"It seems odd now but no one thought Johnson had a chance of becoming Tory leader when May resigned." Really? I think you've been mislead by an idealized vision of the Conservative Party.
Yes, that is of course nonsense. A key reason why May held on for so long - and that backbenchers held back from sending in letters - was because the likelihood was always that we would then end up with the clown in charge.
He confused Donald Trump for Abraham Lincoln in the prsidential debate last week. He does show very early signs of cognitive decline. This is a Trump vs Harris election.
I listened to the Lincoln thing a couple of time. “Abraham Lincoln over here” sounded like deliberate sarcasm to me.
Of course it was. It was a reference to Trump's claim to have done more for blacks than any President ever, with the possible exception of Abraham Lincoln.
A bad parallel, because Abraham Lincoln was actually very racist. He wanted slavery abolished but he would have been perfectly happy with Jim Crow (and said publicly that was what he was aiming for, although not by that name). Truman, Eisenhower and Johnson all did far more for African Americans than he did.
Lincoln's thinking evolved rapidly over the Civil war years but I think in reality he said what he thought could be sold to a majority at any point in time. I remember my wife being very disappointed with Daniel Day-Lewis's Lincoln a few years ago because she had always had this image of Lincoln as the great moral giant. In fact I thought it was a brilliant performance showing Lincoln as an astonishingly skilled and complex politician who held together a remarkably disparate coalition against considerable odds and many, many military set backs.
But I am still tempted to claim that abolishing slavery gives him the Top Trump!
He was personally completely anti-slavery. But, like all the moderate Republicans, he believed that attempting to simply abolish slavery would lead to a civil war which might well destroy the country. And the South might win... What he (and others) believed was that
He was, as you say, a pragmatist. More importantly, he strongly believed in moving the public with him. At the time of his death he was pushing the debate on voting rights for freed slaves - it got him killed.
The film shows the political battle over the amendment as much more dramatic than it was - in reality, every Repoublican was solid with the amendment. It was what their party had been for. I thought the film showed him as a moral giant - pushing forward his great gaol, carefully building a coalition and protecting it to get the job done. I suppose utterly uncompromising failure is more heroic to some people....
Don't get me wrong, he was almost certainly America's greatest President, only FDR runs him close. Trump comparing himself to him in any capacity was well deserving of mockery.
Well, the key point I was trying to make - which has got lost - is that Trump compared himself in his views and attitude on race to Lincoln.
Which would make him, given Lincoln’s publicly admitted views, er, a racist.
Which I thought was deliciously ironic and shows just how dumb Trump is.
"It seems odd now but no one thought Johnson had a chance of becoming Tory leader when May resigned." Really? I think you've been mislead by an idealized vision of the Conservative Party.
I thought the theory was that Johnson would walk it in the membership ballot, and subsequent GE, but be a terrible leader and PM. And knowing this, MPs would move heaven and earth to keep him off the ballot.
It turns out that there were enough MPs mad/desperate/foolish enough to get him on the shortlist, but otherwise that prediction seems to be standing up pretty well.
He confused Donald Trump for Abraham Lincoln in the prsidential debate last week. He does show very early signs of cognitive decline. This is a Trump vs Harris election.
I listened to the Lincoln thing a couple of time. “Abraham Lincoln over here” sounded like deliberate sarcasm to me.
Of course it was. It was a reference to Trump's claim to have done more for blacks than any President ever, with the possible exception of Abraham Lincoln.
A bad parallel, because Abraham Lincoln was actually very racist. He wanted slavery abolished but he would have been perfectly happy with Jim Crow (and said publicly that was what he was aiming for, although not by that name). Truman, Eisenhower and Johnson all did far more for African Americans than he did.
Lincoln's thinking evolved rapidly over the Civil war years but I think in reality he said what he thought could be sold to a majority at any point in time. I remember my wife being very disappointed with Daniel Day-Lewis's Lincoln a few years ago because she had always had this image of Lincoln as the great moral giant. In fact I thought it was a brilliant performance showing Lincoln as an astonishingly skilled and complex politician who held together a remarkably disparate coalition against considerable odds and many, many military set backs.
But I am still tempted to claim that abolishing slavery gives him the Top Trump!
He was personally completely anti-slavery. But, like all the moderate Republicans, he believed that attempting to simply abolish slavery would lead to a civil war which might well destroy the country. And the South might win... What he (and others) believed was that
He was, as you say, a pragmatist. More importantly, he strongly believed in moving the public with him. At the time of his death he was pushing the debate on voting rights for freed slaves - it got him killed.
The film shows the political battle over the amendment as much more dramatic than it was - in reality, every Repoublican was solid with the amendment. It was what their party had been for. I thought the film showed him as a moral giant - pushing forward his great gaol, carefully building a coalition and protecting it to get the job done. I suppose utterly uncompromising failure is more heroic to some people....
Don't get me wrong, he was almost certainly America's greatest President, only FDR runs him close. Trump comparing himself to him in any capacity was well deserving of mockery.
It certainly was. I can't believe anyone watching that actually thought Biden saying "Abraham Lincoln here" was anything other that contemptuous sarcasm, certainly not getting confused.
