s just that people happen to like what they see - the bumbling, slightly shady, clown who makes them all laugh.
Therefore, as that persona is remorselessly peeled away in office, he doesn’t want any bright lights shone on the relative background of the Tories and Labour. Such a comparison is still not to the Tories’ advantage if it matters - and if it doesn’t matter, he’s wasting time and energy that could be better used.
Astute post. Stick to your strengths. Which in Johnson's case is as a charlatan that unaccountably, but actually, charms some people.
The tweet before says she can't understand how it has come to this.
Because we are being led by a ship of fools.
The reason is because preparing for Brexit has been done for just over 12 months.
Under Theresa May and Phil Hammond no money for serious planning was put up and no decisions made. So now its all being done quickly, but its getting done.
How could they start planning when the ERG and Boris wouldn't agree to a deal to start planning from?
Easy: Plan for No Deal as a baseline.
If you get a Deal then treat that as something that simplifies your life and you can remove some of your preparations if necessary - you won't need more than No Deal preparations so do that as a base case scenario.
You can't plan for No Deal while denying the consequences of No Deal.
And this is the problem. They can't plan for anything. We held all the cards remember, so we dictate terms and the Europeans say yes please. So doing anything at all to prepare for anything other than total victory was to signal defeat.
Thing is, no deal simply can't work unless you can implement all that entails - standards checks and customs checks. As we can't do either from 1st January we either have to extend or utterly capitulate.
The cost of Brexit to the UK economy has exceeded the International Space Station (ISS), according to new research – and it continues to rocket.
A report from Bloomberg Economics estimates that Brexit has set Britain back to the tune of £130 billion and is likely to top £200 billion by the end of the year.
The tweet before says she can't understand how it has come to this.
Because we are being led by a ship of fools.
The reason is because preparing for Brexit has been done for just over 12 months.
Under Theresa May and Phil Hammond no money for serious planning was put up and no decisions made. So now its all being done quickly, but its getting done.
Hammond in particular’s failure to prepare was deeply scandalous. I am astonished that he is thought worthy of the Tory whip in the Lords.
The fundamental reason why the government under both May and Johnson have failed to prepare is because no-one has been honest about what Brexit entails. Leavers didn't intend to vote for massive boosts in bureaucracy, to make things more difficult, more costly, more time-consuming and in some cases impossible. Even though that's what they actually did vote for.
So is Hammond more disgraceful for knowing exactly what Brexit would result in - he voted Remain after all - but doing nothing about it after the vote. Or is Johnson the worse culprit for being dishonest in the first place?
Hammond is the most at fault. He chose to accept the second highest position in a government that was supposedly committed to a policy he did not support and sought actively to frustrate. It’s disgraceful.
1. Will the Biden vote come out, given how many plan to vote by mail (and may not bother)? 2. Will it be the national or the state level polls that are correct? (Or both) 3. How much of the undecided/other/WMV/DK will end up going to Trump, and how much to Biden? 4. Can Trump's vote share get any more efficient?
My guesses are:
1. Yes. 2. National. 3. It'll go 2:1 to Trump over Biden. 4. No, in fact it'll diminish.
The tweet before says she can't understand how it has come to this.
Because we are being led by a ship of fools.
The reason is because preparing for Brexit has been done for just over 12 months.
Under Theresa May and Phil Hammond no money for serious planning was put up and no decisions made. So now its all being done quickly, but its getting done.
Hammond in particular’s failure to prepare was deeply scandalous. I am astonished that he is thought worthy of the Tory whip in the Lords.
The fundamental reason why the government under both May and Johnson have failed to prepare is because no-one has been honest about what Brexit entails. Leavers didn't intend to vote for massive boosts in bureaucracy, to make things more difficult, more costly, more time-consuming and in some cases impossible. Even though that's what they actually did vote for.
So is Hammond more disgraceful for knowing exactly what Brexit would result in - he voted Remain after all - but doing nothing about it after the vote. Or is Johnson the worse culprit for being dishonest in the first place?
Hammond is the most at fault. He chose to accept the second highest position in a government that was supposedly committed to a policy he did not support and sought actively to frustrate. It’s disgraceful.
Maybe. But the end result is the same. Neither prepared because, for different reasons, they weren't honest about what they had to prepare for.
The tweet before says she can't understand how it has come to this.
Because we are being led by a ship of fools.
The reason is because preparing for Brexit has been done for just over 12 months.
Under Theresa May and Phil Hammond no money for serious planning was put up and no decisions made. So now its all being done quickly, but its getting done.
Hammond in particular’s failure to prepare was deeply scandalous. I am astonished that he is thought worthy of the Tory whip in the Lords.
The fundamental reason why the government under both May and Johnson have failed to prepare is because no-one has been honest about what Brexit entails. Leavers didn't intend to vote for massive boosts in bureaucracy, to make things more difficult, more costly, more time-consuming and in some cases impossible. Even though that's what they actually did vote for.
So is Hammond more disgraceful for knowing exactly what Brexit would result in - he voted Remain after all - but doing nothing about it after the vote. Or is Johnson the worse culprit for being dishonest in the first place?
Hammond is the most at fault. He chose to accept the second highest position in a government that was supposedly committed to a policy he did not support and sought actively to frustrate. It’s disgraceful.
You're in deep denial about your own choices and are lashing out.
1. Will the Biden vote come out, given how many plan to vote by mail (and may not bother)? 2. Will it be the national or the state level polls that are correct? (Or both) 3. How much of the undecided/other/WMV/DK will end up going to Trump, and how much to Biden? 4. Can Trump's vote share get any more efficient?
My guesses are:
1. Yes. 2. National. 3. It'll go 2:1 to Trump over Biden. 4. No, in fact it'll diminish.
4 is the key to whether to think Trump will win or not.
And if you think it will be more efficient you have to explain why.
After everything I've seen since I got back from my (mercifully mostly news-free) break yesterday afternoon, I'm more convinced than ever that what we are headed for later in the Autumn is Lockdown 2.0 - April, plus shit weather, masks and schools. It's simply a matter of how long it takes now to get there.
I reckon that Johnson and Hancock are terrified, panicking, and want to shut everything down now - the only thing holding them back isn't the economy, which I think is a wholly incidental concern that they're leaving to Sunak to try to do something about, but trying to get the Government off the hook for the decision, hence the salami slicing strategy on which they have now embarked. Rounds of new restrictions will be implemented, in the hope and expectation that they won't cut down infections by enough to satisfy ministers, and so the garotte will be tightened further and further, whilst - and this is the crucial part - the blame for each new twist will be laid at the door of disobedient elements of the public for failing to stick to the rules. Much of the Government's elderly core vote wants everyone forced to stay at home for however many decades it takes to finally tame the disease anyway, so it'll probably be very easy to sell them on the idea that this is all the fault of feckless youths, chavs holding illegal house parties and smelly poor people from down-at-heel areas generally.
I wouldn't like to subscribe to a precise timescale but I'm quite sure that they want everyone parcelled up into self-isolating individual households again before the Christmas holidays. We might get one of these lockdown lite/circuit breaker things around school half-term time in October, as has previously been speculated, followed by full-fat lockdown the following month. We'll then be incarcerated until March or February, presumably on the pretext of saving our (mostly half-empty) hospitals from collapse.
After everything I've seen since I got back from my (mercifully mostly news-free) break yesterday afternoon, I'm more convinced than ever that what we are headed for later in the Autumn is Lockdown 2.0 - April, plus shit weather, masks and schools. It's simply a matter of how long it takes now to get there.
I reckon that Johnson and Hancock are terrified, panicking, and want to shut everything down now - the only thing holding them back isn't the economy, which I think is a wholly incidental concern that they're leaving to Sunak to try to do something about, but trying to get the Government off the hook for the decision, hence the salami slicing strategy on which they have now embarked. Rounds of new restrictions will be implemented, in the hope and expectation that they won't cut down infections by enough to satisfy ministers, and so the garotte will be tightened further and further, whilst - and this is the crucial part - the blame for each new twist will be laid at the door of disobedient elements of the public for failing to stick to the rules. Much of the Government's elderly core vote wants everyone forced to stay at home for however many decades it takes to finally tame the disease anyway, so it'll probably be very easy to sell them on the idea that this is all the fault of feckless youths, chavs holding illegal house parties and smelly poor people from down-at-heel areas generally.
I wouldn't like to subscribe to a precise timescale but I'm quite sure that they want everyone parcelled up into self-isolating individual households again before the Christmas holidays. We might get one of these lockdown lite/circuit breaker things around school half-term time in October, as has previously been speculated, followed by full-fat lockdown the following month. We'll then be incarcerated until March or February, presumably on the pretext of saving our (mostly half-empty) hospitals from collapse.
