Govt unwisely raised expectations things would go back to normal much earlier than was even vaguely plausible.
I am generally a critic of the government but think they are being harshly treated here. Alternating between using the brake and accelerator is the right way forward at the moment, but wont be popular with either the dominant shut everything down group or the keep everything open group.
I don't completely disagree with the sentiment, but would say that good driving does not involve alternating too much and too hard between accelerator and brake. It involves using each when necessary but essentially maintaining a fairly steady pace.
In this case, I agree the "let it rip" and "hide until next May" mobs are equally nuts but in different ways. However, you get a lot of uncertainty and frustration if you hit the gas hard as soon as there's a bit of clear road ahead, only to have to slam on the brakes when you realise you're about to smash into the car in front.
Generally yes steady pace is ideal. To do that is much easier when the optimum speed is known and constant. In governing UK 2020, we dont know the optimum speed, and that speed changes for sometimes unknown/uncertain reasons. Hence a mix of brake and accelerator is the right way forward "at the moment" (and this caveat is important).
Which will mean the government will claim victory over its new restrictions.
What won't happen is Vallance admitting his scaremongering was exactly that.
- Infection rates surge -
- New restrictions brought in and Government scientists tell the public that it's surging and warn them how bad it could get if it continued at its fastest observed rate - while emphasising they don't expect it to be that bad - - - Infections continue to ramp up for a while, slowing, and start to fall in exactly the time frame you'd expect if the warnings and restrictions were responsible -
- Conclusion: It just happened on its own and there's no way the warnings and restrictions could have had anything to do with it -
Sure.
How could it possibly be proven that the restrictions were a mistake? Is this a Karl Popper falsification thing? It seems that it was a free option for the govt, no matter what happened they were right
Quite.
Certainly it will be impossible to prove to certain PBers that anything other than full blown hardcore lockdownism would be wrong.
It's equally impossible for any evidence to be accepted by certain PBers that any restrictions might possibly have ever been necessary, isn't it?
Dunno. I am pro restrictions, as you should know by now.
I think, however, that the restrictions are poorly targeted and ignorant of the risk profile of various groups.
I`m concerned about civil liberties, but despair of those who manipulate statistics to suit their lockdown-skeptic views. They spoil their argument by doing this because it becomes unscientific and dogmatic.
Better to stick to arguing against overly, or poorly targeted, authoritarian measures on philosophical grounds - i.e. through points of principle. Seeking to re-look at the balance between health considerations and other considerations (freedoms and economics and non-Covid health and psychological considerations) is a perfectly arguable line to take.
In this respect it's very similar to climate change denialism. People don't like interventionist solutions, but instead of coming up with a different approach or arguing that the free market is the best way to promote green innovation, they just attempt to discredit the science.
Reminds me of a restaurant in Sofia - completely decorated in weird "Folk" shite. Tony Sopranos Bulgarian relatives were sitting in a group, smoking cigars just under a No Smoking sign. Their "driver" had appointed himself doorman and was checking everyone coming into the restaurant.
Which will mean the government will claim victory over its new restrictions.
What won't happen is Vallance admitting his scaremongering was exactly that.
- Infection rates surge -
- New restrictions brought in and Government scientists tell the public that it's surging and warn them how bad it could get if it continued at its fastest observed rate - while emphasising they don't expect it to be that bad - - - Infections continue to ramp up for a while, slowing, and start to fall in exactly the time frame you'd expect if the warnings and restrictions were responsible -
- Conclusion: It just happened on its own and there's no way the warnings and restrictions could have had anything to do with it -
Sure.
How could it possibly be proven that the restrictions were a mistake? Is this a Karl Popper falsification thing? It seems that it was a free option for the govt, no matter what happened they were right
Well, if measures were brought in to reduce socialisations and the opportunity to spread the virus, the simplest hypothesis is therefore that the rate of spread of the virus would decrease, comparative to not bringing them in.
To then jump to "These couldn't have had any effect and the reduction was exactly what would have happened without them" would seem to be the less likely hypothesis and would require greater evidence than "I've decided it didn't happen like that."
If the level of spread suddenly dropped like a rock instantly after the speech and far sooner than the effects of any warning or restrictions would allow, we could switch to the simplest hypothesis being that they were unnecessary.
Which it didn't, so we couldn't, so they weren't.
The idea that natural phenomena, whether volcanoes, eclipses, floods, drought or viruses, or even global climate for that matter, are relatable to and controllable by human behaviour is as old as the dark ages and belongs there, surely.
We can amelerioate the effects of almightly nature. But we cannot, and never will be able to, control it.
We get oil from Scottish seas because there were forests there once. Our valleys were glaciers.
That's climate change, right there.
Which is why diseases such as typhoid, measles, polio, smallpox, and so on remain such a problem and have never been brought under control.
Seriously, that entire worldview is laughable - that strange and inexplicable phenomena govern our world like the effects of capricious gods.
Is this some strange trolling or joke?
Someone called Semmelweiss made some rather important discoveries in the 1800s. Something called the Germ Theory of Disease came along. And one of the bigger steps in changing behaviours in order to control disease outbreaks was carried out by someone called Florence Nightingale (you may have heard of her) who produced excellent data visualisations to convince some decision-makers of the way to deal with disease outbreaks in hospitals.
That a good point but there's a distinction. Those diseases were largely brought under control not by human behaviour but by human treatments. By real science. People were not ordered to dramatically alter their day to day behaviour, surrender their liberty or give up their businesses.
And other viruses. such as influenza, still kill. Right now, more than COVID.
Polio outbreaks regularly saw American towns/regions put under lockdown and quarantined.
That to me seems an illogical difference. The EC supremacy market is the delta between Biden EC and opponent EC.
It's perfectly logical in principle: If Biden withdraws, the Biden ECV market is voided but the Trump ECV market stands because he hasn't withdrawn. If Trump withdraws, the Trump ECV market is voided but the Biden ECV market stands because he hasn't withdrawn. If either withdraws, the Supremacy market is voided because it's the delta between two figures one of which is not considered not valid.
In practice, though, I'm not sure it's sustainable. The market is essentially about the Trump/Biden contest and only the Trump/Biden contest. The whole basis of the market would be invalid if one of them withdraws.
But that's what I mean by illogical. The supremacy is Biden EC over Trump EC. It's A = B - C. So, the basis of B and C should be the same as that of A. But so long as the rules were clear and put up in advance - as they were - then I guess a punter cannot complain. You could factor the illogicality in.
Its entirely logical.
If A = Supremacy, B = Biden and C = Trump then Biden withdrawing voids B and therefore also voids A. Trump withdrawing voids C and therefore also voids A.
Not my point. It is indeed logical that A is void if either B or C is void. The illogicality is that B is not void if C is, and C is not void if B is.
Why?
Because B = 540 - C and C = 540 - B. Thus if C changes its identity (e.g. from Trump to Pence) it is no longer the C it used to be - as confirmed by the fact it would be void. Ergo B (being 540 minus a void C) should also be void. QED.
You're wrong.
B is not 540 - C since voters also have the right to vote for third parties D. Electoral college votes have indeed gone to third parties in the past on more than a few occasions.
That is not material to the point I am demonstrating.
Yes it is. The question is solely Biden ECVs so Trump isn't in the equation.
For every ECV the question is if it is won by Biden (you win) or A N Other (you lose).
Trump is only relevant for the Trump and Supremacy markets.
Think deeper. It is B vs C for EC votes. So when assessing how many of the 540 available B will win you assess the chances of B against C. It has no meaning in isolation. What C is defines and affects what B is. For example, if C is Superman, you get one answer for B's chances, and if C is Clark Kent, you get another. Thus if B or C is void, so in logic should the other one be. QED.
You're wrong and thinking from a British perspective where the only options are those on the ballot paper. In the USA it doesn't work that way. You can vote for B or C, or minor candidates D and E like here . . . or you can write in X, Y or Z if you dislike any of the above.
If C is Clark Kent and you dislike Clark Kent but are happy to vote for Superman or Bruce Wayne then you are not obliged to vote for either B or Clark Kent. You can write in Superman, or you can write in Bruce Wayne. Here your vote would be spoilt if you do that, there it would be counted.
Last time 111 000 people voted for Bernie Sanders although he was not named on any ballot paper.
For comparison, the latest available numbers for Scotland and Wales (obtained by following the trail of links from the main Gov.UK page) are as follows:
Scotland (issued 1/10/20) - R = 1.3-1.7, growth rate estimate: +5% to +10% Wales (issued 25/9/20) - R = 1.0-1.4, growth rate estimate +1% to +4%
There appear to be no similar recent data available for Northern Ireland.
The locations of the worst outbreaks continue to support the notion that low incomes, low quality housing and high population densities are the key drivers (although, given the more general spread of the virus which appears to have taken place all over Yorkshire, the relationship between low prevalence and wealthier/more rural localities isn't entirely set in stone.)
What will Boris do if Covid subsides enough to make his "Rule of 6" nonsense look even more useless?
The double-whammy is that if Covid falls off the radar, what will he use to distract from the continuing disaster of Brexit?
Err, if Covid cases are subsiding (which I hope is the case, although we don't know for sure yet), then surely that vindicates the measures the government has taken?
The ONS infection data is the ground truth for this stuff -
On the principle that you should look at what somebody does for how they truly feel, not what they say, the second one is perhaps more interesting. Not only is a change from the previous approach but look at where they are canvassing:
"Beginning this weekend, the Biden campaign will send out several hundred volunteers to reach voters in Nevada, Michigan, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, with the efforts expanding, in a phased approach, to 17 battleground states, one official said."
Now, I may be looking at things from a skewed angle and there are maybe logistical reasons involved, but I don't know why the Biden campaign would have Nevada and NH as two of their first states for this approach unless (a) they think numbers are tight here and / or (b) they recognise the election might be tight and therefore even states with 4-5 electoral votes might be crucial.
If you believe 538, these have a serious chance of being tipping point states (i.e. the state where the 270th EV will be won and lost) - they have Pennsylvania at 30.8% probability, Michigan 9.8%, Nevada (a much smaller state, mind) 2.9% and New Hampshire (a tiny state) 1.7%. Texas - despite being huge and much discussed - has only a 1.5% chance. Some of the states talked about as outside Biden bets have a much less than 1% chance.
Crucially as far as your chain of logic goes, those basic facts don't change if Biden was 20% ahead in the polls or if he was 20% behind. If he wins big, then maybe he'll win South Carolina. If he loses big, then maybe he'll lose Washington. But the 270th electoral vote when you order the states by margin will still be provided by Pennsylvania or one of those.
This isn't like the UK where, if a party thinks it's on course to win big it pulls resources out of the ultra marginal to attack the 10k opposition majority seat. There is nothing beyond vanity in winning big over winning small. You throw everything into the tipping points and, if he wins Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and Nevada crushingly and in the process loses South Carolina narrowly, Biden won't give a tuppenny jizz about that.
