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Trump making surprise recovery in the WH2020 betting even though most pollsters have double digit Bi

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    PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 76,001

    Pulpstar said:

    18,804 new cases.

    What was last tuesday's reported no ?
    Tuesday 17,234 but should cf to Monday, surely?

    13972 (by reporting date).

    As ever - specimen date is what counts.
    It does, ultimately but there's always a horrific amount of backfilling so comparing new number to new number might be better on... reported.
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    TimTTimT Posts: 6,328

    TimT said:

    Re Trumpsters being confident and Dems being scared, it suits both sides' GOTV efforts to talk up Trump's chances at this point.

    - Republicans need their voters to think Trump is still in with a chance to ensure their supporters believe voting is worthwhile and so do
    - Dems are genuinely jittery after 2016, but also don't want this election to be even close, so that Trump has no path to challenge either its legitimacy or to seek to invalidate certain ballot papers in order to steal the election or to refer it to the Supreme Court. Also, the Dems want to use the top of the ticket to win many very important state-level elections.

    The enthusiasm for Biden is so great that literally dozens turn out when he deigns to speak.
    And yet his Town Hall's eyeballs exceeded Trump's by a tasty margin.
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    I remember posting on here yonks back that May should have stepped down immediately as leader just before conference so that she could sit there on the front row shouting BOLLOCKS as her colleagues talked unadulterated bollocks. OK so its not conference. But glad to see that she is ignoring the usual boring convention and making her feelings clear about her successors.
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    Is Construction work allowed in Wales during the lockdown?

    Yes. It is.
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    TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 41,403
    felix said:

    TOPPING said:

    isam said:

    TOPPING said:

    isam said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Nigelb said:

    (FPT)

    Cicero said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Who is the most left-wing person on PB?

    @Dura_Ace by a mile
    I think I'm the only Revolutionary Leninist, Steiner/Vallentyne Left-Libertarian, Leeds Utd Fan.

    Democracy = Social Fascism

    WACCOE
    I'm getting increasingly concerned at some posters on here playing fast and loose with democracy.

    We have this post, which I can't say entirely surprises me coming from you, and we had @IanB2 ostensibly a centrist and ex-LD flirting with benign dictatorship as being the best form of government the other day.

    I think you both need to go back to the history books and read about what life in non-democratic societies is like.
    Unfortunately I fear that the peoples of what increasingly looks like "the former" UK are not going to enjoy finding out a whole lot more about "the lessons of history" than they can really cope with.

    At every point since the historic wrong turn of Brexit, the far right has doubled down, so now the "impossible" "failure" of a "no deal" is now an odds on outcome. The consequences for our nouveau pauvre PM may include finding that the Eton College where he wants to send his son has been burned down by an army of furious and unemployed farmers, fisherfolk and even financiers.

    Certainly, having won the referendum by a whisker under extremely dubious circumstances, the winners could have reached out to the losers and created a compromise- EEA, EFTA, whatever- but they chose four years of uncertainty, rejecting any kind of compromise deal whatsoever as a BINO (not withstanding that these compromises were actually the only solution that people could be said to have "voted for") and then grabbing the tiller and steering us straight towards an economically half witted no deal, while lying all the way.

    If the break up of the UK is indeed the result of "no deal", then the successor republics will probably prosecute the ****s responsible.

    "Crucifixion is too good for them"

    I do study history and the future of what is currently "the UK", both economically and politically, will not be fixed in my lifetime if no deal goes through. Not sure how many UK citizens have taken citizenship elsewhere, but a trickle may well become a flood and I`m contemplating joining them. We know how this story ends...
    Top post, Cicero.
    Possibly hyperbolic; possibly not.
    For all the comments about brexiteers should have reached out to remainers and compromised....where was this reaching out by the pro eu people in the 40 years of membership? You called them fruitcakes and closet loons for most of that time and told to suck it up so I can understand why they feel no need to reach out.

    As you sow you shall reap seem apposite
    There is plenty of blame to go round on both sides.

    The depressing part is the discussion never seem to move on.

    We just seem to fall back in telling each other to go fuck ourselves.
    The conversation is shaped by events. At present, we have a large number of "experts" (I know) saying that things could be difficult in January if we don't have a deal.

    Many people (shout out to our Phil) say: "bring it on".

    Is it any wonder that sensible people despair.

    And oh from FPT when I pointed out how a large number of people was motivated to vote Brexit because of a dislike of foreigners? They were.
    Very reasonable until your last paragraph.

    You can both like and admire foreigners and want controls on immigration at the same time.

    Indeed, it might be to ensure safe continuation and consent for acceptance of the former that you see it as so important to ensure the latter.
    I think it is uncontentious to say that a dislike of foreigners was one of the main, if not the main motivating factor for a large number of people who voted Leave.

    Not "all" as @Philip_Thompson has confirmed, but for a large number.
    That wasn’t my experience from knocking on doors, although I certainly found some (10-15%) who put it like that.

    Bear in mind that not all the working class use the flowery, nuanced and carefully caveated language that the professional middle classes do. Many use the unambiguous language of the shop floor and don’t call a spade a shovel when they’re feeling frustrated.

    It doesn’t make them all bigots, and an experienced canvasser can tell the difference. It’s the difference between a Gillian Duffy to a Nick Griffin, for example.
    It may not be all, but it was enough.
    No it wasn't.
    I think 10-15% is definately more than 3.5%

    3.5% was not enough. 50%+1 was enough.
    Are you saying that 50%+1 were motivated by the anti foreignor vote?
    No. I'm saying 50%+1 was the threshold for winning and the anti foreigner vote was nowhere close to that.

    Remain won over 48% and lost. If Leave was just an anti foreigner vote then it would have lost massively. The anti foreigner vote was not enough to win the referendum.
    As long as people mischaracterise a dislike of competing for low wages and state resources with an influx of immigrants as "a dislike of foreigners", I doubt the debate will get anywhere. It makes Remain voters feel like they lost because they are more pure than Leave, so let them think it, everyone needs consolation
    Why so squeamish. You might dislike someone because they shag your women and take your job. It so happens that the majority of those who have done the latter (have they though?) have been foreign.

    So say you don't like foreigners.
    Because voting to do something about the disadvantage put upon you by the governments policy of mass immigration doesn't require a dislike of foreigners. We talk in nuanced terms on here all the time, it is strange that such pejorative, broad strokes are the way to go when explaining the Leave vote
    Saves a lot of time, though.
    While failing to understand why the vote was lost.
    I am very well aware of why the vote was lost. A dislike of foreigners. And also a desire to see the outrage of droite de suite addressed.
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    BBC News - Coronavirus: Belgium facing 'tsunami' of new infections
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-54602999
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    HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 117,164
    edited October 2020

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Nigelb said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    TimT said:

    Re Trumpsters being confident and Dems being scared, it suits both sides' GOTV efforts to talk up Trump's chances at this point.

    - Republicans need their voters to think Trump is still in with a chance to ensure their supporters believe voting is worthwhile and so do
    - Dems are genuinely jittery after 2016, but also don't want this election to be even close, so that Trump has no path to challenge either its legitimacy or to seek to invalidate certain ballot papers in order to steal the election or to refer it to the Supreme Court. Also, the Dems want to use the top of the ticket to win many very important state-level elections.

    Your final line is critical.

    The Dems goal is not just to win but to win big. Win very big.

    They don't just want the Oval Office, they want the Senators and they want to win the House votes and the State Representatives who will be determining Redistricting issues next year. If for instance Texas can be flipped then the Democrats redistricting Texas could make the map look very different to the GOP doing so.
    Yet ironically even if the Democrats win a landslide this year and the Presidency, the House and the Senate they will almost certainly lose Congress again in the 2022 midterms when the usual midterm protest vote sees a swing back to the post Trump GOP, as 2 years after Obama was elected by a landslide in 2008 the Democrats lost the House in 2010 and 2 years after Trump won in 2016 the GOP lost the House in 2018.

    However if Trump is re elected the Democrats will likely win a huge majority in Congress in 2022 and be very likely to win back the Presidency in 2024
    Winning in 2022 will be too late for redistricting.

    In order to win for redistricting they need to win this year. This is the redistricting election and this year's winner will control gerrymandering for a decade to come.

    Also Obama held the Senate for six years not two. Ditto Trump has held it for four. From memory Dubya also held it for six.
    The Senate only really has influence over foreign treaties and executive appointments, once your party loses control of the House of Representatives so does your ability to set the US domestic agenda
    Nonsense.
    The senate can legislate too - and more to the point can block legislation.
    Without control of both houses, and with a deeply obstructionist opposition, any agenda is considerably blunted.
    You only need control of 1 chamber of congress to block the President's agenda, 2 is just a bonus
    It really isn't the case that as soon as you lose one chamber as President, you lose control.

    Since you can veto bills as President, the reality is you move into a compromise phase where your team discuss with the leadership of the Senate and House what items on your agenda you might be able to progress (with some tweaks) and what of their agenda you might be willing to sign.

    You are in a much, much stronger position as President if you hold one of the two chambers in your party as you have more to bargain with. For example, if you still have the Senate, you have strong appointment powers (as you say) so you can trade that against legislative concessions from the House leadership. And if you still have the House and the other side only has a slim Senate majority, you may well only need to buy off one or two blue state Republicans or blue dog Democrats with a nice (and not wildly expensive) little side benefit for their state to get a key piece of legislation through.

    You also only need to satisfy one group of people - remember that the House GOP (or Dems) don't necessarily have the same aims at all as their Senate colleagues. They don't map that well onto each other geographically and, rather crucially, the House has a two year cycle and the Senate six - so they are playing very different games in terms of what they want to achieve and when and you get the much longer term, grey bearded strategic thinkers in the Senate and the "what am I going to say to my constituents in the elections in a few months?" folk at the start of their careers in the House. So it's a hell of a lot harder if you control neither chamber, whereas it's not ideal but not the end of the world by any means if you have one of two.
    The point is though you still have to compromise your agenda, you can no longer set the agenda as you could when you controlled both chambers
    You've moved your position from saying if you lose one chamber you lose your ability to set the domestic agenda to saying you need to make some compromises... which just isn't the same at all.
    Yes it is, most of the biggest changes in US domestic policy in terms of a President implementing their agenda, eg FDR's new Deal, LBJ's Great Society and civil rights laws, Obamacare, George W Bush's tax cuts came when that President's party controlled both chambers of Congress.

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    dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 28,013

    Is Construction work allowed in Wales during the lockdown?

    Yes. It is.
    Got a wall to build...
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    LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 15,424

    Northern parochialism is a real thing – and it's utterly pathetic.

    It does manifest in public policy – hence why Greater Newcastle doesn't have a metro mayor but 'North of Tyne' does.

    The Gateshead councillors didn't want to merge with the city council, one minute's walk across the river.

    There's no faster way to wind up a Gatesheader than praise the "Newcastle Sage Centre"
    When I was doing work experience at BBC Manchester I went out to do a piece on the city's expanding hotel sector. Interviewing the manager of a new Premier Inn who told me all about how great it was to have this new central Manchester location. I pointed out the window down the street at the Welcome to Manchester sign and pointed out he was in Salford. Same with "Renault Manchester Trinity Way Salford" ads on the radio.

    And up here? Stockton Riverside College is in Thornaby. Durham University Queens Campus Stockton is in Thornaby. Winds our mayor up something chronic :smiley:
    Down in London, not many people will say things like, "You're not in London, you're in Wimbledon."

    Why do places like Salford and Gateshead retain such a strong separate identity to the large city that has expanded to absorb them, in a way that places once miles from London do not?
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    AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670

    dixiedean said:

    18804.

    Is about 1/3 up from last Monday, but as always wait for the scriptors to produce the proper charts.
    The 14th now has over 19000 cases. Find a couple of thousand more over the next 2 days and that's a doubling from the 4th
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    contrariancontrarian Posts: 5,818

    BBC News - Coronavirus: Belgium facing 'tsunami' of new infections
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-54602999

    Is that the Belgium that was widely praised as having success with its ten pm bar curfew, the example for us adopting that crazy lunacy?

    Or is that a different Belgium?
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    TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 41,403

    Northern parochialism is a real thing – and it's utterly pathetic.

    It does manifest in public policy – hence why Greater Newcastle doesn't have a metro mayor but 'North of Tyne' does.

    The Gateshead councillors didn't want to merge with the city council, one minute's walk across the river.

    There's no faster way to wind up a Gatesheader than praise the "Newcastle Sage Centre"
    When I was doing work experience at BBC Manchester I went out to do a piece on the city's expanding hotel sector. Interviewing the manager of a new Premier Inn who told me all about how great it was to have this new central Manchester location. I pointed out the window down the street at the Welcome to Manchester sign and pointed out he was in Salford. Same with "Renault Manchester Trinity Way Salford" ads on the radio.

    And up here? Stockton Riverside College is in Thornaby. Durham University Queens Campus Stockton is in Thornaby. Winds our mayor up something chronic :smiley:
    Down in London, not many people will say things like, "You're not in London, you're in Wimbledon."

    Why do places like Salford and Gateshead retain such a strong separate identity to the large city that has expanded to absorb them, in a way that places once miles from London do not?
    Erm there is a vibrant youth scene in London, you know.

    https://news.sky.com/story/london-map-shows-territories-of-dozens-of-gangs-11492542

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    Northern parochialism is a real thing – and it's utterly pathetic.

    It does manifest in public policy – hence why Greater Newcastle doesn't have a metro mayor but 'North of Tyne' does.

    The Gateshead councillors didn't want to merge with the city council, one minute's walk across the river.

    There's no faster way to wind up a Gatesheader than praise the "Newcastle Sage Centre"
    When I was doing work experience at BBC Manchester I went out to do a piece on the city's expanding hotel sector. Interviewing the manager of a new Premier Inn who told me all about how great it was to have this new central Manchester location. I pointed out the window down the street at the Welcome to Manchester sign and pointed out he was in Salford. Same with "Renault Manchester Trinity Way Salford" ads on the radio.

    And up here? Stockton Riverside College is in Thornaby. Durham University Queens Campus Stockton is in Thornaby. Winds our mayor up something chronic :smiley:
    Down in London, not many people will say things like, "You're not in London, you're in Wimbledon."

    Why do places like Salford and Gateshead retain such a strong separate identity to the large city that has expanded to absorb them, in a way that places once miles from London do not?
    There are large parts of London/not London where people argue endlessly and pointlessly whether its London or not due to inconsistent postal codes, old county boundaries, etc
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    CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 59,787
    edited October 2020

    I remember posting on here yonks back that May should have stepped down immediately as leader just before conference so that she could sit there on the front row shouting BOLLOCKS as her colleagues talked unadulterated bollocks. OK so its not conference. But glad to see that she is ignoring the usual boring convention and making her feelings clear about her successors.
    https://twitter.com/jillongovt/status/1318204866125234176?s=20
    https://twitter.com/paulwaugh/status/1318211059572985859?s=20
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    OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 32,058

    Northern parochialism is a real thing – and it's utterly pathetic.

    It does manifest in public policy – hence why Greater Newcastle doesn't have a metro mayor but 'North of Tyne' does.

    The Gateshead councillors didn't want to merge with the city council, one minute's walk across the river.

    There's no faster way to wind up a Gatesheader than praise the "Newcastle Sage Centre"
    When I was doing work experience at BBC Manchester I went out to do a piece on the city's expanding hotel sector. Interviewing the manager of a new Premier Inn who told me all about how great it was to have this new central Manchester location. I pointed out the window down the street at the Welcome to Manchester sign and pointed out he was in Salford. Same with "Renault Manchester Trinity Way Salford" ads on the radio.

    And up here? Stockton Riverside College is in Thornaby. Durham University Queens Campus Stockton is in Thornaby. Winds our mayor up something chronic :smiley:
    Down in London, not many people will say things like, "You're not in London, you're in Wimbledon."

    Why do places like Salford and Gateshead retain such a strong separate identity to the large city that has expanded to absorb them, in a way that places once miles from London do not?
    Afternoon all. Among people from Romford, every so often, there's a debate about whether they are in London or Essex. Fortunately, for cricket purposes both they and Leyton still are.
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    rpjsrpjs Posts: 3,787
    HYUFD said:

    rpjs said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    TimT said:

    Re Trumpsters being confident and Dems being scared, it suits both sides' GOTV efforts to talk up Trump's chances at this point.

    - Republicans need their voters to think Trump is still in with a chance to ensure their supporters believe voting is worthwhile and so do
    - Dems are genuinely jittery after 2016, but also don't want this election to be even close, so that Trump has no path to challenge either its legitimacy or to seek to invalidate certain ballot papers in order to steal the election or to refer it to the Supreme Court. Also, the Dems want to use the top of the ticket to win many very important state-level elections.