1. Will the Biden vote come out, given how many plan to vote by mail (and may not bother)? 2. Will it be the national or the state level polls that are correct? (Or both) 3. How much of the undecided/other/WMV/DK will end up going to Trump, and how much to Biden? 4. Can Trump's vote share get any more efficient?
My guesses are:
1. Yes. 2. National. 3. It'll go 2:1 to Trump over Biden. 4. No, in fact it'll diminish.
4 is the key to whether to think Trump will win or not.
And if you think it will be more efficient you have to explain why.
Clinton was genuinely unlucky last time, Monte Carlo sim the votes and she probably wins most of the rolls.
The tweet before says she can't understand how it has come to this.
Because we are being led by a ship of fools.
The reason is because preparing for Brexit has been done for just over 12 months.
Under Theresa May and Phil Hammond no money for serious planning was put up and no decisions made. So now its all being done quickly, but its getting done.
Hammond in particular’s failure to prepare was deeply scandalous. I am astonished that he is thought worthy of the Tory whip in the Lords.
The fundamental reason why the government under both May and Johnson have failed to prepare is because no-one has been honest about what Brexit entails. Leavers didn't intend to vote for massive boosts in bureaucracy, to make things more difficult, more costly, more time-consuming and in some cases impossible. Even though that's what they actually did vote for.
So is Hammond more disgraceful for knowing exactly what Brexit would result in - he voted Remain after all - but doing nothing about it after the vote. Or is Johnson the worse culprit for being dishonest in the first place?
Hammond is the most at fault. He chose to accept the second highest position in a government that was supposedly committed to a policy he did not support and sought actively to frustrate. It’s disgraceful.
Early on Hammond took a rather different line
The chancellor, Philip Hammond, has suggested Britain could transform its economic model into that of a corporate tax haven if the EU fails to provide it with an agreement on market access after Brexit. -The Guardian, 15th Jan 2017.
So first he riles the Europeans then when push comes to shove he undermines his own government. Or did he? Perhaps he had May's backing or worked to her orders.
The tweet before says she can't understand how it has come to this.
Because we are being led by a ship of fools.
The reason is because preparing for Brexit has been done for just over 12 months.
Under Theresa May and Phil Hammond no money for serious planning was put up and no decisions made. So now its all being done quickly, but its getting done.
Hammond in particular’s failure to prepare was deeply scandalous. I am astonished that he is thought worthy of the Tory whip in the Lords.
The fundamental reason why the government under both May and Johnson have failed to prepare is because no-one has been honest about what Brexit entails. Leavers didn't intend to vote for massive boosts in bureaucracy, to make things more difficult, more costly, more time-consuming and in some cases impossible. Even though that's what they actually did vote for.
So is Hammond more disgraceful for knowing exactly what Brexit would result in - he voted Remain after all - but doing nothing about it after the vote. Or is Johnson the worse culprit for being dishonest in the first place?
Hammond is the most at fault. He chose to accept the second highest position in a government that was supposedly committed to a policy he did not support and sought actively to frustrate. It’s disgraceful.
You're in deep denial about your own choices and are lashing out.
Hammond's a bit of a bogeyman for the soft Leavers.
Remember he announced he wanted to Leave the EU back in 2012/13, but once he saw the actual ramifications of Brexit rather than the fantasy of Brexit, he knew Brexit was just too much of a risk, especially for the future survival of the UK.
The man's a patriot, he put the UK ahead of ideology.
After everything I've seen since I got back from my (mercifully mostly news-free) break yesterday afternoon, I'm more convinced than ever that what we are headed for later in the Autumn is Lockdown 2.0 - April, plus shit weather, masks and schools. It's simply a matter of how long it takes now to get there.
I reckon that Johnson and Hancock are terrified, panicking, and want to shut everything down now - the only thing holding them back isn't the economy, which I think is a wholly incidental concern that they're leaving to Sunak to try to do something about, but trying to get the Government off the hook for the decision, hence the salami slicing strategy on which they have now embarked. Rounds of new restrictions will be implemented, in the hope and expectation that they won't cut down infections by enough to satisfy ministers, and so the garotte will be tightened further and further, whilst - and this is the crucial part - the blame for each new twist will be laid at the door of disobedient elements of the public for failing to stick to the rules. Much of the Government's elderly core vote wants everyone forced to stay at home for however many decades it takes to finally tame the disease anyway, so it'll probably be very easy to sell them on the idea that this is all the fault of feckless youths, chavs holding illegal house parties and smelly poor people from down-at-heel areas generally.
I wouldn't like to subscribe to a precise timescale but I'm quite sure that they want everyone parcelled up into self-isolating individual households again before the Christmas holidays. We might get one of these lockdown lite/circuit breaker things around school half-term time in October, as has previously been speculated, followed by full-fat lockdown the following month. We'll then be incarcerated until March or February, presumably on the pretext of saving our (mostly half-empty) hospitals from collapse.
Boris is popular with many of the proles for the same reason Farage is.
Despite being both public school educated - and objectively "posh" - they don't patronise them, they listen to them, they take their concerns seriously and promise action on them.
This stuff isn't that hard. It's the basic art of politics.
I am surprised there wasn't outbreaks at unis in March, this time unless action (either testing or making students stay over Christmas), I can foresee their return home being akin to when the hospitals emptied oldies into care homes.
Boris is popular with many of the proles for the same reason Farage is.
Despite being both public school educated - and objectively "posh" - they don't patronise them, they listen to them, they take their concerns seriously and promise action on them.
This stuff isn't that hard. It's the basic art of politics.
Personally I’d like to see something beyond simply promising action. Inadvertently, you have put your finger on part of the problem.
The tweet before says she can't understand how it has come to this.
Because we are being led by a ship of fools.
The reason is because preparing for Brexit has been done for just over 12 months.
Under Theresa May and Phil Hammond no money for serious planning was put up and no decisions made. So now its all being done quickly, but its getting done.
Hammond in particular’s failure to prepare was deeply scandalous. I am astonished that he is thought worthy of the Tory whip in the Lords.
The fundamental reason why the government under both May and Johnson have failed to prepare is because no-one has been honest about what Brexit entails. Leavers didn't intend to vote for massive boosts in bureaucracy, to make things more difficult, more costly, more time-consuming and in some cases impossible. Even though that's what they actually did vote for.
So is Hammond more disgraceful for knowing exactly what Brexit would result in - he voted Remain after all - but doing nothing about it after the vote. Or is Johnson the worse culprit for being dishonest in the first place?
Hammond is the most at fault. He chose to accept the second highest position in a government that was supposedly committed to a policy he did not support and sought actively to frustrate. It’s disgraceful.
You're in deep denial about your own choices and are lashing out.
Not at all. I was asked a question and I answered it. My main criticism of Hammond was that he had the imagination of a junior bank manager ( and I apologise to any of them on this board). His budgets completely lacked imagination, innovation or purpose. I suppose that suited May well enough but it did the country no favours. His uselessness as Chancellor did more damage to this country than his dishonesty about Brexit because it was far more important to our future prospects. To be clear Brexit was, is and will remain a side issue in the management of our economy.
After everything I've seen since I got back from my (mercifully mostly news-free) break yesterday afternoon, I'm more convinced than ever that what we are headed for later in the Autumn is Lockdown 2.0 - April, plus shit weather, masks and schools. It's simply a matter of how long it takes now to get there.
I reckon that Johnson and Hancock are terrified, panicking, and want to shut everything down now - the only thing holding them back isn't the economy, which I think is a wholly incidental concern that they're leaving to Sunak to try to do something about, but trying to get the Government off the hook for the decision, hence the salami slicing strategy on which they have now embarked. Rounds of new restrictions will be implemented, in the hope and expectation that they won't cut down infections by enough to satisfy ministers, and so the garotte will be tightened further and further, whilst - and this is the crucial part - the blame for each new twist will be laid at the door of disobedient elements of the public for failing to stick to the rules. Much of the Government's elderly core vote wants everyone forced to stay at home for however many decades it takes to finally tame the disease anyway, so it'll probably be very easy to sell them on the idea that this is all the fault of feckless youths, chavs holding illegal house parties and smelly poor people from down-at-heel areas generally.
I wouldn't like to subscribe to a precise timescale but I'm quite sure that they want everyone parcelled up into self-isolating individual households again before the Christmas holidays. We might get one of these lockdown lite/circuit breaker things around school half-term time in October, as has previously been speculated, followed by full-fat lockdown the following month. We'll then be incarcerated until March or February, presumably on the pretext of saving our (mostly half-empty) hospitals from collapse.
Yes, I think that's right. But a lockdown won't hold until March.
The last one lasted just over three months for the full first wave so I'd expect something shorter this time.
Boris is popular with many of the proles for the same reason Farage is.