Which will mean the government will claim victory over its new restrictions.
What won't happen is Vallance admitting his scaremongering was exactly that.
- Infection rates surge -
- New restrictions brought in and Government scientists tell the public that it's surging and warn them how bad it could get if it continued at its fastest observed rate - while emphasising they don't expect it to be that bad - - - Infections continue to ramp up for a while, slowing, and start to fall in exactly the time frame you'd expect if the warnings and restrictions were responsible -
- Conclusion: It just happened on its own and there's no way the warnings and restrictions could have had anything to do with it -
Sure.
How could it possibly be proven that the restrictions were a mistake? Is this a Karl Popper falsification thing? It seems that it was a free option for the govt, no matter what happened they were right
Quite.
Certainly it will be impossible to prove to certain PBers that anything other than full blown hardcore lockdownism would be wrong.
It's equally impossible for any evidence to be accepted by certain PBers that any restrictions might possibly have ever been necessary, isn't it?
Dunno. I am pro restrictions, as you should know by now.
I think, however, that the restrictions are poorly targeted and ignorant of the risk profile of various groups.
I`m concerned about civil liberties, but despair of those who manipulate statistics to suit their lockdown-skeptic views. They spoil their argument by doing this because it becomes unscientific and dogmatic.
Better to stick to arguing against overly, or poorly targeted, authoritarian measures on philosophical grounds - i.e. through points of principle. Seeking to re-look at the balance between health considerations and other considerations (freedoms and economics and non-Covid health and psychological considerations) is a perfectly arguable line to take.
In this respect it's very similar to climate change denialism. People don't like interventionist solutions, but instead of coming up with a different approach or arguing that the free market is the best way to promote green innovation, they just attempt to discredit the science.
These Covid science-wrestlers open themselves up to mockery and, worse, can put them into conspiracy theory territory. They are a bloody liability to those of us, mostly liberals, who want to defend freedoms that we never thought would ever need defending and sincerely believe that the government has got the balance wrong.
Which will mean the government will claim victory over its new restrictions.
What won't happen is Vallance admitting his scaremongering was exactly that.
- Infection rates surge -
- New restrictions brought in and Government scientists tell the public that it's surging and warn them how bad it could get if it continued at its fastest observed rate - while emphasising they don't expect it to be that bad - - - Infections continue to ramp up for a while, slowing, and start to fall in exactly the time frame you'd expect if the warnings and restrictions were responsible -
- Conclusion: It just happened on its own and there's no way the warnings and restrictions could have had anything to do with it -
Sure.
How could it possibly be proven that the restrictions were a mistake? Is this a Karl Popper falsification thing? It seems that it was a free option for the govt, no matter what happened they were right
Well, if measures were brought in to reduce socialisations and the opportunity to spread the virus, the simplest hypothesis is therefore that the rate of spread of the virus would decrease, comparative to not bringing them in.
To then jump to "These couldn't have had any effect and the reduction was exactly what would have happened without them" would seem to be the less likely hypothesis and would require greater evidence than "I've decided it didn't happen like that."
If the level of spread suddenly dropped like a rock instantly after the speech and far sooner than the effects of any warning or restrictions would allow, we could switch to the simplest hypothesis being that they were unnecessary.
Which it didn't, so we couldn't, so they weren't.
The idea that natural phenomena, whether volcanoes, eclipses, floods, drought or viruses, or even global climate for that matter, are relatable to and controllable by human behaviour is as old as the dark ages and belongs there, surely.
We can amelerioate the effects of almightly nature. But we cannot, and never will be able to, control it.
We get oil from Scottish seas because there were forests there once. Our valleys were glaciers.
That's climate change, right there.
Which is why diseases such as typhoid, measles, polio, smallpox, and so on remain such a problem and have never been brought under control.
Seriously, that entire worldview is laughable - that strange and inexplicable phenomena govern our world like the effects of capricious gods.
Is this some strange trolling or joke?
Someone called Semmelweiss made some rather important discoveries in the 1800s. Something called the Germ Theory of Disease came along. And one of the bigger steps in changing behaviours in order to control disease outbreaks was carried out by someone called Florence Nightingale (you may have heard of her) who produced excellent data visualisations to convince some decision-makers of the way to deal with disease outbreaks in hospitals.
That a good point but there's a distinction. Those diseases were largely brought under control not by human behaviour but by human treatments. By real science. People were not ordered to dramatically alter their day to day behaviour, surrender their liberty or give up their businesses.
And other viruses. such as influenza, still kill. Right now, more than COVID.
Polio outbreaks regularly saw American towns/regions put under lockdown and quarantined.
That behaviour did not stop polio. The vaccines against it did. Those lockdowns might still be there if real science had not intervened.
Which will mean the government will claim victory over its new restrictions.
What won't happen is Vallance admitting his scaremongering was exactly that.
- Infection rates surge -
- New restrictions brought in and Government scientists tell the public that it's surging and warn them how bad it could get if it continued at its fastest observed rate - while emphasising they don't expect it to be that bad - - - Infections continue to ramp up for a while, slowing, and start to fall in exactly the time frame you'd expect if the warnings and restrictions were responsible -
- Conclusion: It just happened on its own and there's no way the warnings and restrictions could have had anything to do with it -
Sure.
How could it possibly be proven that the restrictions were a mistake? Is this a Karl Popper falsification thing? It seems that it was a free option for the govt, no matter what happened they were right
Quite.
Certainly it will be impossible to prove to certain PBers that anything other than full blown hardcore lockdownism would be wrong.
It's equally impossible for any evidence to be accepted by certain PBers that any restrictions might possibly have ever been necessary, isn't it?
But surely a pandemic is a natural event like a tsunami or an earthquake or a flood or a volcanic eruption. There are, unavoidably and very sadly, going to be victims.
The human response to the natural event merely decides how many and of what character the casualties are. We may have lost more eighty year olds with two-comorbidities by not locking down.
But how many younger people have we consigned to unnecessary deaths in other ways by doing so?
We can react to tsunamis and earthquakes and volcanic eruptions by minimising casualties. We can head for higher ground as soon as a tsunami starts to approach (and we can often detect them in advance from our knowledge of how they are created). We can avoid fault lines, and when we do build on them, build to a certain earthquake code. We can avoid living on flood plains, or too close to volcanoes (and monitor them carefully and evacuate the areas prior to most eruptions).
All of this is adjusting our behaviour.
With a pandemic, we can adjust our behaviour to limit or reduce the amount of opportunity the virus has to spread.
The key question isn't whether this adjustment reduces spread, but in your last sentence: whether that reduction in spread was worthwhile.
(Which is why the "Hah, I bet the reduction has nothing to do with the restrictions" is both daft and ill-aimed. If it was "Was the level of the reduction we got from these restrictions worth the impact on us of the restrictions?" it would be a meaningful and worthwhile discussion to have. But very different.)
As it happens, I think the cost of the lockdown and restrictions was significant - both in the loss of health and life from people who did not get needed treatments (albeit many of them would have lost their treatments in the counterfactual of not addressing the spread of covid sooner as it took up more and more healthcare capacity) and in the loss of quality of life of everyone.
However, the first lockdown looks overwhelmingly likely to have avoided greater cost in loss of life, health, and quality of life in the counterfactual of not having locked down. had we, instead, locked down sooner, we'd probably have got a far better improvement while being able to release restrictions a lot sooner (a week's delay at the start leads to several weeks longer being needed).
A second full lockdown looks to me to have costs outweighing the benefits, unless a big and rapid spread otherwise looks to be on the cards. It's crude and untargeted. We should know more and better to be more discriminating of measures - targeting superspreader scenarios before they exist, with rapid cheap (albeit less reliable) testing rolled out, with poorly ventilated indoor situations with crowds being avoided, and so forth. Banning outside movement with small numbers of people seems unnecessary and with minimal (or no) benefits, for example, but that was a big component of the first lockdown.
This just like all the lies we got when Johnson had it.
Yes, but Trump is at much much higher risk in terms of age and weight. If he does indeed have symptoms, the chances are they could get worse much quicker.
This could go south very fast. Still early days, so if things are 'progressing' that's really not a good sign for him.
On the principle that you should look at what somebody does for how they truly feel, not what they say, the second one is perhaps more interesting. Not only is a change from the previous approach but look at where they are canvassing:
"Beginning this weekend, the Biden campaign will send out several hundred volunteers to reach voters in Nevada, Michigan, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, with the efforts expanding, in a phased approach, to 17 battleground states, one official said."
Now, I may be looking at things from a skewed angle and there are maybe logistical reasons involved, but I don't know why the Biden campaign would have Nevada and NH as two of their first states for this approach unless (a) they think numbers are tight here and / or (b) they recognise the election might be tight and therefore even states with 4-5 electoral votes might be crucial.
If you believe 538, these have a serious chance of being tipping point states (i.e. the state where the 270th EV will be won and lost) - they have Pennsylvania at 30.8% probability, Michigan 9.8%, Nevada (a much smaller state, mind) 2.9% and New Hampshire (a tiny state) 1.7%. Texas - despite being huge and much discussed - has only a 1.5% chance. Some of the states talked about as outside Biden bets have a much less than 1% chance.
Crucially as far as your chain of logic goes, those basic facts don't change if Biden was 20% ahead in the polls or if he was 20% behind. If he wins big, then maybe he'll win South Carolina. If he loses big, then maybe he'll lose Washington. But the 270th electoral vote when you order the states by margin will still be provided by Pennsylvania or one of those.
This isn't like the UK where, if a party thinks it's on course to win big it pulls resources out of the ultra marginal to attack the 10k opposition majority seat. There is nothing beyond vanity in winning big over winning small. You throw everything into the tipping points and, if he wins Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and Nevada crushingly and in the process loses South Carolina narrowly, Biden won't give a tuppenny jizz about that.
Winning the Senate is perhaps the equivalent for the Democrats of getting a landslide in the UK rather than the big electoral college victory. So the priorities should be tipping point states then tight senate races then marginal states.
Which will mean the government will claim victory over its new restrictions.
What won't happen is Vallance admitting his scaremongering was exactly that.
- Infection rates surge -
- New restrictions brought in and Government scientists tell the public that it's surging and warn them how bad it could get if it continued at its fastest observed rate - while emphasising they don't expect it to be that bad - - - Infections continue to ramp up for a while, slowing, and start to fall in exactly the time frame you'd expect if the warnings and restrictions were responsible -
- Conclusion: It just happened on its own and there's no way the warnings and restrictions could have had anything to do with it -
Sure.
The alternative is that The Boris & Cummings Junta got something right.
Quite a few people would rather die of COVID than do that.
Which will mean the government will claim victory over its new restrictions.
What won't happen is Vallance admitting his scaremongering was exactly that.