    Your final line is critical.

    The Dems goal is not just to win but to win big. Win very big.

    They don't just want the Oval Office, they want the Senators and they want to win the House votes and the State Representatives who will be determining Redistricting issues next year. If for instance Texas can be flipped then the Democrats redistricting Texas could make the map look very different to the GOP doing so.
    Yet ironically even if the Democrats win a landslide this year and the Presidency, the House and the Senate they will almost certainly lose Congress again in the 2022 midterms when the usual midterm protest vote sees a swing back to the post Trump GOP, as 2 years after Obama was elected by a landslide in 2008 the Democrats lost the House in 2010 and 2 years after Trump won in 2016 the GOP lost the House in 2018.

    However if Trump is re elected the Democrats will likely win a huge majority in Congress in 2022 and be very likely to win back the Presidency in 2024
    Winning in 2022 will be too late for redistricting.

    In order to win for redistricting they need to win this year. This is the redistricting election and this year's winner will control gerrymandering for a decade to come.

    Also Obama held the Senate for six years not two. Ditto Trump has held it for four. From memory Dubya also held it for six.
    The Senate only really has influence over foreign treaties and executive appointments, once your party loses control of the House of Representatives so does your ability to set the US domestic agenda
    That's farcical. The Senate is far more important and gets a say in everything domestic and most importantly the judiciary. The House is impotent when it comes to judicial appointments.
    Control of the budget, control of most domestic legislation in the US is controlled by the House, the President proposes it but the House has to approve it, hence Obama was only to get Obamacare through when the Democrats controlled the House and Bush was only able to get his tax cuts through when the GOP controlled the House.

    It does not matter if your party controls the Senate as it needs House support too for domestic federal legislation to pass.

    The executive branch proposes appointments to the Federal Judiciary and SC with Senate approval so that did not contradict anything I said
    "Control of the budget, control of most domestic legislation in the US is controlled by the House"

    NO! For general legislation the House and Senate are co-equal. The only privilege the House has over the Senate is that revenue bills (which is not the same as the budget) must originate in the House. That's it. The Senate can reject such bills just like it can reject any other bill. The US Senate is not like the British House of Lords but with extra ratification powers as you seem to think. It is a fully fledged legislative chamber with the equal powers over passing laws as the House.
    Which does not change my point at all that once the President's party has lost control of the House it does not matter if his party still has control of the Senate, he will still not be able to get legislation through (including his proposed budget), so at that point all the Senate can help the President on is judicial appointments and treaties approval, exactly as I originally said.
    You fundamentally misunderstand the concept of separation of powers in the American constitution.

    You seem to think that Presidents have legislative agendas which they can push through Congress if their party controls both houses, just like a British Prime Minister can push their legislative agenda through Parliament due to their de facto control of the Commons and the Lords no longer having an absolute veto.

    Presidents do have a legislative wish-list, it is certainly true, and you could even use the term agenda if you wish. But the President, nor any other officer of the executive, does not have the power to introduce legislation. They can make it clear that they would like to see X, Y or Z enacted, but it requires members of Congress to act and to introduce such legislation. Maybe it might even be exactly what the President is after, but there's no guarantee it will, and it frequently isn't as the sponsors and other Congresscritters drop in their own pet projects and pork. It can and does happen fairly regularly that a Congress of the same party as the President will pass legislation the President opposes, and dares them to veto it. There have even been incidences where a Congress has overriden the veto of a President of the same party as controlling both houses.

    Please stop thinking of the American system as being essentially the British system with different terminology and no hereditary elements. The doctrine of separation of powers is fundamentally different to the British system. Congress is not a parliament.
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    dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 28,013

    Northern parochialism is a real thing – and it's utterly pathetic.

    It does manifest in public policy – hence why Greater Newcastle doesn't have a metro mayor but 'North of Tyne' does.

    The Gateshead councillors didn't want to merge with the city council, one minute's walk across the river.

    There's no faster way to wind up a Gatesheader than praise the "Newcastle Sage Centre"
    When I was doing work experience at BBC Manchester I went out to do a piece on the city's expanding hotel sector. Interviewing the manager of a new Premier Inn who told me all about how great it was to have this new central Manchester location. I pointed out the window down the street at the Welcome to Manchester sign and pointed out he was in Salford. Same with "Renault Manchester Trinity Way Salford" ads on the radio.

    And up here? Stockton Riverside College is in Thornaby. Durham University Queens Campus Stockton is in Thornaby. Winds our mayor up something chronic :smiley:
    Down in London, not many people will say things like, "You're not in London, you're in Wimbledon."

    Why do places like Salford and Gateshead retain such a strong separate identity to the large city that has expanded to absorb them, in a way that places once miles from London do not?
    Because Salford is a City. It is also very ancient, predating Manchester. Charter in 1230 as Salfordshire.
    Gateshead was in Durham not Northumberland. The split is like the North/South London one.
    So they have much stronger identities than the small villages London absorbed.
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    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Nigelb said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    TimT said:

    Re Trumpsters being confident and Dems being scared, it suits both sides' GOTV efforts to talk up Trump's chances at this point.

    - Republicans need their voters to think Trump is still in with a chance to ensure their supporters believe voting is worthwhile and so do
    - Dems are genuinely jittery after 2016, but also don't want this election to be even close, so that Trump has no path to challenge either its legitimacy or to seek to invalidate certain ballot papers in order to steal the election or to refer it to the Supreme Court. Also, the Dems want to use the top of the ticket to win many very important state-level elections.

    Your final line is critical.

    The Dems goal is not just to win but to win big. Win very big.

    They don't just want the Oval Office, they want the Senators and they want to win the House votes and the State Representatives who will be determining Redistricting issues next year. If for instance Texas can be flipped then the Democrats redistricting Texas could make the map look very different to the GOP doing so.
    Yet ironically even if the Democrats win a landslide this year and the Presidency, the House and the Senate they will almost certainly lose Congress again in the 2022 midterms when the usual midterm protest vote sees a swing back to the post Trump GOP, as 2 years after Obama was elected by a landslide in 2008 the Democrats lost the House in 2010 and 2 years after Trump won in 2016 the GOP lost the House in 2018.

    However if Trump is re elected the Democrats will likely win a huge majority in Congress in 2022 and be very likely to win back the Presidency in 2024
    Winning in 2022 will be too late for redistricting.

    In order to win for redistricting they need to win this year. This is the redistricting election and this year's winner will control gerrymandering for a decade to come.

    Also Obama held the Senate for six years not two. Ditto Trump has held it for four. From memory Dubya also held it for six.
    The Senate only really has influence over foreign treaties and executive appointments, once your party loses control of the House of Representatives so does your ability to set the US domestic agenda
    Nonsense.
    The senate can legislate too - and more to the point can block legislation.
    Without control of both houses, and with a deeply obstructionist opposition, any agenda is considerably blunted.
    You only need control of 1 chamber of congress to block the President's agenda, 2 is just a bonus
    It really isn't the case that as soon as you lose one chamber as President, you lose control.

    Since you can veto bills as President, the reality is you move into a compromise phase where your team discuss with the leadership of the Senate and House what items on your agenda you might be able to progress (with some tweaks) and what of their agenda you might be willing to sign.

    You are in a much, much stronger position as President if you hold one of the two chambers in your party as you have more to bargain with. For example, if you still have the Senate, you have strong appointment powers (as you say) so you can trade that against legislative concessions from the House leadership. And if you still have the House and the other side only has a slim Senate majority, you may well only need to buy off one or two blue state Republicans or blue dog Democrats with a nice (and not wildly expensive) little side benefit for their state to get a key piece of legislation through.

    You also only need to satisfy one group of people - remember that the House GOP (or Dems) don't necessarily have the same aims at all as their Senate colleagues. They don't map that well onto each other geographically and, rather crucially, the House has a two year cycle and the Senate six - so they are playing very different games in terms of what they want to achieve and when and you get the much longer term, grey bearded strategic thinkers in the Senate and the "what am I going to say to my constituents in the elections in a few months?" folk at the start of their careers in the House. So it's a hell of a lot harder if you control neither chamber, whereas it's not ideal but not the end of the world by any means if you have one of two.
    The point is though you still have to compromise your agenda, you can no longer set the agenda as you could when you controlled both chambers
    You've moved your position from saying if you lose one chamber you lose your ability to set the domestic agenda to saying you need to make some compromises... which just isn't the same at all.
    Yes it is, most of the biggest changes in US domestic policy in terms of a President implementing their agenda, eg FDR's new Deal, LBJ's Great Society and civil rights laws, Obamacare, George W Bush's tax cuts came when that President's party controlled both chambers of Congress.

    You can't be as radical as you might like, for sure. But are you claiming Nixon, Reagan, and Bush Snr were insignificant in domestic policy agenda terms? Because none of them ever had control of both chambers of Congress at any point. If so, it's a big (and incorrect) claim.
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    LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 15,424
    TimT said:

    TimT said:

    Re Trumpsters being confident and Dems being scared, it suits both sides' GOTV efforts to talk up Trump's chances at this point.

    - Republicans need their voters to think Trump is still in with a chance to ensure their supporters believe voting is worthwhile and so do
    - Dems are genuinely jittery after 2016, but also don't want this election to be even close, so that Trump has no path to challenge either its legitimacy or to seek to invalidate certain ballot papers in order to steal the election or to refer it to the Supreme Court. Also, the Dems want to use the top of the ticket to win many very important state-level elections.

    The enthusiasm for Biden is so great that literally dozens turn out when he deigns to speak.
    And yet his Town Hall's eyeballs exceeded Trump's by a tasty margin.
    I was amazed by that. All along one of Trump's big strengths has been to hold all the attention onto himself. So I expected him to win the ratings battle easily. For him to lose itmade me think that most people expect Biden to win, so they were more interested in hearing what the next President had to say.

    It briefly made me believe that Trump is about to be buried in a landslide, before I started worrying again.
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    The mayors of Liverpool City Region, along with council leaders, are asking the government to review the decision to close gyms and leisure centres.
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    NigelbNigelb Posts: 62,797
    TimT said:

    TimT said:

    Re Trumpsters being confident and Dems being scared, it suits both sides' GOTV efforts to talk up Trump's chances at this point.

    - Republicans need their voters to think Trump is still in with a chance to ensure their supporters believe voting is worthwhile and so do
    - Dems are genuinely jittery after 2016, but also don't want this election to be even close, so that Trump has no path to challenge either its legitimacy or to seek to invalidate certain ballot papers in order to steal the election or to refer it to the Supreme Court. Also, the Dems want to use the top of the ticket to win many very important state-level elections.

    The enthusiasm for Biden is so great that literally dozens turn out when he deigns to speak.
    And yet his Town Hall's eyeballs exceeded Trump's by a tasty margin.
    Eyeballs and tasty ought not to appear in the same sentence.
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    PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 76,001
    Alistair said:

    dixiedean said:

    18804.

    Is about 1/3 up from last Monday, but as always wait for the scriptors to produce the proper charts.
    The 14th now has over 19000 cases. Find a couple of thousand more over the next 2 days and that's a doubling from the 4th
    You need to go back a week in my view to look at sample dates. Just too much future backfilling otherwise. So currently this week's reported is the best comparable to last week's reported.
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    @LostPassword you should rename yourself LeftPassword :)
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    LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 15,424
    edited October 2020

    Northern parochialism is a real thing – and it's utterly pathetic.

    It does manifest in public policy – hence why Greater Newcastle doesn't have a metro mayor but 'North of Tyne' does.

    The Gateshead councillors didn't want to merge with the city council, one minute's walk across the river.

    There's no faster way to wind up a Gatesheader than praise the "Newcastle Sage Centre"
    When I was doing work experience at BBC Manchester I went out to do a piece on the city's expanding hotel sector. Interviewing the manager of a new Premier Inn who told me all about how great it was to have this new central Manchester location. I pointed out the window down the street at the Welcome to Manchester sign and pointed out he was in Salford. Same with "Renault Manchester Trinity Way Salford" ads on the radio.

    And up here? Stockton Riverside College is in Thornaby. Durham University Queens Campus Stockton is in Thornaby. Winds our mayor up something chronic :smiley:
    Down in London, not many people will say things like, "You're not in London, you're in Wimbledon."

    Why do places like Salford and Gateshead retain such a strong separate identity to the large city that has expanded to absorb them, in a way that places once miles from London do not?
    There are large parts of London/not London where people argue endlessly and pointlessly whether its London or not due to inconsistent postal codes, old county boundaries, etc
    Well, maybe, but they're mostly a lot further out than places like Streatham, which might equivalently complain about being absorbed into Lambeth...
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    not_on_firenot_on_fire Posts: 4,341
    isam said:
    Presumably the two parties Hitchens has in mind are Telegraph Readers and Sunday Telegraph Readers?
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    kinabalukinabalu Posts: 39,333

    kinabalu said:

    Alistair said:

    Pulpstar said:
    The state prices and national prices are getting so heavily decoupled we must be close to being able to arb them.
    I sense there are some good arbs given enough time and a working calculator. Yesterday I was able to back Trump wins Michigan at an effective 4.16 on SPIN's 100/0 binary and simultaneously lay the same at 3.25 on Betfair. Mega smug city.
    If you browse down the individual States on Betfair they imply a very big Biden win. You could back Trump in all of the swing States and then Biden to win in their National market. It works but it takes time, capital and the returns though certain are small.
    Yes, I think you're right. What I'm doing is a bit different. I'm regularly cross checking SPIN against Betfair on individual states. SPIN are batch update whereas Betfair is real time. So if you're lucky you'll drop on a case where Betfair has seen a big move on a state and SPIN are still as they were. All of this being for people who are very unbusy with flesh & blood matters of course. :smile:
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    HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 117,164
    rpjs said:

    HYUFD said:

    rpjs said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    TimT said:

    Re Trumpsters being confident and Dems being scared, it suits both sides' GOTV efforts to talk up Trump's chances at this point.

    - Republicans need their voters to think Trump is still in with a chance to ensure their supporters believe voting is worthwhile and so do
    - Dems are genuinely jittery after 2016, but also don't want this election to be even close, so that Trump has no path to challenge either its legitimacy or to seek to invalidate certain ballot papers in order to steal the election or to refer it to the Supreme Court. Also, the Dems want to use the top of the ticket to win many very important state-level elections.

    Your final line is critical.

    The Dems goal is not just to win but to win big. Win very big.

    They don't just want the Oval Office, they want the Senators and they want to win the House votes and the State Representatives who will be determining Redistricting issues next year. If for instance Texas can be flipped then the Democrats redistricting Texas could make the map look very different to the GOP doing so.
    Yet ironically even if the Democrats win a landslide this year and the Presidency, the House and the Senate they will almost certainly lose Congress again in the 2022 midterms when the usual midterm protest vote sees a swing back to the post Trump GOP, as 2 years after Obama was elected by a landslide in 2008 the Democrats lost the House in 2010 and 2 years after Trump won in 2016 the GOP lost the House in 2018.

    However if Trump is re elected the Democrats will likely win a huge majority in Congress in 2022 and be very likely to win back the Presidency in 2024
    Winning in 2022 will be too late for redistricting.

    In order to win for redistricting they need to win this year. This is the redistricting election and this year's winner will control gerrymandering for a decade to come.

    Also Obama held the Senate for six years not two. Ditto Trump has held it for four. From memory Dubya also held it for six.
    The Senate only really has influence over foreign treaties and executive appointments, once your party loses control of the House of Representatives so does your ability to set the US domestic agenda
    That's farcical. The Senate is far more important and gets a say in everything domestic and most importantly the judiciary. The House is impotent when it comes to judicial appointments.
    Control of the budget, control of most domestic legislation in the US is controlled by the House, the President proposes it but the House has to approve it, hence Obama was only to get Obamacare through when the Democrats controlled the House and Bush was only able to get his tax cuts through when the GOP controlled the House.

    It does not matter if your party controls the Senate as it needs House support too for domestic federal legislation to pass.

    The executive branch proposes appointments to the Federal Judiciary and SC with Senate approval so that did not contradict anything I said
    "Control of the budget, control of most domestic legislation in the US is controlled by the House"

    NO! For general legislation the House and Senate are co-equal. The only privilege the House has over the Senate is that revenue bills (which is not the same as the budget) must originate in the House. That's it. The Senate can reject such bills just like it can reject any other bill. The US Senate is not like the British House of Lords but with extra ratification powers as you seem to think. It is a fully fledged legislative chamber with the equal powers over passing laws as the House.
    Which does not change my point at all that once the President's party has lost control of the House it does not matter if his party still has control of the Senate, he will still not be able to get legislation through (including his proposed budget), so at that point all the Senate can help the President on is judicial appointments and treaties approval, exactly as I originally said.
    You fundamentally misunderstand the concept of separation of powers in the American constitution.