Despite being both public school educated - and objectively "posh" - they don't patronise them, they listen to them, they take their concerns seriously and promise action on them.
This stuff isn't that hard. It's the basic art of politics.
Farage is doing the same now for those who are anti Lockdown II. Boris has probably lost them.
1. Will the Biden vote come out, given how many plan to vote by mail (and may not bother)? 2. Will it be the national or the state level polls that are correct? (Or both) 3. How much of the undecided/other/WMV/DK will end up going to Trump, and how much to Biden? 4. Can Trump's vote share get any more efficient?
My guesses are:
1. Yes. 2. National. 3. It'll go 2:1 to Trump over Biden. 4. No, in fact it'll diminish.
4 is the key to whether to think Trump will win or not.
And if you think it will be more efficient you have to explain why.
Clinton was genuinely unlucky last time, Monte Carlo sim the votes and she probably wins most of the rolls.
She was also unlucky because she was Clinton.
Arrogant, entitled and wholly lacking in self-awareness.
1. Will the Biden vote come out, given how many plan to vote by mail (and may not bother)? 2. Will it be the national or the state level polls that are correct? (Or both) 3. How much of the undecided/other/WMV/DK will end up going to Trump, and how much to Biden? 4. Can Trump's vote share get any more efficient?
My guesses are:
1. Yes. 2. National. 3. It'll go 2:1 to Trump over Biden. 4. No, in fact it'll diminish.
4 is the key to whether to think Trump will win or not.
And if you think it will be more efficient you have to explain why.
Re: your addendum to #1, think that Trumpsky's war on USPS is backfiring, and was dumb politics aside from it's harm to US economy and society. Especially rural residents (major part of T's base) and older Americans (key swing vote this election).
Instead of saying, "oh why bother voting via the mail?" voters are MUCH more likely to say,"oh, send my ballot back in the mail ASAP. OR head out to early vote in person.
Seems to me the voters MOST likely to avoid mail voting are Trump voters - but just the less-savvy ones. Because clued-in Republicans know this anti-postal propaganda is meant for the ears of gullible Democrats.
Certainly Trumpsky's war on USPS did NOT depress voter turnout in August WA State primary, which reached record proportions, with turnout high everywhere, but highest in Republican counties, districts & voting precincts.
The cost of Brexit to the UK economy has exceeded the International Space Station (ISS), according to new research – and it continues to rocket.
A report from Bloomberg Economics estimates that Brexit has set Britain back to the tune of £130 billion and is likely to top £200 billion by the end of the year.
That's about 200 bn in 200 weeks, or a billion a week. Let's take that away from the NHS.
They're trying to make him sound posh, but his working class, one of the lads credentials are bang on - violin lessons at Private school are on every white van man's CV
The problem isn’t that. The problem is that you don’t want to be weaponising class when your own party leader is a thick posho transparently only there because daddy pulled the right strings.
I don’t buy Keir Starmer’s proletarian schtick, but compared to Boris Johnson or indeed Jeremy Corbyn he’s a veritable Worzel Gummidge.
Maybe so, but Boris schtick is that he is a posho. I think that working class people are more inclined to be alright with that than a middle class, slightly woke, human rights lawyer. But maybe that's just the kind of people I know
The Johnson schtick is that he’s a posho who understands ordinary people.
As lies go, this is as unconvincing as Cummings’ claim he needed childcare. And I don’t think it fools anybody. It’s just that people happen to like what they see - the bumbling, slightly shady, clown who makes them all laugh.
Therefore, as that persona is remorselessly peeled away in office, he doesn’t want any bright lights shone on the relative background of the Tories and Labour. Such a comparison is still not to the Tories’ advantage if it matters - and if it doesn’t matter, he’s wasting time and energy that could be better used.
Astute post. Stick to your strengths. Which in Johnson's case is as a charlatan that unaccountably, but actually, charms some people.
When you think about though this is actually quite patronising: it implies he bewitches people who are too stupid to know any better, and so it's his fault.
Heaven forbid that they might have minds of their own and recognise that Boris understands them and wants to address their real concerns (and not what they're told their concerns should be).
This is a mistake that liberal elites make time and time again: start with respect and addressing the root concerns.
The tweet before says she can't understand how it has come to this.
Because we are being led by a ship of fools.
The reason is because preparing for Brexit has been done for just over 12 months.
Under Theresa May and Phil Hammond no money for serious planning was put up and no decisions made. So now its all being done quickly, but its getting done.
Hammond in particular’s failure to prepare was deeply scandalous. I am astonished that he is thought worthy of the Tory whip in the Lords.
The fundamental reason why the government under both May and Johnson have failed to prepare is because no-one has been honest about what Brexit entails. Leavers didn't intend to vote for massive boosts in bureaucracy, to make things more difficult, more costly, more time-consuming and in some cases impossible. Even though that's what they actually did vote for.
So is Hammond more disgraceful for knowing exactly what Brexit would result in - he voted Remain after all - but doing nothing about it after the vote. Or is Johnson the worse culprit for being dishonest in the first place?
Hammond is the most at fault. He chose to accept the second highest position in a government that was supposedly committed to a policy he did not support and sought actively to frustrate. It’s disgraceful.
You're in deep denial about your own choices and are lashing out.
I think Hammond holding back funds for No Deal prep was both irresponsible and damaged our negotiating position.
However, he's also a lifelong Conservative to the core so I wouldn't throw him out.
1. Will the Biden vote come out, given how many plan to vote by mail (and may not bother)? 2. Will it be the national or the state level polls that are correct? (Or both) 3. How much of the undecided/other/WMV/DK will end up going to Trump, and how much to Biden? 4. Can Trump's vote share get any more efficient?
My guesses are:
1. Yes. 2. National. 3. It'll go 2:1 to Trump over Biden. 4. No, in fact it'll diminish.
4 is the key to whether to think Trump will win or not.
And if you think it will be more efficient you have to explain why.
Clinton was genuinely unlucky last time, Monte Carlo sim the votes and she probably wins most of the rolls.
She was also unlucky because she was Clinton.
Arrogant, entitled and wholly lacking in self-awareness.
Let's hope those statements will apply to Trump by November 4.
They're trying to make him sound posh, but his working class, one of the lads credentials are bang on - violin lessons at Private school are on every white van man's CV
The problem isn’t that. The problem is that you don’t want to be weaponising class when your own party leader is a thick posho transparently only there because daddy pulled the right strings.
I don’t buy Keir Starmer’s proletarian schtick, but compared to Boris Johnson or indeed Jeremy Corbyn he’s a veritable Worzel Gummidge.
Maybe so, but Boris schtick is that he is a posho. I think that working class people are more inclined to be alright with that than a middle class, slightly woke, human rights lawyer. But maybe that's just the kind of people I know
The Johnson schtick is that he’s a posho who understands ordinary people.
As lies go, this is as unconvincing as Cummings’ claim he needed childcare. And I don’t think it fools anybody. It’s just that people happen to like what they see - the bumbling, slightly shady, clown who makes them all laugh.
Therefore, as that persona is remorselessly peeled away in office, he doesn’t want any bright lights shone on the relative background of the Tories and Labour. Such a comparison is still not to the Tories’ advantage if it matters - and if it doesn’t matter, he’s wasting time and energy that could be better used.
No-one’s going to be playing the violin for Boris, that’s for sure. Well, almost no-one.
I was interested to see from @isam that SKS had violin lessons. What a curious coincidence.
On Starmer, he wants to attract soft Scottish SNP votes back to Labour in the next general and leave open the door for a coalition with the SNP (who'd demand a new referendum) if he falls short so he can became PM.
He's definitely very pro UK but politically he knows he needs to keep those cards close to his chest.
Both puts the Scotland figures in context and, like the warning England should have got from looking at testing demand after Scottish schools returned in August, should prepare people for the absolute explosion that is going to happen in a couple of weeks when English Unis are back.
The tweet before says she can't understand how it has come to this.
Because we are being led by a ship of fools.
The reason is because preparing for Brexit has been done for just over 12 months.
Under Theresa May and Phil Hammond no money for serious planning was put up and no decisions made. So now its all being done quickly, but its getting done.
Hammond in particular’s failure to prepare was deeply scandalous. I am astonished that he is thought worthy of the Tory whip in the Lords.
The fundamental reason why the government under both May and Johnson have failed to prepare is because no-one has been honest about what Brexit entails. Leavers didn't intend to vote for massive boosts in bureaucracy, to make things more difficult, more costly, more time-consuming and in some cases impossible. Even though that's what they actually did vote for.
So is Hammond more disgraceful for knowing exactly what Brexit would result in - he voted Remain after all - but doing nothing about it after the vote. Or is Johnson the worse culprit for being dishonest in the first place?
