Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
Remember how we were told “the U.K. would never process EU citizen applications in time”?
overall, the total number of applications received up to 30 September 2020 was 4,061,900 overall, the total number of applications concluded up to 30 September 2020 was 3,880,400
How have EU members done with British citizen applications? Funny how many EU citizens want to live in nasty xenophobic “Little Britain” (England, actually, with the overwhelming majority (91%) of the applications).
Morning to everyone although not a good one given the GDP underperformance. Will be interesting to see what Rishi means by his new measure for jobs.
I spent too much bloody time on here yesterday so this is the only post of the day and then I'm off. First, @HYFUD posted the Florida poll with a +3% Republican lead. Here is an article on it, which claims the pollster got Florida right in 2016 and the scale of Obama's 2008 victory (don't know whether that is true, I haven't had time to check). Biden's rating amongst Hispanics actually looks decent in the poll but it states Trump is winning amongst 45+ and has 12% of the Black vote.
For @OllyT, the same pollster explains why he is sceptical the polling is reliable. He has a slightly different take from me, namely the problem being that it has to do with the switch to cellphone and polling the same pool but his conclusion is the same, namely polling is less reliable than it was:
Finally, from Bitzer at North State politics. This is "old" (a week and half ago) but it is looking at the composition of the early returned ballots in NC. HIs conclusion is there is a good chance the Democrats are merely cannibalising their 2016 votes with the returned ballots rather than adding new voters. - at Sep 27, 71% of Democrats who had voted by mail had voted in person in 2016 vs 66% for the state as a whole, and only 21% had either registered in 2017+ or hadn't voted in 2016 vs 24% for the whole state (and 25% for the much smaller Republican number):
Thanks for your detailed response yesterday, only saw it this morning.
I don't actually agree with you that any of those points are causing the national polling to be way off. Weren't you claiming exactly the same things during the mid-terms, telling us that despite the polls the GOP were going to win the House?
I believe that the national polls will prove to be broadly accurate. We shall soon know which of us is correct.
Indeed, the article above saying polling is "not anywhere as reliable as it was before" offers zero evidence for this assertion. Whereas: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-polls-are-all-right/ has some actual numbers, and comes to the opposite conclusion, and is from before the 2018 mid-terms, where pollsters did quite well.
I think it's also at least as likely that the polls underestimate Biden's lead - just as many people were making arguments (often similar to those saying Trump will do better than the polls) for the polls overestimating Macron's lead over Le Pen in 2017, some even saying that she had a good chance of winning. In fact the polls massively underestimated Macron's winning margin. One of the biggest polling misses of recent years.
My prediction: Biden will win nationally by 6-7%, which will be a fairly comfortable Electoral College win. How comfortable maybe depending on whether he picks up Florida or not, where Trump has had some good polls. But anything from a narrow Trump EC win to a Biden landslide (= double figures national lead) wouldn't surprise me.
Oh f*ck it, I was trying to stay off this site all day to do this and I promise myself this will be the last one for the day but, Kamski, in your Nate Silver piece, if you read down, there is actually a reference to this which is as follows:
"There’s also reason to worry about what’s going into the polls as response rates to polls decline and as newsrooms cut their budgets for traditional, high-quality surveys. Internet-based polling may eventually be a part of the solution, but for the most part,1 it was quite inaccurate in 2016 (we’ll go into more detail on this point in another article later this week)."
This was written in 2018. The reason I highlight that paragraph now is that newspaper revenues have gone off a cliff with the pandemic and many organisations - including the polling companies and the newspapers themselves - are struggling to survive. The chances therefore that they are spending more on improving the quality of their polls is almost zero whereas the chances they have cut the amount they spend, focused less on quality and more on whether a new poll incites readers to click through (and therefore its traffic and therefore its appeal to advertisers) is high.
This is an entirely different situation from what has gone with 2018 and 2016 etc.
Is that bad? Or is that good? I genuinely don't know. What proportion of sexual contacts does an STD clinic manage to trace? What is the comparator here?
It seems to me that if 2/3 of those who have been in contact with someone found to be infected are being traced this should be more than sufficient to reduce R below 1. As that is not happening I wonder how they are defining "contacts" and how quickly those 2/3 are being traced.
Not really, as we’re in the main testing only those who are symptomatic. So even if we were testing all of those, which we aren’t, around half of infected cases wouldn’t be tested at all.
Add in the days of delay between testing and tracing contacts, and you can see why that’s not the case.
Again this is the consequence of making test accuracy the single most important metric. Number of tests (which must include testing those who are not symptomatic) and speed of results are every bit as important, and have simply not been given equivalent priority from the start.
I do recall in March or April listening to Vallance and Whitty and being told that a test that was not sufficiently accurate was "worse than useless". Even at the time my eyebrows shot up but, in a crowded field, I think it is now clear that that was the worst single piece of advice the government received. Its cost thousands of lives and had horrific economic consequences.
It depends where you set the bar for 'sufficiently'. @Nigelb is right though, speed and volume are very important, along with decent sensitivity, specificity less important - you can test again.
I think you have sensitivity/specificity the wrong way round there ?
As long as the test isn't actively misleading (a high rate of false positives is obviously that), even comparatively low sensitivity, provided that is a known characteristic, is better than no test at all.
A lowish rate of false positives is tolerable, again as long as that test characteristic is known (one can then retest isolated positives with a more accurate test).
The cheap, mass produced, rapid antigen tests I think meet those characteristics.
I meant it the way I said it, but I think we're talking about different testing approaches and maybe different definitions of 'high' and 'low' regarding sensitivity and specificity - in short I was not specific enough about my meaning
My thinking, for individual tests: you want most people really infected to come back with positive tests (high sensitivity) so that they go into isolation and you trace contacts. A test that missed say 50% of positives would not be that great at the individual level, but it is a trade off - if the 50% sensitive test lets you test three times the number of people compared to the 90% sensitive test then you potentially still detect more cases and can break more chains of transmission. The false positives, if specificity is not so great, are a bit disruptive to individuals and may lose confidence in the system*, but as long as the rate is not too high (say 10%, 20%) it's ok. If low specificity is a known problem then you can test the positives again (using a more specific test, perhaps, on the smaller sample) if you have the capacity.
If you're talking about pooled testing approaches, which should be done more, then yes good specificity is the key. Poor specificity ruins pooled testing as it dramatically increases the workload/reduces capacity, which negates the whole purpose of pooled testing.
* I think this is where the worse than useless idea comes from. There needs to be confidence in testing, if you have a very low specificity individual test and people are repeatedly being asked to isolate for no reason then people will want to avoid getting tested. Tracing systems also get overwhelmed.
There is a medical establishment dislike of inaccurate tests, in general. See the debate over PSA testing for prostate cancer etc.
Morning to everyone although not a good one given the GDP underperformance. Will be interesting to see what Rishi means by his new measure for jobs.
I spent too much bloody time on here yesterday so this is the only post of the day and then I'm off. First, @HYFUD posted the Florida poll with a +3% Republican lead. Here is an article on it, which claims the pollster got Florida right in 2016 and the scale of Obama's 2008 victory (don't know whether that is true, I haven't had time to check). Biden's rating amongst Hispanics actually looks decent in the poll but it states Trump is winning amongst 45+ and has 12% of the Black vote.
For @OllyT, the same pollster explains why he is sceptical the polling is reliable. He has a slightly different take from me, namely the problem being that it has to do with the switch to cellphone and polling the same pool but his conclusion is the same, namely polling is less reliable than it was:
Finally, from Bitzer at North State politics. This is "old" (a week and half ago) but it is looking at the composition of the early returned ballots in NC. HIs conclusion is there is a good chance the Democrats are merely cannibalising their 2016 votes with the returned ballots rather than adding new voters. - at Sep 27, 71% of Democrats who had voted by mail had voted in person in 2016 vs 66% for the state as a whole, and only 21% had either registered in 2017+ or hadn't voted in 2016 vs 24% for the whole state (and 25% for the much smaller Republican number):
Thanks for your detailed response yesterday, only saw it this morning.
I don't actually agree with you that any of those points are causing the national polling to be way off. Weren't you claiming exactly the same things during the mid-terms, telling us that despite the polls the GOP were going to win the House?
I believe that the national polls will prove to be broadly accurate. We shall soon know which of us is correct.
Indeed, the article above saying polling is "not anywhere as reliable as it was before" offers zero evidence for this assertion. Whereas: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-polls-are-all-right/ has some actual numbers, and comes to the opposite conclusion, and is from before the 2018 mid-terms, where pollsters did quite well.
I think it's also at least as likely that the polls underestimate Biden's lead - just as many people were making arguments (often similar to those saying Trump will do better than the polls) for the polls overestimating Macron's lead over Le Pen in 2017, some even saying that she had a good chance of winning. In fact the polls massively underestimated Macron's winning margin. One of the biggest polling misses of recent years.
My prediction: Biden will win nationally by 6-7%, which will be a fairly comfortable Electoral College win. How comfortable maybe depending on whether he picks up Florida or not, where Trump has had some good polls. But anything from a narrow Trump EC win to a Biden landslide (= double figures national lead) wouldn't surprise me.
I have no doubt Biden will win the popular vote but even if he wins it by 4% Trump could still theoretically win the EC even if that is only a small chance.
In the 2017 first round in France as the map showed Le Pen actually won at least half of the departements, especially in ex industrial areas like those Trump won in the US and Fillon also won a few rural areas and Melenchon a few urban areas, it was only in the run off Macron really got a big lead.
One French poll over the summer had it Macron 55% Le Pen 45% in the run off and the latest poll is Macron 58% Le Pen 42%, so not far off the current Biden and Trump polling
Yes I am talking about the run-off between Macron and Le Pen in 2017. There were some posters on here saying the polls would all be proved wrong ("again! look at Brexit and Trump, and shy Le Pen voters because it's not socially acceptable to say you are voting Le Pen etc etc") and Le Pen would do much better than expected. I don't remember anyone arguing that the polls were wrong and Macron would do much better than the polls - which is what in fact happened.
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/10/james-fallows-little-bit-quieter-and-little-bit-worse/616659/ ...I believe that Kamala Harris’s bearing, in a head-to-head meeting with a sitting vice president, may have a similar effect for her. Of course her temperamental task was vastly more complicated than Kennedy’s, Reagan’s, or Clinton’s. As a woman, she had to walk the inch-wide line that separates being submissive from being harsh. A retort that would be tough from a male politician could be—kiss of misogynist death—shrill from her. For a Black woman, the path that is strong but not angry is narrower still. But Harris has had a lifetime’s practice with such navigation, which she put to use.
My guess is that her knowledgeable, unflustered, controlled-but-forceful bearing will not convert many votes to her camp. Most people who will vote Biden-Harris after the debate had long ago decided to do so. The same is true for most of those who will vote Trump-Pence. But I think that, as with Kennedy and with Reagan, her performance may have reassured people who were already considering her. She’s up to it; she knows the terrain; she’s okay. If they were “undecided” mainly about taking the trouble to vote, they’ll be less motivated to vote against her, or more willing to give her a try. I have no idea of the scale of this potential effect, but its direction seems clear—at least to me, as I think back on these preceding They’re up to it, they’re okay debates
As for Pence, the likely effect is simpler and clearer. Most American voters are women; according to polls, the Trump-Pence ticket is in trouble mainly because the pair has such an enormous deficit among female voters. For 90 minutes on Wednesday evening, viewers saw a smug silver-haired man interrupting, talking over, and hogging airtime from one professional woman, and ignoring the “please, sir” requests for decorum from another. To have any hope of winning the election, Pence and Trump had to gain rather than lose female support through this debate. I’ve learned that anything can happen. But it seemed to me, as another silver-haired man, that Pence’s faux-polite bombast would have just the opposite effect...
All of the poor, confusing decisions have lead to this huge economic underperformance. The bill for Boris and his nonsense policies are coming due and we're going to pay for it for the next 20 years.
I actually can't put into context just how awful this is going to be.
You seem to imply that we wouldn't have been paying for it for 20 years without the nonsense policies. I'd suggest that is pretty absurd and the only difference if Boris and co had done differently would be in the precise amount, a reduction in scale, but still absolutely massive.
There's criticism to be made, but implying all would have been well without the actions of Boris I think overplays how powerful he is.
Proper policies would have taken us up to 94-96% of GDP before stalling. We're now hitting the wall of organic growth rather than recovering what was lost. That additional 3-5% is going to add at least two years onto the recovery period which means an additional £200bn in borrowing. It took 12 years to almost balance the fiscal budget from a 6% GDP drop in a growing global economy. It will take 20+ to do it for a 9% drop in worse economic conditions.
While everyone was having a laugh about go out but don't go out and go to the office but don't go to the office it was causing huge economic damage as people just don't know what it is they should or shouldn't do any more.
I think you're overly pessimistic. There are a couple of big differences.
In 2008 there was a major structural deficit already and had been for years. Going into this crash the deficit was down to 1.2% of GDP and falling every year so there was more slack for the deficit. Also the 2008 crash was due to structural problems and not an artificial constraint or fear that would be lifted.
Also the growth at the minute reflects that people are staying in still. Out of fear of the virus as much as any restrictions. Anecdotally, in August I went out a few times with my family but I know my grandparents remained inside throughout and they'd normally pre virus even in their 80s and 90s had very active social lives and would go out a couple of times a week.
Indeed pre virus the "grey pound" was very very valuable and if people are shielding they're not spending it.
Once we are out the other side of this, one way or another, there will be slack in the economy from where we are now to recover quickly.
The fiscal position going into this was less sustainable than it looked. Spending had been suppressed to unsustainably low levels. For instance, the government had to increase universal credit once the crisis hit because some of "their" voters were about to get laid off and realise you couldn't actually live on the previous level. Local governments and public health have been so slashed back that they had to create all the infrastructure from scratch at huge expense, with lots of waste and exposure to the serial incompetence of the consultancy/outsourcing industry. And years of austerity have contributed to the poverty and poor and overcrowded housing that have led to Covid's spread across the North of England. Covid itself is an exogenous shock, but the reason the UK has been so spectacularly knocked for six by it is that we came into it with an underfunded and barely functioning state and welfare system, all of which was a deliberate policy choice. Not to mention Brexit of course, which has left the economy already vulnerable and under-performing.
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
Power wasn't the issue. If they'd kept their promises in power then they would have been OK, the issue is they didn't.
As for your final line you have it backwards. The LDs benefited from people being unaware of what compromises would be required. The LDs are struggling because people do now understand the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government . . . Why vote LD if they're just going to be required to compromise away everything they claim to stand for?
The LDs problem is not that they went into power, it is they have absolutely no integrity left.
But we need to find a modus vivendi with this thing because in advance of a vaccine, life as things stand is simply not tenable.
I agree that the current purgatory is not tenable. I'd characterise the current approach as being to use blunt, society-wide restrictions to reduce R, and keep infection levels suppressed below the level of overwhelming the hospital system, until a vaccine, treatment, or cheap insta-test rides to the rescue.
I think it's worth noting that this is the same strategy that Sweden is using. The difference is only that they have implemented it more competently than the UK, and have some advantages which make it easier to achieve (lower population density, stronger social security, better voluntary compliance).
The alternative presented is risk segmentation. I think there are many problems with that as a strategy, which have been well discussed: How do you define the vulnerable population? How do you effectively isolate them when they're mixed within households? Can the health service deal with the numbers who will still need treatment among the low-risk population? Will it actually lead to herd-immunity and a time when it is safe for the vulnerable to leave isolation?
My preference is to go after the virus. We let it get on top of us in the spring and we immediately lost our confidence and decided that victory was impossible. But if we manage to isolate the infectious the virus has nowhere to go.
We can work on speeding up testing. We can make tracing more effective. And we can ensure that those who need to actually do isolate.
Those are the choices. 1. Isolate everyone. 2. Isolate the vulnerable. 3. Isolate the infectious.
The vulnerable rely upon the non vulnerable so isolating them is easier said than done.