    You seem to think that Presidents have legislative agendas which they can push through Congress if their party controls both houses, just like a British Prime Minister can push their legislative agenda through Parliament due to their de facto control of the Commons and the Lords no longer having an absolute veto.

    Presidents do have a legislative wish-list, it is certainly true, and you could even use the term agenda if you wish. But the President, nor any other officer of the executive, does not have the power to introduce legislation. They can make it clear that they would like to see X, Y or Z enacted, but it requires members of Congress to act and to introduce such legislation. Maybe it might even be exactly what the President is after, but there's no guarantee it will, and it frequently isn't as the sponsors and other Congresscritters drop in their own pet projects and pork. It can and does happen fairly regularly that a Congress of the same party as the President will pass legislation the President opposes, and dares them to veto it. There have even been incidences where a Congress has overriden the veto of a President of the same party as controlling both houses.

    Please stop thinking of the American system as being essentially the British system with different terminology and no hereditary elements. The doctrine of separation of powers is fundamentally different to the British system. Congress is not a parliament.
    No that is not true, the executive branch in the US really will be able to get more of its legislation through if it has a Congress that is from the same party, you only have to see the recent government shutdowns under Trump and Obama when the party opposing them controlled the House to see how clashes have become increasingly frequent when the President has been of 1 party and at least 1 chamber of Congress of the other.

    In that sense it is no different to here where Boris has got through much more of his agenda and delivered Brexit now he has a majority than either he or May could do when they had no majority in the legislature
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    MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 44,582
    UK cases

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    dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 28,013
    Council leader of Rochdale strongly suspects Tier 3 will be imposed on GM in a few moments.
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    MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 44,582
    UK R

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    MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 44,582
    London cases

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    dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 28,013
    In fact, the real surprise is why Manchester was never absorbed into Salford in the 19th Century.
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    MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 44,582
    London case scale to 100K population

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    HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 117,164
    edited October 2020

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Nigelb said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    TimT said:

    Re Trumpsters being confident and Dems being scared, it suits both sides' GOTV efforts to talk up Trump's chances at this point.

    - Republicans need their voters to think Trump is still in with a chance to ensure their supporters believe voting is worthwhile and so do
    - Dems are genuinely jittery after 2016, but also don't want this election to be even close, so that Trump has no path to challenge either its legitimacy or to seek to invalidate certain ballot papers in order to steal the election or to refer it to the Supreme Court. Also, the Dems want to use the top of the ticket to win many very important state-level elections.

    Your final line is critical.

    The Dems goal is not just to win but to win big. Win very big.

    They don't just want the Oval Office, they want the Senators and they want to win the House votes and the State Representatives who will be determining Redistricting issues next year. If for instance Texas can be flipped then the Democrats redistricting Texas could make the map look very different to the GOP doing so.
    Yet ironically even if the Democrats win a landslide this year and the Presidency, the House and the Senate they will almost certainly lose Congress again in the 2022 midterms when the usual midterm protest vote sees a swing back to the post Trump GOP, as 2 years after Obama was elected by a landslide in 2008 the Democrats lost the House in 2010 and 2 years after Trump won in 2016 the GOP lost the House in 2018.

    However if Trump is re elected the Democrats will likely win a huge majority in Congress in 2022 and be very likely to win back the Presidency in 2024
    Winning in 2022 will be too late for redistricting.

    In order to win for redistricting they need to win this year. This is the redistricting election and this year's winner will control gerrymandering for a decade to come.

    Also Obama held the Senate for six years not two. Ditto Trump has held it for four. From memory Dubya also held it for six.
    The Senate only really has influence over foreign treaties and executive appointments, once your party loses control of the House of Representatives so does your ability to set the US domestic agenda
    Nonsense.
    The senate can legislate too - and more to the point can block legislation.
    Without control of both houses, and with a deeply obstructionist opposition, any agenda is considerably blunted.
    You only need control of 1 chamber of congress to block the President's agenda, 2 is just a bonus
    It really isn't the case that as soon as you lose one chamber as President, you lose control.

    Since you can veto bills as President, the reality is you move into a compromise phase where your team discuss with the leadership of the Senate and House what items on your agenda you might be able to progress (with some tweaks) and what of their agenda you might be willing to sign.

    You are in a much, much stronger position as President if you hold one of the two chambers in your party as you have more to bargain with. For example, if you still have the Senate, you have strong appointment powers (as you say) so you can trade that against legislative concessions from the House leadership. And if you still have the House and the other side only has a slim Senate majority, you may well only need to buy off one or two blue state Republicans or blue dog Democrats with a nice (and not wildly expensive) little side benefit for their state to get a key piece of legislation through.

    You also only need to satisfy one group of people - remember that the House GOP (or Dems) don't necessarily have the same aims at all as their Senate colleagues. They don't map that well onto each other geographically and, rather crucially, the House has a two year cycle and the Senate six - so they are playing very different games in terms of what they want to achieve and when and you get the much longer term, grey bearded strategic thinkers in the Senate and the "what am I going to say to my constituents in the elections in a few months?" folk at the start of their careers in the House. So it's a hell of a lot harder if you control neither chamber, whereas it's not ideal but not the end of the world by any means if you have one of two.
    The point is though you still have to compromise your agenda, you can no longer set the agenda as you could when you controlled both chambers
    You've moved your position from saying if you lose one chamber you lose your ability to set the domestic agenda to saying you need to make some compromises... which just isn't the same at all.
    Yes it is, most of the biggest changes in US domestic policy in terms of a President implementing their agenda, eg FDR's new Deal, LBJ's Great Society and civil rights laws, Obamacare, George W Bush's tax cuts came when that President's party controlled both chambers of Congress.

    You can't be as radical as you might like, for sure. But are you claiming Nixon, Reagan, and Bush Snr were insignificant in domestic policy agenda terms? Because none of them ever had control of both chambers of Congress at any point. If so, it's a big (and incorrect) claim.
    Relatively yes, Nixon and Bush Snr were far more significant in foreign policy terms than domestic policy terms.

    Reagan was an exception because he built a good personal relationship with Speaker O'Neill and there were more conservative southern Democrats at that time and fewer liberal Northern and West Coast Democrats but even he could not prevent the Democrats expanding government spending.
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    MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 44,582
    UK cases scaled to 100K population

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    MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 44,582
    UK case summary

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    felix said:

    isam said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Nigelb said:

    (FPT)

    Cicero said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Who is the most left-wing person on PB?

    @Dura_Ace by a mile
    I think I'm the only Revolutionary Leninist, Steiner/Vallentyne Left-Libertarian, Leeds Utd Fan.

    Democracy = Social Fascism

    WACCOE
    I'm getting increasingly concerned at some posters on here playing fast and loose with democracy.

    We have this post, which I can't say entirely surprises me coming from you, and we had @IanB2 ostensibly a centrist and ex-LD flirting with benign dictatorship as being the best form of government the other day.

    I think you both need to go back to the history books and read about what life in non-democratic societies is like.
    Unfortunately I fear that the peoples of what increasingly looks like "the former" UK are not going to enjoy finding out a whole lot more about "the lessons of history" than they can really cope with.

    At every point since the historic wrong turn of Brexit, the far right has doubled down, so now the "impossible" "failure" of a "no deal" is now an odds on outcome. The consequences for our nouveau pauvre PM may include finding that the Eton College where he wants to send his son has been burned down by an army of furious and unemployed farmers, fisherfolk and even financiers.

    Certainly, having won the referendum by a whisker under extremely dubious circumstances, the winners could have reached out to the losers and created a compromise- EEA, EFTA, whatever- but they chose four years of uncertainty, rejecting any kind of compromise deal whatsoever as a BINO (not withstanding that these compromises were actually the only solution that people could be said to have "voted for") and then grabbing the tiller and steering us straight towards an economically half witted no deal, while lying all the way.

    If the break up of the UK is indeed the result of "no deal", then the successor republics will probably prosecute the ****s responsible.

    "Crucifixion is too good for them"

    I do study history and the future of what is currently "the UK", both economically and politically, will not be fixed in my lifetime if no deal goes through. Not sure how many UK citizens have taken citizenship elsewhere, but a trickle may well become a flood and I`m contemplating joining them. We know how this story ends...
    Top post, Cicero.
    Possibly hyperbolic; possibly not.
    For all the comments about brexiteers should have reached out to remainers and compromised....where was this reaching out by the pro eu people in the 40 years of membership? You called them fruitcakes and closet loons for most of that time and told to suck it up so I can understand why they feel no need to reach out.

    As you sow you shall reap seem apposite
    There is plenty of blame to go round on both sides.

    The depressing part is the discussion never seem to move on.

    We just seem to fall back in telling each other to go fuck ourselves.
    The conversation is shaped by events. At present, we have a large number of "experts" (I know) saying that things could be difficult in January if we don't have a deal.

    Many people (shout out to our Phil) say: "bring it on".

    Is it any wonder that sensible people despair.

    And oh from FPT when I pointed out how a large number of people was motivated to vote Brexit because of a dislike of foreigners? They were.
    Very reasonable until your last paragraph.

    You can both like and admire foreigners and want controls on immigration at the same time.

    Indeed, it might be to ensure safe continuation and consent for acceptance of the former that you see it as so important to ensure the latter.
    I think it is uncontentious to say that a dislike of foreigners was one of the main, if not the main motivating factor for a large number of people who voted Leave.

    Not "all" as @Philip_Thompson has confirmed, but for a large number.
    That wasn’t my experience from knocking on doors, although I certainly found some (10-15%) who put it like that.

    Bear in mind that not all the working class use the flowery, nuanced and carefully caveated language that the professional middle classes do. Many use the unambiguous language of the shop floor and don’t call a spade a shovel when they’re feeling frustrated.

    It doesn’t make them all bigots, and an experienced canvasser can tell the difference. It’s the difference between a Gillian Duffy to a Nick Griffin, for example.
    It may not be all, but it was enough.
    No it wasn't.
    I think 10-15% is definately more than 3.5%

    3.5% was not enough. 50%+1 was enough.
    Are you saying that 50%+1 were motivated by the anti foreignor vote?
    No. I'm saying 50%+1 was the threshold for winning and the anti foreigner vote was nowhere close to that.

    Remain won over 48% and lost. If Leave was just an anti foreigner vote then it would have lost massively. The anti foreigner vote was not enough to win the referendum.
    As long as people mischaracterise a dislike of competing for low wages and state resources with an influx of immigrants as "a dislike of foreigners", I doubt the debate will get anywhere. It makes Remain voters feel like they lost because they are more pure than Leave, so let them think it, everyone needs consolation
    Indeed I've read several posts on this thread who basically want to characterise people who have concerns about immigration as automatically racists and effectively seek to cancel them and their views as, of course , no further argument is necessary. I was a remain voter myself but can so easily understand why the argument was lost when so many on the left throw out the word bigot or racist to any who dare to question the left liberal view of the world. Four years on from the vote and they simply do not get it.
    There absolutely were people hurling the racism word around and they still are. And yes, every racist voted for Brexit. But as I keep pointing out the majority of people who voted leave because of migration weren't against any given race - just bigoted against anyone who isn't them. Whether the other is Asians, Blacks, Poles, people from the next county, people from the next village it doesn't matter, they were given the opportunity to STOP whatever it is they personally wanted to stop.

    So they voted to leave the EU. To stop people not from the EU from coming here. Or to stop people not from their town coming here. Its nonsensical, but whoever said reasons for voting had to be.
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    MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 44,582
    UK R

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    MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 44,582
    UK Hospitals

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    MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 44,582
    UK Deaths

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    Health Secretary Matt Hancock is due to give a statement relating to Covid-19 in the House of Commons shortly.

    It is not known what will be announced, but it comes amid ongoing negotiations between Greater Manchester and central government over moving the region to the highest tier of restrictions.
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    The mayors of Liverpool City Region, along with council leaders, are asking the government to review the decision to close gyms and leisure centres.

    Well of course they are. They've found out that "Tier 3" isn't a fixed list of things. So they want the special T3 variant that their neighbours have got.
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    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    Alistair said:

    Pulpstar said:
    The state prices and national prices are getting so heavily decoupled we must be close to being able to arb them.
    I sense there are some good arbs given enough time and a working calculator. Yesterday I was able to back Trump wins Michigan at an effective 4.16 on SPIN's 100/0 binary and simultaneously lay the same at 3.25 on Betfair. Mega smug city.
    If you browse down the individual States on Betfair they imply a very big Biden win. You could back Trump in all of the swing States and then Biden to win in their National market. It works but it takes time, capital and the returns though certain are small.
    Yes, I think you're right. What I'm doing is a bit different. I'm regularly cross checking SPIN against Betfair on individual states. SPIN are batch update whereas Betfair is real time. So if you're lucky you'll drop on a case where Betfair has seen a big move on a state and SPIN are still as they were. All of this being for people who are very unbusy with flesh & blood matters of course. :smile:
    Prices on SPIN are definitely stickier than on Betfair, and if you have the patience this can be exploited. SPIN prices are a bit like a brick on a long piece of elastic. The elastic gets stretched and nothing happens until ping! The brick shoots forward, and hits you in the goolies if you are not careful.

    Btw, one problem with what you are doing is that SPIN overrounds tend to be large, and difficult to calculate. This is compensated by Betfair where the opposite applies, but you need to be aware. (Sorry if I'm teaching Granny etc...)
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    The mayors of Liverpool City Region, along with council leaders, are asking the government to review the decision to close gyms and leisure centres.

    Well of course they are. They've found out that "Tier 3" isn't a fixed list of things. So they want the special T3 variant that their neighbours have got.
    Its bloody stupid. T3 should be T3, not some sort of new Brexit negotiation each time.
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    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Nigelb said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    TimT said:

    Re Trumpsters being confident and Dems being scared, it suits both sides' GOTV efforts to talk up Trump's chances at this point.

    - Republicans need their voters to think Trump is still in with a chance to ensure their supporters believe voting is worthwhile and so do
    - Dems are genuinely jittery after 2016, but also don't want this election to be even close, so that Trump has no path to challenge either its legitimacy or to seek to invalidate certain ballot papers in order to steal the election or to refer it to the Supreme Court. Also, the Dems want to use the top of the ticket to win many very important state-level elections.

    Your final line is critical.

    The Dems goal is not just to win but to win big. Win very big.

    They don't just want the Oval Office, they want the Senators and they want to win the House votes and the State Representatives who will be determining Redistricting issues next year. If for instance Texas can be flipped then the Democrats redistricting Texas could make the map look very different to the GOP doing so.
    Yet ironically even if the Democrats win a landslide this year and the Presidency, the House and the Senate they will almost certainly lose Congress again in the 2022 midterms when the usual midterm protest vote sees a swing back to the post Trump GOP, as 2 years after Obama was elected by a landslide in 2008 the Democrats lost the House in 2010 and 2 years after Trump won in 2016 the GOP lost the House in 2018.

    However if Trump is re elected the Democrats will likely win a huge majority in Congress in 2022 and be very likely to win back the Presidency in 2024
    Winning in 2022 will be too late for redistricting.

    In order to win for redistricting they need to win this year. This is the redistricting election and this year's winner will control gerrymandering for a decade to come.

    Also Obama held the Senate for six years not two. Ditto Trump has held it for four. From memory Dubya also held it for six.
    The Senate only really has influence over foreign treaties and executive appointments, once your party loses control of the House of Representatives so does your ability to set the US domestic agenda
    Nonsense.
    The senate can legislate too - and more to the point can block legislation.
    Without control of both houses, and with a deeply obstructionist opposition, any agenda is considerably blunted.
    You only need control of 1 chamber of congress to block the President's agenda, 2 is just a bonus
    It really isn't the case that as soon as you lose one chamber as President, you lose control.

    Since you can veto bills as President, the reality is you move into a compromise phase where your team discuss with the leadership of the Senate and House what items on your agenda you might be able to progress (with some tweaks) and what of their agenda you might be willing to sign.

    You are in a much, much stronger position as President if you hold one of the two chambers in your party as you have more to bargain with. For example, if you still have the Senate, you have strong appointment powers (as you say) so you can trade that against legislative concessions from the House leadership. And if you still have the House and the other side only has a slim Senate majority, you may well only need to buy off one or two blue state Republicans or blue dog Democrats with a nice (and not wildly expensive) little side benefit for their state to get a key piece of legislation through.