Hammond is the most at fault. He chose to accept the second highest position in a government that was supposedly committed to a policy he did not support and sought actively to frustrate. It’s disgraceful.
You're in deep denial about your own choices and are lashing out.
Not at all. I was asked a question and I answered it. My main criticism of Hammond was that he had the imagination of a junior bank manager ( and I apologise to any of them on this board). His budgets completely lacked imagination, innovation or purpose. I suppose that suited May well enough but it did the country no favours. His uselessness as Chancellor did more damage to this country than his dishonesty about Brexit because it was far more important to our future prospects. To be clear Brexit was, is and will remain a side issue in the management of our economy.
I think Brexit, even hard Brexit, could have been a side issue if it was managed properly. Unfortunately that has not been the case.
There really is no excuse for the lack of preparations for customs. We refused a Customs Union so whatever else was the outcome of negotiations required them.
This is a a government of fuckwits. We have no need of exports.
Boris is popular with many of the proles for the same reason Farage is.
Despite being both public school educated - and objectively "posh" - they don't patronise them, they listen to them, they take their concerns seriously and promise action on them.
This stuff isn't that hard. It's the basic art of politics.
Personally I’d like to see something beyond simply promising action. Inadvertently, you have put your finger on part of the problem.
I'm a big critic of Boris, as I'm sure you've noticed.
That doesn't invalidate my point.
For these voters to move a new political leader will have to convince them he/she understands them just as well (if not better) and is on their side.
This means - for example - doing something about immigration and culture war stuff where Boris doesn't do very much at all but they all know he's on their side.
Just looking at the weekly download of transport numbers:
Rail passenger numbers falling back to 35% of pre-Covid numbers after a few days above 40. Tube numbers still between 35-40% of pre-Covid numbers - certainly my experience this week the off-peak passenger numbers are very low.
Bus usage just under 60% of pre-Covid levels.
Interesting to see once again the pick-up of vehicle traffic at the weekends especially the numbers of commercial vehicles out on Sundays which are up to 120% of pre-Covid numbers. I suspect the supply chains are having to work overtime to deal with demand - the nature of food shopping seems to be changing with more people doing big "shops" for food but less often.
The tweet before says she can't understand how it has come to this.
Because we are being led by a ship of fools.
The reason is because preparing for Brexit has been done for just over 12 months.
Under Theresa May and Phil Hammond no money for serious planning was put up and no decisions made. So now its all being done quickly, but its getting done.
Hammond in particular’s failure to prepare was deeply scandalous. I am astonished that he is thought worthy of the Tory whip in the Lords.
The fundamental reason why the government under both May and Johnson have failed to prepare is because no-one has been honest about what Brexit entails. Leavers didn't intend to vote for massive boosts in bureaucracy, to make things more difficult, more costly, more time-consuming and in some cases impossible. Even though that's what they actually did vote for.
So is Hammond more disgraceful for knowing exactly what Brexit would result in - he voted Remain after all - but doing nothing about it after the vote. Or is Johnson the worse culprit for being dishonest in the first place?
Hammond is the most at fault. He chose to accept the second highest position in a government that was supposedly committed to a policy he did not support and sought actively to frustrate. It’s disgraceful.
You're in deep denial about your own choices and are lashing out.
I think Hammond holding back funds for No Deal prep was both irresponsible and damaged our negotiating position.
However, he's also a lifelong Conservative to the core so I wouldn't throw him out.
If Hammond didn't want the UK to prepare for Brexit he should have resigned and fought from the backbenches like Grieve. Instead he took the job of Chancellor and actively undermined the country and stated Government policies in the role of Chancellor. That is terrible.
I disagree with him but have much more respect for Grieve than Hammond.
The tweet before says she can't understand how it has come to this.
Because we are being led by a ship of fools.
The reason is because preparing for Brexit has been done for just over 12 months.
Under Theresa May and Phil Hammond no money for serious planning was put up and no decisions made. So now its all being done quickly, but its getting done.
Hammond in particular’s failure to prepare was deeply scandalous. I am astonished that he is thought worthy of the Tory whip in the Lords.
The fundamental reason why the government under both May and Johnson have failed to prepare is because no-one has been honest about what Brexit entails. Leavers didn't intend to vote for massive boosts in bureaucracy, to make things more difficult, more costly, more time-consuming and in some cases impossible. Even though that's what they actually did vote for.
So is Hammond more disgraceful for knowing exactly what Brexit would result in - he voted Remain after all - but doing nothing about it after the vote. Or is Johnson the worse culprit for being dishonest in the first place?
Hammond is the most at fault. He chose to accept the second highest position in a government that was supposedly committed to a policy he did not support and sought actively to frustrate. It’s disgraceful.
Early on Hammond took a rather different line
The chancellor, Philip Hammond, has suggested Britain could transform its economic model into that of a corporate tax haven if the EU fails to provide it with an agreement on market access after Brexit. -The Guardian, 15th Jan 2017.
So first he riles the Europeans then when push comes to shove he undermines his own government. Or did he? Perhaps he had May's backing or worked to her orders.
He was May’s creature, of that there is no doubt. May didn’t want to work with clever people like Osborne, even if they shared her views. She preferred stupid people like Hammond who made her feel less inadequate.
A huge app-based survey of symptoms people get with COVID- they are one of the groups who recognised the importance of loss of taste/smell as a key symptom.
One of the things they can do with their data set is a real-time estimate of the number of infections each day. (They make it 14 thousand new infections yesterday across the UK.)
Just looking at the weekly download of transport numbers:
Rail passenger numbers falling back to 35% of pre-Covid numbers after a few days above 40. Tube numbers still between 35-40% of pre-Covid numbers - certainly my experience this week the off-peak passenger numbers are very low.
Bus usage just under 60% of pre-Covid levels.
Interesting to see once again the pick-up of vehicle traffic at the weekends especially the numbers of commercial vehicles out on Sundays which are up to 120% of pre-Covid numbers. I suspect the supply chains are having to work overtime to deal with demand - the nature of food shopping seems to be changing with more people doing big "shops" for food but less often.
I haven’t checked the DfT figures recently, but watch out for revisions to the most recent rail figures. It takes a few days for all the tickets to work their way into the stats.
The tweet before says she can't understand how it has come to this.
Because we are being led by a ship of fools.
The reason is because preparing for Brexit has been done for just over 12 months.
Under Theresa May and Phil Hammond no money for serious planning was put up and no decisions made. So now its all being done quickly, but its getting done.
Hammond in particular’s failure to prepare was deeply scandalous. I am astonished that he is thought worthy of the Tory whip in the Lords.
The fundamental reason why the government under both May and Johnson have failed to prepare is because no-one has been honest about what Brexit entails. Leavers didn't intend to vote for massive boosts in bureaucracy, to make things more difficult, more costly, more time-consuming and in some cases impossible. Even though that's what they actually did vote for.
So is Hammond more disgraceful for knowing exactly what Brexit would result in - he voted Remain after all - but doing nothing about it after the vote. Or is Johnson the worse culprit for being dishonest in the first place?
Hammond is the most at fault. He chose to accept the second highest position in a government that was supposedly committed to a policy he did not support and sought actively to frustrate. It’s disgraceful.
Early on Hammond took a rather different line
The chancellor, Philip Hammond, has suggested Britain could transform its economic model into that of a corporate tax haven if the EU fails to provide it with an agreement on market access after Brexit. -The Guardian, 15th Jan 2017.
So first he riles the Europeans then when push comes to shove he undermines his own government. Or did he? Perhaps he had May's backing or worked to her orders.
He was May’s creature, of that there is no doubt. May didn’t want to work with clever people like Osborne, even if they shared her views. She preferred stupid people like Hammond who made her feel less inadequate.
Of course, if May's deal had passed then her backstop would have prevented a need for customs until a Deal was agreed. In such a situation we would have had Customs Union and Single Market access for free.
Customs only became essential when BoZo and his chums took power.
And if Hammond is stupid, he is a towering genius compared to this cabinet of numpties.
The tweet before says she can't understand how it has come to this.
Because we are being led by a ship of fools.
The reason is because preparing for Brexit has been done for just over 12 months.
Under Theresa May and Phil Hammond no money for serious planning was put up and no decisions made. So now its all being done quickly, but its getting done.
Hammond in particular’s failure to prepare was deeply scandalous. I am astonished that he is thought worthy of the Tory whip in the Lords.
The fundamental reason why the government under both May and Johnson have failed to prepare is because no-one has been honest about what Brexit entails. Leavers didn't intend to vote for massive boosts in bureaucracy, to make things more difficult, more costly, more time-consuming and in some cases impossible. Even though that's what they actually did vote for.
So is Hammond more disgraceful for knowing exactly what Brexit would result in - he voted Remain after all - but doing nothing about it after the vote. Or is Johnson the worse culprit for being dishonest in the first place?