Well, yes, but to be fair, the characteristics of Sars-Cov-2 (spread by those pre-symptomatic and asymptomatic) also make it (isolating the infectious) easier said than done.
And enduring the current purgatory is no longer easy to say, let alone do.
Indeed.
I wish we had more news on the vaccine trials. The Oxford vaccine is well into its final phase trials and I believe manufacturing of it is also well underway. It could theoretically begin rollout next month.
If it's a case of we have a few more weeks to endure and then vaccinations will begin on the most vulnerable I think everyone could live with that. It's the unknown of this being dragged out and the fear it could be for years that is really getting to people now I think.
Unfortunately that is how clinical trials work - there is no news until there is news. It's not going to be years, though. We will have results from several trials in a very few months.
Agree with IDS on the general principle that we need to learn to live with the virus but not as he disingenuously sets out (you can hear it without a DT subscription - click the Choppers Politics tab). He has no concept of what the risks are and how to manage them. He dismisses the scientific consensus as "groupthink" (who needs to bother with the evidence?).
Nevertheless an important interview as IDS clearly represents today's ideological mainstream of the Conservative Party
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Yet things haven't worked out too well since chucking them out.
Agree with IDS on the general principle that we need to learn to live with the virus but not as he disingenuously sets out (you can hear it without a DT subscription - click the Choppers Politics tab). He has no concept of what the risks are and how to manage them. He dismisses the scientific consensus as "groupthink" (who needs to bother with the evidence?).
Nevertheless an important interview as IDS clearly represents today's ideological mainstream of the Conservative Party
All of the poor, confusing decisions have lead to this huge economic underperformance. The bill for Boris and his nonsense policies are coming due and we're going to pay for it for the next 20 years.
I actually can't put into context just how awful this is going to be.
You seem to imply that we wouldn't have been paying for it for 20 years without the nonsense policies. I'd suggest that is pretty absurd and the only difference if Boris and co had done differently would be in the precise amount, a reduction in scale, but still absolutely massive.
There's criticism to be made, but implying all would have been well without the actions of Boris I think overplays how powerful he is.
Proper policies would have taken us up to 94-96% of GDP before stalling. We're now hitting the wall of organic growth rather than recovering what was lost. That additional 3-5% is going to add at least two years onto the recovery period which means an additional £200bn in borrowing. It took 12 years to almost balance the fiscal budget from a 6% GDP drop in a growing global economy. It will take 20+ to do it for a 9% drop in worse economic conditions.
While everyone was having a laugh about go out but don't go out and go to the office but don't go to the office it was causing huge economic damage as people just don't know what it is they should or shouldn't do any more.
I think you're overly pessimistic. There are a couple of big differences.
In 2008 there was a major structural deficit already and had been for years. Going into this crash the deficit was down to 1.2% of GDP and falling every year so there was more slack for the deficit. Also the 2008 crash was due to structural problems and not an artificial constraint or fear that would be lifted.
Also the growth at the minute reflects that people are staying in still. Out of fear of the virus as much as any restrictions. Anecdotally, in August I went out a few times with my family but I know my grandparents remained inside throughout and they'd normally pre virus even in their 80s and 90s had very active social lives and would go out a couple of times a week.
Indeed pre virus the "grey pound" was very very valuable and if people are shielding they're not spending it.
Once we are out the other side of this, one way or another, there will be slack in the economy from where we are now to recover quickly.
Throw away your 2010 George Osborne propaganda notes. They were wrong then and are wrong now. There was a small deficit before the global financial crisis; whether structural or not is moot because it had sod all to do with causing the global crash or our recovery from it.
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
Power wasn't the issue. If they'd kept their promises in power then they would have been OK, the issue is they didn't.
As for your final line you have it backwards. The LDs benefited from people being unaware of what compromises would be required. The LDs are struggling because people do now understand the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government . . . Why vote LD if they're just going to be required to compromise away everything they claim to stand for?
The LDs problem is not that they went into power, it is they have absolutely no integrity left.
If people didn't understand that pre-election promises are only meaningful with overall majorities then that's another failing of peoples' understanding.
The LD were pragmatic. And yes, you could be right about people not wanting coalitions because the junior member will be rolled over, as is often the way with such arrangements.
On the other hand, people may still like the idea of a restraining influence on whichever government would otherwise be in power.
All of the poor, confusing decisions have lead to this huge economic underperformance. The bill for Boris and his nonsense policies are coming due and we're going to pay for it for the next 20 years.
I actually can't put into context just how awful this is going to be.
You seem to imply that we wouldn't have been paying for it for 20 years without the nonsense policies. I'd suggest that is pretty absurd and the only difference if Boris and co had done differently would be in the precise amount, a reduction in scale, but still absolutely massive.
There's criticism to be made, but implying all would have been well without the actions of Boris I think overplays how powerful he is.
Proper policies would have taken us up to 94-96% of GDP before stalling. We're now hitting the wall of organic growth rather than recovering what was lost. That additional 3-5% is going to add at least two years onto the recovery period which means an additional £200bn in borrowing. It took 12 years to almost balance the fiscal budget from a 6% GDP drop in a growing global economy. It will take 20+ to do it for a 9% drop in worse economic conditions.
While everyone was having a laugh about go out but don't go out and go to the office but don't go to the office it was causing huge economic damage as people just don't know what it is they should or shouldn't do any more.
I think you're overly pessimistic. There are a couple of big differences.
In 2008 there was a major structural deficit already and had been for years. Going into this crash the deficit was down to 1.2% of GDP and falling every year so there was more slack for the deficit. Also the 2008 crash was due to structural problems and not an artificial constraint or fear that would be lifted.
Also the growth at the minute reflects that people are staying in still. Out of fear of the virus as much as any restrictions. Anecdotally, in August I went out a few times with my family but I know my grandparents remained inside throughout and they'd normally pre virus even in their 80s and 90s had very active social lives and would go out a couple of times a week.
Indeed pre virus the "grey pound" was very very valuable and if people are shielding they're not spending it.
Once we are out the other side of this, one way or another, there will be slack in the economy from where we are now to recover quickly.
Throw away your 2010 George Osborne propaganda notes. They were wrong then and are wrong now. There was a small deficit before the global financial crisis; whether structural or not is moot because it had sod all to do with causing the global crash or our recovery from it.
Good luck. When it comes to the 2010 Tory messaging PT is very much high on his own supply.
We've had the Harrowing of the North. Now we've got the Etoning.
I'm not too far from Nottingham. Real anger around today I am hearing about the mess that will be this weekend in the city centre pubs as 45,000 students go on a last hurrah before a lockdown that wont happen until Monday.
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
Power wasn't the issue. If they'd kept their promises in power then they would have been OK, the issue is they didn't.
As for your final line you have it backwards. The LDs benefited from people being unaware of what compromises would be required. The LDs are struggling because people do now understand the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government . . . Why vote LD if they're just going to be required to compromise away everything they claim to stand for?
The LDs problem is not that they went into power, it is they have absolutely no integrity left.
That’s rubbish the LDs achieved a lot in government, far more than labour are achieving at present, they will be back with a bang in May doing what they do best ousting lazy conservative and labour councilors,
All of the poor, confusing decisions have lead to this huge economic underperformance. The bill for Boris and his nonsense policies are coming due and we're going to pay for it for the next 20 years.
I actually can't put into context just how awful this is going to be.
You seem to imply that we wouldn't have been paying for it for 20 years without the nonsense policies. I'd suggest that is pretty absurd and the only difference if Boris and co had done differently would be in the precise amount, a reduction in scale, but still absolutely massive.
There's criticism to be made, but implying all would have been well without the actions of Boris I think overplays how powerful he is.
Proper policies would have taken us up to 94-96% of GDP before stalling. We're now hitting the wall of organic growth rather than recovering what was lost. That additional 3-5% is going to add at least two years onto the recovery period which means an additional £200bn in borrowing. It took 12 years to almost balance the fiscal budget from a 6% GDP drop in a growing global economy. It will take 20+ to do it for a 9% drop in worse economic conditions.
While everyone was having a laugh about go out but don't go out and go to the office but don't go to the office it was causing huge economic damage as people just don't know what it is they should or shouldn't do any more.
I think you're overly pessimistic. There are a couple of big differences.
In 2008 there was a major structural deficit already and had been for years. Going into this crash the deficit was down to 1.2% of GDP and falling every year so there was more slack for the deficit. Also the 2008 crash was due to structural problems and not an artificial constraint or fear that would be lifted.
Also the growth at the minute reflects that people are staying in still. Out of fear of the virus as much as any restrictions. Anecdotally, in August I went out a few times with my family but I know my grandparents remained inside throughout and they'd normally pre virus even in their 80s and 90s had very active social lives and would go out a couple of times a week.
Indeed pre virus the "grey pound" was very very valuable and if people are shielding they're not spending it.
Once we are out the other side of this, one way or another, there will be slack in the economy from where we are now to recover quickly.
Throw away your 2010 George Osborne propaganda notes. They were wrong then and are wrong now. There was a small deficit before the global financial crisis; whether structural or not is moot because it had sod all to do with causing the global crash or our recovery from it.
There was a very big deficit before the crisis.
In order to maintain debt-to-GDP the average deficit over a cycle should be at or below the average growth over a cycle. Pre-recession after seventeen years of uninterrupted economic growth we somehow managed to enter a recession with a deficit more than long term growth averages. Which meant of course the deficit exploded, inevitably.
How do you think we can possibly have average deficit at 2.5% when it is more than that during the growth period?
Is that bad? Or is that good? I genuinely don't know. What proportion of sexual contacts does an STD clinic manage to trace? What is the comparator here?
It seems to me that if 2/3 of those who have been in contact with someone found to be infected are being traced this should be more than sufficient to reduce R below 1. As that is not happening I wonder how they are defining "contacts" and how quickly those 2/3 are being traced.
Not really, as we’re in the main testing only those who are symptomatic. So even if we were testing all of those, which we aren’t, around half of infected cases wouldn’t be tested at all.
Add in the days of delay between testing and tracing contacts, and you can see why that’s not the case.
Again this is the consequence of making test accuracy the single most important metric. Number of tests (which must include testing those who are not symptomatic) and speed of results are every bit as important, and have simply not been given equivalent priority from the start.
I do recall in March or April listening to Vallance and Whitty and being told that a test that was not sufficiently accurate was "worse than useless". Even at the time my eyebrows shot up but, in a crowded field, I think it is now clear that that was the worst single piece of advice the government received. Its cost thousands of lives and had horrific economic consequences.
It depends where you set the bar for 'sufficiently'. @Nigelb is right though, speed and volume are very important, along with decent sensitivity, specificity less important - you can test again.
I think you have sensitivity/specificity the wrong way round there ?
As long as the test isn't actively misleading (a high rate of false positives is obviously that), even comparatively low sensitivity, provided that is a known characteristic, is better than no test at all.
A lowish rate of false positives is tolerable, again as long as that test characteristic is known (one can then retest isolated positives with a more accurate test).
The cheap, mass produced, rapid antigen tests I think meet those characteristics.
I meant it the way I said it, but I think we're talking about different testing approaches and maybe different definitions of 'high' and 'low' regarding sensitivity and specificity - in short I was not specific enough about my meaning
My thinking, for individual tests: you want most people really infected to come back with positive tests (high sensitivity) so that they go into isolation and you trace contacts. A test that missed say 50% of positives would not be that great at the individual level, but it is a trade off - if the 50% sensitive test lets you test three times the number of people compared to the 90% sensitive test then you potentially still detect more cases and can break more chains of transmission. The false positives, if specificity is not so great, are a bit disruptive to individuals and may lose confidence in the system*, but as long as the rate is not too high (say 10%, 20%) it's ok. If low specificity is a known problem then you can test the positives again (using a more specific test, perhaps, on the smaller sample) if you have the capacity.
If you're talking about pooled testing approaches, which should be done more, then yes good specificity is the key. Poor specificity ruins pooled testing as it dramatically increases the workload/reduces capacity, which negates the whole purpose of pooled testing.
* I think this is where the worse than useless idea comes from. There needs to be confidence in testing, if you have a very low specificity individual test and people are repeatedly being asked to isolate for no reason then people will want to avoid getting tested. Tracing systems also get overwhelmed.
There is a medical establishment dislike of inaccurate tests, in general. See the debate over PSA testing for prostate cancer etc.
Those services numbers are horrific given August was Eat Out to Help Out month. And Services are going to be very badly affected by whatever Brexit deal we do or don’t end up with. Thankfully, services are only a small part of the UK economy ...
In normal times the August growth figures would be little short of sensational and we would be worrying about uncontrolled booms. What I think can be said is that the horrendous damage caused by Covid and the lockdown is being undone but not quite as fast as it was in the summer. Of course August had the higher base of July for a monthly comparison but even so the force of the bounce back faded somewhat.
I don't agree that the services figure is particularly bad, let alone horrific. Most services are still operating with significantly reduced capacity and that includes restaurants and bars. What is clear is that the new restrictions that we have in Scotland and much of the north of England will drive those figures down further in the coming weeks with severe job implications.
The brutal truth is that our economy cannot operate at its previous level when we have to stay 2m apart, where the capacity of a pub or restaurant or even court house is measured on the fingers of a couple of hands. We are trying to live virtually. Its not working.
I understand why the services numbers are horrific, but they are horrific. And come January a major market for our services sector will become much harder to access. That’s just a fact. Covid we can’t do much about. The rest is about choices our government has made.
We can do a lot about our response to Covid and that will have vastly more effect on our service industries than the end of the transitional arrangements, whatever replaces them.
So far the blessed Nicola has been the mother of the nation in Scotland riding high on a wave of approval but I am detecting a lot of opposition to her most recent measures, a surprising amount of it from SNP supporters. I think we are at the limits of what people are willing to accept in terms of limits on our economy. The price is now payable and people are shocked by it. All too soon, as furlough unwinds, they will be appalled. I think at that point the consensus will switch to living with the virus rather than trying to eliminate it.
She doesn't have a choice on the recent measures. Apart from schools, which everyone thinks should be kept open full time, closing hospitality is the only tool left in her box. The arguments about what is cafe etc is really her government trying to mitigate some of the negative effects of these measures by providing minimal opportunities for social interaction. Hospitality owners and workers are tragically screwed.
Reopening universities was a mistake and she needs to close those down too, unfortunately.
I think that's a fair assessment. She has at least been clearer than some - and without the embellishments of Mr Johnson who keeps trying to gild the covid measures turd - but could have been earlier. However, the Unionist opposition has been so intense (partly because London is lagging behind on English measures) that it can't be easy to do so while running what remains a minority administration, and without any control of the furlough scheme etc. The Greens, in particular, rely disproportionately on the student vote in general, and so too will some Unionist MPs and MSPs too in those university cities [edit] which hace a lot of students coming in from outside Scotland and therefore unfamiliar with Scottish politics and tending to vote for London-based parties simply out of familiarity.
Note, however, that her governmenbt put into law a way for students to be released from rental contracts (possibly for university accommodation only?) back in April, IIRC. That could be very important if it comes to closing unis. This is not the case for rUK.
Perhaps we need to learn from those who are ahead of us in the timeline. I have seen no comparisons on Universities in other countries. Where has closed them again?
What have cases been in France, for example?
I have seen endless media wibbles about the situation in Universities in the UK, and this morning the Today programme was having a go at a chap from Durham that they did not have a full hot food delivery service to a couple of hundred newly locked down students in place in 24 hours flat. Which sounds to me like standard "put 'em in the stocks and through rotten tomatoes" tactics on Today, rather than have a useful conversation.
But then we saw endless wibbles about social distancing in beaches and parks, and 90% of that was 90% bullshit based on misleading photography, and very little of the media gave accurate coverage then.
Is the issue in Scotland with student halls or private rental? I would expect the whole problem in institutional settings with bigger cluster flats, as that is where the freshers are and 2nd year and above don't go postal in the same way.
Which is why the PRS who want to supply nice accommodation avoid them.