    You also only need to satisfy one group of people - remember that the House GOP (or Dems) don't necessarily have the same aims at all as their Senate colleagues. They don't map that well onto each other geographically and, rather crucially, the House has a two year cycle and the Senate six - so they are playing very different games in terms of what they want to achieve and when and you get the much longer term, grey bearded strategic thinkers in the Senate and the "what am I going to say to my constituents in the elections in a few months?" folk at the start of their careers in the House. So it's a hell of a lot harder if you control neither chamber, whereas it's not ideal but not the end of the world by any means if you have one of two.
    The point is though you still have to compromise your agenda, you can no longer set the agenda as you could when you controlled both chambers
    You've moved your position from saying if you lose one chamber you lose your ability to set the domestic agenda to saying you need to make some compromises... which just isn't the same at all.
    Yes it is, most of the biggest changes in US domestic policy in terms of a President implementing their agenda, eg FDR's new Deal, LBJ's Great Society and civil rights laws, Obamacare, George W Bush's tax cuts came when that President's party controlled both chambers of Congress.

    You can't be as radical as you might like, for sure. But are you claiming Nixon, Reagan, and Bush Snr were insignificant in domestic policy agenda terms? Because none of them ever had control of both chambers of Congress at any point. If so, it's a big (and incorrect) claim.
    Relatively yes, Nixon and Bush Snr were far more significant in foreign policy terms than domestic policy terms.

    Reagan was an exception because he built a good personal relationship with Speaker O'Neill and there were more conservative southern Democrats at that time and fewer liberal Northern and West Coast Democrats but even he could not prevent the Democrats expanding government spending.
    That wasn't my question. My question was whether they were insignificant domestically. It's clear that they weren't.

    Look - nobody is arguing against the case that you have more control if you control both chambers of the legislature plus the Presidency, and can be more radical. Obviously that's true. The problem is the radical assertion that you started with (and seem to have stepped back from a bit) that you lose control of the agenda the second you only have one chamber of Congress. It's just demonstrably incorrect as a position.
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    dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 28,013
    edited October 2020

    felix said:

    isam said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Nigelb said:

    (FPT)

    Cicero said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Who is the most left-wing person on PB?

    @Dura_Ace by a mile
    I think I'm the only Revolutionary Leninist, Steiner/Vallentyne Left-Libertarian, Leeds Utd Fan.

    Democracy = Social Fascism

    WACCOE
    I'm getting increasingly concerned at some posters on here playing fast and loose with democracy.

    We have this post, which I can't say entirely surprises me coming from you, and we had @IanB2 ostensibly a centrist and ex-LD flirting with benign dictatorship as being the best form of government the other day.

    I think you both need to go back to the history books and read about what life in non-democratic societies is like.
    Unfortunately I fear that the peoples of what increasingly looks like "the former" UK are not going to enjoy finding out a whole lot more about "the lessons of history" than they can really cope with.

    At every point since the historic wrong turn of Brexit, the far right has doubled down, so now the "impossible" "failure" of a "no deal" is now an odds on outcome. The consequences for our nouveau pauvre PM may include finding that the Eton College where he wants to send his son has been burned down by an army of furious and unemployed farmers, fisherfolk and even financiers.

    Certainly, having won the referendum by a whisker under extremely dubious circumstances, the winners could have reached out to the losers and created a compromise- EEA, EFTA, whatever- but they chose four years of uncertainty, rejecting any kind of compromise deal whatsoever as a BINO (not withstanding that these compromises were actually the only solution that people could be said to have "voted for") and then grabbing the tiller and steering us straight towards an economically half witted no deal, while lying all the way.

    If the break up of the UK is indeed the result of "no deal", then the successor republics will probably prosecute the ****s responsible.

    "Crucifixion is too good for them"

    I do study history and the future of what is currently "the UK", both economically and politically, will not be fixed in my lifetime if no deal goes through. Not sure how many UK citizens have taken citizenship elsewhere, but a trickle may well become a flood and I`m contemplating joining them. We know how this story ends...
    Top post, Cicero.
    Possibly hyperbolic; possibly not.
    For all the comments about brexiteers should have reached out to remainers and compromised....where was this reaching out by the pro eu people in the 40 years of membership? You called them fruitcakes and closet loons for most of that time and told to suck it up so I can understand why they feel no need to reach out.

    As you sow you shall reap seem apposite
    There is plenty of blame to go round on both sides.

    The depressing part is the discussion never seem to move on.

    We just seem to fall back in telling each other to go fuck ourselves.
    The conversation is shaped by events. At present, we have a large number of "experts" (I know) saying that things could be difficult in January if we don't have a deal.

    Many people (shout out to our Phil) say: "bring it on".

    Is it any wonder that sensible people despair.

    And oh from FPT when I pointed out how a large number of people was motivated to vote Brexit because of a dislike of foreigners? They were.
    Very reasonable until your last paragraph.

    You can both like and admire foreigners and want controls on immigration at the same time.

    Indeed, it might be to ensure safe continuation and consent for acceptance of the former that you see it as so important to ensure the latter.
    I think it is uncontentious to say that a dislike of foreigners was one of the main, if not the main motivating factor for a large number of people who voted Leave.

    Not "all" as @Philip_Thompson has confirmed, but for a large number.
    That wasn’t my experience from knocking on doors, although I certainly found some (10-15%) who put it like that.

    Bear in mind that not all the working class use the flowery, nuanced and carefully caveated language that the professional middle classes do. Many use the unambiguous language of the shop floor and don’t call a spade a shovel when they’re feeling frustrated.

    It doesn’t make them all bigots, and an experienced canvasser can tell the difference. It’s the difference between a Gillian Duffy to a Nick Griffin, for example.
    It may not be all, but it was enough.
    No it wasn't.
    I think 10-15% is definately more than 3.5%

    3.5% was not enough. 50%+1 was enough.
    Are you saying that 50%+1 were motivated by the anti foreignor vote?
    No. I'm saying 50%+1 was the threshold for winning and the anti foreigner vote was nowhere close to that.

    Remain won over 48% and lost. If Leave was just an anti foreigner vote then it would have lost massively. The anti foreigner vote was not enough to win the referendum.
    As long as people mischaracterise a dislike of competing for low wages and state resources with an influx of immigrants as "a dislike of foreigners", I doubt the debate will get anywhere. It makes Remain voters feel like they lost because they are more pure than Leave, so let them think it, everyone needs consolation
    Indeed I've read several posts on this thread who basically want to characterise people who have concerns about immigration as automatically racists and effectively seek to cancel them and their views as, of course , no further argument is necessary. I was a remain voter myself but can so easily understand why the argument was lost when so many on the left throw out the word bigot or racist to any who dare to question the left liberal view of the world. Four years on from the vote and they simply do not get it.
    There absolutely were people hurling the racism word around and they still are. And yes, every racist voted for Brexit. But as I keep pointing out the majority of people who voted leave because of migration weren't against any given race - just bigoted against anyone who isn't them. Whether the other is Asians, Blacks, Poles, people from the next county, people from the next village it doesn't matter, they were given the opportunity to STOP whatever it is they personally wanted to stop.

    So they voted to leave the EU. To stop people not from the EU from coming here. Or to stop people not from their town coming here. Its nonsensical, but whoever said reasons for voting had to be.
    My Uncle voted to stop foreign takeaways. This includes fried chicken and pizza. Anything other than fish and chips has a funny smell and should be banned.
    He is very insistent on this.
  • Options
    contrariancontrarian Posts: 5,818
    Trafalgar strikes again....

    Biden just 1.5% ahead in Wisconsin with almost 3% undecided!

  • Options
    Hospital admissions not looking good at all
  • Options
    eekeek Posts: 25,020

    The mayors of Liverpool City Region, along with council leaders, are asking the government to review the decision to close gyms and leisure centres.

    Well of course they are. They've found out that "Tier 3" isn't a fixed list of things. So they want the special T3 variant that their neighbours have got.
    Its bloody stupid. T3 should be T3, not some sort of new Brexit negotiation each time.
    The issue is once again Boris and co who while forcing Lancashire to move to tier 3 agreed to concessions following the publicity around Gyms earlier that week.

    Hence the second area in Tier 3 has lesser restrictions than the first area in tier 3.
  • Options
    not_on_firenot_on_fire Posts: 4,341

    Trafalgar strikes again....

    Biden just 1.5% ahead in Wisconsin with almost 3% undecided!

    OK, so using the @rcs1000 rule, Biden is 7.5% ahead in Wisconsin.
  • Options
    dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 28,013

    Health Secretary Matt Hancock is due to give a statement relating to Covid-19 in the House of Commons shortly.

    It is not known what will be announced, but it comes amid ongoing negotiations between Greater Manchester and central government over moving the region to the highest tier of restrictions.

    No agreement reached. Government ended the discussion.
  • Options
    @Malmesbury - I don't know if you saw my post yesterday but how are you calculating your R rate? The message from your calcs seems to be that things are starting to improve in a lot of places but I'm wondering if that is partly because recent cases are missing from the data set
  • Options
    kinabalukinabalu Posts: 39,333

    isam said:
    Presumably the two parties Hitchens has in mind are Telegraph Readers and Sunday Telegraph Readers?
    He means AOC Dems v Trump Reps, Owen Jones v Douglas Murray, Clive Lewis v Nigel Farage, Rejoin v No Deal ... our politics formally recast along polarized binary culture war ("values") lines.

    Like America.
  • Options
    Roy_G_BivRoy_G_Biv Posts: 998
    dixiedean said:

    felix said:

    isam said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Nigelb said:

    (FPT)

    Cicero said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Who is the most left-wing person on PB?

    @Dura_Ace by a mile
    I think I'm the only Revolutionary Leninist, Steiner/Vallentyne Left-Libertarian, Leeds Utd Fan.

    Democracy = Social Fascism

    WACCOE
    I'm getting increasingly concerned at some posters on here playing fast and loose with democracy.

    We have this post, which I can't say entirely surprises me coming from you, and we had @IanB2 ostensibly a centrist and ex-LD flirting with benign dictatorship as being the best form of government the other day.

    I think you both need to go back to the history books and read about what life in non-democratic societies is like.
    Unfortunately I fear that the peoples of what increasingly looks like "the former" UK are not going to enjoy finding out a whole lot more about "the lessons of history" than they can really cope with.

    At every point since the historic wrong turn of Brexit, the far right has doubled down, so now the "impossible" "failure" of a "no deal" is now an odds on outcome. The consequences for our nouveau pauvre PM may include finding that the Eton College where he wants to send his son has been burned down by an army of furious and unemployed farmers, fisherfolk and even financiers.

    Certainly, having won the referendum by a whisker under extremely dubious circumstances, the winners could have reached out to the losers and created a compromise- EEA, EFTA, whatever- but they chose four years of uncertainty, rejecting any kind of compromise deal whatsoever as a BINO (not withstanding that these compromises were actually the only solution that people could be said to have "voted for") and then grabbing the tiller and steering us straight towards an economically half witted no deal, while lying all the way.

    If the break up of the UK is indeed the result of "no deal", then the successor republics will probably prosecute the ****s responsible.

    "Crucifixion is too good for them"

    I do study history and the future of what is currently "the UK", both economically and politically, will not be fixed in my lifetime if no deal goes through. Not sure how many UK citizens have taken citizenship elsewhere, but a trickle may well become a flood and I`m contemplating joining them. We know how this story ends...
    Top post, Cicero.
    Possibly hyperbolic; possibly not.
    For all the comments about brexiteers should have reached out to remainers and compromised....where was this reaching out by the pro eu people in the 40 years of membership? You called them fruitcakes and closet loons for most of that time and told to suck it up so I can understand why they feel no need to reach out.

    As you sow you shall reap seem apposite
    There is plenty of blame to go round on both sides.

    The depressing part is the discussion never seem to move on.

    We just seem to fall back in telling each other to go fuck ourselves.
    The conversation is shaped by events. At present, we have a large number of "experts" (I know) saying that things could be difficult in January if we don't have a deal.

    Many people (shout out to our Phil) say: "bring it on".

    Is it any wonder that sensible people despair.

    And oh from FPT when I pointed out how a large number of people was motivated to vote Brexit because of a dislike of foreigners? They were.
    Very reasonable until your last paragraph.

    You can both like and admire foreigners and want controls on immigration at the same time.

    Indeed, it might be to ensure safe continuation and consent for acceptance of the former that you see it as so important to ensure the latter.
    I think it is uncontentious to say that a dislike of foreigners was one of the main, if not the main motivating factor for a large number of people who voted Leave.

    Not "all" as @Philip_Thompson has confirmed, but for a large number.
    That wasn’t my experience from knocking on doors, although I certainly found some (10-15%) who put it like that.

    Bear in mind that not all the working class use the flowery, nuanced and carefully caveated language that the professional middle classes do. Many use the unambiguous language of the shop floor and don’t call a spade a shovel when they’re feeling frustrated.

    It doesn’t make them all bigots, and an experienced canvasser can tell the difference. It’s the difference between a Gillian Duffy to a Nick Griffin, for example.
    It may not be all, but it was enough.
    No it wasn't.
    I think 10-15% is definately more than 3.5%

    3.5% was not enough. 50%+1 was enough.
    Are you saying that 50%+1 were motivated by the anti foreignor vote?
    No. I'm saying 50%+1 was the threshold for winning and the anti foreigner vote was nowhere close to that.

    Remain won over 48% and lost. If Leave was just an anti foreigner vote then it would have lost massively. The anti foreigner vote was not enough to win the referendum.
    As long as people mischaracterise a dislike of competing for low wages and state resources with an influx of immigrants as "a dislike of foreigners", I doubt the debate will get anywhere. It makes Remain voters feel like they lost because they are more pure than Leave, so let them think it, everyone needs consolation
    Indeed I've read several posts on this thread who basically want to characterise people who have concerns about immigration as automatically racists and effectively seek to cancel them and their views as, of course , no further argument is necessary. I was a remain voter myself but can so easily understand why the argument was lost when so many on the left throw out the word bigot or racist to any who dare to question the left liberal view of the world. Four years on from the vote and they simply do not get it.
    There absolutely were people hurling the racism word around and they still are. And yes, every racist voted for Brexit. But as I keep pointing out the majority of people who voted leave because of migration weren't against any given race - just bigoted against anyone who isn't them. Whether the other is Asians, Blacks, Poles, people from the next county, people from the next village it doesn't matter, they were given the opportunity to STOP whatever it is they personally wanted to stop.

    So they voted to leave the EU. To stop people not from the EU from coming here. Or to stop people not from their town coming here. Its nonsensical, but whoever said reasons for voting had to be.
    My Uncle voted to stop foreign takeaways. This includes fried chicken and pizza. Anything other than fish and chips has a funny smell and should be banned.
    He is very insistent on this.
    He'd like pizza if only you gave him a slice with pineapple on it. King of toppings. Pineapple forever.
  • Options
    NigelbNigelb Posts: 62,797
    As attacks go, it’s almost up there with comparing him to Mr Rogers...

    https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1318156453035839488
  • Options
    dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 28,013
    Hancock's Half Hour is go.
  • Options
    IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    felix said:

    isam said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Nigelb said:

    (FPT)

    Cicero said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Who is the most left-wing person on PB?

    @Dura_Ace by a mile
    I think I'm the only Revolutionary Leninist, Steiner/Vallentyne Left-Libertarian, Leeds Utd Fan.

    Democracy = Social Fascism

    WACCOE
    I'm getting increasingly concerned at some posters on here playing fast and loose with democracy.

    We have this post, which I can't say entirely surprises me coming from you, and we had @IanB2 ostensibly a centrist and ex-LD flirting with benign dictatorship as being the best form of government the other day.

    I think you both need to go back to the history books and read about what life in non-democratic societies is like.
    Unfortunately I fear that the peoples of what increasingly looks like "the former" UK are not going to enjoy finding out a whole lot more about "the lessons of history" than they can really cope with.

    At every point since the historic wrong turn of Brexit, the far right has doubled down, so now the "impossible" "failure" of a "no deal" is now an odds on outcome. The consequences for our nouveau pauvre PM may include finding that the Eton College where he wants to send his son has been burned down by an army of furious and unemployed farmers, fisherfolk and even financiers.

    Certainly, having won the referendum by a whisker under extremely dubious circumstances, the winners could have reached out to the losers and created a compromise- EEA, EFTA, whatever- but they chose four years of uncertainty, rejecting any kind of compromise deal whatsoever as a BINO (not withstanding that these compromises were actually the only solution that people could be said to have "voted for") and then grabbing the tiller and steering us straight towards an economically half witted no deal, while lying all the way.