Hammond is the most at fault. He chose to accept the second highest position in a government that was supposedly committed to a policy he did not support and sought actively to frustrate. It’s disgraceful.
You're in deep denial about your own choices and are lashing out.
Not at all. I was asked a question and I answered it. My main criticism of Hammond was that he had the imagination of a junior bank manager ( and I apologise to any of them on this board). His budgets completely lacked imagination, innovation or purpose. I suppose that suited May well enough but it did the country no favours. His uselessness as Chancellor did more damage to this country than his dishonesty about Brexit because it was far more important to our future prospects. To be clear Brexit was, is and will remain a side issue in the management of our economy.
I think Brexit, even hard Brexit, could have been a side issue if it was managed properly. Unfortunately that has not been the case.
There really is no excuse for the lack of preparations for customs. We refused a Customs Union so whatever else was the outcome of negotiations required them.
This is a a government of fuckwits. We have no need of exports.
The tweet before says she can't understand how it has come to this.
Because we are being led by a ship of fools.
The reason is because preparing for Brexit has been done for just over 12 months.
Under Theresa May and Phil Hammond no money for serious planning was put up and no decisions made. So now its all being done quickly, but its getting done.
Hammond in particular’s failure to prepare was deeply scandalous. I am astonished that he is thought worthy of the Tory whip in the Lords.
The fundamental reason why the government under both May and Johnson have failed to prepare is because no-one has been honest about what Brexit entails. Leavers didn't intend to vote for massive boosts in bureaucracy, to make things more difficult, more costly, more time-consuming and in some cases impossible. Even though that's what they actually did vote for.
So is Hammond more disgraceful for knowing exactly what Brexit would result in - he voted Remain after all - but doing nothing about it after the vote. Or is Johnson the worse culprit for being dishonest in the first place?
Hammond is the most at fault. He chose to accept the second highest position in a government that was supposedly committed to a policy he did not support and sought actively to frustrate. It’s disgraceful.
Early on Hammond took a rather different line
The chancellor, Philip Hammond, has suggested Britain could transform its economic model into that of a corporate tax haven if the EU fails to provide it with an agreement on market access after Brexit. -The Guardian, 15th Jan 2017.
So first he riles the Europeans then when push comes to shove he undermines his own government. Or did he? Perhaps he had May's backing or worked to her orders.
He was May’s creature, of that there is no doubt. May didn’t want to work with clever people like Osborne, even if they shared her views. She preferred stupid people like Hammond who made her feel less inadequate.
Of course, if May's deal had passed then her backstop would have prevented a need for customs until a Deal was agreed. In such a situation we would have had Customs Union and Single Market access for free.
Customs only became essential when BoZo and his chums took power.
May's deal couldn't pass though because it was a bad deal and the policy was supposedly that no deal was better than a bad deal so the government should have been preparing for no deal. The defeat of the deal at the Meaningful Votes was comprehensive but also signposted a long time in advance, before the deal had been signed a large majority of MPs said they wouldn't accept it. So what was she doing signing that and having no Plan B? She was not an elected dictator.
They're trying to make him sound posh, but his working class, one of the lads credentials are bang on - violin lessons at Private school are on every white van man's CV
The problem isn’t that. The problem is that you don’t want to be weaponising class when your own party leader is a thick posho transparently only there because daddy pulled the right strings.
I don’t buy Keir Starmer’s proletarian schtick, but compared to Boris Johnson or indeed Jeremy Corbyn he’s a veritable Worzel Gummidge.
Maybe so, but Boris schtick is that he is a posho. I think that working class people are more inclined to be alright with that than a middle class, slightly woke, human rights lawyer. But maybe that's just the kind of people I know
The Johnson schtick is that he’s a posho who understands ordinary people.
As lies go, this is as unconvincing as Cummings’ claim he needed childcare. And I don’t think it fools anybody. It’s just that people happen to like what they see - the bumbling, slightly shady, clown who makes them all laugh.
Therefore, as that persona is remorselessly peeled away in office, he doesn’t want any bright lights shone on the relative background of the Tories and Labour. Such a comparison is still not to the Tories’ advantage if it matters - and if it doesn’t matter, he’s wasting time and energy that could be better used.
Astute post. Stick to your strengths. Which in Johnson's case is as a charlatan that unaccountably, but actually, charms some people.
When you think about though this is actually quite patronising: it implies he bewitches people who are too stupid to know any better, and so it's his fault.
Heaven forbid that they might have minds of their own and recognise that Boris understands them and wants to address their real concerns (and not what they're told their concerns should be).
This is a mistake that liberal elites make time and time again: start with respect and addressing the root concerns.
Don't practice cognitive dissonance.
Not exactly. The psychology of charlatans is interesting. Their job is to sell a dream. It has to be believable and authentic, even though the product itself is a fraud. They probably do believe in the story themselves at the point when they tell it, otherwise it won't convince. Johnson understands very well the people he is selling to, their hopes, their fears, their desires - otherwise he wouldn't be as good as he is at what he does.
The tweet before says she can't understand how it has come to this.
Because we are being led by a ship of fools.
The reason is because preparing for Brexit has been done for just over 12 months.
Under Theresa May and Phil Hammond no money for serious planning was put up and no decisions made. So now its all being done quickly, but its getting done.
Hammond in particular’s failure to prepare was deeply scandalous. I am astonished that he is thought worthy of the Tory whip in the Lords.
The fundamental reason why the government under both May and Johnson have failed to prepare is because no-one has been honest about what Brexit entails. Leavers didn't intend to vote for massive boosts in bureaucracy, to make things more difficult, more costly, more time-consuming and in some cases impossible. Even though that's what they actually did vote for.
So is Hammond more disgraceful for knowing exactly what Brexit would result in - he voted Remain after all - but doing nothing about it after the vote. Or is Johnson the worse culprit for being dishonest in the first place?
Hammond is the most at fault. He chose to accept the second highest position in a government that was supposedly committed to a policy he did not support and sought actively to frustrate. It’s disgraceful.
Early on Hammond took a rather different line
The chancellor, Philip Hammond, has suggested Britain could transform its economic model into that of a corporate tax haven if the EU fails to provide it with an agreement on market access after Brexit. -The Guardian, 15th Jan 2017.
So first he riles the Europeans then when push comes to shove he undermines his own government. Or did he? Perhaps he had May's backing or worked to her orders.
He was May’s creature, of that there is no doubt. May didn’t want to work with clever people like Osborne, even if they shared her views. She preferred stupid people like Hammond who made her feel less inadequate.
Of course, if May's deal had passed then her backstop would have prevented a need for customs until a Deal was agreed. In such a situation we would have had Customs Union and Single Market access for free.
Customs only became essential when BoZo and his chums took power.
May's deal couldn't pass though because it was a bad deal and the policy was supposedly that no deal was better than a bad deal so the government should have been preparing for no deal. The defeat of the deal at the Meaningful Votes was comprehensive but also signposted a long time in advance, before the deal had been signed a large majority of MPs said they wouldn't accept it. So what was she doing signing that and having no Plan B? She was not an elected dictator.
Was that the May government where BoZo was in charge of the FCO and David Davis of Brexit? There were plenty of Brexiteers in the lower ranks of the cabinet too.
Brexiteers couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery, any failures to prepare is their fault entirely.
There are signs of a resistance movement among young people against their disgusting treatment at the hands of absolutely everybody in the establishment.
Think back to your school and university days, and compare those with what the young are going through now.
They're trying to make him sound posh, but his working class, one of the lads credentials are bang on - violin lessons at Private school are on every white van man's CV
The problem isn’t that. The problem is that you don’t want to be weaponising class when your own party leader is a thick posho transparently only there because daddy pulled the right strings.
I don’t buy Keir Starmer’s proletarian schtick, but compared to Boris Johnson or indeed Jeremy Corbyn he’s a veritable Worzel Gummidge.
Maybe so, but Boris schtick is that he is a posho. I think that working class people are more inclined to be alright with that than a middle class, slightly woke, human rights lawyer. But maybe that's just the kind of people I know
Yeah a lot of working class English people like a posho. I've never seen the feeling being reciprocated much.
It was In the past, look after the boss and we may get some crumbs from the table, with labour there wouldn’t be any crumbs
The tweet before says she can't understand how it has come to this.
Because we are being led by a ship of fools.
The reason is because preparing for Brexit has been done for just over 12 months.
Under Theresa May and Phil Hammond no money for serious planning was put up and no decisions made. So now its all being done quickly, but its getting done.
Hammond in particular’s failure to prepare was deeply scandalous. I am astonished that he is thought worthy of the Tory whip in the Lords.