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Problem for the LD's in 2010-15 was responsibility without the power. At least, that was the perception.
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
Power wasn't the issue. If they'd kept their promises in power then they would have been OK, the issue is they didn't.
As for your final line you have it backwards. The LDs benefited from people being unaware of what compromises would be required. The LDs are struggling because people do now understand the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government . . . Why vote LD if they're just going to be required to compromise away everything they claim to stand for?
The LDs problem is not that they went into power, it is they have absolutely no integrity left.
If people didn't understand that pre-election promises are only meaningful with overall majorities then that's another failing of peoples' understanding.
The LD were pragmatic. And yes, you could be right about people not wanting coalitions because the junior member will be rolled over, as is often the way with such arrangements.
On the other hand, people may still like the idea of a restraining influence on whichever government would otherwise be in power.
If the LDs campaigned on a platform of "we will be a restraining influence on whichever government would otherwise be in power" then that might be the case. But they don't.
Instead they run on grandiose claims of things they will do, which are patently implausible . . . like abolishing tuition fees outright (then voting to triple them), or calling their leader the Next Prime Minister and promising to revoke Article 50 without a referendum.
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
I don't think it has much to do with 2010-2015. The LibDems were polling in the 20s less than 18 months ago. Instead, we are back to 2017: there are two entrenched blocks of voters in England and Wales right now, and they feed off each other. If you want to stop the Tories you choose Labour; and if you want to stop Labour you choose the Tories. I suspect that is the way it will remain for quite a while. And that spells big trouble for the LibDems.
We've had the Harrowing of the North. Now we've got the Etoning.
cracking gag if original.
Thanks! I haven't heard it before but I'm sure someone else must have made it at some point. Feel free to use it, I'm always pleased to make any small contribution to the Class War.
Morning to everyone although not a good one given the GDP underperformance. Will be interesting to see what Rishi means by his new measure for jobs.
I spent too much bloody time on here yesterday so this is the only post of the day and then I'm off. First, @HYFUD posted the Florida poll with a +3% Republican lead. Here is an article on it, which claims the pollster got Florida right in 2016 and the scale of Obama's 2008 victory (don't know whether that is true, I haven't had time to check). Biden's rating amongst Hispanics actually looks decent in the poll but it states Trump is winning amongst 45+ and has 12% of the Black vote.
For @OllyT, the same pollster explains why he is sceptical the polling is reliable. He has a slightly different take from me, namely the problem being that it has to do with the switch to cellphone and polling the same pool but his conclusion is the same, namely polling is less reliable than it was:
Finally, from Bitzer at North State politics. This is "old" (a week and half ago) but it is looking at the composition of the early returned ballots in NC. HIs conclusion is there is a good chance the Democrats are merely cannibalising their 2016 votes with the returned ballots rather than adding new voters. - at Sep 27, 71% of Democrats who had voted by mail had voted in person in 2016 vs 66% for the state as a whole, and only 21% had either registered in 2017+ or hadn't voted in 2016 vs 24% for the whole state (and 25% for the much smaller Republican number):
Thanks for your detailed response yesterday, only saw it this morning.
I don't actually agree with you that any of those points are causing the national polling to be way off. Weren't you claiming exactly the same things during the mid-terms, telling us that despite the polls the GOP were going to win the House?
I believe that the national polls will prove to be broadly accurate. We shall soon know which of us is correct.
Indeed, the article above saying polling is "not anywhere as reliable as it was before" offers zero evidence for this assertion. Whereas: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-polls-are-all-right/ has some actual numbers, and comes to the opposite conclusion, and is from before the 2018 mid-terms, where pollsters did quite well.
I think it's also at least as likely that the polls underestimate Biden's lead - just as many people were making arguments (often similar to those saying Trump will do better than the polls) for the polls overestimating Macron's lead over Le Pen in 2017, some even saying that she had a good chance of winning. In fact the polls massively underestimated Macron's winning margin. One of the biggest polling misses of recent years.
My prediction: Biden will win nationally by 6-7%, which will be a fairly comfortable Electoral College win. How comfortable maybe depending on whether he picks up Florida or not, where Trump has had some good polls. But anything from a narrow Trump EC win to a Biden landslide (= double figures national lead) wouldn't surprise me.
I have no doubt Biden will win the popular vote but even if he wins it by 4% Trump could still theoretically win the EC even if that is only a small chance.
In the 2017 first round in France as the map showed Le Pen actually won at least half of the departements, especially in ex industrial areas like those Trump won in the US and Fillon also won a few rural areas and Melenchon a few urban areas, it was only in the run off Macron really got a big lead.
One French poll over the summer had it Macron 55% Le Pen 45% in the run off and the latest poll is Macron 58% Le Pen 42%, so not far off the current Biden and Trump polling
Various new articles stating that the Trump campaign is pulling ads from mid west states and focusing elsewhere because their data (on the ground campaigning) is looking good. Democrats are saying its tosh and they are short of money.
All the evidence says this is tosh by the GOP, but....
Agree with IDS on the general principle that we need to learn to live with the virus but not as he disingenuously sets out (you can hear it without a DT subscription - click the Choppers Politics tab). He has no concept of what the risks are and how to manage them. He dismisses the scientific consensus as "groupthink" (who needs to bother with the evidence?).
Nevertheless an important interview as IDS clearly represents today's ideological mainstream of the Conservative Party
Is that bad? Or is that good? I genuinely don't know. What proportion of sexual contacts does an STD clinic manage to trace? What is the comparator here?
It seems to me that if 2/3 of those who have been in contact with someone found to be infected are being traced this should be more than sufficient to reduce R below 1. As that is not happening I wonder how they are defining "contacts" and how quickly those 2/3 are being traced.
Not really, as we’re in the main testing only those who are symptomatic. So even if we were testing all of those, which we aren’t, around half of infected cases wouldn’t be tested at all.
Add in the days of delay between testing and tracing contacts, and you can see why that’s not the case.
Again this is the consequence of making test accuracy the single most important metric. Number of tests (which must include testing those who are not symptomatic) and speed of results are every bit as important, and have simply not been given equivalent priority from the start.
I do recall in March or April listening to Vallance and Whitty and being told that a test that was not sufficiently accurate was "worse than useless". Even at the time my eyebrows shot up but, in a crowded field, I think it is now clear that that was the worst single piece of advice the government received. Its cost thousands of lives and had horrific economic consequences.
It depends where you set the bar for 'sufficiently'. @Nigelb is right though, speed and volume are very important, along with decent sensitivity, specificity less important - you can test again.
I think you have sensitivity/specificity the wrong way round there ?
As long as the test isn't actively misleading (a high rate of false positives is obviously that), even comparatively low sensitivity, provided that is a known characteristic, is better than no test at all.
A lowish rate of false positives is tolerable, again as long as that test characteristic is known (one can then retest isolated positives with a more accurate test).
The cheap, mass produced, rapid antigen tests I think meet those characteristics.
I meant it the way I said it, but I think we're talking about different testing approaches and maybe different definitions of 'high' and 'low' regarding sensitivity and specificity - in short I was not specific enough about my meaning
My thinking, for individual tests: you want most people really infected to come back with positive tests (high sensitivity) so that they go into isolation and you trace contacts. A test that missed say 50% of positives would not be that great at the individual level, but it is a trade off - if the 50% sensitive test lets you test three times the number of people compared to the 90% sensitive test then you potentially still detect more cases and can break more chains of transmission. The false positives, if specificity is not so great, are a bit disruptive to individuals and may lose confidence in the system*, but as long as the rate is not too high (say 10%, 20%) it's ok. If low specificity is a known problem then you can test the positives again (using a more specific test, perhaps, on the smaller sample) if you have the capacity.
If you're talking about pooled testing approaches, which should be done more, then yes good specificity is the key. Poor specificity ruins pooled testing as it dramatically increases the workload/reduces capacity, which negates the whole purpose of pooled testing.
* I think this is where the worse than useless idea comes from. There needs to be confidence in testing, if you have a very low specificity individual test and people are repeatedly being asked to isolate for no reason then people will want to avoid getting tested. Tracing systems also get overwhelmed.
There is a medical establishment dislike of inaccurate tests, in general. See the debate over PSA testing for prostate cancer etc.
Those GDP data are really bad. The numbers to focus on are services, since IP and construction combined are barely 20% of the economy, and as others have noted the construction data have always had question marks about them (although the IP numbers are probably better measured than anything else in there). Bear in mind August was probably about as good as it is likely to get in terms of support for growth: Eat out to Help out, the Vat cut, support from the furlough scheme still in place, and with all that support services sector growth still came in at half the expected level, with output still almost 10% below February levels. The fact that consumer facing services like tourism and recreation are still so far off pre-Covid levels is to be expected, but the weakness goes way beyond that. I guess the upsides are that the BOE will likely be doing more QE, and that there is no way the government will countenance a No Deal Brexit with the economy already so far underwater. Small mercies, but seriously, these numbers are awful.
Not quite right.
Green Housing Grant only opened for *applications* a week ago.
Those services numbers are horrific given August was Eat Out to Help Out month. And Services are going to be very badly affected by whatever Brexit deal we do or don’t end up with. Thankfully, services are only a small part of the UK economy ...
In normal times the August growth figures would be little short of sensational and we would be worrying about uncontrolled booms. What I think can be said is that the horrendous damage caused by Covid and the lockdown is being undone but not quite as fast as it was in the summer. Of course August had the higher base of July for a monthly comparison but even so the force of the bounce back faded somewhat.
I don't agree that the services figure is particularly bad, let alone horrific. Most services are still operating with significantly reduced capacity and that includes restaurants and bars. What is clear is that the new restrictions that we have in Scotland and much of the north of England will drive those figures down further in the coming weeks with severe job implications.
The brutal truth is that our economy cannot operate at its previous level when we have to stay 2m apart, where the capacity of a pub or restaurant or even court house is measured on the fingers of a couple of hands. We are trying to live virtually. Its not working.
I understand why the services numbers are horrific, but they are horrific. And come January a major market for our services sector will become much harder to access. That’s just a fact. Covid we can’t do much about. The rest is about choices our government has made.
We can do a lot about our response to Covid and that will have vastly more effect on our service industries than the end of the transitional arrangements, whatever replaces them.
So far the blessed Nicola has been the mother of the nation in Scotland riding high on a wave of approval but I am detecting a lot of opposition to her most recent measures, a surprising amount of it from SNP supporters. I think we are at the limits of what people are willing to accept in terms of limits on our economy. The price is now payable and people are shocked by it. All too soon, as furlough unwinds, they will be appalled. I think at that point the consensus will switch to living with the virus rather than trying to eliminate it.
She doesn't have a choice on the recent measures. Apart from schools, which everyone thinks should be kept open full time, closing hospitality is the only tool left in her box. The arguments about what is cafe etc is really her government trying to mitigate some of the negative effects of these measures by providing minimal opportunities for social interaction. Hospitality owners and workers are tragically screwed.
Reopening universities was a mistake and she needs to close those down too, unfortunately.
I think that's a fair assessment. She has at least been clearer than some - and without the embellishments of Mr Johnson who keeps trying to gild the covid measures turd - but could have been earlier. However, the Unionist opposition has been so intense (partly because London is lagging behind on English measures) that it can't be easy to do so while running what remains a minority administration, and without any control of the furlough scheme etc. The Greens, in particular, rely disproportionately on the student vote in general, and so too will some Unionist MPs and MSPs too in those university cities [edit] which hace a lot of students coming in from outside Scotland and therefore unfamiliar with Scottish politics and tending to vote for London-based parties simply out of familiarity.
Note, however, that her governmenbt put into law a way for students to be released from rental contracts (possibly for university accommodation only?) back in April, IIRC. That could be very important if it comes to closing unis. This is not the case for rUK.
Perhaps we need to learn from those who are ahead of us in the timeline. I have seen no comparisons on Universities in other countries. Where has closed them again?
What have cases been in France, for example?
I have seen endless media wibbles about the situation in Universities in the UK, and this morning the Today programme was having a go at a chap from Durham that they did not have a full hot food delivery service to a couple of hundred newly locked down students in place in 24 hours flat. Which sounds to me like standard "put 'em in the stocks and through rotten tomatoes" tactics on Today, rather than have a useful conversation.
But then we saw endless wibbles about social distancing in beaches and parks, and 90% of that was 90% bullshit based on misleading photography, and very little of the media gave accurate coverage then.
Is the issue in Scotland with student halls or private rental? I would expect the whole problem in institutional settings with bigger cluster flats, as that is where the freshers are and 2nd year and above don't go postal in the same way.
Which is why the PRS who want to supply nice accommodation avoid them.
Most of the publicity in Scotland has indeed been re freshers/bejants/whatever they call them now in halls of residence - both in terms of behaviour and in terms of covid outbreaks. But they would be higher profile in the media anyway than 2nd-4th year students diffused in, say, flats in Marchmont and around Kelvinside.
From what I've heard from friends/family, I suspect the problem is likely to be in large part in the halls of residence, but it can't be the whole story, as lecturers etc are catching the bug, presumably from classes etc.
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
Power wasn't the issue. If they'd kept their promises in power then they would have been OK, the issue is they didn't.
As for your final line you have it backwards. The LDs benefited from people being unaware of what compromises would be required. The LDs are struggling because people do now understand the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government . . . Why vote LD if they're just going to be required to compromise away everything they claim to stand for?
The LDs problem is not that they went into power, it is they have absolutely no integrity left.
If people didn't understand that pre-election promises are only meaningful with overall majorities then that's another failing of peoples' understanding.
The LD were pragmatic. And yes, you could be right about people not wanting coalitions because the junior member will be rolled over, as is often the way with such arrangements.
On the other hand, people may still like the idea of a restraining influence on whichever government would otherwise be in power.
If the LDs campaigned on a platform of "we will be a restraining influence on whichever government would otherwise be in power" then that might be the case. But they don't.
Instead they run on grandiose claims of things they will do, which are patently implausible . . . like abolishing tuition fees outright (then voting to triple them), or calling their leader the Next Prime Minister and promising to revoke Article 50 without a referendum.
Um, Philip, this is a politics blog. You do know how the whole politics thing works, right?
And here's a secret if you promise not to tell anyone: it's not just the LDs who make claims for political benefit.
Exhibit 1: "Creating a border in the Irish Sea is something no British Prime Minister could ever sign up to."
Various new articles stating that the Trump campaign is pulling ads from mid west states and focusing elsewhere because their data (on the ground campaigning) is looking good. Democrats are saying its tosh and they are short of money.
All the evidence says this is tosh by the GOP, but....
Convince me not to worry please.
Its essentially tosh, they're running very low on money and Biden is raking in much more money than they are.
Even if it wasn't tosh then Hillary doing that last time (thinking the midwest was in the bank so not bothering to spend or campaign) ended up seeing her lose.
OTOH the Republicans did outspend the Democrats in midwest Facebook microspending last week, so they've not quit spending altogether. However the gap between the two on Facebook expenditure wasn't that big whereas the TV expenditure certainly was.
All of the poor, confusing decisions have lead to this huge economic underperformance. The bill for Boris and his nonsense policies are coming due and we're going to pay for it for the next 20 years.
I actually can't put into context just how awful this is going to be.
You seem to imply that we wouldn't have been paying for it for 20 years without the nonsense policies. I'd suggest that is pretty absurd and the only difference if Boris and co had done differently would be in the precise amount, a reduction in scale, but still absolutely massive.
There's criticism to be made, but implying all would have been well without the actions of Boris I think overplays how powerful he is.
Proper policies would have taken us up to 94-96% of GDP before stalling. We're now hitting the wall of organic growth rather than recovering what was lost. That additional 3-5% is going to add at least two years onto the recovery period which means an additional £200bn in borrowing. It took 12 years to almost balance the fiscal budget from a 6% GDP drop in a growing global economy. It will take 20+ to do it for a 9% drop in worse economic conditions.
While everyone was having a laugh about go out but don't go out and go to the office but don't go to the office it was causing huge economic damage as people just don't know what it is they should or shouldn't do any more.