    If the break up of the UK is indeed the result of "no deal", then the successor republics will probably prosecute the ****s responsible.

    "Crucifixion is too good for them"

    I do study history and the future of what is currently "the UK", both economically and politically, will not be fixed in my lifetime if no deal goes through. Not sure how many UK citizens have taken citizenship elsewhere, but a trickle may well become a flood and I`m contemplating joining them. We know how this story ends...
    Top post, Cicero.
    Possibly hyperbolic; possibly not.
    For all the comments about brexiteers should have reached out to remainers and compromised....where was this reaching out by the pro eu people in the 40 years of membership? You called them fruitcakes and closet loons for most of that time and told to suck it up so I can understand why they feel no need to reach out.

    As you sow you shall reap seem apposite
    There is plenty of blame to go round on both sides.

    The depressing part is the discussion never seem to move on.

    We just seem to fall back in telling each other to go fuck ourselves.
    The conversation is shaped by events. At present, we have a large number of "experts" (I know) saying that things could be difficult in January if we don't have a deal.

    Many people (shout out to our Phil) say: "bring it on".

    Is it any wonder that sensible people despair.

    And oh from FPT when I pointed out how a large number of people was motivated to vote Brexit because of a dislike of foreigners? They were.
    Very reasonable until your last paragraph.

    You can both like and admire foreigners and want controls on immigration at the same time.

    Indeed, it might be to ensure safe continuation and consent for acceptance of the former that you see it as so important to ensure the latter.
    I think it is uncontentious to say that a dislike of foreigners was one of the main, if not the main motivating factor for a large number of people who voted Leave.

    Not "all" as @Philip_Thompson has confirmed, but for a large number.
    That wasn’t my experience from knocking on doors, although I certainly found some (10-15%) who put it like that.

    Bear in mind that not all the working class use the flowery, nuanced and carefully caveated language that the professional middle classes do. Many use the unambiguous language of the shop floor and don’t call a spade a shovel when they’re feeling frustrated.

    It doesn’t make them all bigots, and an experienced canvasser can tell the difference. It’s the difference between a Gillian Duffy to a Nick Griffin, for example.
    It may not be all, but it was enough.
    No it wasn't.
    I think 10-15% is definately more than 3.5%

    3.5% was not enough. 50%+1 was enough.
    Are you saying that 50%+1 were motivated by the anti foreignor vote?
    No. I'm saying 50%+1 was the threshold for winning and the anti foreigner vote was nowhere close to that.

    Remain won over 48% and lost. If Leave was just an anti foreigner vote then it would have lost massively. The anti foreigner vote was not enough to win the referendum.
    As long as people mischaracterise a dislike of competing for low wages and state resources with an influx of immigrants as "a dislike of foreigners", I doubt the debate will get anywhere. It makes Remain voters feel like they lost because they are more pure than Leave, so let them think it, everyone needs consolation
    Indeed I've read several posts on this thread who basically want to characterise people who have concerns about immigration as automatically racists and effectively seek to cancel them and their views as, of course , no further argument is necessary. I was a remain voter myself but can so easily understand why the argument was lost when so many on the left throw out the word bigot or racist to any who dare to question the left liberal view of the world. Four years on from the vote and they simply do not get it.
    There absolutely were people hurling the racism word around and they still are. And yes, every racist voted for Brexit. But as I keep pointing out the majority of people who voted leave because of migration weren't against any given race - just bigoted against anyone who isn't them. Whether the other is Asians, Blacks, Poles, people from the next county, people from the next village it doesn't matter, they were given the opportunity to STOP whatever it is they personally wanted to stop.

    So they voted to leave the EU. To stop people not from the EU from coming here. Or to stop people not from their town coming here. Its nonsensical, but whoever said reasons for voting had to be.
    That seems an ungenerous interpretation. Is it not equally credible that they thought their town overcrowded (which being in the UK it inevitably is) and rightly thought that stopping immigration is the only practical method of reducing the inflow?
  • Options
    HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 117,164
    Nigelb said:

    As attacks go, it’s almost up there with comparing him to Mr Rogers...

    https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1318156453035839488

    Full quote: Trump told attendees in Carson City that supporters of his opponent would surrender their “future to the virus,” saying: “He’s gonna want to lockdown.”

    “He’ll listen to the scientists,” Trump added in a mocking tone before saying, “If I listened totally to the scientists, we would right now have a country that would be in a massive depression instead — we’re like a rocket ship. Take a look at the numbers.”
  • Options
    NigelbNigelb Posts: 62,797

    Trafalgar strikes again....

    Biden just 1.5% ahead in Wisconsin with almost 3% undecided!

    OK, so using the @rcs1000 rule, Biden is 7.5% ahead in Wisconsin.
    Perhaps they’re now excluding those who’ve already voted ?
  • Options
    TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 41,403
    IshmaelZ said:

    felix said:

    isam said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Nigelb said:

    (FPT)

    Cicero said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Who is the most left-wing person on PB?

    @Dura_Ace by a mile
    I think I'm the only Revolutionary Leninist, Steiner/Vallentyne Left-Libertarian, Leeds Utd Fan.

    Democracy = Social Fascism

    WACCOE
    I'm getting increasingly concerned at some posters on here playing fast and loose with democracy.

    We have this post, which I can't say entirely surprises me coming from you, and we had @IanB2 ostensibly a centrist and ex-LD flirting with benign dictatorship as being the best form of government the other day.

    I think you both need to go back to the history books and read about what life in non-democratic societies is like.
    Unfortunately I fear that the peoples of what increasingly looks like "the former" UK are not going to enjoy finding out a whole lot more about "the lessons of history" than they can really cope with.

    At every point since the historic wrong turn of Brexit, the far right has doubled down, so now the "impossible" "failure" of a "no deal" is now an odds on outcome. The consequences for our nouveau pauvre PM may include finding that the Eton College where he wants to send his son has been burned down by an army of furious and unemployed farmers, fisherfolk and even financiers.

    Certainly, having won the referendum by a whisker under extremely dubious circumstances, the winners could have reached out to the losers and created a compromise- EEA, EFTA, whatever- but they chose four years of uncertainty, rejecting any kind of compromise deal whatsoever as a BINO (not withstanding that these compromises were actually the only solution that people could be said to have "voted for") and then grabbing the tiller and steering us straight towards an economically half witted no deal, while lying all the way.

    If the break up of the UK is indeed the result of "no deal", then the successor republics will probably prosecute the ****s responsible.

    "Crucifixion is too good for them"

    I do study history and the future of what is currently "the UK", both economically and politically, will not be fixed in my lifetime if no deal goes through. Not sure how many UK citizens have taken citizenship elsewhere, but a trickle may well become a flood and I`m contemplating joining them. We know how this story ends...
    Top post, Cicero.
    Possibly hyperbolic; possibly not.
    For all the comments about brexiteers should have reached out to remainers and compromised....where was this reaching out by the pro eu people in the 40 years of membership? You called them fruitcakes and closet loons for most of that time and told to suck it up so I can understand why they feel no need to reach out.

    As you sow you shall reap seem apposite
    There is plenty of blame to go round on both sides.

    The depressing part is the discussion never seem to move on.

    We just seem to fall back in telling each other to go fuck ourselves.
    The conversation is shaped by events. At present, we have a large number of "experts" (I know) saying that things could be difficult in January if we don't have a deal.

    Many people (shout out to our Phil) say: "bring it on".

    Is it any wonder that sensible people despair.

    And oh from FPT when I pointed out how a large number of people was motivated to vote Brexit because of a dislike of foreigners? They were.
    Very reasonable until your last paragraph.

    You can both like and admire foreigners and want controls on immigration at the same time.

    Indeed, it might be to ensure safe continuation and consent for acceptance of the former that you see it as so important to ensure the latter.
    I think it is uncontentious to say that a dislike of foreigners was one of the main, if not the main motivating factor for a large number of people who voted Leave.

    Not "all" as @Philip_Thompson has confirmed, but for a large number.
    That wasn’t my experience from knocking on doors, although I certainly found some (10-15%) who put it like that.

    Bear in mind that not all the working class use the flowery, nuanced and carefully caveated language that the professional middle classes do. Many use the unambiguous language of the shop floor and don’t call a spade a shovel when they’re feeling frustrated.

    It doesn’t make them all bigots, and an experienced canvasser can tell the difference. It’s the difference between a Gillian Duffy to a Nick Griffin, for example.
    It may not be all, but it was enough.
    No it wasn't.
    I think 10-15% is definately more than 3.5%

    3.5% was not enough. 50%+1 was enough.
    Are you saying that 50%+1 were motivated by the anti foreignor vote?
    No. I'm saying 50%+1 was the threshold for winning and the anti foreigner vote was nowhere close to that.

    Remain won over 48% and lost. If Leave was just an anti foreigner vote then it would have lost massively. The anti foreigner vote was not enough to win the referendum.
    As long as people mischaracterise a dislike of competing for low wages and state resources with an influx of immigrants as "a dislike of foreigners", I doubt the debate will get anywhere. It makes Remain voters feel like they lost because they are more pure than Leave, so let them think it, everyone needs consolation
    Indeed I've read several posts on this thread who basically want to characterise people who have concerns about immigration as automatically racists and effectively seek to cancel them and their views as, of course , no further argument is necessary. I was a remain voter myself but can so easily understand why the argument was lost when so many on the left throw out the word bigot or racist to any who dare to question the left liberal view of the world. Four years on from the vote and they simply do not get it.
    There absolutely were people hurling the racism word around and they still are. And yes, every racist voted for Brexit. But as I keep pointing out the majority of people who voted leave because of migration weren't against any given race - just bigoted against anyone who isn't them. Whether the other is Asians, Blacks, Poles, people from the next county, people from the next village it doesn't matter, they were given the opportunity to STOP whatever it is they personally wanted to stop.

    So they voted to leave the EU. To stop people not from the EU from coming here. Or to stop people not from their town coming here. Its nonsensical, but whoever said reasons for voting had to be.
    That seems an ungenerous interpretation. Is it not equally credible that they thought their town overcrowded (which being in the UK it inevitably is) and rightly thought that stopping immigration is the only practical method of reducing the inflow?
    https://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/man-claims-hius-life-being-ruined-by-immigration-but-cant-explain-how-20170227122932

  • Options

    This is hilarious:

    https://twitter.com/tnewtondunn/status/1318204541070942210

    Apparently now it's a great British triumph that the EU are refusing to play silly games and haven't walked out in a huff, but are patiently repeating what they've said all along.

    Any hope of the Brexiteers falling for this?

    Yes as long as they get fish, and they will, they will be happy and triumphalist for a few months. Then someone from the brexit harder camp will find a new issue to rail against.
    You've discovered the ratchet effect. It worked against Eurosceptics for over 40 years, so turnabout is fair play.
  • Options
    contrariancontrarian Posts: 5,818
    Nigelb said:

    As attacks go, it’s almost up there with comparing him to Mr Rogers...

    https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1318156453035839488

    I read a commentary the US growth will be positive thru 2020 if Trump wins

    The UK? 10% down at least. The EU?
  • Options

    Trafalgar strikes again....

    Biden just 1.5% ahead in Wisconsin with almost 3% undecided!

    OK, so using the @rcs1000 rule, Biden is 7.5% ahead in Wisconsin.
    If Trafalgar were that consistent it might be of some help. Rasmussen, for example, has a well-known GoP lean but it IS consistent, so all you have to do is lop about five points off their Trump figure every time and you have a reliable guide.

    As we now know from Robert's sterling efforts, Trafalgar is a one-man operation; he cribs results from others and then adjusts them as he fancies.

    You may as well pull numbers from a hat.
  • Options
    MrEdMrEd Posts: 5,578
    HYUFD said:

    Nigelb said:

    As attacks go, it’s almost up there with comparing him to Mr Rogers...

    https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1318156453035839488

    Full quote: Trump told attendees in Carson City that supporters of his opponent would surrender their “future to the virus,” saying: “He’s gonna want to lockdown.”

    “He’ll listen to the scientists,” Trump added in a mocking tone before saying, “If I listened totally to the scientists, we would right now have a country that would be in a massive depression instead — we’re like a rocket ship. Take a look at the numbers.”
    Yes, slightly different slant when put in the full context.

    A playing to the Twitter crowd tweet
  • Options
    Roy_G_BivRoy_G_Biv Posts: 998
    IshmaelZ said:

    felix said:

    isam said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Nigelb said:

    (FPT)

    Cicero said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Who is the most left-wing person on PB?

    @Dura_Ace by a mile
    I think I'm the only Revolutionary Leninist, Steiner/Vallentyne Left-Libertarian, Leeds Utd Fan.

    Democracy = Social Fascism

    WACCOE
    I'm getting increasingly concerned at some posters on here playing fast and loose with democracy.

    We have this post, which I can't say entirely surprises me coming from you, and we had @IanB2 ostensibly a centrist and ex-LD flirting with benign dictatorship as being the best form of government the other day.

    I think you both need to go back to the history books and read about what life in non-democratic societies is like.
    Unfortunately I fear that the peoples of what increasingly looks like "the former" UK are not going to enjoy finding out a whole lot more about "the lessons of history" than they can really cope with.

    At every point since the historic wrong turn of Brexit, the far right has doubled down, so now the "impossible" "failure" of a "no deal" is now an odds on outcome. The consequences for our nouveau pauvre PM may include finding that the Eton College where he wants to send his son has been burned down by an army of furious and unemployed farmers, fisherfolk and even financiers.

    Certainly, having won the referendum by a whisker under extremely dubious circumstances, the winners could have reached out to the losers and created a compromise- EEA, EFTA, whatever- but they chose four years of uncertainty, rejecting any kind of compromise deal whatsoever as a BINO (not withstanding that these compromises were actually the only solution that people could be said to have "voted for") and then grabbing the tiller and steering us straight towards an economically half witted no deal, while lying all the way.

    If the break up of the UK is indeed the result of "no deal", then the successor republics will probably prosecute the ****s responsible.

    "Crucifixion is too good for them"

    I do study history and the future of what is currently "the UK", both economically and politically, will not be fixed in my lifetime if no deal goes through. Not sure how many UK citizens have taken citizenship elsewhere, but a trickle may well become a flood and I`m contemplating joining them. We know how this story ends...
    Top post, Cicero.
    Possibly hyperbolic; possibly not.
    For all the comments about brexiteers should have reached out to remainers and compromised....where was this reaching out by the pro eu people in the 40 years of membership? You called them fruitcakes and closet loons for most of that time and told to suck it up so I can understand why they feel no need to reach out.

    As you sow you shall reap seem apposite
    There is plenty of blame to go round on both sides.

    The depressing part is the discussion never seem to move on.

    We just seem to fall back in telling each other to go fuck ourselves.
    The conversation is shaped by events. At present, we have a large number of "experts" (I know) saying that things could be difficult in January if we don't have a deal.

    Many people (shout out to our Phil) say: "bring it on".

    Is it any wonder that sensible people despair.

    And oh from FPT when I pointed out how a large number of people was motivated to vote Brexit because of a dislike of foreigners? They were.
    Very reasonable until your last paragraph.

    You can both like and admire foreigners and want controls on immigration at the same time.

    Indeed, it might be to ensure safe continuation and consent for acceptance of the former that you see it as so important to ensure the latter.
    I think it is uncontentious to say that a dislike of foreigners was one of the main, if not the main motivating factor for a large number of people who voted Leave.

    Not "all" as @Philip_Thompson has confirmed, but for a large number.
    That wasn’t my experience from knocking on doors, although I certainly found some (10-15%) who put it like that.

    Bear in mind that not all the working class use the flowery, nuanced and carefully caveated language that the professional middle classes do. Many use the unambiguous language of the shop floor and don’t call a spade a shovel when they’re feeling frustrated.

    It doesn’t make them all bigots, and an experienced canvasser can tell the difference. It’s the difference between a Gillian Duffy to a Nick Griffin, for example.
    It may not be all, but it was enough.
    No it wasn't.
    I think 10-15% is definately more than 3.5%

    3.5% was not enough. 50%+1 was enough.
    Are you saying that 50%+1 were motivated by the anti foreignor vote?
    No. I'm saying 50%+1 was the threshold for winning and the anti foreigner vote was nowhere close to that.