The fundamental reason why the government under both May and Johnson have failed to prepare is because no-one has been honest about what Brexit entails. Leavers didn't intend to vote for massive boosts in bureaucracy, to make things more difficult, more costly, more time-consuming and in some cases impossible. Even though that's what they actually did vote for.
So is Hammond more disgraceful for knowing exactly what Brexit would result in - he voted Remain after all - but doing nothing about it after the vote. Or is Johnson the worse culprit for being dishonest in the first place?
Hammond is the most at fault. He chose to accept the second highest position in a government that was supposedly committed to a policy he did not support and sought actively to frustrate. It’s disgraceful.
Early on Hammond took a rather different line
The chancellor, Philip Hammond, has suggested Britain could transform its economic model into that of a corporate tax haven if the EU fails to provide it with an agreement on market access after Brexit. -The Guardian, 15th Jan 2017.
So first he riles the Europeans then when push comes to shove he undermines his own government. Or did he? Perhaps he had May's backing or worked to her orders.
He was May’s creature, of that there is no doubt. May didn’t want to work with clever people like Osborne, even if they shared her views. She preferred stupid people like Hammond who made her feel less inadequate.
Of course, if May's deal had passed then her backstop would have prevented a need for customs until a Deal was agreed. In such a situation we would have had Customs Union and Single Market access for free.
Customs only became essential when BoZo and his chums took power.
And if Hammond is stupid, he is a towering genius compared to this cabinet of numpties.
Unlike Philip I supported May's deal as the best that was realistically going to be achieved. But Hammond remains a poor Chancellor. Penny wise and pound foolish. Did nothing to boost growth or address our strategic weaknesses.
There are signs of a resistance movement among young people against their disgusting treatment at the hands of absolutely everybody in the establishment.
Think back to your school and university days, and compare those with what the young are going through now.
Its quite appalling.
What should their contribution have been to control the pandemic then?
The tweet before says she can't understand how it has come to this.
Because we are being led by a ship of fools.
The reason is because preparing for Brexit has been done for just over 12 months.
Under Theresa May and Phil Hammond no money for serious planning was put up and no decisions made. So now its all being done quickly, but its getting done.
Hammond in particular’s failure to prepare was deeply scandalous. I am astonished that he is thought worthy of the Tory whip in the Lords.
The fundamental reason why the government under both May and Johnson have failed to prepare is because no-one has been honest about what Brexit entails. Leavers didn't intend to vote for massive boosts in bureaucracy, to make things more difficult, more costly, more time-consuming and in some cases impossible. Even though that's what they actually did vote for.
So is Hammond more disgraceful for knowing exactly what Brexit would result in - he voted Remain after all - but doing nothing about it after the vote. Or is Johnson the worse culprit for being dishonest in the first place?
Hammond is the most at fault. He chose to accept the second highest position in a government that was supposedly committed to a policy he did not support and sought actively to frustrate. It’s disgraceful.
You're in deep denial about your own choices and are lashing out.
Not at all. I was asked a question and I answered it. My main criticism of Hammond was that he had the imagination of a junior bank manager ( and I apologise to any of them on this board). His budgets completely lacked imagination, innovation or purpose. I suppose that suited May well enough but it did the country no favours. His uselessness as Chancellor did more damage to this country than his dishonesty about Brexit because it was far more important to our future prospects. To be clear Brexit was, is and will remain a side issue in the management of our economy.
I think Brexit, even hard Brexit, could have been a side issue if it was managed properly. Unfortunately that has not been the case.
There really is no excuse for the lack of preparations for customs. We refused a Customs Union so whatever else was the outcome of negotiations required them.
This is a a government of fuckwits. We have no need of exports.
I agree with your first sentence. I have a lot of sympathy for the next 3. Actually I just agree with them too. What the hell has been going on?
They're trying to make him sound posh, but his working class, one of the lads credentials are bang on - violin lessons at Private school are on every white van man's CV
The problem isn’t that. The problem is that you don’t want to be weaponising class when your own party leader is a thick posho transparently only there because daddy pulled the right strings.
I don’t buy Keir Starmer’s proletarian schtick, but compared to Boris Johnson or indeed Jeremy Corbyn he’s a veritable Worzel Gummidge.
Maybe so, but Boris schtick is that he is a posho. I think that working class people are more inclined to be alright with that than a middle class, slightly woke, human rights lawyer. But maybe that's just the kind of people I know
The Johnson schtick is that he’s a posho who understands ordinary people.
As lies go, this is as unconvincing as Cummings’ claim he needed childcare. And I don’t think it fools anybody. It’s just that people happen to like what they see - the bumbling, slightly shady, clown who makes them all laugh.
Therefore, as that persona is remorselessly peeled away in office, he doesn’t want any bright lights shone on the relative background of the Tories and Labour. Such a comparison is still not to the Tories’ advantage if it matters - and if it doesn’t matter, he’s wasting time and energy that could be better used.
Astute post. Stick to your strengths. Which in Johnson's case is as a charlatan that unaccountably, but actually, charms some people.
When you think about though this is actually quite patronising: it implies he bewitches people who are too stupid to know any better, and so it's his fault.
Heaven forbid that they might have minds of their own and recognise that Boris understands them and wants to address their real concerns (and not what they're told their concerns should be).
This is a mistake that liberal elites make time and time again: start with respect and addressing the root concerns.
Don't practice cognitive dissonance.
Not exactly. The psychology of charlatans is interesting. Their job is to sell a dream. It has to be believable and authentic, even though the product itself is a fraud. They probably do believe in the story themselves at the point when they tell it, otherwise it won't convince. Johnson understands very well the people he is selling to, their hopes, their fears, their desires - otherwise he wouldn't be as good as he is at what he does.
Additional important point. You mentioned respect. A charlatan has no respect for the people he is cheating. Johnson in general lacks respect for people.
I can see this crazy situation where students end up having to do all their lectures online stuck in their uni accommodation and not allowed to leave for months.
At the moment, most unis plan to do a few hours of in person teaching each week, but if it becomes rife, i can't see it sustainable given how risky it would be for older academics.
Is it that or they empty out unis and risk spreading it wide and far.
The tweet before says she can't understand how it has come to this.
Because we are being led by a ship of fools.
The reason is because preparing for Brexit has been done for just over 12 months.
Under Theresa May and Phil Hammond no money for serious planning was put up and no decisions made. So now its all being done quickly, but its getting done.
Hammond in particular’s failure to prepare was deeply scandalous. I am astonished that he is thought worthy of the Tory whip in the Lords.
The fundamental reason why the government under both May and Johnson have failed to prepare is because no-one has been honest about what Brexit entails. Leavers didn't intend to vote for massive boosts in bureaucracy, to make things more difficult, more costly, more time-consuming and in some cases impossible. Even though that's what they actually did vote for.
So is Hammond more disgraceful for knowing exactly what Brexit would result in - he voted Remain after all - but doing nothing about it after the vote. Or is Johnson the worse culprit for being dishonest in the first place?
Hammond is the most at fault. He chose to accept the second highest position in a government that was supposedly committed to a policy he did not support and sought actively to frustrate. It’s disgraceful.
You're in deep denial about your own choices and are lashing out.
Not at all. I was asked a question and I answered it. My main criticism of Hammond was that he had the imagination of a junior bank manager ( and I apologise to any of them on this board). His budgets completely lacked imagination, innovation or purpose. I suppose that suited May well enough but it did the country no favours. His uselessness as Chancellor did more damage to this country than his dishonesty about Brexit because it was far more important to our future prospects. To be clear Brexit was, is and will remain a side issue in the management of our economy.
I think Brexit, even hard Brexit, could have been a side issue if it was managed properly. Unfortunately that has not been the case.
There really is no excuse for the lack of preparations for customs. We refused a Customs Union so whatever else was the outcome of negotiations required them.
This is a a government of fuckwits. We have no need of exports.
I agree with your first sentence. I have a lot of sympathy for the next 3. Actually I just agree with them too. What the hell has been going on?
Many of the leading Brexiteers in the Tory party didn't really believe in Brexit but just saw it as a way to a) win power and/or b) get a better deal out of the EU. They didn't actually want to have to go through with it. In reality there isn't much difference between Hammond and Gove's views on it.
Dottin for the Windies is a hell of a player. I saw her hit a 6 88m a couple of nights ago, something relatively few men in the professional game could exceed. But take her out and this Windies side is poor, no match at all for an English attack which seems to have all bases covered.
They're trying to make him sound posh, but his working class, one of the lads credentials are bang on - violin lessons at Private school are on every white van man's CV
Being posh and being Labour kind of works.
Just like being working class and being Tory kind of works.
There are signs of a resistance movement among young people against their disgusting treatment at the hands of absolutely everybody in the establishment.
Think back to your school and university days, and compare those with what the young are going through now.
Its quite appalling.
What should their contribution have been to control the pandemic then?