- Infection rates surge -
- New restrictions brought in and Government scientists tell the public that it's surging and warn them how bad it could get if it continued at its fastest observed rate - while emphasising they don't expect it to be that bad - - - Infections continue to ramp up for a while, slowing, and start to fall in exactly the time frame you'd expect if the warnings and restrictions were responsible -
- Conclusion: It just happened on its own and there's no way the warnings and restrictions could have had anything to do with it -
Sure.
How could it possibly be proven that the restrictions were a mistake? Is this a Karl Popper falsification thing? It seems that it was a free option for the govt, no matter what happened they were right
Quite.
Certainly it will be impossible to prove to certain PBers that anything other than full blown hardcore lockdownism would be wrong.
It's equally impossible for any evidence to be accepted by certain PBers that any restrictions might possibly have ever been necessary, isn't it?
Dunno. I am pro restrictions, as you should know by now.
I think, however, that the restrictions are poorly targeted and ignorant of the risk profile of various groups.
There is a point to be explored here. That Atlantic article on overdispersion provides some very useful steers - there could well be some very low-hanging fruit that has big effects on the spread and minimal effects on the way of life and economy, by targeting potential superspreader scenarios.
The lockdowns and restrictions work to reduce spread, but many of them (full lockdown especially) are crude and poorly targeted, including restrictions on things that have minimal or no effect.
The curfew, especially, seems to be either minimal in effect or counterproductive.
Others (reducing numbers of people you can socialise with - which would prevent superspreader events) should be a lot more effective.
Unfortunately, your stance appears comparatively rare. Too many seem to go straight to denial that covid has an effect, or could be serious, or that restrictions could have any discernible effect (we've seen a bunch of the latter on here just now, insistent that the restrictions could have had nothing to do with the downturn and at least one person scoffing at the idea that diseases could be prevented or controlled at all)
Actually, I don't think risk segmentation is as rare a stance as you think.
What I do think is that those who advocate it are frequently miscast as denialists.
That to me seems an illogical difference. The EC supremacy market is the delta between Biden EC and opponent EC.
It's perfectly logical in principle: If Biden withdraws, the Biden ECV market is voided but the Trump ECV market stands because he hasn't withdrawn. If Trump withdraws, the Trump ECV market is voided but the Biden ECV market stands because he hasn't withdrawn. If either withdraws, the Supremacy market is voided because it's the delta between two figures one of which is not considered not valid.
In practice, though, I'm not sure it's sustainable. The market is essentially about the Trump/Biden contest and only the Trump/Biden contest. The whole basis of the market would be invalid if one of them withdraws.
But that's what I mean by illogical. The supremacy is Biden EC over Trump EC. It's A = B - C. So, the basis of B and C should be the same as that of A. But so long as the rules were clear and put up in advance - as they were - then I guess a punter cannot complain. You could factor the illogicality in.
Its entirely logical.
If A = Supremacy, B = Biden and C = Trump then Biden withdrawing voids B and therefore also voids A. Trump withdrawing voids C and therefore also voids A.
Not my point. It is indeed logical that A is void if either B or C is void. The illogicality is that B is not void if C is, and C is not void if B is.
Why?
Because B = 540 - C and C = 540 - B. Thus if C changes its identity (e.g. from Trump to Pence) it is no longer the C it used to be - as confirmed by the fact it would be void. Ergo B (being 540 minus a void C) should also be void. QED.
You're wrong.
B is not 540 - C since voters also have the right to vote for third parties D. Electoral college votes have indeed gone to third parties in the past on more than a few occasions.
That is not material to the point I am demonstrating.
Yes it is. The question is solely Biden ECVs so Trump isn't in the equation.
For every ECV the question is if it is won by Biden (you win) or A N Other (you lose).
Trump is only relevant for the Trump and Supremacy markets.
Think deeper. It is B vs C for EC votes. So when assessing how many of the 540 available B will win you assess the chances of B against C. It has no meaning in isolation. What C is defines and affects what B is. For example, if C is Superman, you get one answer for B's chances, and if C is Clark Kent, you get another. Thus if B or C is void, so in logic should the other one be. QED.
You're wrong and thinking from a British perspective where the only options are those on the ballot paper. In the USA it doesn't work that way. You can vote for B or C, or minor candidates D and E like here . . . or you can write in X, Y or Z if you dislike any of the above.
If C is Clark Kent and you dislike Clark Kent but are happy to vote for Superman or Bruce Wayne then you are not obliged to vote for either B or Clark Kent. You can write in Superman, or you can write in Bruce Wayne. Here your vote would be spoilt if you do that, there it would be counted.
Last time 111 000 people voted for Bernie Sanders although he was not named on any ballot paper.
Indeed and write in candidates have won before. Strom Thurmond who was a Senator for half a century first won as a write in candidate . . . his main opponent was the only candidate on the ballot paper, but Thurmond won two thirds of the vote against the ballot paper's only candidate winning just a third of the vote.
Recently Murkowski ran as a write-in candidate and won despite having lost her primary.
On the principle that you should look at what somebody does for how they truly feel, not what they say, the second one is perhaps more interesting. Not only is a change from the previous approach but look at where they are canvassing:
"Beginning this weekend, the Biden campaign will send out several hundred volunteers to reach voters in Nevada, Michigan, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, with the efforts expanding, in a phased approach, to 17 battleground states, one official said."
Now, I may be looking at things from a skewed angle and there are maybe logistical reasons involved, but I don't know why the Biden campaign would have Nevada and NH as two of their first states for this approach unless (a) they think numbers are tight here and / or (b) they recognise the election might be tight and therefore even states with 4-5 electoral votes might be crucial.
You are Hillary Clinton and I claim my PB chequebook and pen.
A) Infected by sharing a plane with an infected person, and little distancing OR B ) Infected by talking into a spiked microphone
I wonder which explanation Occams Razor would choose?
If your understanding of the world is that the "left" are the root of all problems, then applying Occam's Razor would give you B. Logic can't win when people have such an incorrect and uninformed world view.
Vice President Pence has tested negative for Covid so with Trump isolating after his positive test he is in effect acting President for the time being
No he's not.
They've said Trump is still carrying out his duties. Pence only becomes acting President if Trump becomes incapacitated.
Raab was in effect acting PM when Boris was down with Covid, whatever the official line says Boris was not carrying out his full PM duties during that time.
I recognise that the state needs some taxes to pay for things that need paying for - but those things that need paying for should surely be the "priority".
Taxes, all taxes, should be levelled solely in or to get the job done of raising money to pay for your priorities, not be raised as a priority in its own right.
On the principle that you should look at what somebody does for how they truly feel, not what they say, the second one is perhaps more interesting. Not only is a change from the previous approach but look at where they are canvassing:
"Beginning this weekend, the Biden campaign will send out several hundred volunteers to reach voters in Nevada, Michigan, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, with the efforts expanding, in a phased approach, to 17 battleground states, one official said."
Now, I may be looking at things from a skewed angle and there are maybe logistical reasons involved, but I don't know why the Biden campaign would have Nevada and NH as two of their first states for this approach unless (a) they think numbers are tight here and / or (b) they recognise the election might be tight and therefore even states with 4-5 electoral votes might be crucial.
If you believe 538, these have a serious chance of being tipping point states (i.e. the state where the 270th EV will be won and lost) - they have Pennsylvania at 30.8% probability, Michigan 9.8%, Nevada (a much smaller state, mind) 2.9% and New Hampshire (a tiny state) 1.7%. Texas - despite being huge and much discussed - has only a 1.5% chance. Some of the states talked about as outside Biden bets have a much less than 1% chance.
Crucially as far as your chain of logic goes, those basic facts don't change if Biden was 20% ahead in the polls or if he was 20% behind. If he wins big, then maybe he'll win South Carolina. If he loses big, then maybe he'll lose Washington. But the 270th electoral vote when you order the states by margin will still be provided by Pennsylvania or one of those.
This isn't like the UK where, if a party thinks it's on course to win big it pulls resources out of the ultra marginal to attack the 10k opposition majority seat. There is nothing beyond vanity in winning big over winning small. You throw everything into the tipping points and, if he wins Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and Nevada crushingly and in the process loses South Carolina narrowly, Biden won't give a tuppenny jizz about that.
Winning the Senate is perhaps the equivalent for the Democrats of getting a landslide in the UK rather than the big electoral college victory. So the priorities should be tipping point states then tight senate races then marginal states.
That's true, but it isn't the Biden campaign's job to win the Senate. No doubt they wish Al Gross and Jaime Harrison well in Alaska and South Carolina (and they have an outside chance of winning) and will throw them a bone on request if it'd help, they just aren't going to make it a focus. Gross and Harrison have their own fundraising, and their own teams, and blooming good luck to 'em.
I know it's great for Biden if he does get over the line in the Senate, and it'd be irritating if they get 49 seats and Harrison misses on a recount. But the campaign team will have one focus.
I recognise that the state needs some taxes to pay for things that need paying for - but those things that need paying for should surely be the "priority".
Taxes, all taxes, should be levelled solely in or to get the job done of raising money to pay for your priorities, not be raised as a priority in its own right.
Indeed and this also confirms Starmer is certainly no Blairite even if he is not as far left as Corbyn, one of Blair's key pledges was not to raise the top rate of income tax.
This just like all the lies we got when Johnson had it.
Yes, but Trump is at much much higher risk in terms of age and weight. If he does indeed have symptoms, the chances are they could get worse much quicker.
This could go south very fast. Still early days, so if things are 'progressing' that's really not a good sign for him.
Days 7-10 from infection - so probably a week or so from now - is the key risk point for serious illness.
That to me seems an illogical difference. The EC supremacy market is the delta between Biden EC and opponent EC.
It's perfectly logical in principle: If Biden withdraws, the Biden ECV market is voided but the Trump ECV market stands because he hasn't withdrawn. If Trump withdraws, the Trump ECV market is voided but the Biden ECV market stands because he hasn't withdrawn. If either withdraws, the Supremacy market is voided because it's the delta between two figures one of which is not considered not valid.
In practice, though, I'm not sure it's sustainable. The market is essentially about the Trump/Biden contest and only the Trump/Biden contest. The whole basis of the market would be invalid if one of them withdraws.
But that's what I mean by illogical. The supremacy is Biden EC over Trump EC. It's A = B - C. So, the basis of B and C should be the same as that of A. But so long as the rules were clear and put up in advance - as they were - then I guess a punter cannot complain. You could factor the illogicality in.
Its entirely logical.
If A = Supremacy, B = Biden and C = Trump then Biden withdrawing voids B and therefore also voids A. Trump withdrawing voids C and therefore also voids A.
Not my point. It is indeed logical that A is void if either B or C is void. The illogicality is that B is not void if C is, and C is not void if B is.
Why?