    Remain won over 48% and lost. If Leave was just an anti foreigner vote then it would have lost massively. The anti foreigner vote was not enough to win the referendum.
    As long as people mischaracterise a dislike of competing for low wages and state resources with an influx of immigrants as "a dislike of foreigners", I doubt the debate will get anywhere. It makes Remain voters feel like they lost because they are more pure than Leave, so let them think it, everyone needs consolation
    Indeed I've read several posts on this thread who basically want to characterise people who have concerns about immigration as automatically racists and effectively seek to cancel them and their views as, of course , no further argument is necessary. I was a remain voter myself but can so easily understand why the argument was lost when so many on the left throw out the word bigot or racist to any who dare to question the left liberal view of the world. Four years on from the vote and they simply do not get it.
    There absolutely were people hurling the racism word around and they still are. And yes, every racist voted for Brexit. But as I keep pointing out the majority of people who voted leave because of migration weren't against any given race - just bigoted against anyone who isn't them. Whether the other is Asians, Blacks, Poles, people from the next county, people from the next village it doesn't matter, they were given the opportunity to STOP whatever it is they personally wanted to stop.

    So they voted to leave the EU. To stop people not from the EU from coming here. Or to stop people not from their town coming here. Its nonsensical, but whoever said reasons for voting had to be.
    That seems an ungenerous interpretation. Is it not equally credible that they thought their town overcrowded (which being in the UK it inevitably is) and rightly thought that stopping immigration is the only practical method of reducing the inflow?
    Is there a correlation between leave vote and population density?
    I'll let you leave Gibraltar out of your analysis if you like.
  • Options
    contrariancontrarian Posts: 5,818
    dixiedean said:

    Health Secretary Matt Hancock is due to give a statement relating to Covid-19 in the House of Commons shortly.

    It is not known what will be announced, but it comes amid ongoing negotiations between Greater Manchester and central government over moving the region to the highest tier of restrictions.

    No agreement reached. Government ended the discussion.
    Wow. There really is no money left.
  • Options
    OllyTOllyT Posts: 4,921

    Trafalgar strikes again....

    Biden just 1.5% ahead in Wisconsin with almost 3% undecided!

    Did RCS's excellent article on Trafalgar completely pass you by?
  • Options
    williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 48,146

    This is hilarious:

    https://twitter.com/tnewtondunn/status/1318204541070942210

    Apparently now it's a great British triumph that the EU are refusing to play silly games and haven't walked out in a huff, but are patiently repeating what they've said all along.

    Any hope of the Brexiteers falling for this?

    Yes as long as they get fish, and they will, they will be happy and triumphalist for a few months. Then someone from the brexit harder camp will find a new issue to rail against.
    You've discovered the ratchet effect. It worked against Eurosceptics for over 40 years, so turnabout is fair play.
    No it didn't. The UK became ever more detached from the EU starting from the opt outs negotiated in the Maastricht Treaty. If there was a ratchet effect, it worked in the opposite direction.
  • Options
    FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,292
    edited October 2020
    Government still working hard to agree measures in Manchester...

    He says "talks are continuing this afternoon" with Greater Manchester and this week further discussions are planned with other areas including South Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire and Teesside.

    ....we are going to get a Brexit deal quicker than sorting out of these T3 deals.


  • Options
    MrEdMrEd Posts: 5,578

    Trafalgar strikes again....

    Biden just 1.5% ahead in Wisconsin with almost 3% undecided!

    OK, so using the @rcs1000 rule, Biden is 7.5% ahead in Wisconsin.
    If Trafalgar were that consistent it might be of some help. Rasmussen, for example, has a well-known GoP lean but it IS consistent, so all you have to do is lop about five points off their Trump figure every time and you have a reliable guide.

    As we now know from Robert's sterling efforts, Trafalgar is a one-man operation; he cribs results from others and then adjusts them as he fancies.

    You may as well pull numbers from a hat.
    I don't think you can necessarily say that. Not because he definitely isn't pulling numbers from a hat but because, while Trafalgar got some states wrong, it also did a lot better in other states than plenty of other pollsters who - by the way - have not had their methods scrutinised so much.

    If he gets it wrong this time, fine. If he doesn't, it may be well worth listening to him. Reserve judgement until there is further evidence.
  • Options

    dixiedean said:

    Health Secretary Matt Hancock is due to give a statement relating to Covid-19 in the House of Commons shortly.

    It is not known what will be announced, but it comes amid ongoing negotiations between Greater Manchester and central government over moving the region to the highest tier of restrictions.

    No agreement reached. Government ended the discussion.
    Wow. There really is no money left.
    No, not for Greater Manchester. Otoh, if you are a consultany operation with a line through to the PM......

    You can understand people being cynical.
  • Options
    OnlyLivingBoyOnlyLivingBoy Posts: 15,166

    Northern parochialism is a real thing – and it's utterly pathetic.

    It does manifest in public policy – hence why Greater Newcastle doesn't have a metro mayor but 'North of Tyne' does.

    The Gateshead councillors didn't want to merge with the city council, one minute's walk across the river.

    There's no faster way to wind up a Gatesheader than praise the "Newcastle Sage Centre"
    When I was doing work experience at BBC Manchester I went out to do a piece on the city's expanding hotel sector. Interviewing the manager of a new Premier Inn who told me all about how great it was to have this new central Manchester location. I pointed out the window down the street at the Welcome to Manchester sign and pointed out he was in Salford. Same with "Renault Manchester Trinity Way Salford" ads on the radio.

    And up here? Stockton Riverside College is in Thornaby. Durham University Queens Campus Stockton is in Thornaby. Winds our mayor up something chronic :smiley:
    Down in London, not many people will say things like, "You're not in London, you're in Wimbledon."

    Why do places like Salford and Gateshead retain such a strong separate identity to the large city that has expanded to absorb them, in a way that places once miles from London do not?
    Because the kind of people from London who say that kind of thing have mostly moved futher out to Essex or Kent where they moan about how they don't recognise London anymore cos it's full of foreigners.
  • Options
    kinabalu said:

    felix said:

    isam said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Nigelb said:

    (FPT)

    Cicero said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Who is the most left-wing person on PB?

    @Dura_Ace by a mile
    I think I'm the only Revolutionary Leninist, Steiner/Vallentyne Left-Libertarian, Leeds Utd Fan.

    Democracy = Social Fascism

    WACCOE
    I'm getting increasingly concerned at some posters on here playing fast and loose with democracy.

    We have this post, which I can't say entirely surprises me coming from you, and we had @IanB2 ostensibly a centrist and ex-LD flirting with benign dictatorship as being the best form of government the other day.

    I think you both need to go back to the history books and read about what life in non-democratic societies is like.
    Unfortunately I fear that the peoples of what increasingly looks like "the former" UK are not going to enjoy finding out a whole lot more about "the lessons of history" than they can really cope with.

    At every point since the historic wrong turn of Brexit, the far right has doubled down, so now the "impossible" "failure" of a "no deal" is now an odds on outcome. The consequences for our nouveau pauvre PM may include finding that the Eton College where he wants to send his son has been burned down by an army of furious and unemployed farmers, fisherfolk and even financiers.

    Certainly, having won the referendum by a whisker under extremely dubious circumstances, the winners could have reached out to the losers and created a compromise- EEA, EFTA, whatever- but they chose four years of uncertainty, rejecting any kind of compromise deal whatsoever as a BINO (not withstanding that these compromises were actually the only solution that people could be said to have "voted for") and then grabbing the tiller and steering us straight towards an economically half witted no deal, while lying all the way.

    If the break up of the UK is indeed the result of "no deal", then the successor republics will probably prosecute the ****s responsible.

    "Crucifixion is too good for them"

    I do study history and the future of what is currently "the UK", both economically and politically, will not be fixed in my lifetime if no deal goes through. Not sure how many UK citizens have taken citizenship elsewhere, but a trickle may well become a flood and I`m contemplating joining them. We know how this story ends...
    Top post, Cicero.
    Possibly hyperbolic; possibly not.
    For all the comments about brexiteers should have reached out to remainers and compromised....where was this reaching out by the pro eu people in the 40 years of membership? You called them fruitcakes and closet loons for most of that time and told to suck it up so I can understand why they feel no need to reach out.

    As you sow you shall reap seem apposite
    There is plenty of blame to go round on both sides.

    The depressing part is the discussion never seem to move on.

    We just seem to fall back in telling each other to go fuck ourselves.
    The conversation is shaped by events. At present, we have a large number of "experts" (I know) saying that things could be difficult in January if we don't have a deal.

    Many people (shout out to our Phil) say: "bring it on".

    Is it any wonder that sensible people despair.

    And oh from FPT when I pointed out how a large number of people was motivated to vote Brexit because of a dislike of foreigners? They were.
    Very reasonable until your last paragraph.

    You can both like and admire foreigners and want controls on immigration at the same time.

    Indeed, it might be to ensure safe continuation and consent for acceptance of the former that you see it as so important to ensure the latter.
    I think it is uncontentious to say that a dislike of foreigners was one of the main, if not the main motivating factor for a large number of people who voted Leave.

    Not "all" as @Philip_Thompson has confirmed, but for a large number.
    That wasn’t my experience from knocking on doors, although I certainly found some (10-15%) who put it like that.

    Bear in mind that not all the working class use the flowery, nuanced and carefully caveated language that the professional middle classes do. Many use the unambiguous language of the shop floor and don’t call a spade a shovel when they’re feeling frustrated.

    It doesn’t make them all bigots, and an experienced canvasser can tell the difference. It’s the difference between a Gillian Duffy to a Nick Griffin, for example.
    It may not be all, but it was enough.
    No it wasn't.
    I think 10-15% is definately more than 3.5%

    3.5% was not enough. 50%+1 was enough.
    Are you saying that 50%+1 were motivated by the anti foreignor vote?
    No. I'm saying 50%+1 was the threshold for winning and the anti foreigner vote was nowhere close to that.

    Remain won over 48% and lost. If Leave was just an anti foreigner vote then it would have lost massively. The anti foreigner vote was not enough to win the referendum.
    As long as people mischaracterise a dislike of competing for low wages and state resources with an influx of immigrants as "a dislike of foreigners", I doubt the debate will get anywhere. It makes Remain voters feel like they lost because they are more pure than Leave, so let them think it, everyone needs consolation
    Indeed I've read several posts on this thread who basically want to characterise people who have concerns about immigration as automatically racists and effectively seek to cancel them and their views as, of course , no further argument is necessary. I was a remain voter myself but can so easily understand why the argument was lost when so many on the left throw out the word bigot or racist to any who dare to question the left liberal view of the world. Four years on from the vote and they simply do not get it.
    Couple of points here Felix -

    The main source - Topping - is not on the left. Worse than that, he's a true blue Tory!

    And the assertion is not that concerns about immigration are automatically racist or xenophobic. They are clearly not. The (precise) assertion is that if you take a properly randomized sample from the large group of people who not only have concerns about immigration but are SO concerned about it that it caused them to vote Leave in 2016, you will find in that sample a considerably higher proportion of racists and xenophobes than you will in the control sample drawn similarly from the rest of the population.

    Everyone knows this. Including all Leavers with faculties.
    Its also completely irrelevant gibberish.

    It is as pathetic as suggesting that if sample a large proportion of Muslims concerned with western decadence who are SO concerned about it that they have gone to Mosques with their concerns, you will find in that sample a considerably higher proportion of Jihadists and Islamic terrorists than you will in the control sample drawn similarly from the rest of the population.

    That may be true but it says absolutely nothing meaningful and anyone who tries to tarnish the whole group of all Muslims/Leavers by insinuation is a closed-minded bigot.
  • Options
    TimTTimT Posts: 6,328
    Reads like a carbon copy of Robert's conversation with Cahaly.

    https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/10/the-pollster-who-thinks-trump-is-ahead/

    He clearly has his press line down pat.
  • Options
    IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830
    Roy_G_Biv said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    felix said:

    isam said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Nigelb said:

    (FPT)

    Cicero said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Who is the most left-wing person on PB?

    @Dura_Ace by a mile
    I think I'm the only Revolutionary Leninist, Steiner/Vallentyne Left-Libertarian, Leeds Utd Fan.

    Democracy = Social Fascism

    WACCOE
    I'm getting increasingly concerned at some posters on here playing fast and loose with democracy.

    We have this post, which I can't say entirely surprises me coming from you, and we had @IanB2 ostensibly a centrist and ex-LD flirting with benign dictatorship as being the best form of government the other day.

    I think you both need to go back to the history books and read about what life in non-democratic societies is like.
    Unfortunately I fear that the peoples of what increasingly looks like "the former" UK are not going to enjoy finding out a whole lot more about "the lessons of history" than they can really cope with.

    At every point since the historic wrong turn of Brexit, the far right has doubled down, so now the "impossible" "failure" of a "no deal" is now an odds on outcome. The consequences for our nouveau pauvre PM may include finding that the Eton College where he wants to send his son has been burned down by an army of furious and unemployed farmers, fisherfolk and even financiers.

    Certainly, having won the referendum by a whisker under extremely dubious circumstances, the winners could have reached out to the losers and created a compromise- EEA, EFTA, whatever- but they chose four years of uncertainty, rejecting any kind of compromise deal whatsoever as a BINO (not withstanding that these compromises were actually the only solution that people could be said to have "voted for") and then grabbing the tiller and steering us straight towards an economically half witted no deal, while lying all the way.

    If the break up of the UK is indeed the result of "no deal", then the successor republics will probably prosecute the ****s responsible.

    "Crucifixion is too good for them"

    I do study history and the future of what is currently "the UK", both economically and politically, will not be fixed in my lifetime if no deal goes through. Not sure how many UK citizens have taken citizenship elsewhere, but a trickle may well become a flood and I`m contemplating joining them. We know how this story ends...
    Top post, Cicero.
    Possibly hyperbolic; possibly not.
    For all the comments about brexiteers should have reached out to remainers and compromised....where was this reaching out by the pro eu people in the 40 years of membership? You called them fruitcakes and closet loons for most of that time and told to suck it up so I can understand why they feel no need to reach out.

    As you sow you shall reap seem apposite
    There is plenty of blame to go round on both sides.

    The depressing part is the discussion never seem to move on.

    We just seem to fall back in telling each other to go fuck ourselves.
    The conversation is shaped by events. At present, we have a large number of "experts" (I know) saying that things could be difficult in January if we don't have a deal.

    Many people (shout out to our Phil) say: "bring it on".

    Is it any wonder that sensible people despair.

    And oh from FPT when I pointed out how a large number of people was motivated to vote Brexit because of a dislike of foreigners? They were.
    Very reasonable until your last paragraph.

    You can both like and admire foreigners and want controls on immigration at the same time.

    Indeed, it might be to ensure safe continuation and consent for acceptance of the former that you see it as so important to ensure the latter.
    I think it is uncontentious to say that a dislike of foreigners was one of the main, if not the main motivating factor for a large number of people who voted Leave.

    Not "all" as @Philip_Thompson has confirmed, but for a large number.
    That wasn’t my experience from knocking on doors, although I certainly found some (10-15%) who put it like that.

    Bear in mind that not all the working class use the flowery, nuanced and carefully caveated language that the professional middle classes do. Many use the unambiguous language of the shop floor and don’t call a spade a shovel when they’re feeling frustrated.

    It doesn’t make them all bigots, and an experienced canvasser can tell the difference. It’s the difference between a Gillian Duffy to a Nick Griffin, for example.
    It may not be all, but it was enough.
    No it wasn't.
    I think 10-15% is definately more than 3.5%

    3.5% was not enough. 50%+1 was enough.
    Are you saying that 50%+1 were motivated by the anti foreignor vote?
    No. I'm saying 50%+1 was the threshold for winning and the anti foreigner vote was nowhere close to that.

    Remain won over 48% and lost. If Leave was just an anti foreigner vote then it would have lost massively. The anti foreigner vote was not enough to win the referendum.
    As long as people mischaracterise a dislike of competing for low wages and state resources with an influx of immigrants as "a dislike of foreigners", I doubt the debate will get anywhere. It makes Remain voters feel like they lost because they are more pure than Leave, so let them think it, everyone needs consolation
    Indeed I've read several posts on this thread who basically want to characterise people who have concerns about immigration as automatically racists and effectively seek to cancel them and their views as, of course , no further argument is necessary. I was a remain voter myself but can so easily understand why the argument was lost when so many on the left throw out the word bigot or racist to any who dare to question the left liberal view of the world. Four years on from the vote and they simply do not get it.
    There absolutely were people hurling the racism word around and they still are. And yes, every racist voted for Brexit. But as I keep pointing out the majority of people who voted leave because of migration weren't against any given race - just bigoted against anyone who isn't them. Whether the other is Asians, Blacks, Poles, people from the next county, people from the next village it doesn't matter, they were given the opportunity to STOP whatever it is they personally wanted to stop.