Just imagine going to university and not being able to congregate in groups of more than six. Gruesome. Gruesome. Barbaric.
And when you come out, laden with debt, what are your prospects in lockdown Britain?
612 Likely voters in the State with a near 4% Margin of Error so the headline isn't wrong.
National polls have never been so irrelevant. It's the state polls that are important.
The problem with that argument is that state polls were wrong in 2016 while the nation polls were (broadly) right.
And national polls have been historically pretty accurate.
If you'd watched the national polls in 2016, you would have said 'Hmmm... Trump's really closed the gap. He's within a couple of points, and if the distribution of his votes is efficient, he could win this.'
My view is: (1) the national polls are more likely to be accurate than the state ones (2) if Biden is 4% or more ahead on election day, then he has to be pretty unlucky not to win
I can see this crazy situation where students end up having to do all their lectures online stuck in their uni accommodation and not allowed to leave for months.
At the moment, most unis plan to do a few hours of in person teaching each week, but if it becomes rife, i can't see it sustainable given how risky it would be for older academics.
Is it that or they empty out unis and risk spreading it wide and far.
There are signs of a resistance movement among young people against their disgusting treatment at the hands of absolutely everybody in the establishment.
Think back to your school and university days, and compare those with what the young are going through now.
Its quite appalling.
What should their contribution have been to control the pandemic then?
Just imagine going to university and not being able to congregate in groups of more than six. Gruesome. Gruesome. Barbaric.
And when you come out, laden with debt, what are your prospects in lockdown Britain?
That's a pretty mean thing to say about physicists and mathematicians.
The tweet before says she can't understand how it has come to this.
Because we are being led by a ship of fools.
The reason is because preparing for Brexit has been done for just over 12 months.
Under Theresa May and Phil Hammond no money for serious planning was put up and no decisions made. So now its all being done quickly, but its getting done.
Hammond in particular’s failure to prepare was deeply scandalous. I am astonished that he is thought worthy of the Tory whip in the Lords.
The fundamental reason why the government under both May and Johnson have failed to prepare is because no-one has been honest about what Brexit entails. Leavers didn't intend to vote for massive boosts in bureaucracy, to make things more difficult, more costly, more time-consuming and in some cases impossible. Even though that's what they actually did vote for.
So is Hammond more disgraceful for knowing exactly what Brexit would result in - he voted Remain after all - but doing nothing about it after the vote. Or is Johnson the worse culprit for being dishonest in the first place?
Hammond is the most at fault. He chose to accept the second highest position in a government that was supposedly committed to a policy he did not support and sought actively to frustrate. It’s disgraceful.
Early on Hammond took a rather different line
The chancellor, Philip Hammond, has suggested Britain could transform its economic model into that of a corporate tax haven if the EU fails to provide it with an agreement on market access after Brexit. -The Guardian, 15th Jan 2017.
So first he riles the Europeans then when push comes to shove he undermines his own government. Or did he? Perhaps he had May's backing or worked to her orders.
He was May’s creature, of that there is no doubt. May didn’t want to work with clever people like Osborne, even if they shared her views. She preferred stupid people like Hammond who made her feel less inadequate.
Of course, if May's deal had passed then her backstop would have prevented a need for customs until a Deal was agreed. In such a situation we would have had Customs Union and Single Market access for free.
Customs only became essential when BoZo and his chums took power.
May's deal couldn't pass though because it was a bad deal and the policy was supposedly that no deal was better than a bad deal so the government should have been preparing for no deal. The defeat of the deal at the Meaningful Votes was comprehensive but also signposted a long time in advance, before the deal had been signed a large majority of MPs said they wouldn't accept it. So what was she doing signing that and having no Plan B? She was not an elected dictator.
Was that the May government where BoZo was in charge of the FCO and David Davis of Brexit? There were plenty of Brexiteers in the lower ranks of the cabinet too.
Brexiteers couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery, any failures to prepare is their fault entirely.
No its not because Boris wasn't in charge of the FCO, nor was David Davis the Brexit Secretary when the deal was signed or any time afterwards or even building up to that.
The tweet before says she can't understand how it has come to this.
Because we are being led by a ship of fools.
The reason is because preparing for Brexit has been done for just over 12 months.
Under Theresa May and Phil Hammond no money for serious planning was put up and no decisions made. So now its all being done quickly, but its getting done.
Hammond in particular’s failure to prepare was deeply scandalous. I am astonished that he is thought worthy of the Tory whip in the Lords.
The fundamental reason why the government under both May and Johnson have failed to prepare is because no-one has been honest about what Brexit entails. Leavers didn't intend to vote for massive boosts in bureaucracy, to make things more difficult, more costly, more time-consuming and in some cases impossible. Even though that's what they actually did vote for.
So is Hammond more disgraceful for knowing exactly what Brexit would result in - he voted Remain after all - but doing nothing about it after the vote. Or is Johnson the worse culprit for being dishonest in the first place?
Hammond is the most at fault. He chose to accept the second highest position in a government that was supposedly committed to a policy he did not support and sought actively to frustrate. It’s disgraceful.
You're in deep denial about your own choices and are lashing out.
Not at all. I was asked a question and I answered it. My main criticism of Hammond was that he had the imagination of a junior bank manager ( and I apologise to any of them on this board). His budgets completely lacked imagination, innovation or purpose. I suppose that suited May well enough but it did the country no favours. His uselessness as Chancellor did more damage to this country than his dishonesty about Brexit because it was far more important to our future prospects. To be clear Brexit was, is and will remain a side issue in the management of our economy.
I think Brexit, even hard Brexit, could have been a side issue if it was managed properly. Unfortunately that has not been the case.
There really is no excuse for the lack of preparations for customs. We refused a Customs Union so whatever else was the outcome of negotiations required them.
This is a a government of fuckwits. We have no need of exports.
I agree with your first sentence. I have a lot of sympathy for the next 3. Actually I just agree with them too. What the hell has been going on?
Many of the leading Brexiteers in the Tory party didn't really believe in Brexit but just saw it as a way to a) win power and/or b) get a better deal out of the EU. They didn't actually want to have to go through with it. In reality there isn't much difference between Hammond and Gove's views on it.
There seems to be a complete failure by Brexiteers to understand that Brexit means Brexit. They were so wrapped up in flag waving culture war that they didn't make any proper plans for third country status. Chickens are coming home to roost.
There are signs of a resistance movement among young people against their disgusting treatment at the hands of absolutely everybody in the establishment.
Think back to your school and university days, and compare those with what the young are going through now.
Its quite appalling.
I don't think I'd be paying 10k a year to watch live stream videos in a tiny dorm room and no student bar.
The tweet before says she can't understand how it has come to this.
Because we are being led by a ship of fools.
The reason is because preparing for Brexit has been done for just over 12 months.
Under Theresa May and Phil Hammond no money for serious planning was put up and no decisions made. So now its all being done quickly, but its getting done.
Hammond in particular’s failure to prepare was deeply scandalous. I am astonished that he is thought worthy of the Tory whip in the Lords.
The fundamental reason why the government under both May and Johnson have failed to prepare is because no-one has been honest about what Brexit entails. Leavers didn't intend to vote for massive boosts in bureaucracy, to make things more difficult, more costly, more time-consuming and in some cases impossible. Even though that's what they actually did vote for.
So is Hammond more disgraceful for knowing exactly what Brexit would result in - he voted Remain after all - but doing nothing about it after the vote. Or is Johnson the worse culprit for being dishonest in the first place?
Hammond is the most at fault. He chose to accept the second highest position in a government that was supposedly committed to a policy he did not support and sought actively to frustrate. It’s disgraceful.
Early on Hammond took a rather different line
The chancellor, Philip Hammond, has suggested Britain could transform its economic model into that of a corporate tax haven if the EU fails to provide it with an agreement on market access after Brexit. -The Guardian, 15th Jan 2017.
So first he riles the Europeans then when push comes to shove he undermines his own government. Or did he? Perhaps he had May's backing or worked to her orders.
He was May’s creature, of that there is no doubt. May didn’t want to work with clever people like Osborne, even if they shared her views. She preferred stupid people like Hammond who made her feel less inadequate.
Of course, if May's deal had passed then her backstop would have prevented a need for customs until a Deal was agreed. In such a situation we would have had Customs Union and Single Market access for free.
Customs only became essential when BoZo and his chums took power.
May's deal couldn't pass though because it was a bad deal and the policy was supposedly that no deal was better than a bad deal so the government should have been preparing for no deal. The defeat of the deal at the Meaningful Votes was comprehensive but also signposted a long time in advance, before the deal had been signed a large majority of MPs said they wouldn't accept it. So what was she doing signing that and having no Plan B? She was not an elected dictator.