Because B = 540 - C and C = 540 - B. Thus if C changes its identity (e.g. from Trump to Pence) it is no longer the C it used to be - as confirmed by the fact it would be void. Ergo B (being 540 minus a void C) should also be void. QED.
You're wrong.
B is not 540 - C since voters also have the right to vote for third parties D. Electoral college votes have indeed gone to third parties in the past on more than a few occasions.
That is not material to the point I am demonstrating.
Yes it is. The question is solely Biden ECVs so Trump isn't in the equation.
For every ECV the question is if it is won by Biden (you win) or A N Other (you lose).
Trump is only relevant for the Trump and Supremacy markets.
Think deeper. It is B vs C for EC votes. So when assessing how many of the 540 available B will win you assess the chances of B against C. It has no meaning in isolation. What C is defines and affects what B is. For example, if C is Superman, you get one answer for B's chances, and if C is Clark Kent, you get another. Thus if B or C is void, so in logic should the other one be. QED.
You're wrong and thinking from a British perspective where the only options are those on the ballot paper. In the USA it doesn't work that way. You can vote for B or C, or minor candidates D and E like here . . . or you can write in X, Y or Z if you dislike any of the above.
If C is Clark Kent and you dislike Clark Kent but are happy to vote for Superman or Bruce Wayne then you are not obliged to vote for either B or Clark Kent. You can write in Superman, or you can write in Bruce Wayne. Here your vote would be spoilt if you do that, there it would be counted.
Last time 111 000 people voted for Bernie Sanders although he was not named on any ballot paper.
Indeed and write in candidates have won before. Strom Thurmond who was a Senator for half a century first won as a write in candidate . . . his main opponent was the only candidate on the ballot paper, but Thurmond won two thirds of the vote against the ballot paper's only candidate winning just a third of the vote.
Recently Murkowski ran as a write-in candidate and won despite having lost her primary.
Nothing new under the sun, Herman Talmadge was a write in candidate in the farcical 3 Governors controversy in Georgia.
Which will mean the government will claim victory over its new restrictions.
What won't happen is Vallance admitting his scaremongering was exactly that.
- Infection rates surge -
- New restrictions brought in and Government scientists tell the public that it's surging and warn them how bad it could get if it continued at its fastest observed rate - while emphasising they don't expect it to be that bad - - - Infections continue to ramp up for a while, slowing, and start to fall in exactly the time frame you'd expect if the warnings and restrictions were responsible -
- Conclusion: It just happened on its own and there's no way the warnings and restrictions could have had anything to do with it -
Sure.
How could it possibly be proven that the restrictions were a mistake? Is this a Karl Popper falsification thing? It seems that it was a free option for the govt, no matter what happened they were right
Well, if measures were brought in to reduce socialisations and the opportunity to spread the virus, the simplest hypothesis is therefore that the rate of spread of the virus would decrease, comparative to not bringing them in.
To then jump to "These couldn't have had any effect and the reduction was exactly what would have happened without them" would seem to be the less likely hypothesis and would require greater evidence than "I've decided it didn't happen like that."
If the level of spread suddenly dropped like a rock instantly after the speech and far sooner than the effects of any warning or restrictions would allow, we could switch to the simplest hypothesis being that they were unnecessary.
Which it didn't, so we couldn't, so they weren't.
The idea that natural phenomena, whether volcanoes, eclipses, floods, drought or viruses, or even global climate for that matter, are relatable to and controllable by human behaviour is as old as the dark ages and belongs there, surely.
We can amelerioate the effects of almightly nature. But we cannot, and never will be able to, control it.
We get oil from Scottish seas because there were forests there once. Our valleys were glaciers.
That's climate change, right there.
Which is why diseases such as typhoid, measles, polio, smallpox, and so on remain such a problem and have never been brought under control.
Seriously, that entire worldview is laughable - that strange and inexplicable phenomena govern our world like the effects of capricious gods.
Is this some strange trolling or joke?
Someone called Semmelweiss made some rather important discoveries in the 1800s. Something called the Germ Theory of Disease came along. And one of the bigger steps in changing behaviours in order to control disease outbreaks was carried out by someone called Florence Nightingale (you may have heard of her) who produced excellent data visualisations to convince some decision-makers of the way to deal with disease outbreaks in hospitals.
That a good point but there's a distinction. Those diseases were largely brought under control not by human behaviour but by human treatments. By real science. People were not ordered to dramatically alter their day to day behaviour, surrender their liberty or give up their businesses.
And other viruses. such as influenza, still kill. Right now, more than COVID.
Polio outbreaks regularly saw American towns/regions put under lockdown and quarantined.
That behaviour did not stop polio. The vaccines against it did. Those lockdowns might still be there if real science had not intervened.
Your argument makes no sense at all.
Yes effective vaccines are the what we are aiming for. We do not yet have vaccines. We need to use science reduce the infection rates now. That includes using lockdown policies if and when things get out of hand. There is science behind quarrantining as well as just vaccines.
On the principle that you should look at what somebody does for how they truly feel, not what they say, the second one is perhaps more interesting. Not only is a change from the previous approach but look at where they are canvassing:
"Beginning this weekend, the Biden campaign will send out several hundred volunteers to reach voters in Nevada, Michigan, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, with the efforts expanding, in a phased approach, to 17 battleground states, one official said."
Now, I may be looking at things from a skewed angle and there are maybe logistical reasons involved, but I don't know why the Biden campaign would have Nevada and NH as two of their first states for this approach unless (a) they think numbers are tight here and / or (b) they recognise the election might be tight and therefore even states with 4-5 electoral votes might be crucial.
If you believe 538, these have a serious chance of being tipping point states (i.e. the state where the 270th EV will be won and lost) - they have Pennsylvania at 30.8% probability, Michigan 9.8%, Nevada (a much smaller state, mind) 2.9% and New Hampshire (a tiny state) 1.7%. Texas - despite being huge and much discussed - has only a 1.5% chance. Some of the states talked about as outside Biden bets have a much less than 1% chance.
Crucially as far as your chain of logic goes, those basic facts don't change if Biden was 20% ahead in the polls or if he was 20% behind. If he wins big, then maybe he'll win South Carolina. If he loses big, then maybe he'll lose Washington. But the 270th electoral vote when you order the states by margin will still be provided by Pennsylvania or one of those.
This isn't like the UK where, if a party thinks it's on course to win big it pulls resources out of the ultra marginal to attack the 10k opposition majority seat. There is nothing beyond vanity in winning big over winning small. You throw everything into the tipping points and, if he wins Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and Nevada crushingly and in the process loses South Carolina narrowly, Biden won't give a tuppenny jizz about that.
Winning the Senate is perhaps the equivalent for the Democrats of getting a landslide in the UK rather than the big electoral college victory. So the priorities should be tipping point states then tight senate races then marginal states.
It's not just the Senate, there are also State-level races which are particularly important this time due to redistricting. The identity of the tipping point states also drifts over time, so if you neglect all other States until they become tipping-point States then you will always be starting from behind.
Prioritization can be taken too far. Sometimes you need to work out how to manage to do several things at once, because whichever one you neglect doing will trip you up.
I recognise that the state needs some taxes to pay for things that need paying for - but those things that need paying for should surely be the "priority".
Taxes, all taxes, should be levelled solely in or to get the job done of raising money to pay for your priorities, not be raised as a priority in its own right.
The other difference is when the right go about changing taxes, the objective is to raise more money
When the left do it is to make some people pay more, even if, in the end, less money is raised.
For comparison, the latest available numbers for Scotland and Wales (obtained by following the trail of links from the main Gov.UK page) are as follows:
Scotland (issued 1/10/20) - R = 1.3-1.7, growth rate estimate: +5% to +10% Wales (issued 25/9/20) - R = 1.0-1.4, growth rate estimate +1% to +4%
There appear to be no similar recent data available for Northern Ireland.
The locations of the worst outbreaks continue to support the notion that low incomes, low quality housing and high population densities are the key drivers (although, given the more general spread of the virus which appears to have taken place all over Yorkshire, the relationship between low prevalence and wealthier/more rural localities isn't entirely set in stone.)
For NI, the ONS is tarting to build a data set -
27 August 0.12 10 September 0.54 24 September 0.26
Are the percentage infected found by the survey there
Oh dear. You're not going to get the money to effect societal change just by soaking the rich a bit more.
Firstly, the top 5% will include lots of senior medical personages, many of whom will show their commitment to Our Beloved NHS by buggering off to take up a more lucrative gig in Australia if they are singled out. A good deal of the remainder of the 5% will also be highly mobile and not keen on being parted from more and more of their salaries either.
Secondly, there aren't enough of them.
The sustainable route to social democracy lies directly through the soaking of the entire population. You might ask a bit less in terms of a tax hike of low wage earners and the retired than you do of better off workers or the very wealthy, but everyone else has to pay more. Otherwise, if you just go after the rich and big businesses, then most of them cut investment or run away and you drive your economy into the ground. That simply results in the return of the Tories and a bigger helping of what might be described in some parts of the political spectrum as disaster capitalism than what came before.
Hunting down the minted may be good red meat for Starmer's followers, and may even be an effective populist position, but it's just as well he's got plenty of time to come up with an actual plan because narrowing the tax base still further ain't gonna cut it.
A) Infected by sharing a plane with an infected person, and little distancing OR B ) Infected by talking into a spiked microphone
I wonder which explanation Occams Razor would choose?
If your understanding of the world is that the "left" are the root of all problems, then applying Occam's Razor would give you B. Logic can't win when people have such an incorrect and uninformed world view.
True. It is still worth calling out how stupid unlogical thinking is, though.
On the principle that you should look at what somebody does for how they truly feel, not what they say, the second one is perhaps more interesting. Not only is a change from the previous approach but look at where they are canvassing:
"Beginning this weekend, the Biden campaign will send out several hundred volunteers to reach voters in Nevada, Michigan, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, with the efforts expanding, in a phased approach, to 17 battleground states, one official said."
Now, I may be looking at things from a skewed angle and there are maybe logistical reasons involved, but I don't know why the Biden campaign would have Nevada and NH as two of their first states for this approach unless (a) they think numbers are tight here and / or (b) they recognise the election might be tight and therefore even states with 4-5 electoral votes might be crucial.
If you believe 538, these have a serious chance of being tipping point states (i.e. the state where the 270th EV will be won and lost) - they have Pennsylvania at 30.8% probability, Michigan 9.8%, Nevada (a much smaller state, mind) 2.9% and New Hampshire (a tiny state) 1.7%. Texas - despite being huge and much discussed - has only a 1.5% chance. Some of the states talked about as outside Biden bets have a much less than 1% chance.
Crucially as far as your chain of logic goes, those basic facts don't change if Biden was 20% ahead in the polls or if he was 20% behind. If he wins big, then maybe he'll win South Carolina. If he loses big, then maybe he'll lose Washington. But the 270th electoral vote when you order the states by margin will still be provided by Pennsylvania or one of those.