I think you're overly pessimistic. There are a couple of big differences.
In 2008 there was a major structural deficit already and had been for years. Going into this crash the deficit was down to 1.2% of GDP and falling every year so there was more slack for the deficit. Also the 2008 crash was due to structural problems and not an artificial constraint or fear that would be lifted.
Also the growth at the minute reflects that people are staying in still. Out of fear of the virus as much as any restrictions. Anecdotally, in August I went out a few times with my family but I know my grandparents remained inside throughout and they'd normally pre virus even in their 80s and 90s had very active social lives and would go out a couple of times a week.
Indeed pre virus the "grey pound" was very very valuable and if people are shielding they're not spending it.
Once we are out the other side of this, one way or another, there will be slack in the economy from where we are now to recover quickly.
The fiscal position going into this was less sustainable than it looked. Spending had been suppressed to unsustainably low levels. For instance, the government had to increase universal credit once the crisis hit because some of "their" voters were about to get laid off and realise you couldn't actually live on the previous level. Local governments and public health have been so slashed back that they had to create all the infrastructure from scratch at huge expense, with lots of waste and exposure to the serial incompetence of the consultancy/outsourcing industry. And years of austerity have contributed to the poverty and poor and overcrowded housing that have led to Covid's spread across the North of England. Covid itself is an exogenous shock, but the reason the UK has been so spectacularly knocked for six by it is that we came into it with an underfunded and barely functioning state and welfare system, all of which was a deliberate policy choice. Not to mention Brexit of course, which has left the economy already vulnerable and under-performing.
Cannot be emphasised enough. The economy grew by precisely zero in the last 3 months of 2019. Anyone surprised by the painful figures released today needs to appreciate we were flat on our backs before anyone had heard of Covid. Interminable Brexit Wars and the election distracted attention from it, but it was there.
Morning to everyone although not a good one given the GDP underperformance. Will be interesting to see what Rishi means by his new measure for jobs.
I spent too much bloody time on here yesterday so this is the only post of the day and then I'm off. First, @HYFUD posted the Florida poll with a +3% Republican lead. Here is an article on it, which claims the pollster got Florida right in 2016 and the scale of Obama's 2008 victory (don't know whether that is true, I haven't had time to check). Biden's rating amongst Hispanics actually looks decent in the poll but it states Trump is winning amongst 45+ and has 12% of the Black vote.
For @OllyT, the same pollster explains why he is sceptical the polling is reliable. He has a slightly different take from me, namely the problem being that it has to do with the switch to cellphone and polling the same pool but his conclusion is the same, namely polling is less reliable than it was:
Finally, from Bitzer at North State politics. This is "old" (a week and half ago) but it is looking at the composition of the early returned ballots in NC. HIs conclusion is there is a good chance the Democrats are merely cannibalising their 2016 votes with the returned ballots rather than adding new voters. - at Sep 27, 71% of Democrats who had voted by mail had voted in person in 2016 vs 66% for the state as a whole, and only 21% had either registered in 2017+ or hadn't voted in 2016 vs 24% for the whole state (and 25% for the much smaller Republican number):
Thanks for your detailed response yesterday, only saw it this morning.
I don't actually agree with you that any of those points are causing the national polling to be way off. Weren't you claiming exactly the same things during the mid-terms, telling us that despite the polls the GOP were going to win the House?
I believe that the national polls will prove to be broadly accurate. We shall soon know which of us is correct.
Indeed, the article above saying polling is "not anywhere as reliable as it was before" offers zero evidence for this assertion. Whereas: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-polls-are-all-right/ has some actual numbers, and comes to the opposite conclusion, and is from before the 2018 mid-terms, where pollsters did quite well.
I think it's also at least as likely that the polls underestimate Biden's lead - just as many people were making arguments (often similar to those saying Trump will do better than the polls) for the polls overestimating Macron's lead over Le Pen in 2017, some even saying that she had a good chance of winning. In fact the polls massively underestimated Macron's winning margin. One of the biggest polling misses of recent years.
My prediction: Biden will win nationally by 6-7%, which will be a fairly comfortable Electoral College win. How comfortable maybe depending on whether he picks up Florida or not, where Trump has had some good polls. But anything from a narrow Trump EC win to a Biden landslide (= double figures national lead) wouldn't surprise me.
I have no doubt Biden will win the popular vote but even if he wins it by 4% Trump could still theoretically win the EC even if that is only a small chance.
In the 2017 first round in France as the map showed Le Pen actually won at least half of the departements, especially in ex industrial areas like those Trump won in the US and Fillon also won a few rural areas and Melenchon a few urban areas, it was only in the run off Macron really got a big lead.
One French poll over the summer had it Macron 55% Le Pen 45% in the run off and the latest poll is Macron 58% Le Pen 42%, so not far off the current Biden and Trump polling
Yes I am talking about the run-off between Macron and Le Pen in 2017. There were some posters on here saying the polls would all be proved wrong ("again! look at Brexit and Trump, and shy Le Pen voters because it's not socially acceptable to say you are voting Le Pen etc etc") and Le Pen would do much better than expected. I don't remember anyone arguing that the polls were wrong and Macron would do much better than the polls - which is what in fact happened.
It's just a stunning coincidence that those coldly-analytical zero emotion analysts who had Le Pen in with a good chance despite the wall of polling evidence have managed to set aside all their emotions and conclude that Trump is in with a good chance.
It would be easy to let personal preference sway their analysis but no. They have looked at the numbers and sen straight through them.
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
Power wasn't the issue. If they'd kept their promises in power then they would have been OK, the issue is they didn't.
As for your final line you have it backwards. The LDs benefited from people being unaware of what compromises would be required. The LDs are struggling because people do now understand the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government . . . Why vote LD if they're just going to be required to compromise away everything they claim to stand for?
The LDs problem is not that they went into power, it is they have absolutely no integrity left.
If people didn't understand that pre-election promises are only meaningful with overall majorities then that's another failing of peoples' understanding.
The LD were pragmatic. And yes, you could be right about people not wanting coalitions because the junior member will be rolled over, as is often the way with such arrangements.
On the other hand, people may still like the idea of a restraining influence on whichever government would otherwise be in power.
If the LDs campaigned on a platform of "we will be a restraining influence on whichever government would otherwise be in power" then that might be the case. But they don't.
Instead they run on grandiose claims of things they will do, which are patently implausible . . . like abolishing tuition fees outright (then voting to triple them), or calling their leader the Next Prime Minister and promising to revoke Article 50 without a referendum.
Um, Philip, this is a politics blog. You do know how the whole politics thing works, right?
And here's a secret if you promise not to tell anyone: it's not just the LDs who make claims for political benefit.
Exhibit 1: "Creating a border in the Irish Sea is something no British Prime Minister could ever sign up to."
Politics works by making promises and hoping the voters both want what you're promising and believe you can give it to them.
The Lib Dems promises are as plausible as Santa Corbyn's Christmas wishlist.
So on the day the government say you can go to Greece for half term...
Alarm in Greece at the increase in hospitalizations. The number of patients in ICUs is approaching one hundred, and the resistance of the public health system begins to be in danger. Currently there are 700 people hospitalized, of which 92 receive treatment in an ICU, but if the rate continues at the rate of 400 cases a day, as has happened in recent days, the situation can get out of control, warns Anastasia Kotanidu, professor of pulmonology and care intensive courses at the University of Athens, in statements to the news portal news247.
2010 - 2015 most stable government in years, competent and stable.
The politics post 2015 stem from choices made by the coalition.
As a one-time LD activist, sadly yes. The Criminal Justice system's problems largely stem from that era, as does the mess around immigration, for Theresa May is largely responsible.
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
Power wasn't the issue. If they'd kept their promises in power then they would have been OK, the issue is they didn't.
As for your final line you have it backwards. The LDs benefited from people being unaware of what compromises would be required. The LDs are struggling because people do now understand the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government . . . Why vote LD if they're just going to be required to compromise away everything they claim to stand for?
The LDs problem is not that they went into power, it is they have absolutely no integrity left.
If people didn't understand that pre-election promises are only meaningful with overall majorities then that's another failing of peoples' understanding.
The LD were pragmatic. And yes, you could be right about people not wanting coalitions because the junior member will be rolled over, as is often the way with such arrangements.
On the other hand, people may still like the idea of a restraining influence on whichever government would otherwise be in power.
If the LDs campaigned on a platform of "we will be a restraining influence on whichever government would otherwise be in power" then that might be the case. But they don't.
Instead they run on grandiose claims of things they will do, which are patently implausible . . . like abolishing tuition fees outright (then voting to triple them), or calling their leader the Next Prime Minister and promising to revoke Article 50 without a referendum.
Um, Philip, this is a politics blog. You do know how the whole politics thing works, right?
And here's a secret if you promise not to tell anyone: it's not just the LDs who make claims for political benefit.
Exhibit 1: "Creating a border in the Irish Sea is something no British Prime Minister could ever sign up to."
People say that the LDs are just the same as the "big two" parties (three in Scotland). That is not true - the LDs are different. When the LDs break their promises, people remember. When the others break theirs, people forget.
Various new articles stating that the Trump campaign is pulling ads from mid west states and focusing elsewhere because their data (on the ground campaigning) is looking good. Democrats are saying its tosh and they are short of money.
All the evidence says this is tosh by the GOP, but....
Convince me not to worry please.
I won't reassure you but I will outline what has been their media strategies
- Trump has focused on digital, Biden on TV. That has been the way through the campaign; - Some of the articles about Biden putting money into TV in places like TX have been around for weeks. Because of the nature of US TV buying, especially ahead of elections, you have to buy in advance. So he is not "suddenly" spending money in TX; - Yes, the Trump campaign have focused on the ground effort and new registrations - I posted this link yesterday by an outfit who use AI and claim that domination of the news is more important than polling (https://www.mediaelection.com/#volume)
Now, having put further doubt in your mind, Kamski et al will reassure you and let you know I am totally wrong and speaking out of my a*se. And it really is my last post of the day
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
I don't think it has much to do with 2010-2015. The LibDems were polling in the 20s less than 18 months ago. Instead, we are back to 2017: there are two entrenched blocks of voters in England and Wales right now, and they feed off each other. If you want to stop the Tories you choose Labour; and if you want to stop Labour you choose the Tories. I suspect that is the way it will remain for quite a while. And that spells big trouble for the LibDems.
I think it's difficult to set out your stall clearly on where you stand governing the country-wise if you are going through an 18-month leadership selection process. We have yet to hear how Sir Ed will position the LDs but I can forgive the electorate for thinking that the LDs haven't really cared about the world beyond the LDs for the past seeming age.
Remember how we were told “the U.K. would never process EU citizen applications in time”?
overall, the total number of applications received up to 30 September 2020 was 4,061,900 overall, the total number of applications concluded up to 30 September 2020 was 3,880,400
How have EU members done with British citizen applications? Funny how many EU citizens want to live in nasty xenophobic “Little Britain” (England, actually, with the overwhelming majority (91%) of the applications).
I'm sorry, but being someone who has gone through gaining German Citizenship in 2019, my experience has been totally different from the EU citizens I know living in the UK, trying to get citizenship.
My application could only be accepted from August 2019, but the immigration office was actively helping me from May 2019 to get my application together so I could make my application on the first day possible. Within a couple of months everything had been processed in the fast lane and exactly one year ago today I was sworn in to be a German citizen. The stories I hear the other way round are of delays, mistrust and administrative incompetence.
How many British citizens have the equivalent of “settled status” in Germany?
Well, until transition ends British citizens are here as EU citizens, so perhaps not that many yet?
Given they've only got one fortieth at most of the applications the UK has processed already I'll take tales of German efficiency with a pinch of salt.....
Also in 2019 153,000 people were granted British citizenship. 128,00 were granted German citizenship. I don't make that one fortieth, but you might be using alternative maths.
The topic was "Settled Status" in the EU. The UK has dealt with 4 million cases. At the most, Germany will have to deal with 100,000 - but its not known how many have been dealt with yet.
Various new articles stating that the Trump campaign is pulling ads from mid west states and focusing elsewhere because their data (on the ground campaigning) is looking good. Democrats are saying its tosh and they are short of money.
All the evidence says this is tosh by the GOP, but....
Convince me not to worry please.
Don't worry. Even if you knew you were ahead in the mid-west States you would still need to keep going until election day.
A more significant indicator was the news that team Biden have been splashing the cash in Texas. They have dosh to spare, team Trump does not.
Various new articles stating that the Trump campaign is pulling ads from mid west states and focusing elsewhere because their data (on the ground campaigning) is looking good. Democrats are saying its tosh and they are short of money.
All the evidence says this is tosh by the GOP, but....
Convince me not to worry please.
Didn't the Clinton 2016 campaign say they didn't need to campaign in the Midwest?
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
Power wasn't the issue. If they'd kept their promises in power then they would have been OK, the issue is they didn't.
As for your final line you have it backwards. The LDs benefited from people being unaware of what compromises would be required. The LDs are struggling because people do now understand the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government . . . Why vote LD if they're just going to be required to compromise away everything they claim to stand for?
The LDs problem is not that they went into power, it is they have absolutely no integrity left.
If people didn't understand that pre-election promises are only meaningful with overall majorities then that's another failing of peoples' understanding.
The LD were pragmatic. And yes, you could be right about people not wanting coalitions because the junior member will be rolled over, as is often the way with such arrangements.
On the other hand, people may still like the idea of a restraining influence on whichever government would otherwise be in power.
If the LDs campaigned on a platform of "we will be a restraining influence on whichever government would otherwise be in power" then that might be the case. But they don't.
Instead they run on grandiose claims of things they will do, which are patently implausible . . . like abolishing tuition fees outright (then voting to triple them), or calling their leader the Next Prime Minister and promising to revoke Article 50 without a referendum.
Um, Philip, this is a politics blog. You do know how the whole politics thing works, right?
And here's a secret if you promise not to tell anyone: it's not just the LDs who make claims for political benefit.
Exhibit 1: "Creating a border in the Irish Sea is something no British Prime Minister could ever sign up to."
Indeed. In fact, the only surprise of the 2019 Conservative Brexit Manifesto ("We will get a deal that does X, Y and Z..." when it's not entirely up to them) is how joyfully they have walked into the same elephant trap as the 2010 Lib Dems.
Those services numbers are horrific given August was Eat Out to Help Out month. And Services are going to be very badly affected by whatever Brexit deal we do or don’t end up with. Thankfully, services are only a small part of the UK economy ...
In normal times the August growth figures would be little short of sensational and we would be worrying about uncontrolled booms. What I think can be said is that the horrendous damage caused by Covid and the lockdown is being undone but not quite as fast as it was in the summer. Of course August had the higher base of July for a monthly comparison but even so the force of the bounce back faded somewhat.
I don't agree that the services figure is particularly bad, let alone horrific. Most services are still operating with significantly reduced capacity and that includes restaurants and bars. What is clear is that the new restrictions that we have in Scotland and much of the north of England will drive those figures down further in the coming weeks with severe job implications.
The brutal truth is that our economy cannot operate at its previous level when we have to stay 2m apart, where the capacity of a pub or restaurant or even court house is measured on the fingers of a couple of hands. We are trying to live virtually. Its not working.
I understand why the services numbers are horrific, but they are horrific. And come January a major market for our services sector will become much harder to access. That’s just a fact. Covid we can’t do much about. The rest is about choices our government has made.
We can do a lot about our response to Covid and that will have vastly more effect on our service industries than the end of the transitional arrangements, whatever replaces them.
So far the blessed Nicola has been the mother of the nation in Scotland riding high on a wave of approval but I am detecting a lot of opposition to her most recent measures, a surprising amount of it from SNP supporters. I think we are at the limits of what people are willing to accept in terms of limits on our economy. The price is now payable and people are shocked by it. All too soon, as furlough unwinds, they will be appalled. I think at that point the consensus will switch to living with the virus rather than trying to eliminate it.