    So they voted to leave the EU. To stop people not from the EU from coming here. Or to stop people not from their town coming here. Its nonsensical, but whoever said reasons for voting had to be.
    That seems an ungenerous interpretation. Is it not equally credible that they thought their town overcrowded (which being in the UK it inevitably is) and rightly thought that stopping immigration is the only practical method of reducing the inflow?
    Is there a correlation between leave vote and population density?
    I'll let you leave Gibraltar out of your analysis if you like.
    The test would be excess of actual over optimum density, not the raw number. And I don't know, but as you point out at least the hypothesis is testable, as wellas being less ungenerous and snobbish than the rival one.
  • Options
    HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 117,164
    edited October 2020

    Trafalgar strikes again....

    Biden just 1.5% ahead in Wisconsin with almost 3% undecided!

    So Trafalgar at the moment has Biden picking up Pennsylvania, where he was born, more narrowly picking up Wisconsin and Trump narrowly holding Michigan.

    On that basis Trump would win the EC by the narrowest of margins most likely if you believe Trafalgar.

    https://twitter.com/RobertCahaly/status/1316000421085933568?s=20

    https://twitter.com/RobertCahaly/status/1318210619049496577?s=20


    https://twitter.com/RobertCahaly/status/1317086523477659648?s=20

  • Options
    contrariancontrarian Posts: 5,818
    OllyT said:

    Trafalgar strikes again....

    Biden just 1.5% ahead in Wisconsin with almost 3% undecided!

    Did RCS's excellent article on Trafalgar completely pass you by?
    What didn't pass me by is how accurate Trafalgar were last time around. Meanwhile many of the pollsters most people on here cling to were a mile out.

  • Options
    NigelbNigelb Posts: 62,797
    HYUFD said:

    Nigelb said:

    As attacks go, it’s almost up there with comparing him to Mr Rogers...

    https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1318156453035839488

    Full quote: Trump told attendees in Carson City that supporters of his opponent would surrender their “future to the virus,” saying: “He’s gonna want to lockdown.”

    “He’ll listen to the scientists,” Trump added in a mocking tone before saying, “If I listened totally to the scientists, we would right now have a country that would be in a massive depression instead — we’re like a rocket ship. Take a look at the numbers.”
    You’re still not selling it.
  • Options
    IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830
    Who is this replying to hancock?
  • Options
    OnlyLivingBoyOnlyLivingBoy Posts: 15,166
    HYUFD said:

    Trafalgar strikes again....

    Biden just 1.5% ahead in Wisconsin with almost 3% undecided!

    So Trafalgar at the moment has Biden picking up Pennsylvania, where he was born, more narrowly picking up Wisconsin and Trump narrowly holding Michigan.

    On that basis Trump would win the EC by the narrowest of margins most likely if you believe Trafalgar.

    https://twitter.com/RobertCahaly/status/1316000421085933568?s=20

    https://twitter.com/RobertCahaly/status/1318210619049496577?s=20


    https://twitter.com/RobertCahaly/status/1317086523477659648?s=20

    I call bullshit on the basis of the guy's bow tie.
  • Options
    Peter_the_PunterPeter_the_Punter Posts: 13,350
    edited October 2020
    HYUFD said:

    Nigelb said:

    As attacks go, it’s almost up there with comparing him to Mr Rogers...

    https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1318156453035839488

    Full quote: Trump told attendees in Carson City that supporters of his opponent would surrender their “future to the virus,” saying: “He’s gonna want to lockdown.”

    “He’ll listen to the scientists,” Trump added in a mocking tone before saying, “If I listened totally to the scientists, we would right now have a country that would be in a massive depression instead — we’re like a rocket ship. Take a look at the numbers.”
    If he had listened to the scientists, the USA would have had a three month period of lockdown followed by a gradual relaxing of restrictions. It would have been one of the most successful countries in the world in dealing with the pandemic, like it's near-neighbour Canada. Trump would have been hailed as a hero and would now be storming to a landslide victory.

    For those who regard Trump as a threat to democracy in the USA if not the whole world, it was a near miss.
  • Options
    HYUFD said:

    Trafalgar strikes again....

    Biden just 1.5% ahead in Wisconsin with almost 3% undecided!

    So Trafalgar at the moment has Biden picking up Pennsylvania, more narrowly picking up Wisconsin and Trump narrowly holding Michigan.

    On that basis Trump would win the EC by the narrowest of margins most likely if you believe Trafalgar.

    https://twitter.com/RobertCahaly/status/1316000421085933568?s=20

    https://twitter.com/RobertCahaly/status/1318210619049496577?s=20


    https://twitter.com/RobertCahaly/status/1317086523477659648?s=20

    Looks like an attempt by a partisan quack to encourage Trump supporters to think there is still the possibility of their man winning and to shore up the vote. Possible unintended consequence might be to scare the shit out those who hate him and get them to come out in larger numbers to vote Biden
  • Options
    CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 59,787
    IshmaelZ said:

    Who is this replying to hancock?

    Jonathan Ashworth MP (Leicester South, Labour (Co-op)) Shadow SoS for Health


  • Options
    IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    IshmaelZ said:

    Who is this replying to hancock?

    Jonathan Ashworth MP (Leicester South, Labour (Co-op)) Shadow SoS for Health
    Thank you.
  • Options
    contrariancontrarian Posts: 5,818
    HYUFD said:

    Trafalgar strikes again....

    Biden just 1.5% ahead in Wisconsin with almost 3% undecided!

    So Trafalgar at the moment has Biden picking up Pennsylvania, where he was born, more narrowly picking up Wisconsin and Trump narrowly holding Michigan.

    On that basis Trump would win the EC by the narrowest of margins most likely if you believe Trafalgar.

    https://twitter.com/RobertCahaly/status/1316000421085933568?s=20

    https://twitter.com/RobertCahaly/status/1318210619049496577?s=20


    https://twitter.com/RobertCahaly/status/1317086523477659648?s=20

    Yebbut look at undecided and other.

    On a knife edge I reckon. Though i think Biden wins Penn.
  • Options
    Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 8,846

    isam said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Nigelb said:

    (FPT)

    Cicero said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Who is the most left-wing person on PB?

    @Dura_Ace by a mile
    I think I'm the only Revolutionary Leninist, Steiner/Vallentyne Left-Libertarian, Leeds Utd Fan.

    Democracy = Social Fascism

    WACCOE
    I'm getting increasingly concerned at some posters on here playing fast and loose with democracy.

    We have this post, which I can't say entirely surprises me coming from you, and we had @IanB2 ostensibly a centrist and ex-LD flirting with benign dictatorship as being the best form of government the other day.

    I think you both need to go back to the history books and read about what life in non-democratic societies is like.
    Unfortunately I fear that the peoples of what increasingly looks like "the former" UK are not going to enjoy finding out a whole lot more about "the lessons of history" than they can really cope with.

    At every point since the historic wrong turn of Brexit, the far right has doubled down, so now the "impossible" "failure" of a "no deal" is now an odds on outcome. The consequences for our nouveau pauvre PM may include finding that the Eton College where he wants to send his son has been burned down by an army of furious and unemployed farmers, fisherfolk and even financiers.

    Certainly, having won the referendum by a whisker under extremely dubious circumstances, the winners could have reached out to the losers and created a compromise- EEA, EFTA, whatever- but they chose four years of uncertainty, rejecting any kind of compromise deal whatsoever as a BINO (not withstanding that these compromises were actually the only solution that people could be said to have "voted for") and then grabbing the tiller and steering us straight towards an economically half witted no deal, while lying all the way.

    If the break up of the UK is indeed the result of "no deal", then the successor republics will probably prosecute the ****s responsible.

    "Crucifixion is too good for them"

    I do study history and the future of what is currently "the UK", both economically and politically, will not be fixed in my lifetime if no deal goes through. Not sure how many UK citizens have taken citizenship elsewhere, but a trickle may well become a flood and I`m contemplating joining them. We know how this story ends...
    Top post, Cicero.
    Possibly hyperbolic; possibly not.
    For all the comments about brexiteers should have reached out to remainers and compromised....where was this reaching out by the pro eu people in the 40 years of membership? You called them fruitcakes and closet loons for most of that time and told to suck it up so I can understand why they feel no need to reach out.

    As you sow you shall reap seem apposite
    There is plenty of blame to go round on both sides.

    The depressing part is the discussion never seem to move on.

    We just seem to fall back in telling each other to go fuck ourselves.
    The conversation is shaped by events. At present, we have a large number of "experts" (I know) saying that things could be difficult in January if we don't have a deal.

    Many people (shout out to our Phil) say: "bring it on".

    Is it any wonder that sensible people despair.

    And oh from FPT when I pointed out how a large number of people was motivated to vote Brexit because of a dislike of foreigners? They were.
    Very reasonable until your last paragraph.

    You can both like and admire foreigners and want controls on immigration at the same time.

    Indeed, it might be to ensure safe continuation and consent for acceptance of the former that you see it as so important to ensure the latter.
    I think it is uncontentious to say that a dislike of foreigners was one of the main, if not the main motivating factor for a large number of people who voted Leave.

    Not "all" as @Philip_Thompson has confirmed, but for a large number.
    That wasn’t my experience from knocking on doors, although I certainly found some (10-15%) who put it like that.

    Bear in mind that not all the working class use the flowery, nuanced and carefully caveated language that the professional middle classes do. Many use the unambiguous language of the shop floor and don’t call a spade a shovel when they’re feeling frustrated.

    It doesn’t make them all bigots, and an experienced canvasser can tell the difference. It’s the difference between a Gillian Duffy to a Nick Griffin, for example.
    It may not be all, but it was enough.
    No it wasn't.
    I think 10-15% is definately more than 3.5%

    3.5% was not enough. 50%+1 was enough.
    Are you saying that 50%+1 were motivated by the anti foreignor vote?
    No. I'm saying 50%+1 was the threshold for winning and the anti foreigner vote was nowhere close to that.

    Remain won over 48% and lost. If Leave was just an anti foreigner vote then it would have lost massively. The anti foreigner vote was not enough to win the referendum.
    As long as people mischaracterise a dislike of competing for low wages and state resources with an influx of immigrants as "a dislike of foreigners", I doubt the debate will get anywhere. It makes Remain voters feel like they lost because they are more pure than Leave, so let them think it, everyone needs consolation
    You make a fair point, but no-one seemed to ask why the UK, in particular, has low wages and low state resources. Or why that's the EU's fault.

    I know the response will be foreigners are lowering wages. They might be in London and the big cities. They ain't round here. The EU didn't shift manufacturing abroad. I wonder about the political leanings of the Boards of all the companies that did. But if manufacturing and heavy industry leaving the UK is an inevitable side effect of globalisation, why weren't the left behind communities, and the ex-mining ones, supported instead of being left to rot? I grew up in the 80s and 90s and until I moved away in the late 90s, just as New Labour came in, I didn't realise how badly areas like the one I grew up in had been hung out to dry.
    The eu didn't shift jobs abroad?

    Cadbury moved a factory to poland with an eu grant
    https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/anger-cadbury-makes-dairy-milk-12457521

    Ford transit moved to turkey using an EU loan
    http://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/10026411.Focus_on_Ford__The___80m_EU_loan_for_Ford_s_Turkish_Transit_plant/

    Peugeot moved its factory from Ryton to Slovakia with eu support
    https://www.coventrytelegraph.net/news/look-peugeots-ryton-factory-closed-12298655

    British armies Ajax vehicles been built in spain at request of the eu to support spanish jobs
    https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/british-armys-new-fighting-vehicles-7928358
    https://ec.europa.eu/growth/sectors/defence_en

    just to name a few
  • Options
    StockyStocky Posts: 9,736
    edited October 2020
    TimT said:

    Reads like a carbon copy of Robert's conversation with Cahaly.

    https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/10/the-pollster-who-thinks-trump-is-ahead/

    He clearly has his press line down pat.

    Very interesting and a tad worrying. He says that his sample sizes are always more than 1000. So more than a one-man operation obviously.

    He says:
    “conservatives are less likely to participate in polls in general” ... “We see a five-to-one refusal rate among conservatives” ... “you’ve got to work very hard to get a fair representation of conservatives, when you do any kind of a survey.”

    I`ve often wondered about polls in general for this very reason. Conservatives and libertarians are less likely to be bothered to participate than liberals and the left. But I`ve assumed that polls routinely correct for this?
  • Options

    This is hilarious:

    https://twitter.com/tnewtondunn/status/1318204541070942210

    Apparently now it's a great British triumph that the EU are refusing to play silly games and haven't walked out in a huff, but are patiently repeating what they've said all along.

    Any hope of the Brexiteers falling for this?

    Yes as long as they get fish, and they will, they will be happy and triumphalist for a few months. Then someone from the brexit harder camp will find a new issue to rail against.
    You've discovered the ratchet effect. It worked against Eurosceptics for over 40 years, so turnabout is fair play.
    No it didn't. The UK became ever more detached from the EU starting from the opt outs negotiated in the Maastricht Treaty. If there was a ratchet effect, it worked in the opposite direction.
    We may have been more detached from the EU but we were still more integrated into the EU than we were in the past. So we were still ratcheting only in one direction, just at a different pace, hence the phrase "two speed Europe". There were two speeds but only one direction.
  • Options
    Roy_G_BivRoy_G_Biv Posts: 998
    IshmaelZ said:

    Roy_G_Biv said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    felix said:

    isam said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Nigelb said:

    (FPT)

    Cicero said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Who is the most left-wing person on PB?

    @Dura_Ace by a mile
    I think I'm the only Revolutionary Leninist, Steiner/Vallentyne Left-Libertarian, Leeds Utd Fan.

    Democracy = Social Fascism

    WACCOE
    I'm getting increasingly concerned at some posters on here playing fast and loose with democracy.

    We have this post, which I can't say entirely surprises me coming from you, and we had @IanB2 ostensibly a centrist and ex-LD flirting with benign dictatorship as being the best form of government the other day.

    I think you both need to go back to the history books and read about what life in non-democratic societies is like.
    Unfortunately I fear that the peoples of what increasingly looks like "the former" UK are not going to enjoy finding out a whole lot more about "the lessons of history" than they can really cope with.

    At every point since the historic wrong turn of Brexit, the far right has doubled down, so now the "impossible" "failure" of a "no deal" is now an odds on outcome. The consequences for our nouveau pauvre PM may include finding that the Eton College where he wants to send his son has been burned down by an army of furious and unemployed farmers, fisherfolk and even financiers.

    Certainly, having won the referendum by a whisker under extremely dubious circumstances, the winners could have reached out to the losers and created a compromise- EEA, EFTA, whatever- but they chose four years of uncertainty, rejecting any kind of compromise deal whatsoever as a BINO (not withstanding that these compromises were actually the only solution that people could be said to have "voted for") and then grabbing the tiller and steering us straight towards an economically half witted no deal, while lying all the way.

    If the break up of the UK is indeed the result of "no deal", then the successor republics will probably prosecute the ****s responsible.

    "Crucifixion is too good for them"

    I do study history and the future of what is currently "the UK", both economically and politically, will not be fixed in my lifetime if no deal goes through. Not sure how many UK citizens have taken citizenship elsewhere, but a trickle may well become a flood and I`m contemplating joining them. We know how this story ends...
    Top post, Cicero.
    Possibly hyperbolic; possibly not.
    For all the comments about brexiteers should have reached out to remainers and compromised....where was this reaching out by the pro eu people in the 40 years of membership? You called them fruitcakes and closet loons for most of that time and told to suck it up so I can understand why they feel no need to reach out.

    As you sow you shall reap seem apposite
    There is plenty of blame to go round on both sides.

    The depressing part is the discussion never seem to move on.

    We just seem to fall back in telling each other to go fuck ourselves.
    The conversation is shaped by events. At present, we have a large number of "experts" (I know) saying that things could be difficult in January if we don't have a deal.

    Many people (shout out to our Phil) say: "bring it on".

    Is it any wonder that sensible people despair.

    And oh from FPT when I pointed out how a large number of people was motivated to vote Brexit because of a dislike of foreigners? They were.
    Very reasonable until your last paragraph.

    You can both like and admire foreigners and want controls on immigration at the same time.

    Indeed, it might be to ensure safe continuation and consent for acceptance of the former that you see it as so important to ensure the latter.
    I think it is uncontentious to say that a dislike of foreigners was one of the main, if not the main motivating factor for a large number of people who voted Leave.

    Not "all" as @Philip_Thompson has confirmed, but for a large number.
    That wasn’t my experience from knocking on doors, although I certainly found some (10-15%) who put it like that.

    Bear in mind that not all the working class use the flowery, nuanced and carefully caveated language that the professional middle classes do. Many use the unambiguous language of the shop floor and don’t call a spade a shovel when they’re feeling frustrated.