This isn't like the UK where, if a party thinks it's on course to win big it pulls resources out of the ultra marginal to attack the 10k opposition majority seat. There is nothing beyond vanity in winning big over winning small. You throw everything into the tipping points and, if he wins Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and Nevada crushingly and in the process loses South Carolina narrowly, Biden won't give a tuppenny jizz about that.
Winning the Senate is perhaps the equivalent for the Democrats of getting a landslide in the UK rather than the big electoral college victory. So the priorities should be tipping point states then tight senate races then marginal states.
It's not just the Senate, there are also State-level races which are particularly important this time due to redistricting. The identity of the tipping point states also drifts over time, so if you neglect all other States until they become tipping-point States then you will always be starting from behind.
Prioritization can be taken too far. Sometimes you need to work out how to manage to do several things at once, because whichever one you neglect doing will trip you up.
You can worry about making South Carolina competitive (if you're a Democrat) or Oregon competitive (if you're a Republican) for three and a half years of the electoral cycle through policy, mid-term elections etc. In the month before a Presidential election, you're a fool if you spend a millisecond of your valuable time on them.
Oh dear. You're not going to get the money to effect societal change just by soaking the rich a bit more.
Firstly, the top 5% will include lots of senior medical personages, many of whom will show their commitment to Our Beloved NHS by buggering off to take up a more lucrative gig in Australia if they are singled out. A good deal of the remainder of the 5% will also be highly mobile and not keen on being parted from more and more of their salaries either.
Secondly, there aren't enough of them.
The sustainable route to social democracy lies directly through the soaking of the entire population. You might ask a bit less in terms of a tax hike of low wage earners and the retired than you do of better off workers or the very wealthy, but everyone else has to pay more. Otherwise, if you just go after the rich and big businesses, then most of them cut investment or run away and you drive your economy into the ground. That simply results in the return of the Tories and a bigger helping of what might be described in some parts of the political spectrum as disaster capitalism than what came before.
Hunting down the minted may be good red meat for Starmer's followers, and may even be an effective populist position, but it's just as well he's got plenty of time to come up with an actual plan because narrowing the tax base still further ain't gonna cut it.
So for the average taxpayer basically it is 'first they came for the rich, then they came for you'.
Starmer would be our most leftwing PM since Harold Wilson, he is only 'centrist' relative to Corbyn.
Indeed a Starmer premiership and Biden presidency would be back to the 1960s and Wilson and LBJ economics and social policy
Well, with BoZo's famously diligent preparation and world beating competence, what could possibly go wrong?
Don't be so negative. With his level of diligent preparation and world beating competence, with a bit of luck Boris might accidentally do a deal which he doesn't understand, like last time.
Don't be so negative. With his level of diligent preparation and world beating competence, with a bit of luck he might accidentally do a deal which he doesn't understand, like last time.
A Quote from that article "Trump advisers knew it was likely that Hicks had contracted the coronavirus Wednesday when she publicly began exhibiting symptoms during a presidential campaign trip to Duluth, Minnesota.".... "Instead of taking precautions to protect those around him, however, Trump basically did nothing different. Instead of laying low, he traveled; instead of isolating, he met with people at campaign events; instead of protecting those around him, he knowingly risked spreading the virus further."
This is an aspect which could have an impact on the undecideds. It is one thing to be blaseé about Corona and then get infected. It is gross irresponsibility to meet with the public when you know there is a reasonable chance of having the virus.
Oh dear. You're not going to get the money to effect societal change just by soaking the rich a bit more.
Firstly, the top 5% will include lots of senior medical personages, many of whom will show their commitment to Our Beloved NHS by buggering off to take up a more lucrative gig in Australia if they are singled out. A good deal of the remainder of the 5% will also be highly mobile and not keen on being parted from more and more of their salaries either.
Secondly, there aren't enough of them.
The sustainable route to social democracy lies directly through the soaking of the entire population. You might ask a bit less in terms of a tax hike of low wage earners and the retired than you do of better off workers or the very wealthy, but everyone else has to pay more. Otherwise, if you just go after the rich and big businesses, then most of them cut investment or run away and you drive your economy into the ground. That simply results in the return of the Tories and a bigger helping of what might be described in some parts of the political spectrum as disaster capitalism than what came before.
Hunting down the minted may be good red meat for Starmer's followers, and may even be an effective populist position, but it's just as well he's got plenty of time to come up with an actual plan because narrowing the tax base still further ain't gonna cut it.
As someone on the Left I agree with this. The way to make it work is to strengthen the Unions - so that workers can win themselves a greater share of profits in increased pay - and weaken rent-seeking capital - so that workers will have lower living costs and even more disposable income.
Then the large majority of the population can contribute more in taxes, and still have a higher standard of living at the same time.
The Blairite policy of allowing the Rich to rip off everyone else and use the tax revenue for a bit of redistribution was a complete failure.
Private equity. Expect Asda to have pension difficulties and huge debt servicing costs in 5 years. Wal-Mart were a fairly responsible owner, I'm not convinced I can say the same of any PE owner.
I recognise that the state needs some taxes to pay for things that need paying for - but those things that need paying for should surely be the "priority".
Taxes, all taxes, should be levelled solely in or to get the job done of raising money to pay for your priorities, not be raised as a priority in its own right.
The other difference is when the right go about changing taxes, the objective is to raise more money
When the left do it is to make some people pay more, even if, in the end, less money is raised.
Yeah it really isn't, other than in your Tory fantasy.
Which will mean the government will claim victory over its new restrictions.
What won't happen is Vallance admitting his scaremongering was exactly that.
- Infection rates surge -
- New restrictions brought in and Government scientists tell the public that it's surging and warn them how bad it could get if it continued at its fastest observed rate - while emphasising they don't expect it to be that bad - - - Infections continue to ramp up for a while, slowing, and start to fall in exactly the time frame you'd expect if the warnings and restrictions were responsible -
- Conclusion: It just happened on its own and there's no way the warnings and restrictions could have had anything to do with it -
Sure.
How could it possibly be proven that the restrictions were a mistake? Is this a Karl Popper falsification thing? It seems that it was a free option for the govt, no matter what happened they were right
Well, if measures were brought in to reduce socialisations and the opportunity to spread the virus, the simplest hypothesis is therefore that the rate of spread of the virus would decrease, comparative to not bringing them in.
To then jump to "These couldn't have had any effect and the reduction was exactly what would have happened without them" would seem to be the less likely hypothesis and would require greater evidence than "I've decided it didn't happen like that."
If the level of spread suddenly dropped like a rock instantly after the speech and far sooner than the effects of any warning or restrictions would allow, we could switch to the simplest hypothesis being that they were unnecessary.
Which it didn't, so we couldn't, so they weren't.
The idea that natural phenomena, whether volcanoes, eclipses, floods, drought or viruses, or even global climate for that matter, are relatable to and controllable by human behaviour is as old as the dark ages and belongs there, surely.
We can amelerioate the effects of almightly nature. But we cannot, and never will be able to, control it.
We get oil from Scottish seas because there were forests there once. Our valleys were glaciers.
That's climate change, right there.
Which is why diseases such as typhoid, measles, polio, smallpox, and so on remain such a problem and have never been brought under control.
Seriously, that entire worldview is laughable - that strange and inexplicable phenomena govern our world like the effects of capricious gods.
Is this some strange trolling or joke?
Someone called Semmelweiss made some rather important discoveries in the 1800s. Something called the Germ Theory of Disease came along. And one of the bigger steps in changing behaviours in order to control disease outbreaks was carried out by someone called Florence Nightingale (you may have heard of her) who produced excellent data visualisations to convince some decision-makers of the way to deal with disease outbreaks in hospitals.
That a good point but there's a distinction. Those diseases were largely brought under control not by human behaviour but by human treatments. By real science. People were not ordered to dramatically alter their day to day behaviour, surrender their liberty or give up their businesses.
And other viruses. such as influenza, still kill. Right now, more than COVID.
Polio outbreaks regularly saw American towns/regions put under lockdown and quarantined.
That behaviour did not stop polio. The vaccines against it did. Those lockdowns might still be there if real science had not intervened.
Your argument makes no sense at all.
Yes effective vaccines are the what we are aiming for. We do not yet have vaccines. We need to use science reduce the infection rates now. That includes using lockdown policies if and when things get out of hand. There is science behind quarrantining as well as just vaccines.
Yes. Quarantines, sterilisation of tools and items, handwashing, keeping ones distance, tracing infected individuals (eg Typhoid Mary), cleaning hospitals, and many other methods can and have been used for various diseases and outbreaks over the centuries in the absence of vaccinations.
Whatever Nippy's motives. She is making all the right noises, Johnson did not.
The position of the people involved is quite different, which means it would have been even easier for Boris to deal with and not very explicable why he stubborned it out. Sure he could, but why it was a fight worth taking a hit over i don't know. Advisers usually know they might need to carry the can where MPs are trickier.
Starmer's focus on how much he can take from individuals rather than how much he can raise for the treasury is emblematic of how the left is so often economically wrong.
The tax rate on higher earners now is lower than it was, but raises more because people are content enough (relatively) to pay it without trying too many clever schemes or moving abroad.
The more you hike taxes the less that remains true. And in an interconnected world, the wealthy have all the choice they could want when it comes to residency.
It's foolish trying to have a socialist willy-waving contest about tax hikes. What matters is how much you can raise generally, not how much individuals pay.
Still, it remains reassuring that he's just a typically wrong lefty rather than a full-blown socialist cretin like Corbyn was.
Wallace also pointed out that multiple members of the president's entourage at the debate declined to wear masks, despite requests from the staff of the Cleveland Clinic, which hosted the event.
"Certainly there was no sign during the debate of any problems with the president, in terms of his health," Wallace said. "But it is worth noting that the different people treated the safety rules inside the hall differently."
Oh dear. You're not going to get the money to effect societal change just by soaking the rich a bit more.
Firstly, the top 5% will include lots of senior medical personages, many of whom will show their commitment to Our Beloved NHS by buggering off to take up a more lucrative gig in Australia if they are singled out. A good deal of the remainder of the 5% will also be highly mobile and not keen on being parted from more and more of their salaries either.
Secondly, there aren't enough of them.
The sustainable route to social democracy lies directly through the soaking of the entire population. You might ask a bit less in terms of a tax hike of low wage earners and the retired than you do of better off workers or the very wealthy, but everyone else has to pay more. Otherwise, if you just go after the rich and big businesses, then most of them cut investment or run away and you drive your economy into the ground. That simply results in the return of the Tories and a bigger helping of what might be described in some parts of the political spectrum as disaster capitalism than what came before.
Hunting down the minted may be good red meat for Starmer's followers, and may even be an effective populist position, but it's just as well he's got plenty of time to come up with an actual plan because narrowing the tax base still further ain't gonna cut it.