She doesn't have a choice on the recent measures. Apart from schools, which everyone thinks should be kept open full time, closing hospitality is the only tool left in her box. The arguments about what is cafe etc is really her government trying to mitigate some of the negative effects of these measures by providing minimal opportunities for social interaction. Hospitality owners and workers are tragically screwed.
Reopening universities was a mistake and she needs to close those down too, unfortunately.
They have been back over 2 weeks by now so a long holiday will be coming up for sure.
Various new articles stating that the Trump campaign is pulling ads from mid west states and focusing elsewhere because their data (on the ground campaigning) is looking good. Democrats are saying its tosh and they are short of money.
All the evidence says this is tosh by the GOP, but....
Convince me not to worry please.
I won't reassure you but I will outline what has been their media strategies
- Trump has focused on digital, Biden on TV. That has been the way through the campaign; - Some of the articles about Biden putting money into TV in places like TX have been around for weeks. Because of the nature of US TV buying, especially ahead of elections, you have to buy in advance. So he is not "suddenly" spending money in TX; - Yes, the Trump campaign have focused on the ground effort and new registrations - I posted this link yesterday by an outfit who use AI and claim that domination of the news is more important than polling (https://www.mediaelection.com/#volume)
Now, having put further doubt in your mind, Kamski et al will reassure you and let you know I am totally wrong and speaking out of my a*se. And it really is my last post of the day
Could this be behind Biden's sudden lead amongst seniors? That generation seem to consume endless TV, and believe pretty much all of it.
Morning to everyone although not a good one given the GDP underperformance. Will be interesting to see what Rishi means by his new measure for jobs.
I spent too much bloody time on here yesterday so this is the only post of the day and then I'm off. First, @HYFUD posted the Florida poll with a +3% Republican lead. Here is an article on it, which claims the pollster got Florida right in 2016 and the scale of Obama's 2008 victory (don't know whether that is true, I haven't had time to check). Biden's rating amongst Hispanics actually looks decent in the poll but it states Trump is winning amongst 45+ and has 12% of the Black vote.
For @OllyT, the same pollster explains why he is sceptical the polling is reliable. He has a slightly different take from me, namely the problem being that it has to do with the switch to cellphone and polling the same pool but his conclusion is the same, namely polling is less reliable than it was:
Finally, from Bitzer at North State politics. This is "old" (a week and half ago) but it is looking at the composition of the early returned ballots in NC. HIs conclusion is there is a good chance the Democrats are merely cannibalising their 2016 votes with the returned ballots rather than adding new voters. - at Sep 27, 71% of Democrats who had voted by mail had voted in person in 2016 vs 66% for the state as a whole, and only 21% had either registered in 2017+ or hadn't voted in 2016 vs 24% for the whole state (and 25% for the much smaller Republican number):
Thanks for your detailed response yesterday, only saw it this morning.
I don't actually agree with you that any of those points are causing the national polling to be way off. Weren't you claiming exactly the same things during the mid-terms, telling us that despite the polls the GOP were going to win the House?
I believe that the national polls will prove to be broadly accurate. We shall soon know which of us is correct.
Indeed, the article above saying polling is "not anywhere as reliable as it was before" offers zero evidence for this assertion. Whereas: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-polls-are-all-right/ has some actual numbers, and comes to the opposite conclusion, and is from before the 2018 mid-terms, where pollsters did quite well.
I think it's also at least as likely that the polls underestimate Biden's lead - just as many people were making arguments (often similar to those saying Trump will do better than the polls) for the polls overestimating Macron's lead over Le Pen in 2017, some even saying that she had a good chance of winning. In fact the polls massively underestimated Macron's winning margin. One of the biggest polling misses of recent years.
My prediction: Biden will win nationally by 6-7%, which will be a fairly comfortable Electoral College win. How comfortable maybe depending on whether he picks up Florida or not, where Trump has had some good polls. But anything from a narrow Trump EC win to a Biden landslide (= double figures national lead) wouldn't surprise me.
Oh f*ck it, I was trying to stay off this site all day to do this and I promise myself this will be the last one for the day but, Kamski, in your Nate Silver piece, if you read down, there is actually a reference to this which is as follows:
"There’s also reason to worry about what’s going into the polls as response rates to polls decline and as newsrooms cut their budgets for traditional, high-quality surveys. Internet-based polling may eventually be a part of the solution, but for the most part,1 it was quite inaccurate in 2016 (we’ll go into more detail on this point in another article later this week)."
This was written in 2018. The reason I highlight that paragraph now is that newspaper revenues have gone off a cliff with the pandemic and many organisations - including the polling companies and the newspapers themselves - are struggling to survive. The chances therefore that they are spending more on improving the quality of their polls is almost zero whereas the chances they have cut the amount they spend, focused less on quality and more on whether a new poll incites readers to click through (and therefore its traffic and therefore its appeal to advertisers) is high.
This is an entirely different situation from what has gone with 2018 and 2016 etc.
I'm just not buying that the polls have suddenly all gone to shit because news/polling revenues are down because of coronavirus.
As for trying to get polls that get clicks: polls showing Trump leading or a close race are surely more likely to get clicks and keep people interested in reading the news, than polls showing Biden comfortably winning.
In general, the news organisations (and facebook) love Trump , and the danger is they will do everything they can to help him win, just as they did in 2016.
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
Power wasn't the issue. If they'd kept their promises in power then they would have been OK, the issue is they didn't.
As for your final line you have it backwards. The LDs benefited from people being unaware of what compromises would be required. The LDs are struggling because people do now understand the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government . . . Why vote LD if they're just going to be required to compromise away everything they claim to stand for?
The LDs problem is not that they went into power, it is they have absolutely no integrity left.
If people didn't understand that pre-election promises are only meaningful with overall majorities then that's another failing of peoples' understanding.
The LD were pragmatic. And yes, you could be right about people not wanting coalitions because the junior member will be rolled over, as is often the way with such arrangements.
On the other hand, people may still like the idea of a restraining influence on whichever government would otherwise be in power.
If the LDs campaigned on a platform of "we will be a restraining influence on whichever government would otherwise be in power" then that might be the case. But they don't.
Instead they run on grandiose claims of things they will do, which are patently implausible . . . like abolishing tuition fees outright (then voting to triple them), or calling their leader the Next Prime Minister and promising to revoke Article 50 without a referendum.
Um, Philip, this is a politics blog. You do know how the whole politics thing works, right?
And here's a secret if you promise not to tell anyone: it's not just the LDs who make claims for political benefit.
Exhibit 1: "Creating a border in the Irish Sea is something no British Prime Minister could ever sign up to."
Politics works by making promises and hoping the voters both want what you're promising and believe you can give it to them.
The Lib Dems promises are as plausible as Santa Corbyn's Christmas wishlist.
Various new articles stating that the Trump campaign is pulling ads from mid west states and focusing elsewhere because their data (on the ground campaigning) is looking good. Democrats are saying its tosh and they are short of money.
All the evidence says this is tosh by the GOP, but....
Convince me not to worry please.
I won't reassure you but I will outline what has been their media strategies
- Trump has focused on digital, Biden on TV. That has been the way through the campaign; - Some of the articles about Biden putting money into TV in places like TX have been around for weeks. Because of the nature of US TV buying, especially ahead of elections, you have to buy in advance. So he is not "suddenly" spending money in TX; - Yes, the Trump campaign have focused on the ground effort and new registrations - I posted this link yesterday by an outfit who use AI and claim that domination of the news is more important than polling (https://www.mediaelection.com/#volume)
Now, having put further doubt in your mind, Kamski et al will reassure you and let you know I am totally wrong and speaking out of my a*se. And it really is my last post of the day
Could this be behind Biden's sudden lead amongst seniors? That generation seem to consume endless TV, and believe pretty much all of it.
Seniors are most affected by coronavirus and probably least impressed with Trump's machismo "it is no big deal, hoax, get on with your life" bullshit.
My casual observation of construction is that projects that were already underway at lockdown are being picked up again but new projects are not started.
Housing Estate Build up the road from me started building in about May, and is continuing. This had had wrangling with the Council over the S106 for a couple of years.
I know that because I have a tenant who is fizzing because they left a hole under her fence that would have let the dogs escape, when they took out the roots of a 30 year old beech that would have been an attractive early mature feature in the new estate. The site manager is now scared of her by the sound of it having been vigorously approached .
Will be going down later with my knacker-crackers to find out why it has not been repaired properly 48 hours later.
Plenty of money waiting to be taken for Dems / Biden at 1.51 / 1.53.
I`m having to restrain myself from putting stupid amounts of money on at these prices.
There is still a disconnect between the polling data and punter`s views. I wonder whether the bookies have taken a shedload on Trump, perhaps a while ago, and are still balancing their books. Trump looks way underpriced to me, should be 5/1 or 6/1 I`d say.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/10/james-fallows-little-bit-quieter-and-little-bit-worse/616659/ ...I believe that Kamala Harris’s bearing, in a head-to-head meeting with a sitting vice president, may have a similar effect for her. Of course her temperamental task was vastly more complicated than Kennedy’s, Reagan’s, or Clinton’s. As a woman, she had to walk the inch-wide line that separates being submissive from being harsh. A retort that would be tough from a male politician could be—kiss of misogynist death—shrill from her. For a Black woman, the path that is strong but not angry is narrower still. But Harris has had a lifetime’s practice with such navigation, which she put to use.
My guess is that her knowledgeable, unflustered, controlled-but-forceful bearing will not convert many votes to her camp. Most people who will vote Biden-Harris after the debate had long ago decided to do so. The same is true for most of those who will vote Trump-Pence. But I think that, as with Kennedy and with Reagan, her performance may have reassured people who were already considering her. She’s up to it; she knows the terrain; she’s okay. If they were “undecided” mainly about taking the trouble to vote, they’ll be less motivated to vote against her, or more willing to give her a try. I have no idea of the scale of this potential effect, but its direction seems clear—at least to me, as I think back on these preceding They’re up to it, they’re okay debates
As for Pence, the likely effect is simpler and clearer. Most American voters are women; according to polls, the Trump-Pence ticket is in trouble mainly because the pair has such an enormous deficit among female voters. For 90 minutes on Wednesday evening, viewers saw a smug silver-haired man interrupting, talking over, and hogging airtime from one professional woman, and ignoring the “please, sir” requests for decorum from another. To have any hope of winning the election, Pence and Trump had to gain rather than lose female support through this debate. I’ve learned that anything can happen. But it seemed to me, as another silver-haired man, that Pence’s faux-polite bombast would have just the opposite effect...
538 parsed the debate and found it shifted no votes, but Harris did emerge with a small increase in her approval rating. Pence was pretty much unchanged.
Job done as far as Team Biden was concerned. One danger for Harris was that she might dazzle and distract from an uncharismatic Principal. She avoided it. It may be increasingly difficult for her to do so if he wins the Presidency.
Various new articles stating that the Trump campaign is pulling ads from mid west states and focusing elsewhere because their data (on the ground campaigning) is looking good. Democrats are saying its tosh and they are short of money.
All the evidence says this is tosh by the GOP, but....
Convince me not to worry please.
I won't reassure you but I will outline what has been their media strategies
- Trump has focused on digital, Biden on TV. That has been the way through the campaign; - Some of the articles about Biden putting money into TV in places like TX have been around for weeks. Because of the nature of US TV buying, especially ahead of elections, you have to buy in advance. So he is not "suddenly" spending money in TX; - Yes, the Trump campaign have focused on the ground effort and new registrations - I posted this link yesterday by an outfit who use AI and claim that domination of the news is more important than polling (https://www.mediaelection.com/#volume)
Now, having put further doubt in your mind, Kamski et al will reassure you and let you know I am totally wrong and speaking out of my a*se. And it really is my last post of the day
Could this be behind Biden's sudden lead amongst seniors? That generation seem to consume endless TV, and believe pretty much all of it.
Seniors are most affected by coronavirus and probably least impressed with Trump's machismo "it is no big deal, hoax, get on with your life" bullshit.
His general lack of civility at all times probably doesn't help with that generation of Americans too.
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
Power wasn't the issue. If they'd kept their promises in power then they would have been OK, the issue is they didn't.
As for your final line you have it backwards. The LDs benefited from people being unaware of what compromises would be required. The LDs are struggling because people do now understand the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government . . . Why vote LD if they're just going to be required to compromise away everything they claim to stand for?
The LDs problem is not that they went into power, it is they have absolutely no integrity left.
If people didn't understand that pre-election promises are only meaningful with overall majorities then that's another failing of peoples' understanding.
The LD were pragmatic. And yes, you could be right about people not wanting coalitions because the junior member will be rolled over, as is often the way with such arrangements.
On the other hand, people may still like the idea of a restraining influence on whichever government would otherwise be in power.
If the LDs campaigned on a platform of "we will be a restraining influence on whichever government would otherwise be in power" then that might be the case. But they don't.
Instead they run on grandiose claims of things they will do, which are patently implausible . . . like abolishing tuition fees outright (then voting to triple them), or calling their leader the Next Prime Minister and promising to revoke Article 50 without a referendum.
Um, Philip, this is a politics blog. You do know how the whole politics thing works, right?
And here's a secret if you promise not to tell anyone: it's not just the LDs who make claims for political benefit.
Exhibit 1: "Creating a border in the Irish Sea is something no British Prime Minister could ever sign up to."
Politics works by making promises and hoping the voters both want what you're promising and believe you can give it to them.
The Lib Dems promises are as plausible as Santa Corbyn's Christmas wishlist.
Compare and contrast the world-beating track and trace system!
But we need to find a modus vivendi with this thing because in advance of a vaccine, life as things stand is simply not tenable.
I agree that the current purgatory is not tenable. I'd characterise the current approach as being to use blunt, society-wide restrictions to reduce R, and keep infection levels suppressed below the level of overwhelming the hospital system, until a vaccine, treatment, or cheap insta-test rides to the rescue.
I think it's worth noting that this is the same strategy that Sweden is using. The difference is only that they have implemented it more competently than the UK, and have some advantages which make it easier to achieve (lower population density, stronger social security, better voluntary compliance).
The alternative presented is risk segmentation. I think there are many problems with that as a strategy, which have been well discussed: How do you define the vulnerable population? How do you effectively isolate them when they're mixed within households? Can the health service deal with the numbers who will still need treatment among the low-risk population? Will it actually lead to herd-immunity and a time when it is safe for the vulnerable to leave isolation?
My preference is to go after the virus. We let it get on top of us in the spring and we immediately lost our confidence and decided that victory was impossible. But if we manage to isolate the infectious the virus has nowhere to go.
We can work on speeding up testing. We can make tracing more effective. And we can ensure that those who need to actually do isolate.
Those are the choices. 1. Isolate everyone. 2. Isolate the vulnerable. 3. Isolate the infectious.
The vulnerable rely upon the non vulnerable so isolating them is easier said than done.
Well, yes, but to be fair, the characteristics of Sars-Cov-2 (spread by those pre-symptomatic and asymptomatic) also make it (isolating the infectious) easier said than done.
And enduring the current purgatory is no longer easy to say, let alone do.
Indeed.
I wish we had more news on the vaccine trials. The Oxford vaccine is well into its final phase trials and I believe manufacturing of it is also well underway. It could theoretically begin rollout next month.
If it's a case of we have a few more weeks to endure and then vaccinations will begin on the most vulnerable I think everyone could live with that. It's the unknown of this being dragged out and the fear it could be for years that is really getting to people now I think.
Unfortunately that is how clinical trials work - there is no news until there is news. It's not going to be years, though. We will have results from several trials in a very few months.
You could say "no news is good news". Most clinical trials have criteria to pull the plug, either if there are big problems or interim results show that the new treatment is actually worse.
Remember how we were told “the U.K. would never process EU citizen applications in time”?
overall, the total number of applications received up to 30 September 2020 was 4,061,900 overall, the total number of applications concluded up to 30 September 2020 was 3,880,400
How have EU members done with British citizen applications? Funny how many EU citizens want to live in nasty xenophobic “Little Britain” (England, actually, with the overwhelming majority (91%) of the applications).