Was that the May government where BoZo was in charge of the FCO and David Davis of Brexit? There were plenty of Brexiteers in the lower ranks of the cabinet too.
Brexiteers couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery, any failures to prepare is their fault entirely.
No its not because Boris wasn't in charge of the FCO, nor was David Davis the Brexit Secretary when the deal was signed or any time afterwards or even building up to that.
May made these decisions on the advice of tweedledum and tweedledee. No one else got a look in. But the deal she got is still probably better than the deal we are going to have now.
There are signs of a resistance movement among young people against their disgusting treatment at the hands of absolutely everybody in the establishment.
Think back to your school and university days, and compare those with what the young are going through now.
Its quite appalling.
What should their contribution have been to control the pandemic then?
Just imagine going to university and not being able to congregate in groups of more than six. Gruesome. Gruesome. Barbaric.
And when you come out, laden with debt, what are your prospects in lockdown Britain?
That's a pretty mean thing to say about physicists and mathematicians.
You may think this is funny. I really don't. Its an appalling situation.
Comments
Hammond refusing to fund preparations was neglect. May letting him was just one of her litany of atrocious mistakes.
Ever since the referendum the Tories said no to a Customs Union and the EEA. Which means a border. Which means we need a border system. That they haven't even bothered to start development work on the bloody computer system in any of that time is almost as laughable as you making excuses for it.
As lies go, this is as unconvincing as Cummings’ claim he needed childcare. And I don’t think it fools anybody. It’s just that people happen to like what they see - the bumbling, slightly shady, clown who makes them all laugh.
Therefore, as that persona is remorselessly peeled away in office, he doesn’t want any bright lights shone on the relative background of the Tories and Labour. Such a comparison is still not to the Tories’ advantage if it matters - and if it doesn’t matter, he’s wasting time and energy that could be better used.
If you get a Deal then treat that as something that simplifies your life and you can remove some of your preparations if necessary - you won't need more than No Deal preparations so do that as a base case scenario.
So is Hammond more disgraceful for knowing exactly what Brexit would result in - he voted Remain after all - but doing nothing about it after the vote. Or is Johnson the worse culprit for being dishonest in the first place?
Thing is, no deal simply can't work unless you can implement all that entails - standards checks and customs checks. As we can't do either from 1st January we either have to extend or utterly capitulate.
A report from Bloomberg Economics estimates that Brexit has set Britain back to the tune of £130 billion and is likely to top £200 billion by the end of the year.
1. Will the Biden vote come out, given how many plan to vote by mail (and may not bother)?
2. Will it be the national or the state level polls that are correct? (Or both)
3. How much of the undecided/other/WMV/DK will end up going to Trump, and how much to Biden?
4. Can Trump's vote share get any more efficient?
My guesses are:
1. Yes.
2. National.
3. It'll go 2:1 to Trump over Biden.
4. No, in fact it'll diminish.
And if you think it will be more efficient you have to explain why.
I reckon that Johnson and Hancock are terrified, panicking, and want to shut everything down now - the only thing holding them back isn't the economy, which I think is a wholly incidental concern that they're leaving to Sunak to try to do something about, but trying to get the Government off the hook for the decision, hence the salami slicing strategy on which they have now embarked. Rounds of new restrictions will be implemented, in the hope and expectation that they won't cut down infections by enough to satisfy ministers, and so the garotte will be tightened further and further, whilst - and this is the crucial part - the blame for each new twist will be laid at the door of disobedient elements of the public for failing to stick to the rules. Much of the Government's elderly core vote wants everyone forced to stay at home for however many decades it takes to finally tame the disease anyway, so it'll probably be very easy to sell them on the idea that this is all the fault of feckless youths, chavs holding illegal house parties and smelly poor people from down-at-heel areas generally.
I wouldn't like to subscribe to a precise timescale but I'm quite sure that they want everyone parcelled up into self-isolating individual households again before the Christmas holidays. We might get one of these lockdown lite/circuit breaker things around school half-term time in October, as has previously been speculated, followed by full-fat lockdown the following month. We'll then be incarcerated until March or February, presumably on the pretext of saving our (mostly half-empty) hospitals from collapse.
BBC News - Covid in Scotland: 124 test positive in Glasgow University outbreak
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-54268780
The chancellor, Philip Hammond, has suggested Britain could transform its economic model into that of a corporate tax haven if the EU fails to provide it with an agreement on market access after Brexit. -The Guardian, 15th Jan 2017.
So first he riles the Europeans then when push comes to shove he undermines his own government. Or did he? Perhaps he had May's backing or worked to her orders.
Remember he announced he wanted to Leave the EU back in 2012/13, but once he saw the actual ramifications of Brexit rather than the fantasy of Brexit, he knew Brexit was just too much of a risk, especially for the future survival of the UK.
The man's a patriot, he put the UK ahead of ideology.
Despite being both public school educated - and objectively "posh" - they don't patronise them, they listen to them, they take their concerns seriously and promise action on them.
This stuff isn't that hard. It's the basic art of politics.
To be clear Brexit was, is and will remain a side issue in the management of our economy.
The last one lasted just over three months for the full first wave so I'd expect something shorter this time.
Arrogant, entitled and wholly lacking in self-awareness.
https://twitter.com/cricketwyvern/status/1308790415974371329?s=19
Instead of saying, "oh why bother voting via the mail?" voters are MUCH more likely to say,"oh, send my ballot back in the mail ASAP. OR head out to early vote in person.
Seems to me the voters MOST likely to avoid mail voting are Trump voters - but just the less-savvy ones. Because clued-in Republicans know this anti-postal propaganda is meant for the ears of gullible Democrats.
Certainly Trumpsky's war on USPS did NOT depress voter turnout in August WA State primary, which reached record proportions, with turnout high everywhere, but highest in Republican counties, districts & voting precincts.
Quinnipiac has Biden up 52-42 nationally.
https://poll.qu.edu/images/polling/us/us09232020_ufth12.pdf
1302 Likely voters with a margin of error of 2.7%.
A Civitas poll in North Carolina has Trump a point ahead 45-44 with 8% Undecided.
https://www.nccivitas.org/polling/trump-biden-dead-heat/
612 Likely voters in the State with a near 4% Margin of Error so the headline isn't wrong.
Heaven forbid that they might have minds of their own and recognise that Boris understands them and wants to address their real concerns (and not what they're told their concerns should be).
This is a mistake that liberal elites make time and time again: start with respect and addressing the root concerns.
Don't practice cognitive dissonance.
However, he's also a lifelong Conservative to the core so I wouldn't throw him out.
He's definitely very pro UK but politically he knows he needs to keep those cards close to his chest.
There really is no excuse for the lack of preparations for customs. We refused a Customs Union so whatever else was the outcome of negotiations required them.
This is a a government of fuckwits. We have no need of exports.
That doesn't invalidate my point.
For these voters to move a new political leader will have to convince them he/she understands them just as well (if not better) and is on their side.
This means - for example - doing something about immigration and culture war stuff where Boris doesn't do very much at all but they all know he's on their side.
Rail passenger numbers falling back to 35% of pre-Covid numbers after a few days above 40. Tube numbers still between 35-40% of pre-Covid numbers - certainly my experience this week the off-peak passenger numbers are very low.
Bus usage just under 60% of pre-Covid levels.
Interesting to see once again the pick-up of vehicle traffic at the weekends especially the numbers of commercial vehicles out on Sundays which are up to 120% of pre-Covid numbers. I suspect the supply chains are having to work overtime to deal with demand - the nature of food shopping seems to be changing with more people doing big "shops" for food but less often.
I disagree with him but have much more respect for Grieve than Hammond.
One of the things they can do with their data set is a real-time estimate of the number of infections each day. (They make it 14 thousand new infections yesterday across the UK.)
If you're not signed up, it's here:
https://covid.joinzoe.com/
Customs only became essential when BoZo and his chums took power.
And if Hammond is stupid, he is a towering genius compared to this cabinet of numpties.
Brexiteers couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery, any failures to prepare is their fault entirely.
Think back to your school and university days, and compare those with what the young are going through now.
Its quite appalling.
At the moment, most unis plan to do a few hours of in person teaching each week, but if it becomes rife, i can't see it sustainable given how risky it would be for older academics.
Is it that or they empty out unis and risk spreading it wide and far.
Just like being working class and being Tory kind of works.
Cutting across etc.
And when you come out, laden with debt, what are your prospects in lockdown Britain?
And national polls have been historically pretty accurate.
If you'd watched the national polls in 2016, you would have said 'Hmmm... Trump's really closed the gap. He's within a couple of points, and if the distribution of his votes is efficient, he could win this.'
My view is:
(1) the national polls are more likely to be accurate than the state ones
(2) if Biden is 4% or more ahead on election day, then he has to be pretty unlucky not to win