So for the average taxpayer basically it is 'first they came for the rich, then they came for you'.
Starmer would be our most leftwing PM since Harold Wilson, he is only 'centrist' relative to Corbyn
But is Starmer's leftism necessarily a bad thing? I mean, clearly coming from the Conservative standpoint yes, it's awful, but from the point of view of giving voters two clear, distinct and plausible directions to travel in, neither of which involves electing the IRA Veterans' Support Society (Islington branch) to run the show?
The electorate has settled into the position where it simultaneously expects a comprehensive welfare state (notably endless inflation-busting pension increases, elderly care that doesn't entail homeowners having to sell up to fund it, and unlimited helpings of cash for Our Beloved NHS,) but doesn't want to be made to cough up for any of it. Most voters think that they are precious and special for whatever reason, and that someone else should always be soaked to pay for the things they want - usually "The Rich" (variously described as Richard Branson, celebrity footballers, investment bankers, or everyone who earns at least £1 per year more than they do.) That's arguably one of the key reasons why the country is in such a complete bloody mess.
It's therefore past time that voters were forced to make their minds up. We'd be far better off committing to a course and going for a more American free-market, low tax model, in which we rely mainly on economic dynamism to float all the boats and leave anyone who sinks to drown; or go Scandinavian. Perhaps we might get a choice akin to that from a Sunak vs Starmer competition in a few years' time? Regardless, the cakeism has to stop.
That to me seems an illogical difference. The EC supremacy market is the delta between Biden EC and opponent EC.
It's perfectly logical in principle: If Biden withdraws, the Biden ECV market is voided but the Trump ECV market stands because he hasn't withdrawn. If Trump withdraws, the Trump ECV market is voided but the Biden ECV market stands because he hasn't withdrawn. If either withdraws, the Supremacy market is voided because it's the delta between two figures one of which is not considered not valid.
In practice, though, I'm not sure it's sustainable. The market is essentially about the Trump/Biden contest and only the Trump/Biden contest. The whole basis of the market would be invalid if one of them withdraws.
But that's what I mean by illogical. The supremacy is Biden EC over Trump EC. It's A = B - C. So, the basis of B and C should be the same as that of A. But so long as the rules were clear and put up in advance - as they were - then I guess a punter cannot complain. You could factor the illogicality in.
Its entirely logical.
If A = Supremacy, B = Biden and C = Trump then Biden withdrawing voids B and therefore also voids A. Trump withdrawing voids C and therefore also voids A.
Not my point. It is indeed logical that A is void if either B or C is void. The illogicality is that B is not void if C is, and C is not void if B is.
Why?
Because B = 540 - C and C = 540 - B. Thus if C changes its identity (e.g. from Trump to Pence) it is no longer the C it used to be - as confirmed by the fact it would be void. Ergo B (being 540 minus a void C) should also be void. QED.
You're wrong.
B is not 540 - C since voters also have the right to vote for third parties D. Electoral college votes have indeed gone to third parties in the past on more than a few occasions.
That is not material to the point I am demonstrating.
Yes it is. The question is solely Biden ECVs so Trump isn't in the equation.
For every ECV the question is if it is won by Biden (you win) or A N Other (you lose).
Trump is only relevant for the Trump and Supremacy markets.
Think deeper. It is B vs C for EC votes. So when assessing how many of the 540 available B will win you assess the chances of B against C. It has no meaning in isolation. What C is defines and affects what B is. For example, if C is Superman, you get one answer for B's chances, and if C is Clark Kent, you get another. Thus if B or C is void, so in logic should the other one be. QED.
You're wrong and thinking from a British perspective where the only options are those on the ballot paper. In the USA it doesn't work that way. You can vote for B or C, or minor candidates D and E like here . . . or you can write in X, Y or Z if you dislike any of the above.
If C is Clark Kent and you dislike Clark Kent but are happy to vote for Superman or Bruce Wayne then you are not obliged to vote for either B or Clark Kent. You can write in Superman, or you can write in Bruce Wayne. Here your vote would be spoilt if you do that, there it would be counted.
Yes, there are other candidates (inc Kanye West no less) and yes you can write somebody in (e.g. Bernie), but this is not material to the point at issue. The fact is, there are 540 EC votes available and Trump or Biden will win almost all of them. Thus the equation T + B = 540 works to all intents and purposes. The terms B and T are therefore interdependent. You can see this if you think about how the market is assessed. When looking at the price of B one considers it in the context of the alternative. It has no meaning in isolation. What the alternative is defines and impacts what B is. You have to know what the alternative is (in this case T) in order to decide whether B is a buy or a sell or neither. If T changes to something else - to H (aley) say - this changes B because B does not now equal 540 - T, it equals 540 - H. This is only the same if T = H. Which it patently does not. Ergo, if T pulls out and the T market is voided, there is a logical argument for voiding the B market too. Not that it matters. SPIN put the rules up clearly and, logical or not, you should take them into account when betting.
Equally it would be useful overall if the Independence campaign had multiple parties to allow other policies to get an airing.
That's not the way independence campaigns work. Stage 1: Nationalist party wins big enough to achieve it's aim Stage 2: Nationalist party splits into 'sort of' left and right.
If the Party splits before 'freedom', the aim is not achieved.
Oh dear. You're not going to get the money to effect societal change just by soaking the rich a bit more.
Firstly, the top 5% will include lots of senior medical personages, many of whom will show their commitment to Our Beloved NHS by buggering off to take up a more lucrative gig in Australia if they are singled out. A good deal of the remainder of the 5% will also be highly mobile and not keen on being parted from more and more of their salaries either.
Secondly, there aren't enough of them.
The sustainable route to social democracy lies directly through the soaking of the entire population. You might ask a bit less in terms of a tax hike of low wage earners and the retired than you do of better off workers or the very wealthy, but everyone else has to pay more. Otherwise, if you just go after the rich and big businesses, then most of them cut investment or run away and you drive your economy into the ground. That simply results in the return of the Tories and a bigger helping of what might be described in some parts of the political spectrum as disaster capitalism than what came before.
Hunting down the minted may be good red meat for Starmer's followers, and may even be an effective populist position, but it's just as well he's got plenty of time to come up with an actual plan because narrowing the tax base still further ain't gonna cut it.
So for the average taxpayer basically it is 'first they came for the rich, then they came for you'.
Starmer would be our most leftwing PM since Harold Wilson, he is only 'centrist' relative to Corbyn
But is Starmer's leftism necessarily a bad thing? I mean, clearly coming from the Conservative standpoint yes, it's awful, but from the point of view of giving voters two clear, distinct and plausible directions to travel in, neither of which involves electing the IRA Veterans' Support Society (Islington branch) to run the show?
The electorate has settled into the position where it simultaneously expects a comprehensive welfare state (notably endless inflation-busting pension increases, elderly care that doesn't entail homeowners having to sell up to fund it, and unlimited helpings of cash for Our Beloved NHS,) but doesn't want to be made to cough up for any of it. Most voters think that they are precious and special for whatever reason, and that someone else should always be soaked to pay for the things they want - usually "The Rich" (variously described as Richard Branson, celebrity footballers, investment bankers, or everyone who earns at least £1 per year more than they do.) That's arguably one of the key reasons why the country is in such a complete bloody mess.
It's therefore past time that voters were forced to make their minds up. We'd be far better off committing to a course and going for a more American free-market, low tax model, in which we rely mainly on economic dynamism to float all the boats and leave anyone who sinks to drown; or go Scandinavian. Perhaps we might get a choice akin to that from a Sunak vs Starmer competition in a few years' time? Regardless, the cakeism has to stop.
No we wouldn't, the UK is culturally neither the US nor Scandinavia and always will be.
Plus assuming Biden wins the US Presidency and the Democrats hold the House and maybe even add the Senate too the US will be moving left economically too anyway, Biden's platform is left of Obama's never mind Trump's, so the choice would be Singapore v Scandinavia, not the US v Scandinavia and more likely most UK voters would choose a return to 1970s pre Thatcher economics with a bit more cultural conservatism than going full Singapore
Oh dear. You're not going to get the money to effect societal change just by soaking the rich a bit more.
Firstly, the top 5% will include lots of senior medical personages, many of whom will show their commitment to Our Beloved NHS by buggering off to take up a more lucrative gig in Australia if they are singled out. A good deal of the remainder of the 5% will also be highly mobile and not keen on being parted from more and more of their salaries either.
Secondly, there aren't enough of them.
The sustainable route to social democracy lies directly through the soaking of the entire population. You might ask a bit less in terms of a tax hike of low wage earners and the retired than you do of better off workers or the very wealthy, but everyone else has to pay more. Otherwise, if you just go after the rich and big businesses, then most of them cut investment or run away and you drive your economy into the ground. That simply results in the return of the Tories and a bigger helping of what might be described in some parts of the political spectrum as disaster capitalism than what came before.
Hunting down the minted may be good red meat for Starmer's followers, and may even be an effective populist position, but it's just as well he's got plenty of time to come up with an actual plan because narrowing the tax base still further ain't gonna cut it.
So for the average taxpayer basically it is 'first they came for the rich, then they came for you'.
Starmer would be our most leftwing PM since Harold Wilson, he is only 'centrist' relative to Corbyn
But is Starmer's leftism necessarily a bad thing? I mean, clearly coming from the Conservative standpoint yes, it's awful, but from the point of view of giving voters two clear, distinct and plausible directions to travel in, neither of which involves electing the IRA Veterans' Support Society (Islington branch) to run the show?
The electorate has settled into the position where it simultaneously expects a comprehensive welfare state (notably endless inflation-busting pension increases, elderly care that doesn't entail homeowners having to sell up to fund it, and unlimited helpings of cash for Our Beloved NHS,) but doesn't want to be made to cough up for any of it. Most voters think that they are precious and special for whatever reason, and that someone else should always be soaked to pay for the things they want - usually "The Rich" (variously described as Richard Branson, celebrity footballers, investment bankers, or everyone who earns at least £1 per year more than they do.) That's arguably one of the key reasons why the country is in such a complete bloody mess.
It's therefore past time that voters were forced to make their minds up. We'd be far better off committing to a course and going for a more American free-market, low tax model, in which we rely mainly on economic dynamism to float all the boats and leave anyone who sinks to drown; or go Scandinavian. Perhaps we might get a choice akin to that from a Sunak vs Starmer competition in a few years' time? Regardless, the cakeism has to stop.
Don't be so negative. With his level of diligent preparation and world beating competence, with a bit of luck he might accidentally do a deal which he doesn't understand, like last time.
In all seriousness events if there was justification for recent actions, trashing the last matter makes it hard to take seriously praise for any new matter. He's not Peter Molyneux.
Oh dear. You're not going to get the money to effect societal change just by soaking the rich a bit more.