I'm sorry, but being someone who has gone through gaining German Citizenship in 2019, my experience has been totally different from the EU citizens I know living in the UK, trying to get citizenship.
My application could only be accepted from August 2019, but the immigration office was actively helping me from May 2019 to get my application together so I could make my application on the first day possible. Within a couple of months everything had been processed in the fast lane and exactly one year ago today I was sworn in to be a German citizen. The stories I hear the other way round are of delays, mistrust and administrative incompetence.
How many British citizens have the equivalent of “settled status” in Germany?
Well, until transition ends British citizens are here as EU citizens, so perhaps not that many yet?
Given they've only got one fortieth at most of the applications the UK has processed already I'll take tales of German efficiency with a pinch of salt.....
Also in 2019 153,000 people were granted British citizenship. 128,00 were granted German citizenship. I don't make that one fortieth, but you might be using alternative maths.
The topic was "Settled Status" in the EU. The UK has dealt with 4 million cases. At the most, Germany will have to deal with 100,000 - but its not known how many have been dealt with yet.
Oh I must apologise for not checking with you what the "topic" is. I didn't realise you had such authority. One of the posts further up the thread seemed to be entirely about getting German citizenship compared to getting British citizen ship.
But to stick to your topic if you insist: you might not have noticed but the UK has chosen to leave the EU and Germany hasn't - rubberstamping the status of 4 million people who are already legally in the UK isn't surprising, and there is nothing in Germany to compare it with (although FYI British already here will effectively have their status confirmed at the end of transition by going to the local Amt).
Remember how we were told “the U.K. would never process EU citizen applications in time”?
overall, the total number of applications received up to 30 September 2020 was 4,061,900 overall, the total number of applications concluded up to 30 September 2020 was 3,880,400
How have EU members done with British citizen applications? Funny how many EU citizens want to live in nasty xenophobic “Little Britain” (England, actually, with the overwhelming majority (91%) of the applications).
I'm sorry, but being someone who has gone through gaining German Citizenship in 2019, my experience has been totally different from the EU citizens I know living in the UK, trying to get citizenship.
My application could only be accepted from August 2019, but the immigration office was actively helping me from May 2019 to get my application together so I could make my application on the first day possible. Within a couple of months everything had been processed in the fast lane and exactly one year ago today I was sworn in to be a German citizen. The stories I hear the other way round are of delays, mistrust and administrative incompetence.
How many British citizens have the equivalent of “settled status” in Germany?
Well, until transition ends British citizens are here as EU citizens, so perhaps not that many yet?
Given they've only got one fortieth at most of the applications the UK has processed already I'll take tales of German efficiency with a pinch of salt.....
Also in 2019 153,000 people were granted British citizenship. 128,00 were granted German citizenship. I don't make that one fortieth, but you might be using alternative maths.
The topic was "Settled Status" in the EU. The UK has dealt with 4 million cases. At the most, Germany will have to deal with 100,000 - but its not known how many have been dealt with yet.
One of the 4 million is my better half, and our experience is that it was v smooth despite the little glitch of requiring an android smart phone at the beginning.
Agree with IDS on the general principle that we need to learn to live with the virus but not as he disingenuously sets out (you can hear it without a DT subscription - click the Choppers Politics tab). He has no concept of what the risks are and how to manage them. He dismisses the scientific consensus as "groupthink" (who needs to bother with the evidence?).
Nevertheless an important interview as IDS clearly represents today's ideological mainstream of the Conservative Party
There's something very odd about the backdrop to that photo.
Is it a tiny tiny IDS on a leather banquette?
Or is he in an extremely upmarket padded cell?
I love this idea from the IDS branch of the Conservative Party that we the breadwinners of Britain need to go out into the blue yonder, interact with all sorts of unclean peasants to earn them a crust via our taxes.
I would be quite happy to issue those orders from the relative safety of the Palace of Westminster.
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
I don't think it has much to do with 2010-2015. The LibDems were polling in the 20s less than 18 months ago. Instead, we are back to 2017: there are two entrenched blocks of voters in England and Wales right now, and they feed off each other. If you want to stop the Tories you choose Labour; and if you want to stop Labour you choose the Tories. I suspect that is the way it will remain for quite a while. And that spells big trouble for the LibDems.
I think it's difficult to set out your stall clearly on where you stand governing the country-wise if you are going through an 18-month leadership selection process. We have yet to hear how Sir Ed will position the LDs but I can forgive the electorate for thinking that the LDs haven't really cared about the world beyond the LDs for the past seeming age.
For understandable reasons, it's incredibly tough for anyone outside the government to get a hearing right now, Even Labour is struggling for regualr coverage beyond Starmer at PMQs. At some point that will change, so it could be that the LDs picked a good time to look internally. However, those two blocks look very entrenched to me. I think they will have to pick a side. They won't be able to play off both.
Various new articles stating that the Trump campaign is pulling ads from mid west states and focusing elsewhere because their data (on the ground campaigning) is looking good. Democrats are saying its tosh and they are short of money.
All the evidence says this is tosh by the GOP, but....
Convince me not to worry please.
I won't reassure you but I will outline what has been their media strategies
- Trump has focused on digital, Biden on TV. That has been the way through the campaign; - Some of the articles about Biden putting money into TV in places like TX have been around for weeks. Because of the nature of US TV buying, especially ahead of elections, you have to buy in advance. So he is not "suddenly" spending money in TX; - Yes, the Trump campaign have focused on the ground effort and new registrations - I posted this link yesterday by an outfit who use AI and claim that domination of the news is more important than polling (https://www.mediaelection.com/#volume)
Now, having put further doubt in your mind, Kamski et al will reassure you and let you know I am totally wrong and speaking out of my a*se. And it really is my last post of the day
Various new articles stating that the Trump campaign is pulling ads from mid west states and focusing elsewhere because their data (on the ground campaigning) is looking good. Democrats are saying its tosh and they are short of money.
All the evidence says this is tosh by the GOP, but....
Convince me not to worry please.
Probably tosh but on the ground canvassing and data nonetheless is the most effective way to identify your supporters, by now the Trump campaign in the Midwest swing states should already have done that and will just then be focusing on getting them out on polling day with only a few weeks left of the campaign.
That is one problem the Biden camp will have had with a largely ad only campaign and a few phone banks, they will have had less boots on the ground to id their vote and get it out and will also be more reliant on their vote getting their mailed in ballots posted in time, Trump voters will be mainly voting on polling day itself
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
I disagree with this. It was not because the LDs formed a government with the Conservatives that led to their collapse. It was that they caputilated to the Tories and signed on the dotted line in under a week.
They ended up being light blues and the Ministers and MPs were actively supporting the Conservative policies. Once they started acting like Tories, they lost most of their support from the centre and centre left.
That one week undid thirty years of steady progress. Thirty years to finally get a shot at negotiating a proper coalition agreement, and they roll over in a few days.
Those services numbers are horrific given August was Eat Out to Help Out month. And Services are going to be very badly affected by whatever Brexit deal we do or don’t end up with. Thankfully, services are only a small part of the UK economy ...
In normal times the August growth figures would be little short of sensational and we would be worrying about uncontrolled booms. What I think can be said is that the horrendous damage caused by Covid and the lockdown is being undone but not quite as fast as it was in the summer. Of course August had the higher base of July for a monthly comparison but even so the force of the bounce back faded somewhat.
I don't agree that the services figure is particularly bad, let alone horrific. Most services are still operating with significantly reduced capacity and that includes restaurants and bars. What is clear is that the new restrictions that we have in Scotland and much of the north of England will drive those figures down further in the coming weeks with severe job implications.
The brutal truth is that our economy cannot operate at its previous level when we have to stay 2m apart, where the capacity of a pub or restaurant or even court house is measured on the fingers of a couple of hands. We are trying to live virtually. Its not working.
I understand why the services numbers are horrific, but they are horrific. And come January a major market for our services sector will become much harder to access. That’s just a fact. Covid we can’t do much about. The rest is about choices our government has made.
We can do a lot about our response to Covid and that will have vastly more effect on our service industries than the end of the transitional arrangements, whatever replaces them.
So far the blessed Nicola has been the mother of the nation in Scotland riding high on a wave of approval but I am detecting a lot of opposition to her most recent measures, a surprising amount of it from SNP supporters. I think we are at the limits of what people are willing to accept in terms of limits on our economy. The price is now payable and people are shocked by it. All too soon, as furlough unwinds, they will be appalled. I think at that point the consensus will switch to living with the virus rather than trying to eliminate it.
She doesn't have a choice on the recent measures. Apart from schools, which everyone thinks should be kept open full time, closing hospitality is the only tool left in her box. The arguments about what is cafe etc is really her government trying to mitigate some of the negative effects of these measures by providing minimal opportunities for social interaction. Hospitality owners and workers are tragically screwed.
Reopening universities was a mistake and she needs to close those down too, unfortunately.
I think that's a fair assessment. She has at least been clearer than some - and without the embellishments of Mr Johnson who keeps trying to gild the covid measures turd - but could have been earlier. However, the Unionist opposition has been so intense (partly because London is lagging behind on English measures) that it can't be easy to do so while running what remains a minority administration, and without any control of the furlough scheme etc. The Greens, in particular, rely disproportionately on the student vote in general, and so too will some Unionist MPs and MSPs too in those university cities [edit] which hace a lot of students coming in from outside Scotland and therefore unfamiliar with Scottish politics and tending to vote for London-based parties simply out of familiarity.
Note, however, that her governmenbt put into law a way for students to be released from rental contracts (possibly for university accommodation only?) back in April, IIRC. That could be very important if it comes to closing unis. This is not the case for rUK.
Perhaps we need to learn from those who are ahead of us in the timeline. I have seen no comparisons on Universities in other countries. Where has closed them again?
What have cases been in France, for example?
I have seen endless media wibbles about the situation in Universities in the UK, and this morning the Today programme was having a go at a chap from Durham that they did not have a full hot food delivery service to a couple of hundred newly locked down students in place in 24 hours flat. Which sounds to me like standard "put 'em in the stocks and through rotten tomatoes" tactics on Today, rather than have a useful conversation.
But then we saw endless wibbles about social distancing in beaches and parks, and 90% of that was 90% bullshit based on misleading photography, and very little of the media gave accurate coverage then.
Is the issue in Scotland with student halls or private rental? I would expect the whole problem in institutional settings with bigger cluster flats, as that is where the freshers are and 2nd year and above don't go postal in the same way.
Which is why the PRS who want to supply nice accommodation avoid them.
I don't think universities being open is an "issue", nor is hospitality. The issue actually is that infection rates are too high. Each person who catches Covid infects about 1.6 other people on average. It needs to be brought to 1 or so if we are to avoid a catastrophic epidemic wave. Which means reducing our collective social interactions by about a third. If we protect certain activities such as shopping, schools and healthcare, and household restrictions are already as tight as they acceptably can be, any activity not listed needs to be chopped if we are going to get near to R=1.
But we need to find a modus vivendi with this thing because in advance of a vaccine, life as things stand is simply not tenable.
I agree that the current purgatory is not tenable. I'd characterise the current approach as being to use blunt, society-wide restrictions to reduce R, and keep infection levels suppressed below the level of overwhelming the hospital system, until a vaccine, treatment, or cheap insta-test rides to the rescue.
I think it's worth noting that this is the same strategy that Sweden is using. The difference is only that they have implemented it more competently than the UK, and have some advantages which make it easier to achieve (lower population density, stronger social security, better voluntary compliance).
The alternative presented is risk segmentation. I think there are many problems with that as a strategy, which have been well discussed: How do you define the vulnerable population? How do you effectively isolate them when they're mixed within households? Can the health service deal with the numbers who will still need treatment among the low-risk population? Will it actually lead to herd-immunity and a time when it is safe for the vulnerable to leave isolation?
My preference is to go after the virus. We let it get on top of us in the spring and we immediately lost our confidence and decided that victory was impossible. But if we manage to isolate the infectious the virus has nowhere to go.
We can work on speeding up testing. We can make tracing more effective. And we can ensure that those who need to actually do isolate.
Those are the choices. 1. Isolate everyone. 2. Isolate the vulnerable. 3. Isolate the infectious.
The vulnerable rely upon the non vulnerable so isolating them is easier said than done.
Well, yes, but to be fair, the characteristics of Sars-Cov-2 (spread by those pre-symptomatic and asymptomatic) also make it (isolating the infectious) easier said than done.
And enduring the current purgatory is no longer easy to say, let alone do.
Indeed.
I wish we had more news on the vaccine trials. The Oxford vaccine is well into its final phase trials and I believe manufacturing of it is also well underway. It could theoretically begin rollout next month.
If it's a case of we have a few more weeks to endure and then vaccinations will begin on the most vulnerable I think everyone could live with that. It's the unknown of this being dragged out and the fear it could be for years that is really getting to people now I think.
Unfortunately that is how clinical trials work - there is no news until there is news. It's not going to be years, though. We will have results from several trials in a very few months.
You could say "no news is good news". Most clinical trials have criteria to pull the plug, either if there are big problems or interim results show that the new treatment is actually worse.
From what the public is being allowed to do in China I would say that large swathes of their population has already been vaccinated.
Morning to everyone although not a good one given the GDP underperformance. Will be interesting to see what Rishi means by his new measure for jobs.
I spent too much bloody time on here yesterday so this is the only post of the day and then I'm off. First, @HYFUD posted the Florida poll with a +3% Republican lead. Here is an article on it, which claims the pollster got Florida right in 2016 and the scale of Obama's 2008 victory (don't know whether that is true, I haven't had time to check). Biden's rating amongst Hispanics actually looks decent in the poll but it states Trump is winning amongst 45+ and has 12% of the Black vote.
For @OllyT, the same pollster explains why he is sceptical the polling is reliable. He has a slightly different take from me, namely the problem being that it has to do with the switch to cellphone and polling the same pool but his conclusion is the same, namely polling is less reliable than it was:
Finally, from Bitzer at North State politics. This is "old" (a week and half ago) but it is looking at the composition of the early returned ballots in NC. HIs conclusion is there is a good chance the Democrats are merely cannibalising their 2016 votes with the returned ballots rather than adding new voters. - at Sep 27, 71% of Democrats who had voted by mail had voted in person in 2016 vs 66% for the state as a whole, and only 21% had either registered in 2017+ or hadn't voted in 2016 vs 24% for the whole state (and 25% for the much smaller Republican number):
Thanks for your detailed response yesterday, only saw it this morning.
I don't actually agree with you that any of those points are causing the national polling to be way off. Weren't you claiming exactly the same things during the mid-terms, telling us that despite the polls the GOP were going to win the House?
I believe that the national polls will prove to be broadly accurate. We shall soon know which of us is correct.
Indeed, the article above saying polling is "not anywhere as reliable as it was before" offers zero evidence for this assertion. Whereas: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-polls-are-all-right/ has some actual numbers, and comes to the opposite conclusion, and is from before the 2018 mid-terms, where pollsters did quite well.
I think it's also at least as likely that the polls underestimate Biden's lead - just as many people were making arguments (often similar to those saying Trump will do better than the polls) for the polls overestimating Macron's lead over Le Pen in 2017, some even saying that she had a good chance of winning. In fact the polls massively underestimated Macron's winning margin. One of the biggest polling misses of recent years.
My prediction: Biden will win nationally by 6-7%, which will be a fairly comfortable Electoral College win. How comfortable maybe depending on whether he picks up Florida or not, where Trump has had some good polls. But anything from a narrow Trump EC win to a Biden landslide (= double figures national lead) wouldn't surprise me.
Oh f*ck it, I was trying to stay off this site all day to do this and I promise myself this will be the last one for the day but, Kamski, in your Nate Silver piece, if you read down, there is actually a reference to this which is as follows:
"There’s also reason to worry about what’s going into the polls as response rates to polls decline and as newsrooms cut their budgets for traditional, high-quality surveys. Internet-based polling may eventually be a part of the solution, but for the most part,1 it was quite inaccurate in 2016 (we’ll go into more detail on this point in another article later this week)."