    It doesn’t make them all bigots, and an experienced canvasser can tell the difference. It’s the difference between a Gillian Duffy to a Nick Griffin, for example.
    It may not be all, but it was enough.
    No it wasn't.
    I think 10-15% is definately more than 3.5%

    3.5% was not enough. 50%+1 was enough.
    Are you saying that 50%+1 were motivated by the anti foreignor vote?
    No. I'm saying 50%+1 was the threshold for winning and the anti foreigner vote was nowhere close to that.

    Remain won over 48% and lost. If Leave was just an anti foreigner vote then it would have lost massively. The anti foreigner vote was not enough to win the referendum.
    As long as people mischaracterise a dislike of competing for low wages and state resources with an influx of immigrants as "a dislike of foreigners", I doubt the debate will get anywhere. It makes Remain voters feel like they lost because they are more pure than Leave, so let them think it, everyone needs consolation
    Indeed I've read several posts on this thread who basically want to characterise people who have concerns about immigration as automatically racists and effectively seek to cancel them and their views as, of course , no further argument is necessary. I was a remain voter myself but can so easily understand why the argument was lost when so many on the left throw out the word bigot or racist to any who dare to question the left liberal view of the world. Four years on from the vote and they simply do not get it.
    There absolutely were people hurling the racism word around and they still are. And yes, every racist voted for Brexit. But as I keep pointing out the majority of people who voted leave because of migration weren't against any given race - just bigoted against anyone who isn't them. Whether the other is Asians, Blacks, Poles, people from the next county, people from the next village it doesn't matter, they were given the opportunity to STOP whatever it is they personally wanted to stop.

    So they voted to leave the EU. To stop people not from the EU from coming here. Or to stop people not from their town coming here. Its nonsensical, but whoever said reasons for voting had to be.
    That seems an ungenerous interpretation. Is it not equally credible that they thought their town overcrowded (which being in the UK it inevitably is) and rightly thought that stopping immigration is the only practical method of reducing the inflow?
    Is there a correlation between leave vote and population density?
    I'll let you leave Gibraltar out of your analysis if you like.
    The test would be excess of actual over optimum density, not the raw number. And I don't know, but as you point out at least the hypothesis is testable, as wellas being less ungenerous and snobbish than the rival one.
    I'll be honest and say that I don't know what you mean by excess and optimum density.

    I also think that leave vote is probably INVERSELY correlated with population density. I haven't checked done a rigorous analysis, but eyeballing the list ranking list of areas available here (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-36616028), gives me confidence my hunch is probably right.
  • Options
    NigelbNigelb Posts: 62,797

    HYUFD said:

    Trafalgar strikes again....

    Biden just 1.5% ahead in Wisconsin with almost 3% undecided!

    So Trafalgar at the moment has Biden picking up Pennsylvania, where he was born, more narrowly picking up Wisconsin and Trump narrowly holding Michigan.

    On that basis Trump would win the EC by the narrowest of margins most likely if you believe Trafalgar.

    https://twitter.com/RobertCahaly/status/1316000421085933568?s=20

    https://twitter.com/RobertCahaly/status/1318210619049496577?s=20


    https://twitter.com/RobertCahaly/status/1317086523477659648?s=20

    I call bullshit on the basis of the guy's bow tie.
    I note he didn’t link to Robert’s article.
  • Options
    felixfelix Posts: 15,125
    kinabalu said:

    felix said:

    isam said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Nigelb said:

    (FPT)

    Cicero said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Who is the most left-wing person on PB?

    @Dura_Ace by a mile
    I think I'm the only Revolutionary Leninist, Steiner/Vallentyne Left-Libertarian, Leeds Utd Fan.

    Democracy = Social Fascism

    WACCOE
    I'm getting increasingly concerned at some posters on here playing fast and loose with democracy.

    We have this post, which I can't say entirely surprises me coming from you, and we had @IanB2 ostensibly a centrist and ex-LD flirting with benign dictatorship as being the best form of government the other day.

    I think you both need to go back to the history books and read about what life in non-democratic societies is like.
    Unfortunately I fear that the peoples of what increasingly looks like "the former" UK are not going to enjoy finding out a whole lot more about "the lessons of history" than they can really cope with.

    At every point since the historic wrong turn of Brexit, the far right has doubled down, so now the "impossible" "failure" of a "no deal" is now an odds on outcome. The consequences for our nouveau pauvre PM may include finding that the Eton College where he wants to send his son has been burned down by an army of furious and unemployed farmers, fisherfolk and even financiers.

    Certainly, having won the referendum by a whisker under extremely dubious circumstances, the winners could have reached out to the losers and created a compromise- EEA, EFTA, whatever- but they chose four years of uncertainty, rejecting any kind of compromise deal whatsoever as a BINO (not withstanding that these compromises were actually the only solution that people could be said to have "voted for") and then grabbing the tiller and steering us straight towards an economically half witted no deal, while lying all the way.

    If the break up of the UK is indeed the result of "no deal", then the successor republics will probably prosecute the ****s responsible.

    "Crucifixion is too good for them"

    I do study history and the future of what is currently "the UK", both economically and politically, will not be fixed in my lifetime if no deal goes through. Not sure how many UK citizens have taken citizenship elsewhere, but a trickle may well become a flood and I`m contemplating joining them. We know how this story ends...
    Top post, Cicero.
    Possibly hyperbolic; possibly not.
    For all the comments about brexiteers should have reached out to remainers and compromised....where was this reaching out by the pro eu people in the 40 years of membership? You called them fruitcakes and closet loons for most of that time and told to suck it up so I can understand why they feel no need to reach out.

    As you sow you shall reap seem apposite
    There is plenty of blame to go round on both sides.

    The depressing part is the discussion never seem to move on.

    We just seem to fall back in telling each other to go fuck ourselves.
    The conversation is shaped by events. At present, we have a large number of "experts" (I know) saying that things could be difficult in January if we don't have a deal.

    Many people (shout out to our Phil) say: "bring it on".

    Is it any wonder that sensible people despair.

    And oh from FPT when I pointed out how a large number of people was motivated to vote Brexit because of a dislike of foreigners? They were.
    Very reasonable until your last paragraph.

    You can both like and admire foreigners and want controls on immigration at the same time.

    Indeed, it might be to ensure safe continuation and consent for acceptance of the former that you see it as so important to ensure the latter.
    I think it is uncontentious to say that a dislike of foreigners was one of the main, if not the main motivating factor for a large number of people who voted Leave.

    Not "all" as @Philip_Thompson has confirmed, but for a large number.
    That wasn’t my experience from knocking on doors, although I certainly found some (10-15%) who put it like that.

    Bear in mind that not all the working class use the flowery, nuanced and carefully caveated language that the professional middle classes do. Many use the unambiguous language of the shop floor and don’t call a spade a shovel when they’re feeling frustrated.

    It doesn’t make them all bigots, and an experienced canvasser can tell the difference. It’s the difference between a Gillian Duffy to a Nick Griffin, for example.
    It may not be all, but it was enough.
    No it wasn't.
    I think 10-15% is definately more than 3.5%

    3.5% was not enough. 50%+1 was enough.
    Are you saying that 50%+1 were motivated by the anti foreignor vote?
    No. I'm saying 50%+1 was the threshold for winning and the anti foreigner vote was nowhere close to that.

    Remain won over 48% and lost. If Leave was just an anti foreigner vote then it would have lost massively. The anti foreigner vote was not enough to win the referendum.
    As long as people mischaracterise a dislike of competing for low wages and state resources with an influx of immigrants as "a dislike of foreigners", I doubt the debate will get anywhere. It makes Remain voters feel like they lost because they are more pure than Leave, so let them think it, everyone needs consolation
    Indeed I've read several posts on this thread who basically want to characterise people who have concerns about immigration as automatically racists and effectively seek to cancel them and their views as, of course , no further argument is necessary. I was a remain voter myself but can so easily understand why the argument was lost when so many on the left throw out the word bigot or racist to any who dare to question the left liberal view of the world. Four years on from the vote and they simply do not get it.
    Couple of points here Felix -

    The main source - Topping - is not on the left. Worse than that, he's a true blue Tory!

    And the assertion is not that concerns about immigration are automatically racist or xenophobic. They are clearly not. The (precise) assertion is that if you take a properly randomized sample from the large group of people who not only have concerns about immigration but are SO concerned about it that it caused them to vote Leave in 2016, you will find in that sample a considerably higher proportion of racists and xenophobes than you will in the control sample drawn similarly from the rest of the population.

    Everyone knows this. Including all Leavers with faculties.
    I never claimed or thought they were. My point is those views exist everywhere and are not addressed by label followed by cancel. Which is what you did with your rather cheap and entirely predictable last sentence.
  • Options
    Roy_G_BivRoy_G_Biv Posts: 998
    Roy_G_Biv said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Roy_G_Biv said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    felix said:

    isam said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Nigelb said:

    (FPT)

    Cicero said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Who is the most left-wing person on PB?

    @Dura_Ace by a mile
    I think I'm the only Revolutionary Leninist, Steiner/Vallentyne Left-Libertarian, Leeds Utd Fan.

    Democracy = Social Fascism

    WACCOE
    I'm getting increasingly concerned at some posters on here playing fast and loose with democracy.

    We have this post, which I can't say entirely surprises me coming from you, and we had @IanB2 ostensibly a centrist and ex-LD flirting with benign dictatorship as being the best form of government the other day.

    I think you both need to go back to the history books and read about what life in non-democratic societies is like.
    Unfortunately I fear that the peoples of what increasingly looks like "the former" UK are not going to enjoy finding out a whole lot more about "the lessons of history" than they can really cope with.

    At every point since the historic wrong turn of Brexit, the far right has doubled down, so now the "impossible" "failure" of a "no deal" is now an odds on outcome. The consequences for our nouveau pauvre PM may include finding that the Eton College where he wants to send his son has been burned down by an army of furious and unemployed farmers, fisherfolk and even financiers.

    Certainly, having won the referendum by a whisker under extremely dubious circumstances, the winners could have reached out to the losers and created a compromise- EEA, EFTA, whatever- but they chose four years of uncertainty, rejecting any kind of compromise deal whatsoever as a BINO (not withstanding that these compromises were actually the only solution that people could be said to have "voted for") and then grabbing the tiller and steering us straight towards an economically half witted no deal, while lying all the way.

    If the break up of the UK is indeed the result of "no deal", then the successor republics will probably prosecute the ****s responsible.

    "Crucifixion is too good for them"

    I do study history and the future of what is currently "the UK", both economically and politically, will not be fixed in my lifetime if no deal goes through. Not sure how many UK citizens have taken citizenship elsewhere, but a trickle may well become a flood and I`m contemplating joining them. We know how this story ends...
    Top post, Cicero.
    Possibly hyperbolic; possibly not.
    For all the comments about brexiteers should have reached out to remainers and compromised....where was this reaching out by the pro eu people in the 40 years of membership? You called them fruitcakes and closet loons for most of that time and told to suck it up so I can understand why they feel no need to reach out.

    As you sow you shall reap seem apposite
    There is plenty of blame to go round on both sides.

    The depressing part is the discussion never seem to move on.

    We just seem to fall back in telling each other to go fuck ourselves.
    The conversation is shaped by events. At present, we have a large number of "experts" (I know) saying that things could be difficult in January if we don't have a deal.

    Many people (shout out to our Phil) say: "bring it on".

    Is it any wonder that sensible people despair.

    And oh from FPT when I pointed out how a large number of people was motivated to vote Brexit because of a dislike of foreigners? They were.
    Very reasonable until your last paragraph.

    You can both like and admire foreigners and want controls on immigration at the same time.

    Indeed, it might be to ensure safe continuation and consent for acceptance of the former that you see it as so important to ensure the latter.
    I think it is uncontentious to say that a dislike of foreigners was one of the main, if not the main motivating factor for a large number of people who voted Leave.

    Not "all" as @Philip_Thompson has confirmed, but for a large number.
    That wasn’t my experience from knocking on doors, although I certainly found some (10-15%) who put it like that.

    Bear in mind that not all the working class use the flowery, nuanced and carefully caveated language that the professional middle classes do. Many use the unambiguous language of the shop floor and don’t call a spade a shovel when they’re feeling frustrated.

    It doesn’t make them all bigots, and an experienced canvasser can tell the difference. It’s the difference between a Gillian Duffy to a Nick Griffin, for example.
    It may not be all, but it was enough.
    No it wasn't.
    I think 10-15% is definately more than 3.5%

    3.5% was not enough. 50%+1 was enough.
    Are you saying that 50%+1 were motivated by the anti foreignor vote?
    No. I'm saying 50%+1 was the threshold for winning and the anti foreigner vote was nowhere close to that.

    Remain won over 48% and lost. If Leave was just an anti foreigner vote then it would have lost massively. The anti foreigner vote was not enough to win the referendum.
    As long as people mischaracterise a dislike of competing for low wages and state resources with an influx of immigrants as "a dislike of foreigners", I doubt the debate will get anywhere. It makes Remain voters feel like they lost because they are more pure than Leave, so let them think it, everyone needs consolation
    Indeed I've read several posts on this thread who basically want to characterise people who have concerns about immigration as automatically racists and effectively seek to cancel them and their views as, of course , no further argument is necessary. I was a remain voter myself but can so easily understand why the argument was lost when so many on the left throw out the word bigot or racist to any who dare to question the left liberal view of the world. Four years on from the vote and they simply do not get it.
    There absolutely were people hurling the racism word around and they still are. And yes, every racist voted for Brexit. But as I keep pointing out the majority of people who voted leave because of migration weren't against any given race - just bigoted against anyone who isn't them. Whether the other is Asians, Blacks, Poles, people from the next county, people from the next village it doesn't matter, they were given the opportunity to STOP whatever it is they personally wanted to stop.

    So they voted to leave the EU. To stop people not from the EU from coming here. Or to stop people not from their town coming here. Its nonsensical, but whoever said reasons for voting had to be.
    That seems an ungenerous interpretation. Is it not equally credible that they thought their town overcrowded (which being in the UK it inevitably is) and rightly thought that stopping immigration is the only practical method of reducing the inflow?
    Is there a correlation between leave vote and population density?
    I'll let you leave Gibraltar out of your analysis if you like.
    The test would be excess of actual over optimum density, not the raw number. And I don't know, but as you point out at least the hypothesis is testable, as wellas being less ungenerous and snobbish than the rival one.
    I'll be honest and say that I don't know what you mean by excess and optimum density.

    I also think that leave vote is probably INVERSELY correlated with population density. I haven't checked done a rigorous analysis, but eyeballing the list ranking list of areas available here (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-36616028), gives me confidence my hunch is probably right.
    Looks like someone has done the hard work for us:
    https://cityobservatory.org/cities-and-brexit/
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    HYUFD said:

    Trafalgar strikes again....

    Biden just 1.5% ahead in Wisconsin with almost 3% undecided!

    So Trafalgar at the moment has Biden picking up Pennsylvania, where he was born, more narrowly picking up Wisconsin and Trump narrowly holding Michigan.

    On that basis Trump would win the EC by the narrowest of margins most likely if you believe Trafalgar.

    https://twitter.com/RobertCahaly/status/1316000421085933568?s=20

    https://twitter.com/RobertCahaly/status/1318210619049496577?s=20


    https://twitter.com/RobertCahaly/status/1317086523477659648?s=20

    Yebbut look at undecided and other.

    On a knife edge I reckon. Though i think Biden wins Penn.
    Oh, do me a favour. He may as well be picking these numbers out of a hat. One of them is likely to be his hat-size on the ticket he left in by mistake. Trump would probably be ahead in Wisconsin if he had a bigger head.
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    AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670
    MrEd said:

    Trafalgar strikes again....

    Biden just 1.5% ahead in Wisconsin with almost 3% undecided!

    OK, so using the @rcs1000 rule, Biden is 7.5% ahead in Wisconsin.
    If Trafalgar were that consistent it might be of some help. Rasmussen, for example, has a well-known GoP lean but it IS consistent, so all you have to do is lop about five points off their Trump figure every time and you have a reliable guide.

    As we now know from Robert's sterling efforts, Trafalgar is a one-man operation; he cribs results from others and then adjusts them as he fancies.

    You may as well pull numbers from a hat.
    I don't think you can necessarily say that. Not because he definitely isn't pulling numbers from a hat but because, while Trafalgar got some states wrong, it also did a lot better in other states than plenty of other pollsters who - by the way - have not had their methods scrutinised so much.

    If he gets it wrong this time, fine. If he doesn't, it may be well worth listening to him. Reserve judgement until there is further evidence.
    Like in 2018 with his appalling Texas and Georgia numbers?
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