Firstly, the top 5% will include lots of senior medical personages, many of whom will show their commitment to Our Beloved NHS by buggering off to take up a more lucrative gig in Australia if they are singled out. A good deal of the remainder of the 5% will also be highly mobile and not keen on being parted from more and more of their salaries either.
Secondly, there aren't enough of them.
The sustainable route to social democracy lies directly through the soaking of the entire population. You might ask a bit less in terms of a tax hike of low wage earners and the retired than you do of better off workers or the very wealthy, but everyone else has to pay more. Otherwise, if you just go after the rich and big businesses, then most of them cut investment or run away and you drive your economy into the ground. That simply results in the return of the Tories and a bigger helping of what might be described in some parts of the political spectrum as disaster capitalism than what came before.
Hunting down the minted may be good red meat for Starmer's followers, and may even be an effective populist position, but it's just as well he's got plenty of time to come up with an actual plan because narrowing the tax base still further ain't gonna cut it.
So for the average taxpayer basically it is 'first they came for the rich, then they came for you'.
Starmer would be our most leftwing PM since Harold Wilson, he is only 'centrist' relative to Corbyn
But is Starmer's leftism necessarily a bad thing? I mean, clearly coming from the Conservative standpoint yes, it's awful, but from the point of view of giving voters two clear, distinct and plausible directions to travel in, neither of which involves electing the IRA Veterans' Support Society (Islington branch) to run the show?
The electorate has settled into the position where it simultaneously expects a comprehensive welfare state (notably endless inflation-busting pension increases, elderly care that doesn't entail homeowners having to sell up to fund it, and unlimited helpings of cash for Our Beloved NHS,) but doesn't want to be made to cough up for any of it. Most voters think that they are precious and special for whatever reason, and that someone else should always be soaked to pay for the things they want - usually "The Rich" (variously described as Richard Branson, celebrity footballers, investment bankers, or everyone who earns at least £1 per year more than they do.) That's arguably one of the key reasons why the country is in such a complete bloody mess.
It's therefore past time that voters were forced to make their minds up. We'd be far better off committing to a course and going for a more American free-market, low tax model, in which we rely mainly on economic dynamism to float all the boats and leave anyone who sinks to drown; or go Scandinavian. Perhaps we might get a choice akin to that from a Sunak vs Starmer competition in a few years' time? Regardless, the cakeism has to stop.
Agreed 100%. Unfortunately cakesism is popular in this country, as attested to by the otherwise inexplicable phenomena of Boris Johnson PM and the Great British Bake Off.
Which will mean the government will claim victory over its new restrictions.
What won't happen is Vallance admitting his scaremongering was exactly that.
- Infection rates surge -
- New restrictions brought in and Government scientists tell the public that it's surging and warn them how bad it could get if it continued at its fastest observed rate - while emphasising they don't expect it to be that bad - - - Infections continue to ramp up for a while, slowing, and start to fall in exactly the time frame you'd expect if the warnings and restrictions were responsible -
- Conclusion: It just happened on its own and there's no way the warnings and restrictions could have had anything to do with it -
Sure.
How could it possibly be proven that the restrictions were a mistake? Is this a Karl Popper falsification thing? It seems that it was a free option for the govt, no matter what happened they were right
Well, if measures were brought in to reduce socialisations and the opportunity to spread the virus, the simplest hypothesis is therefore that the rate of spread of the virus would decrease, comparative to not bringing them in.
To then jump to "These couldn't have had any effect and the reduction was exactly what would have happened without them" would seem to be the less likely hypothesis and would require greater evidence than "I've decided it didn't happen like that."
If the level of spread suddenly dropped like a rock instantly after the speech and far sooner than the effects of any warning or restrictions would allow, we could switch to the simplest hypothesis being that they were unnecessary.
Which it didn't, so we couldn't, so they weren't.
The idea that natural phenomena, whether volcanoes, eclipses, floods, drought or viruses, or even global climate for that matter, are relatable to and controllable by human behaviour is as old as the dark ages and belongs there, surely.
We can amelerioate the effects of almightly nature. But we cannot, and never will be able to, control it.
We get oil from Scottish seas because there were forests there once. Our valleys were glaciers.
That's climate change, right there.
Which is why diseases such as typhoid, measles, polio, smallpox, and so on remain such a problem and have never been brought under control.
Seriously, that entire worldview is laughable - that strange and inexplicable phenomena govern our world like the effects of capricious gods.
Is this some strange trolling or joke?
Someone called Semmelweiss made some rather important discoveries in the 1800s. Something called the Germ Theory of Disease came along. And one of the bigger steps in changing behaviours in order to control disease outbreaks was carried out by someone called Florence Nightingale (you may have heard of her) who produced excellent data visualisations to convince some decision-makers of the way to deal with disease outbreaks in hospitals.
That a good point but there's a distinction. Those diseases were largely brought under control not by human behaviour but by human treatments. By real science. People were not ordered to dramatically alter their day to day behaviour, surrender their liberty or give up their businesses.
And other viruses. such as influenza, still kill. Right now, more than COVID.
Polio outbreaks regularly saw American towns/regions put under lockdown and quarantined.
That behaviour did not stop polio. The vaccines against it did. Those lockdowns might still be there if real science had not intervened.
Your argument makes no sense at all.
Yes effective vaccines are the what we are aiming for. We do not yet have vaccines. We need to use science reduce the infection rates now. That includes using lockdown policies if and when things get out of hand. There is science behind quarrantining as well as just vaccines.
Yes. Quarantines, sterilisation of tools and items, handwashing, keeping ones distance, tracing infected individuals (eg Typhoid Mary), cleaning hospitals, and many other methods can and have been used for various diseases and outbreaks over the centuries in the absence of vaccinations.
Yes and how did those work out?
In the 14 th century people had never been more spread out or less travelled. People had not idea what caused the black death but they knew that human contact was bad. Plenty of distancing then eh?
Result? wipe out of up to sixty per cent of the population of Europe.
What was the rate of mortality as people did summersaults to avoid each other down the centuries. Absolutely terrible until real, science based treatments came in such as vaccines and anti-biotics.
Professor Gupta's whole point is that enforced or even voluntary changes in human behaviour at best only delay the inevitable at an enormous residual cost (beyond a possible six week initial lockdown phase). The virus finds a way.
Its almost as if there a mass of evidence that changes in human behaviour a are really crap way of controlling disease. Something that is becoming more obvious by the day.
It's getting to the Samson stage. Can anyone plot a graph of his barnet over the months? We could extrapolate forward on the basis that he'll leave No 10 on the day his head becomes indistinguishable from Matt Lucas's.
Professor Gupta's whole point is that enforced or even voluntary changes in human behaviour at best only delay the inevitable at an enormous residual cost (beyond a possible six week initial lockdown phase). The virus finds a way.
If that's her whole point, why did she propagate the idea that the virus had already found its way to infecting half the population by March?
On the principle that you should look at what somebody does for how they truly feel, not what they say, the second one is perhaps more interesting. Not only is a change from the previous approach but look at where they are canvassing:
"Beginning this weekend, the Biden campaign will send out several hundred volunteers to reach voters in Nevada, Michigan, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, with the efforts expanding, in a phased approach, to 17 battleground states, one official said."
Now, I may be looking at things from a skewed angle and there are maybe logistical reasons involved, but I don't know why the Biden campaign would have Nevada and NH as two of their first states for this approach unless (a) they think numbers are tight here and / or (b) they recognise the election might be tight and therefore even states with 4-5 electoral votes might be crucial.
You are Hillary Clinton and I claim my PB chequebook and pen.
Chr1st, no - I wouldn't wish being Hillary Clinton on my worst enemy (if only because you have to deal with Bill)
Oh dear. You're not going to get the money to effect societal change just by soaking the rich a bit more.
Firstly, the top 5% will include lots of senior medical personages, many of whom will show their commitment to Our Beloved NHS by buggering off to take up a more lucrative gig in Australia if they are singled out. A good deal of the remainder of the 5% will also be highly mobile and not keen on being parted from more and more of their salaries either.
Secondly, there aren't enough of them.
The sustainable route to social democracy lies directly through the soaking of the entire population. You might ask a bit less in terms of a tax hike of low wage earners and the retired than you do of better off workers or the very wealthy, but everyone else has to pay more. Otherwise, if you just go after the rich and big businesses, then most of them cut investment or run away and you drive your economy into the ground. That simply results in the return of the Tories and a bigger helping of what might be described in some parts of the political spectrum as disaster capitalism than what came before.
Hunting down the minted may be good red meat for Starmer's followers, and may even be an effective populist position, but it's just as well he's got plenty of time to come up with an actual plan because narrowing the tax base still further ain't gonna cut it.
So for the average taxpayer basically it is 'first they came for the rich, then they came for you'.
Starmer would be our most leftwing PM since Harold Wilson, he is only 'centrist' relative to Corbyn
The electorate has settled into the position where it simultaneously expects a comprehensive welfare state (notably endless inflation-busting pension increases, elderly care that doesn't entail homeowners having to sell up to fund it, and unlimited helpings of cash for Our Beloved NHS,) but doesn't want to be made to cough up for any of it.
Got it exactly. And the cakeism won't stop until we are forced to stop it (certainly we won't reward those warning about it).
Except one thing we have been very good at is bodging things enough to get by, hence why we won't learn.
Its very noticeable when in theory people accept not increasing x or cutting y or raising taxes z, but meaningful action is rare and not doing them is treated like a basic human right and most such talk disingenuous.
Oh dear. You're not going to get the money to effect societal change just by soaking the rich a bit more.
Firstly, the top 5% will include lots of senior medical personages, many of whom will show their commitment to Our Beloved NHS by buggering off to take up a more lucrative gig in Australia if they are singled out. A good deal of the remainder of the 5% will also be highly mobile and not keen on being parted from more and more of their salaries either.
Secondly, there aren't enough of them.
The sustainable route to social democracy lies directly through the soaking of the entire population. You might ask a bit less in terms of a tax hike of low wage earners and the retired than you do of better off workers or the very wealthy, but everyone else has to pay more. Otherwise, if you just go after the rich and big businesses, then most of them cut investment or run away and you drive your economy into the ground. That simply results in the return of the Tories and a bigger helping of what might be described in some parts of the political spectrum as disaster capitalism than what came before.
Hunting down the minted may be good red meat for Starmer's followers, and may even be an effective populist position, but it's just as well he's got plenty of time to come up with an actual plan because narrowing the tax base still further ain't gonna cut it.
So for the average taxpayer basically it is 'first they came for the rich, then they came for you'.
Starmer would be our most leftwing PM since Harold Wilson, he is only 'centrist' relative to Corbyn
But is Starmer's leftism necessarily a bad thing? I mean, clearly coming from the Conservative standpoint yes, it's awful, but from the point of view of giving voters two clear, distinct and plausible directions to travel in, neither of which involves electing the IRA Veterans' Support Society (Islington branch) to run the show?