This was written in 2018. The reason I highlight that paragraph now is that newspaper revenues have gone off a cliff with the pandemic and many organisations - including the polling companies and the newspapers themselves - are struggling to survive. The chances therefore that they are spending more on improving the quality of their polls is almost zero whereas the chances they have cut the amount they spend, focused less on quality and more on whether a new poll incites readers to click through (and therefore its traffic and therefore its appeal to advertisers) is high.
This is an entirely different situation from what has gone with 2018 and 2016 etc.
Good point, but may I make a correction. I have just waded through the Kennedy Report on the polling 'failure' of 2016 (it was in fact only a failure at State level, the nationals were within 1% which is pretty damn good) and it is abundantly clear that over the long term polls have improved enormously in accuracy. You are right to highlight the issue of money though. It was a major factor in the problem at State level. Local polls didn't have the funds to do proper in depth sampling and weighting. In the past this hadn't mattered too much but in 2016 white working class males turned out in unprecedented numbers. The State polls didn't pick up on this or adjust properly.
Will they do so this time? Who knows? It's hard to get the data, but even if they don't it only matters if there is a similar rate of turnout in the various groups. Who is to say that this time the turnout amongst WWCMs will not drop back, or that young Afro-Americans and Hispanics will not get off their arses in a way they never have before? If that were to happen (and I have no idea if it will) the pollsters could have another 'failure' but this time in the opposite direction.
My guess is that the polls are reasonably accurate. Much can change over 23 days but I think that as things stand we should assume things are as they appear to be.
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
I disagree with this. It was not because the LDs formed a government with the Conservatives that led to their collapse. It was that they caputilated to the Tories and signed on the dotted line in under a week.
They ended up being light blues and the Ministers and MPs were actively supporting the Conservative policies. Once they started acting like Tories, they lost most of their support from the centre and centre left.
That one week undid thirty years of steady progress. Thirty years to finally get a shot at negotiating a proper coalition agreement, and they roll over in a few days.
What policies should the Lib Dems have not agreed to which they did agree to?
Follow the link and reread it if you don't believe me. We are a bit past the five minute edit window. Why would I use the word sank?
Exact words are one thing but the meaning in this case is the opposite. You said (in effect) that the digital Tory conference was not an occasion for rising to. That it would have been inappropriate for him to have put in a virtuoso performance, i.e. he was deliberately muted and a bit "off", and that this - him 'sinking to the occasion' per your perfectly accurate implication - was fine by you. But as I say, the Daily Mail took a different view. They thought it was vintage Johnson.
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
I don't think it has much to do with 2010-2015. The LibDems were polling in the 20s less than 18 months ago. Instead, we are back to 2017: there are two entrenched blocks of voters in England and Wales right now, and they feed off each other. If you want to stop the Tories you choose Labour; and if you want to stop Labour you choose the Tories. I suspect that is the way it will remain for quite a while. And that spells big trouble for the LibDems.
I think it's difficult to set out your stall clearly on where you stand governing the country-wise if you are going through an 18-month leadership selection process. We have yet to hear how Sir Ed will position the LDs but I can forgive the electorate for thinking that the LDs haven't really cared about the world beyond the LDs for the past seeming age.
For understandable reasons, it's incredibly tough for anyone outside the government to get a hearing right now, Even Labour is struggling for regualr coverage beyond Starmer at PMQs. At some point that will change, so it could be that the LDs picked a good time to look internally. However, those two blocks look very entrenched to me. I think they will have to pick a side. They won't be able to play off both.
Starmer has had plenty of opportunity to get Labour's plan out there. Where is the Labour plan on rapid testing, the plan on increasing self isolation rates from 1 in 5 to something close to total, the plan on anything at all?
Blindly following government policy that has been proved to be a load of crap isn't good policy and Labour are still behind in the polls because of that. Starmer has a completely clear way to lay out what Labour would be doing differently and had a captive audience of the vast majority of people who think the country is heading in the wrong direction.
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
I disagree with this. It was not because the LDs formed a government with the Conservatives that led to their collapse. It was that they caputilated to the Tories and signed on the dotted line in under a week.
They ended up being light blues and the Ministers and MPs were actively supporting the Conservative policies. Once they started acting like Tories, they lost most of their support from the centre and centre left.
That one week undid thirty years of steady progress. Thirty years to finally get a shot at negotiating a proper coalition agreement, and they roll over in a few days.
What policies should the Lib Dems have not agreed to which they did agree to?
The Coalition LDs problem is that they spent their political capital on an AV referendum that they then lost anyway rather than on stopping tuition fees.
But we need to find a modus vivendi with this thing because in advance of a vaccine, life as things stand is simply not tenable.
I agree that the current purgatory is not tenable. I'd characterise the current approach as being to use blunt, society-wide restrictions to reduce R, and keep infection levels suppressed below the level of overwhelming the hospital system, until a vaccine, treatment, or cheap insta-test rides to the rescue.
I think it's worth noting that this is the same strategy that Sweden is using. The difference is only that they have implemented it more competently than the UK, and have some advantages which make it easier to achieve (lower population density, stronger social security, better voluntary compliance).
The alternative presented is risk segmentation. I think there are many problems with that as a strategy, which have been well discussed: How do you define the vulnerable population? How do you effectively isolate them when they're mixed within households? Can the health service deal with the numbers who will still need treatment among the low-risk population? Will it actually lead to herd-immunity and a time when it is safe for the vulnerable to leave isolation?
My preference is to go after the virus. We let it get on top of us in the spring and we immediately lost our confidence and decided that victory was impossible. But if we manage to isolate the infectious the virus has nowhere to go.
We can work on speeding up testing. We can make tracing more effective. And we can ensure that those who need to actually do isolate.
Those are the choices. 1. Isolate everyone. 2. Isolate the vulnerable. 3. Isolate the infectious.
The vulnerable rely upon the non vulnerable so isolating them is easier said than done.
Well, yes, but to be fair, the characteristics of Sars-Cov-2 (spread by those pre-symptomatic and asymptomatic) also make it (isolating the infectious) easier said than done.
And enduring the current purgatory is no longer easy to say, let alone do.
Indeed.
I wish we had more news on the vaccine trials. The Oxford vaccine is well into its final phase trials and I believe manufacturing of it is also well underway. It could theoretically begin rollout next month.
If it's a case of we have a few more weeks to endure and then vaccinations will begin on the most vulnerable I think everyone could live with that. It's the unknown of this being dragged out and the fear it could be for years that is really getting to people now I think.
Unfortunately that is how clinical trials work - there is no news until there is news. It's not going to be years, though. We will have results from several trials in a very few months.
You could say "no news is good news". Most clinical trials have criteria to pull the plug, either if there are big problems or interim results show that the new treatment is actually worse.
Or better; sometimes they say fck it, this stuff works so well it would be unethical to withhold it from the controls. But I doubt anything less than 100% sterilising immunity would show up that clearly before all the results are in.
Question for anyone who has followed the Tory Conference.
Were there any proposals to encourage energy efficiency in the Owner Occupied sector?
They currently have a consultation out about bringing forward the requirement for Private Rentals to be a Grade C on the EPC to as early as 2025, which is a little weird given that PRS is only 20% of the stock, is more energy efficient than Owner Occupied and already has a improvement-ratchet in place for EPC C by 2030.
Follow the link and reread it if you don't believe me. We are a bit past the five minute edit window. Why would I use the word sank?
Exact words are one thing but the meaning in this case is the opposite. You said (in effect) that the digital Tory conference was not an occasion for rising to. That it would have been inappropriate for him to have put in a virtuoso performance, i.e. he was deliberately muted and a bit "off", and that this - him 'sinking to the occasion' per your perfectly accurate implication - was fine by you. But as I say, the Daily Mail took a different view. They thought it was vintage Johnson.
Boris really is a performance act. I can't think of another politician in history who is lauded simply for what he says and how he says it - what he actually does seems to be a complete irrelevance to many.
This is fun. Fish frier, funeral director, secret agent for national security, cake decorator, head chef and beauty consultant are amongst my suggested alternative careers. Which to choose?
Those services numbers are horrific given August was Eat Out to Help Out month. And Services are going to be very badly affected by whatever Brexit deal we do or don’t end up with. Thankfully, services are only a small part of the UK economy ...
In normal times the August growth figures would be little short of sensational and we would be worrying about uncontrolled booms. What I think can be said is that the horrendous damage caused by Covid and the lockdown is being undone but not quite as fast as it was in the summer. Of course August had the higher base of July for a monthly comparison but even so the force of the bounce back faded somewhat.
I don't agree that the services figure is particularly bad, let alone horrific. Most services are still operating with significantly reduced capacity and that includes restaurants and bars. What is clear is that the new restrictions that we have in Scotland and much of the north of England will drive those figures down further in the coming weeks with severe job implications.
The brutal truth is that our economy cannot operate at its previous level when we have to stay 2m apart, where the capacity of a pub or restaurant or even court house is measured on the fingers of a couple of hands. We are trying to live virtually. Its not working.
I understand why the services numbers are horrific, but they are horrific. And come January a major market for our services sector will become much harder to access. That’s just a fact. Covid we can’t do much about. The rest is about choices our government has made.
We can do a lot about our response to Covid and that will have vastly more effect on our service industries than the end of the transitional arrangements, whatever replaces them.
So far the blessed Nicola has been the mother of the nation in Scotland riding high on a wave of approval but I am detecting a lot of opposition to her most recent measures, a surprising amount of it from SNP supporters. I think we are at the limits of what people are willing to accept in terms of limits on our economy. The price is now payable and people are shocked by it. All too soon, as furlough unwinds, they will be appalled. I think at that point the consensus will switch to living with the virus rather than trying to eliminate it.
She doesn't have a choice on the recent measures. Apart from schools, which everyone thinks should be kept open full time, closing hospitality is the only tool left in her box. The arguments about what is cafe etc is really her government trying to mitigate some of the negative effects of these measures by providing minimal opportunities for social interaction. Hospitality owners and workers are tragically screwed.
Reopening universities was a mistake and she needs to close those down too, unfortunately.
I think that's a fair assessment. She has at least been clearer than some - and without the embellishments of Mr Johnson who keeps trying to gild the covid measures turd - but could have been earlier. However, the Unionist opposition has been so intense (partly because London is lagging behind on English measures) that it can't be easy to do so while running what remains a minority administration, and without any control of the furlough scheme etc. The Greens, in particular, rely disproportionately on the student vote in general, and so too will some Unionist MPs and MSPs too in those university cities [edit] which hace a lot of students coming in from outside Scotland and therefore unfamiliar with Scottish politics and tending to vote for London-based parties simply out of familiarity.
Note, however, that her governmenbt put into law a way for students to be released from rental contracts (possibly for university accommodation only?) back in April, IIRC. That could be very important if it comes to closing unis. This is not the case for rUK.
Perhaps we need to learn from those who are ahead of us in the timeline. I have seen no comparisons on Universities in other countries. Where has closed them again?
What have cases been in France, for example?
I have seen endless media wibbles about the situation in Universities in the UK, and this morning the Today programme was having a go at a chap from Durham that they did not have a full hot food delivery service to a couple of hundred newly locked down students in place in 24 hours flat. Which sounds to me like standard "put 'em in the stocks and through rotten tomatoes" tactics on Today, rather than have a useful conversation.
But then we saw endless wibbles about social distancing in beaches and parks, and 90% of that was 90% bullshit based on misleading photography, and very little of the media gave accurate coverage then.
Is the issue in Scotland with student halls or private rental? I would expect the whole problem in institutional settings with bigger cluster flats, as that is where the freshers are and 2nd year and above don't go postal in the same way.
Which is why the PRS who want to supply nice accommodation avoid them.
Most of the publicity in Scotland has indeed been re freshers/bejants/whatever they call them now in halls of residence - both in terms of behaviour and in terms of covid outbreaks. But they would be higher profile in the media anyway than 2nd-4th year students diffused in, say, flats in Marchmont and around Kelvinside.
From what I've heard from friends/family, I suspect the problem is likely to be in large part in the halls of residence, but it can't be the whole story, as lecturers etc are catching the bug, presumably from classes etc.
Various new articles stating that the Trump campaign is pulling ads from mid west states and focusing elsewhere because their data (on the ground campaigning) is looking good. Democrats are saying its tosh and they are short of money.
All the evidence says this is tosh by the GOP, but....
Convince me not to worry please.
I won't reassure you but I will outline what has been their media strategies
- Trump has focused on digital, Biden on TV. That has been the way through the campaign; - Some of the articles about Biden putting money into TV in places like TX have been around for weeks. Because of the nature of US TV buying, especially ahead of elections, you have to buy in advance. So he is not "suddenly" spending money in TX; - Yes, the Trump campaign have focused on the ground effort and new registrations - I posted this link yesterday by an outfit who use AI and claim that domination of the news is more important than polling (https://www.mediaelection.com/#volume)
Now, having put further doubt in your mind, Kamski et al will reassure you and let you know I am totally wrong and speaking out of my a*se. And it really is my last post of the day
Ok - but when you're back I'd be interested to hear how big the Donald J Trump outright win odds (currently 2/1) would need to be to iyo represent a value bet.
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
With hindsight, the coalition was a massive political mistake by Clegg. He should have screwed the Tories with a one year confidence and supply agreement and then forced an election when it suited the Lib Dems. They chose office over power.
This is fun. Fish frier, funeral director, secret agent for national security, cake decorator, head chef and beauty consultant are amongst my suggested alternative careers. Which to choose?
Funeral Director is the Covid friendly option. Are you sure this isn't a covert recruiting tool for MI5 ? ie everyone gets the secret agent suggestion?
This is fun. Fish frier, funeral director, secret agent for national security, cake decorator, head chef and beauty consultant are amongst my suggested alternative careers. Which to choose?
Amazing the lack of commentary on the economy today.
With the rebound faltering way short of a v shape, and debt soaring, Rishi Sunak is going to borrow billions to make a major part of the UK economy unproductive.
Goodness knows what follows now. The greatest policy error by any British government ever. A complete and utter failure.
They are doubling down on it now because to admit that error is just going to be too grave a move. The catastrophe is too big now. Only bankruptcy will stop them, I think.
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
I disagree with this. It was not because the LDs formed a government with the Conservatives that led to their collapse. It was that they caputilated to the Tories and signed on the dotted line in under a week.
They ended up being light blues and the Ministers and MPs were actively supporting the Conservative policies. Once they started acting like Tories, they lost most of their support from the centre and centre left.
That one week undid thirty years of steady progress. Thirty years to finally get a shot at negotiating a proper coalition agreement, and they roll over in a few days.
What policies should the Lib Dems have not agreed to which they did agree to?
Tuition Fees.
That should have been their #1 priority in the negotiations. Even a tuition fee freeze would have worked, instead they promised abolition and then tripled them.
They should have made tuition fees their deal breaker, but instead it was an electoral reform referendum that was their deal breaker.
This is fun. Fish frier, funeral director, secret agent for national security, cake decorator, head chef and beauty consultant are amongst my suggested alternative careers. Which to choose?
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
I don't think it has much to do with 2010-2015. The LibDems were polling in the 20s less than 18 months ago. Instead, we are back to 2017: there are two entrenched blocks of voters in England and Wales right now, and they feed off each other. If you want to stop the Tories you choose Labour; and if you want to stop Labour you choose the Tories. I suspect that is the way it will remain for quite a while. And that spells big trouble for the LibDems.
I think it's difficult to set out your stall clearly on where you stand governing the country-wise if you are going through an 18-month leadership selection process. We have yet to hear how Sir Ed will position the LDs but I can forgive the electorate for thinking that the LDs haven't really cared about the world beyond the LDs for the past seeming age.
For understandable reasons, it's incredibly tough for anyone outside the government to get a hearing right now, Even Labour is struggling for regualr coverage beyond Starmer at PMQs. At some point that will change, so it could be that the LDs picked a good time to look internally. However, those two blocks look very entrenched to me. I think they will have to pick a side. They won't be able to play off both.
Starmer has had plenty of opportunity to get Labour's plan out there. Where is the Labour plan on rapid testing, the plan on increasing self isolation rates from 1 in 5 to something close to total, the plan on anything at all?
Blindly following government policy that has been proved to be a load of crap isn't good policy and Labour are still behind in the polls because of that. Starmer has a completely clear way to lay out what Labour would be doing differently and had a captive audience of the vast majority of people who think the country is heading in the wrong direction.
I disagree. Given where Labour were when he took over I think he has played it pretty well. I also think that Labour would have been getting a lot more airtime if we had not had the pandemic. By its nature it has been all consuming and because of that the government and its response is getting almost blanket coverage.
Various new articles stating that the Trump campaign is pulling ads from mid west states and focusing elsewhere because their data (on the ground campaigning) is looking good. Democrats are saying its tosh and they are short of money.
All the evidence says this is tosh by the GOP, but....
Convince me not to worry please.
I won't reassure you but I will outline what has been their media strategies
- Trump has focused on digital, Biden on TV. That has been the way through the campaign; - Some of the articles about Biden putting money into TV in places like TX have been around for weeks. Because of the nature of US TV buying, especially ahead of elections, you have to buy in advance. So he is not "suddenly" spending money in TX; - Yes, the Trump campaign have focused on the ground effort and new registrations - I posted this link yesterday by an outfit who use AI and claim that domination of the news is more important than polling (https://www.mediaelection.com/#volume)
Now, having put further doubt in your mind, Kamski et al will reassure you and let you know I am totally wrong and speaking out of my a*se. And it really is my last post of the day
Could this be behind Biden's sudden lead amongst seniors? That generation seem to consume endless TV, and believe pretty much all of it.
I don't think so, because the ads will be pretty much entirely confined to swing states, and Biden's lead is national.
Biden is doing well with old people because 1) He's good at communicating with old people 2) Trump's policy of not worrying too much about coronavirus isn't appealing to people whose friends have died of coronavirus
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
I disagree with this. It was not because the LDs formed a government with the Conservatives that led to their collapse. It was that they caputilated to the Tories and signed on the dotted line in under a week.
They ended up being light blues and the Ministers and MPs were actively supporting the Conservative policies. Once they started acting like Tories, they lost most of their support from the centre and centre left.
That one week undid thirty years of steady progress. Thirty years to finally get a shot at negotiating a proper coalition agreement, and they roll over in a few days.
What policies should the Lib Dems have not agreed to which they did agree to?
The Coalition LDs problem is that they spent their political capital on an AV referendum that they then lost anyway rather than on stopping tuition fees.
Good point. The tuition-fees thing was just stupid; it did the Lib Dems no end of harm, and Dave and Ozzy would easily have ditched it had the Lib Dems made it a red line. AV was just pandering to an age-old obsession of the activists.
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
I disagree with this. It was not because the LDs formed a government with the Conservatives that led to their collapse. It was that they caputilated to the Tories and signed on the dotted line in under a week.
They ended up being light blues and the Ministers and MPs were actively supporting the Conservative policies. Once they started acting like Tories, they lost most of their support from the centre and centre left.
That one week undid thirty years of steady progress. Thirty years to finally get a shot at negotiating a proper coalition agreement, and they roll over in a few days.
What policies should the Lib Dems have not agreed to which they did agree to?
Tuition Fees.
That should have been their #1 priority in the negotiations. Even a tuition fee freeze would have worked, instead they promised abolition and then tripled them.
They should have made tuition fees their deal breaker, but instead it was an electoral reform referendum that was their deal breaker.
Comments
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-54476569
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
"There’s also reason to worry about what’s going into the polls as response rates to polls decline and as newsrooms cut their budgets for traditional, high-quality surveys. Internet-based polling may eventually be a part of the solution, but for the most part,1 it was quite inaccurate in 2016 (we’ll go into more detail on this point in another article later this week)."
This was written in 2018. The reason I highlight that paragraph now is that newspaper revenues have gone off a cliff with the pandemic and many organisations - including the polling companies and the newspapers themselves - are struggling to survive. The chances therefore that they are spending more on improving the quality of their polls is almost zero whereas the chances they have cut the amount they spend, focused less on quality and more on whether a new poll incites readers to click through (and therefore its traffic and therefore its appeal to advertisers) is high.
This is an entirely different situation from what has gone with 2018 and 2016 etc.
As the medical profession is well aware:
https://twitter.com/michaelmina_lab/status/1314103714328780801
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/10/james-fallows-little-bit-quieter-and-little-bit-worse/616659/
...I believe that Kamala Harris’s bearing, in a head-to-head meeting with a sitting vice president, may have a similar effect for her. Of course her temperamental task was vastly more complicated than Kennedy’s, Reagan’s, or Clinton’s. As a woman, she had to walk the inch-wide line that separates being submissive from being harsh. A retort that would be tough from a male politician could be—kiss of misogynist death—shrill from her. For a Black woman, the path that is strong but not angry is narrower still. But Harris has had a lifetime’s practice with such navigation, which she put to use.
My guess is that her knowledgeable, unflustered, controlled-but-forceful bearing will not convert many votes to her camp. Most people who will vote Biden-Harris after the debate had long ago decided to do so. The same is true for most of those who will vote Trump-Pence. But I think that, as with Kennedy and with Reagan, her performance may have reassured people who were already considering her. She’s up to it; she knows the terrain; she’s okay. If they were “undecided” mainly about taking the trouble to vote, they’ll be less motivated to vote against her, or more willing to give her a try. I have no idea of the scale of this potential effect, but its direction seems clear—at least to me, as I think back on these preceding They’re up to it, they’re okay debates
As for Pence, the likely effect is simpler and clearer. Most American voters are women; according to polls, the Trump-Pence ticket is in trouble mainly because the pair has such an enormous deficit among female voters. For 90 minutes on Wednesday evening, viewers saw a smug silver-haired man interrupting, talking over, and hogging airtime from one professional woman, and ignoring the “please, sir” requests for decorum from another. To have any hope of winning the election, Pence and Trump had to gain rather than lose female support through this debate. I’ve learned that anything can happen. But it seemed to me, as another silver-haired man, that Pence’s faux-polite bombast would have just the opposite effect...
Covid itself is an exogenous shock, but the reason the UK has been so spectacularly knocked for six by it is that we came into it with an underfunded and barely functioning state and welfare system, all of which was a deliberate policy choice.
Not to mention Brexit of course, which has left the economy already vulnerable and under-performing.
As for your final line you have it backwards. The LDs benefited from people being unaware of what compromises would be required. The LDs are struggling because people do now understand the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government . . . Why vote LD if they're just going to be required to compromise away everything they claim to stand for?
The LDs problem is not that they went into power, it is they have absolutely no integrity left.
It's not going to be years, though. We will have results from several trials in a very few months.
Nevertheless an important interview as IDS clearly represents today's ideological mainstream of the Conservative Party
https://twitter.com/MPIainDS/status/1314449927439867904
The LD were pragmatic. And yes, you could be right about people not wanting coalitions because the junior member will be rolled over, as is often the way with such arrangements.
On the other hand, people may still like the idea of a restraining influence on whichever government would otherwise be in power.
Just prolonging the crisis in the city.
In order to maintain debt-to-GDP the average deficit over a cycle should be at or below the average growth over a cycle. Pre-recession after seventeen years of uninterrupted economic growth we somehow managed to enter a recession with a deficit more than long term growth averages. Which meant of course the deficit exploded, inevitably.
How do you think we can possibly have average deficit at 2.5% when it is more than that during the growth period?
What have cases been in France, for example?
I have seen endless media wibbles about the situation in Universities in the UK, and this morning the Today programme was having a go at a chap from Durham that they did not have a full hot food delivery service to a couple of hundred newly locked down students in place in 24 hours flat. Which sounds to me like standard "put 'em in the stocks and through rotten tomatoes" tactics on Today, rather than have a useful conversation.
But then we saw endless wibbles about social distancing in beaches and parks, and 90% of that was 90% bullshit based on misleading photography, and very little of the media gave accurate coverage then.
Is the issue in Scotland with student halls or private rental? I would expect the whole problem in institutional settings with bigger cluster flats, as that is where the freshers are and 2nd year and above don't go postal in the same way.
Which is why the PRS who want to supply nice accommodation avoid them.
Instead they run on grandiose claims of things they will do, which are patently implausible . . . like abolishing tuition fees outright (then voting to triple them), or calling their leader the Next Prime Minister and promising to revoke Article 50 without a referendum.
https://twitter.com/deltaplan/status/1009478705352232961
Various new articles stating that the Trump campaign is pulling ads from mid west states and focusing elsewhere because their data (on the ground campaigning) is looking good. Democrats are saying its tosh and they are short of money.
All the evidence says this is tosh by the GOP, but....
Convince me not to worry please.
Is it a tiny tiny IDS on a leather banquette?
Or is he in an extremely upmarket padded cell?
The rapid antigen test is very similar in that respect - but more accurate.
Green Housing Grant only opened for *applications* a week ago.
Won't see much boost until late Oct or early Nov.
From what I've heard from friends/family, I suspect the problem is likely to be in large part in the halls of residence, but it can't be the whole story, as lecturers etc are catching the bug, presumably from classes etc.
And here's a secret if you promise not to tell anyone: it's not just the LDs who make claims for political benefit.
Exhibit 1: "Creating a border in the Irish Sea is something no British Prime Minister could ever sign up to."
Even if it wasn't tosh then Hillary doing that last time (thinking the midwest was in the bank so not bothering to spend or campaign) ended up seeing her lose.
OTOH the Republicans did outspend the Democrats in midwest Facebook microspending last week, so they've not quit spending altogether. However the gap between the two on Facebook expenditure wasn't that big whereas the TV expenditure certainly was.
Anyone surprised by the painful figures released today needs to appreciate we were flat on our backs before anyone had heard of Covid.
Interminable Brexit Wars and the election distracted attention from it, but it was there.
It would be easy to let personal preference sway their analysis but no. They have looked at the numbers and sen straight through them.
The Lib Dems promises are as plausible as Santa Corbyn's Christmas wishlist.
Alarm in Greece at the increase in hospitalizations. The number of patients in ICUs is approaching one hundred, and the resistance of the public health system begins to be in danger.
Currently there are 700 people hospitalized, of which 92 receive treatment in an ICU, but if the rate continues at the rate of 400 cases a day, as has happened in recent days, the situation can get out of control, warns Anastasia Kotanidu, professor of pulmonology and care intensive courses at the University of Athens, in statements to the news portal news247.
That is not true - the LDs are different.
When the LDs break their promises, people remember.
When the others break theirs, people forget.
- Trump has focused on digital, Biden on TV. That has been the way through the campaign;
- Some of the articles about Biden putting money into TV in places like TX have been around for weeks. Because of the nature of US TV buying, especially ahead of elections, you have to buy in advance. So he is not "suddenly" spending money in TX;
- Yes, the Trump campaign have focused on the ground effort and new registrations
- I posted this link yesterday by an outfit who use AI and claim that domination of the news is more important than polling (https://www.mediaelection.com/#volume)
Now, having put further doubt in your mind, Kamski et al will reassure you and let you know I am totally wrong and speaking out of my a*se. And it really is my last post of the day
A more significant indicator was the news that team Biden have been splashing the cash in Texas. They have dosh to spare, team Trump does not.
How well did that turn out for them?
That generation seem to consume endless TV, and believe pretty much all of it.
As for trying to get polls that get clicks: polls showing Trump leading or a close race are surely more likely to get clicks and keep people interested in reading the news, than polls showing Biden comfortably winning.
In general, the news organisations (and facebook) love Trump , and the danger is they will do everything they can to help him win, just as they did in 2016.
I know that because I have a tenant who is fizzing because they left a hole under her fence that would have let the dogs escape, when they took out the roots of a 30 year old beech that would have been an attractive early mature feature in the new estate. The site manager is now scared of her by the sound of it having been vigorously approached
Will be going down later with my knacker-crackers to find out why it has not been repaired properly 48 hours later.
I`m having to restrain myself from putting stupid amounts of money on at these prices.
There is still a disconnect between the polling data and punter`s views. I wonder whether the bookies have taken a shedload on Trump, perhaps a while ago, and are still balancing their books. Trump looks way underpriced to me, should be 5/1 or 6/1 I`d say.
Job done as far as Team Biden was concerned. One danger for Harris was that she might dazzle and distract from an uncharismatic Principal. She avoided it. It may be increasingly difficult for her to do so if he wins the Presidency.
(cf Baron Stern of Brentford).
But to stick to your topic if you insist: you might not have noticed but the UK has chosen to leave the EU and Germany hasn't - rubberstamping the status of 4 million people who are already legally in the UK isn't surprising, and there is nothing in Germany to compare it with (although FYI British already here will effectively have their status confirmed at the end of transition by going to the local Amt).
I would be quite happy to issue those orders from the relative safety of the Palace of Westminster.
That is one problem the Biden camp will have had with a largely ad only campaign and a few phone banks, they will have had less boots on the ground to id their vote and get it out and will also be more reliant on their vote getting their mailed in ballots posted in time, Trump voters will be mainly voting on polling day itself
They ended up being light blues and the Ministers and MPs were actively supporting the Conservative policies. Once they started acting like Tories, they lost most of their support from the centre and centre left.
That one week undid thirty years of steady progress. Thirty years to finally get a shot at negotiating a proper coalition agreement, and they roll over in a few days.
Will they do so this time? Who knows? It's hard to get the data, but even if they don't it only matters if there is a similar rate of turnout in the various groups. Who is to say that this time the turnout amongst WWCMs will not drop back, or that young Afro-Americans and Hispanics will not get off their arses in a way they never have before? If that were to happen (and I have no idea if it will) the pollsters could have another 'failure' but this time in the opposite direction.
My guess is that the polls are reasonably accurate. Much can change over 23 days but I think that as things stand we should assume things are as they appear to be.
Blindly following government policy that has been proved to be a load of crap isn't good policy and Labour are still behind in the polls because of that. Starmer has a completely clear way to lay out what Labour would be doing differently and had a captive audience of the vast majority of people who think the country is heading in the wrong direction.
https://twitter.com/nypost/status/1314388487760678912
That is how you make the word a plural.
Were there any proposals to encourage energy efficiency in the Owner Occupied sector?
They currently have a consultation out about bringing forward the requirement for Private Rentals to be a Grade C on the EPC to as early as 2025, which is a little weird given that PRS is only 20% of the stock, is more energy efficient than Owner Occupied and already has a improvement-ratchet in place for EPC C by 2030.
https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/improving-the-energy-performance-of-privately-rented-homes
They need to .. er .. follow Nicola Sturgeon on this one.
Fish frier, funeral director, secret agent for national security, cake decorator, head chef and beauty consultant are amongst my suggested alternative careers.
Which to choose?
https://beta.nationalcareers.service.gov.uk/
@MrEd
With the rebound faltering way short of a v shape, and debt soaring, Rishi Sunak is going to borrow billions to make a major part of the UK economy unproductive.
Goodness knows what follows now. The greatest policy error by any British government ever. A complete and utter failure.
They are doubling down on it now because to admit that error is just going to be too grave a move. The catastrophe is too big now. Only bankruptcy will stop them, I think.
Still, that's a step closer today.
That should have been their #1 priority in the negotiations. Even a tuition fee freeze would have worked, instead they promised abolition and then tripled them.
They should have made tuition fees their deal breaker, but instead it was an electoral reform referendum that was their deal breaker.
Biden is doing well with old people because
1) He's good at communicating with old people
2) Trump's policy of not worrying too much about coronavirus isn't appealing to people whose friends have died of coronavirus
Agreed that it was a terrible, terrible mistake. What where they thinking?