The electorate has settled into the position where it simultaneously expects a comprehensive welfare state (notably endless inflation-busting pension increases, elderly care that doesn't entail homeowners having to sell up to fund it, and unlimited helpings of cash for Our Beloved NHS,) but doesn't want to be made to cough up for any of it. Most voters think that they are precious and special for whatever reason, and that someone else should always be soaked to pay for the things they want - usually "The Rich" (variously described as Richard Branson, celebrity footballers, investment bankers, or everyone who earns at least £1 per year more than they do.) That's arguably one of the key reasons why the country is in such a complete bloody mess.
It's therefore past time that voters were forced to make their minds up. We'd be far better off committing to a course and going for a more American free-market, low tax model, in which we rely mainly on economic dynamism to float all the boats and leave anyone who sinks to drown; or go Scandinavian. Perhaps we might get a choice akin to that from a Sunak vs Starmer competition in a few years' time? Regardless, the cakeism has to stop.
Agreed 100%. Unfortunately cakesism is popular in this country, as attested to by the otherwise inexplicable phenomena of Boris Johnson PM and the Great British Bake Off.
Comments
Scotland (issued 1/10/20) - R = 1.3-1.7, growth rate estimate: +5% to +10%
Wales (issued 25/9/20) - R = 1.0-1.4, growth rate estimate +1% to +4%
There appear to be no similar recent data available for Northern Ireland.
The locations of the worst outbreaks continue to support the notion that low incomes, low quality housing and high population densities are the key drivers (although, given the more general spread of the virus which appears to have taken place all over Yorkshire, the relationship between low prevalence and wealthier/more rural localities isn't entirely set in stone.)
Crucially as far as your chain of logic goes, those basic facts don't change if Biden was 20% ahead in the polls or if he was 20% behind. If he wins big, then maybe he'll win South Carolina. If he loses big, then maybe he'll lose Washington. But the 270th electoral vote when you order the states by margin will still be provided by Pennsylvania or one of those.
This isn't like the UK where, if a party thinks it's on course to win big it pulls resources out of the ultra marginal to attack the 10k opposition majority seat. There is nothing beyond vanity in winning big over winning small. You throw everything into the tipping points and, if he wins Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and Nevada crushingly and in the process loses South Carolina narrowly, Biden won't give a tuppenny jizz about that.
OR
B ) Infected by talking into a spiked microphone
I wonder which explanation Occams Razor would choose?
All of this is adjusting our behaviour.
With a pandemic, we can adjust our behaviour to limit or reduce the amount of opportunity the virus has to spread.
The key question isn't whether this adjustment reduces spread, but in your last sentence: whether that reduction in spread was worthwhile.
(Which is why the "Hah, I bet the reduction has nothing to do with the restrictions" is both daft and ill-aimed. If it was "Was the level of the reduction we got from these restrictions worth the impact on us of the restrictions?" it would be a meaningful and worthwhile discussion to have. But very different.)
As it happens, I think the cost of the lockdown and restrictions was significant - both in the loss of health and life from people who did not get needed treatments (albeit many of them would have lost their treatments in the counterfactual of not addressing the spread of covid sooner as it took up more and more healthcare capacity) and in the loss of quality of life of everyone.
However, the first lockdown looks overwhelmingly likely to have avoided greater cost in loss of life, health, and quality of life in the counterfactual of not having locked down. had we, instead, locked down sooner, we'd probably have got a far better improvement while being able to release restrictions a lot sooner (a week's delay at the start leads to several weeks longer being needed).
A second full lockdown looks to me to have costs outweighing the benefits, unless a big and rapid spread otherwise looks to be on the cards. It's crude and untargeted. We should know more and better to be more discriminating of measures - targeting superspreader scenarios before they exist, with rapid cheap (albeit less reliable) testing rolled out, with poorly ventilated indoor situations with crowds being avoided, and so forth. Banning outside movement with small numbers of people seems unnecessary and with minimal (or no) benefits, for example, but that was a big component of the first lockdown.
This could go south very fast. Still early days, so if things are 'progressing' that's really not a good sign for him.
https://twitter.com/RepJoeKennedy/status/1312006751445749761?s=20
What I do think is that those who advocate it are frequently miscast as denialists.
It's an infantile level of debate, mostly.
Recently Murkowski ran as a write-in candidate and won despite having lost her primary.
You are Hillary Clinton and I claim my PB chequebook and pen.
I recognise that the state needs some taxes to pay for things that need paying for - but those things that need paying for should surely be the "priority".
Taxes, all taxes, should be levelled solely in or to get the job done of raising money to pay for your priorities, not be raised as a priority in its own right.
I know it's great for Biden if he does get over the line in the Senate, and it'd be irritating if they get 49 seats and Harrison misses on a recount. But the campaign team will have one focus.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/10/trump-knew-exposed-maskless-campaign-trail-hope-hicks-showing-symptoms.html
Yes effective vaccines are the what we are aiming for.
We do not yet have vaccines. We need to use science reduce the infection rates now. That includes using lockdown policies if and when things get out of hand. There is science behind quarrantining as well as just vaccines.
Prioritization can be taken too far. Sometimes you need to work out how to manage to do several things at once, because whichever one you neglect doing will trip you up.
https://twitter.com/MittRomney/status/1312010773208674305?s=20
When the left do it is to make some people pay more, even if, in the end, less money is raised.
27 August 0.12
10 September 0.54
24 September 0.26
Are the percentage infected found by the survey there
Firstly, the top 5% will include lots of senior medical personages, many of whom will show their commitment to Our Beloved NHS by buggering off to take up a more lucrative gig in Australia if they are singled out. A good deal of the remainder of the 5% will also be highly mobile and not keen on being parted from more and more of their salaries either.
Secondly, there aren't enough of them.
The sustainable route to social democracy lies directly through the soaking of the entire population. You might ask a bit less in terms of a tax hike of low wage earners and the retired than you do of better off workers or the very wealthy, but everyone else has to pay more. Otherwise, if you just go after the rich and big businesses, then most of them cut investment or run away and you drive your economy into the ground. That simply results in the return of the Tories and a bigger helping of what might be described in some parts of the political spectrum as disaster capitalism than what came before.
Hunting down the minted may be good red meat for Starmer's followers, and may even be an effective populist position, but it's just as well he's got plenty of time to come up with an actual plan because narrowing the tax base still further ain't gonna cut it.
Starmer would be our most leftwing PM since Harold Wilson, he is only 'centrist' relative to Corbyn.
Indeed a Starmer premiership and Biden presidency would be back to the 1960s and Wilson and LBJ economics and social policy
But you can't give the GOP snowflake outrage merchants anything to work with.
In the same way that I "eagerly await" Monday morning presumably?
https://twitter.com/heraldscotland/status/1312001549799956482?s=20
"Trump advisers knew it was likely that Hicks had contracted the coronavirus Wednesday when she publicly began exhibiting symptoms during a presidential campaign trip to Duluth, Minnesota."....
"Instead of taking precautions to protect those around him, however, Trump basically did nothing different. Instead of laying low, he traveled; instead of isolating, he met with people at campaign events; instead of protecting those around him, he knowingly risked spreading the virus further."
This is an aspect which could have an impact on the undecideds. It is one thing to be blaseé about Corona and then get infected. It is gross irresponsibility to meet with the public when you know there is a reasonable chance of having the virus.
Then the large majority of the population can contribute more in taxes, and still have a higher standard of living at the same time.
The Blairite policy of allowing the Rich to rip off everyone else and use the tax revenue for a bit of redistribution was a complete failure.
https://twitter.com/Douglas4Moray/status/1312021195789918208?s=20
Equally it would be useful overall if the Independence campaign had multiple parties to allow other policies to get an airing.
Can we have Morning Joe instead of Kay Burley?
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/02/debate-moderator-chris-wallace-coronavirus-test-425069
The tax rate on higher earners now is lower than it was, but raises more because people are content enough (relatively) to pay it without trying too many clever schemes or moving abroad.
The more you hike taxes the less that remains true. And in an interconnected world, the wealthy have all the choice they could want when it comes to residency.
It's foolish trying to have a socialist willy-waving contest about tax hikes. What matters is how much you can raise generally, not how much individuals pay.
Still, it remains reassuring that he's just a typically wrong lefty rather than a full-blown socialist cretin like Corbyn was.
"Certainly there was no sign during the debate of any problems with the president, in terms of his health," Wallace said. "But it is worth noting that the different people treated the safety rules inside the hall differently."
What plonkers.
The electorate has settled into the position where it simultaneously expects a comprehensive welfare state (notably endless inflation-busting pension increases, elderly care that doesn't entail homeowners having to sell up to fund it, and unlimited helpings of cash for Our Beloved NHS,) but doesn't want to be made to cough up for any of it. Most voters think that they are precious and special for whatever reason, and that someone else should always be soaked to pay for the things they want - usually "The Rich" (variously described as Richard Branson, celebrity footballers, investment bankers, or everyone who earns at least £1 per year more than they do.) That's arguably one of the key reasons why the country is in such a complete bloody mess.
It's therefore past time that voters were forced to make their minds up. We'd be far better off committing to a course and going for a more American free-market, low tax model, in which we rely mainly on economic dynamism to float all the boats and leave anyone who sinks to drown; or go Scandinavian. Perhaps we might get a choice akin to that from a Sunak vs Starmer competition in a few years' time? Regardless, the cakeism has to stop.
Stage 1: Nationalist party wins big enough to achieve it's aim
Stage 2: Nationalist party splits into 'sort of' left and right.
If the Party splits before 'freedom', the aim is not achieved.
Plus assuming Biden wins the US Presidency and the Democrats hold the House and maybe even add the Senate too the US will be moving left economically too anyway, Biden's platform is left of Obama's never mind Trump's, so the choice would be Singapore v Scandinavia, not the US v Scandinavia and more likely most UK voters would choose a return to 1970s pre Thatcher economics with a bit more cultural conservatism than going full Singapore
In the 14 th century people had never been more spread out or less travelled. People had not idea what caused the black death but they knew that human contact was bad. Plenty of distancing then eh?
Result? wipe out of up to sixty per cent of the population of Europe.
What was the rate of mortality as people did summersaults to avoid each other down the centuries. Absolutely terrible until real, science based treatments came in such as vaccines and anti-biotics.
Professor Gupta's whole point is that enforced or even voluntary changes in human behaviour at best only delay the inevitable at an enormous residual cost (beyond a possible six week initial lockdown phase). The virus finds a way.
Its almost as if there a mass of evidence that changes in human behaviour a are really crap way of controlling disease. Something that is becoming more obvious by the day.
Except one thing we have been very good at is bodging things enough to get by, hence why we won't learn.
Its very noticeable when in theory people accept not increasing x or cutting y or raising taxes z, but meaningful action is rare and not doing them is treated like a basic human right and most such talk disingenuous.