The Americans don't always have the best sense of irony but that one was an open goal.
@Philip_Thompson thankfully I did test the switch with a multimeter before touching it. The government spending many tens of thousands of pounds teaching me "engineering" is finally paying off!
"It seems odd now but no one thought Johnson had a chance of becoming Tory leader when May resigned." Really? I think you've been mislead by an idealized vision of the Conservative Party.
I thought the theory was that Johnson would walk it in the membership ballot, and subsequent GE, but be a terrible leader and PM. And knowing this, MPs would move heaven and earth to keep him off the ballot.
It turns out that there were enough MPs mad/desperate/foolish enough to get him on the shortlist, but otherwise that prediction seems to be standing up pretty well.
By the time the moment came, things were so perilous under May that the MPs just wanted to win. As ever in politics, it was short term gain (for them) and long term pain (for us).
He confused Donald Trump for Abraham Lincoln in the prsidential debate last week. He does show very early signs of cognitive decline. This is a Trump vs Harris election.
I listened to the Lincoln thing a couple of time. “Abraham Lincoln over here” sounded like deliberate sarcasm to me.
Of course it was. It was a reference to Trump's claim to have done more for blacks than any President ever, with the possible exception of Abraham Lincoln.
A bad parallel, because Abraham Lincoln was actually very racist. He wanted slavery abolished but he would have been perfectly happy with Jim Crow (and said publicly that was what he was aiming for, although not by that name). Truman, Eisenhower and Johnson all did far more for African Americans than he did.
Lincoln's thinking evolved rapidly over the Civil war years but I think in reality he said what he thought could be sold to a majority at any point in time. I remember my wife being very disappointed with Daniel Day-Lewis's Lincoln a few years ago because she had always had this image of Lincoln as the great moral giant. In fact I thought it was a brilliant performance showing Lincoln as an astonishingly skilled and complex politician who held together a remarkably disparate coalition against considerable odds and many, many military set backs.
But I am still tempted to claim that abolishing slavery gives him the Top Trump!
He was personally completely anti-slavery. But, like all the moderate Republicans, he believed that attempting to simply abolish slavery would lead to a civil war which might well destroy the country. And the South might win... What he (and others) believed was that
He was, as you say, a pragmatist. More importantly, he strongly believed in moving the public with him. At the time of his death he was pushing the debate on voting rights for freed slaves - it got him killed.
The film shows the political battle over the amendment as much more dramatic than it was - in reality, every Repoublican was solid with the amendment. It was what their party had been for. I thought the film showed him as a moral giant - pushing forward his great gaol, carefully building a coalition and protecting it to get the job done. I suppose utterly uncompromising failure is more heroic to some people....
Don't get me wrong, he was almost certainly America's greatest President, only FDR runs him close. Trump comparing himself to him in any capacity was well deserving of mockery.
Well, the key point I was trying to make - which has got lost - is that Trump compared himself in his views and attitude on race to Lincoln.
Which would make him, given Lincoln’s publicly admitted views, er, a racist.
Which I thought was deliciously ironic and shows just how dumb Trump is.
Nobody thinks of Lincoln and thinks "racist" though.
Thanks for the thread Robert. I agree with your conclusion.
Those clutching to the faint hope of a Trump win are pinning their hopes on all of the following: 1. Trump supporters are hiding from the pollsters. 2. Despite coming from the "expendible" demographic most at risk from Covid-19, a significant proportion of older registered Democrats are voting for Trump. 3. Polling companies which got it utterly wrong in 2018 will get it right in 2020, and other companies changes to their methods in the wake of 2016 count for nothing. 4. To counter what's happening in early voting, Trump will pull it out of the bag by winning a far higher proportion of the vote share on election day than happened in 2016.
Yes, it's possible. Very occasionally, an absolute outsider wins the Grand National. But personally, I think the chances of Biden winning the popular vote by >10% now exceed by some way those of Trump winning the electoral college.
In other news, I changed my first light switch yesterday. I feel like a proper adult at the grand old age of 28 years.
Cor. I've never done that and doubt if I ever will. If I do, it'll probably be the last thing I do...
I feel I'm being intrepid when I change a light bulb.
Try hard not to make it a shocking experience.
You joke though I did shock myself once changing a switch. Was living in a flat and it had multiple circuit breaker panels, turned out I'd isolated the wrong one. Touched the cables together and I jumped backwards at the shock, burnt my fingers for days afterwards.
Make damn sure you've fully isolated the power is my advice before doing something like that. Easy enough in a home with only one panel, in a flat its not always so obvious . . .
Yes. We are at least lucky we have earthed plugs and appliances, unlike the rest of the world.
I have just finished installing and wiring together four fluorescent lights and a switch in my cellar, but the electrician is coming tomorrow to cut them into the mains circuit, just to be safe.
Thanks for the thread Robert. I agree with your conclusion.
Those clutching to the faint hope of a Trump win are pinning their hopes on all of the following: 1. Trump supporters are hiding from the pollsters. 2. Despite coming from the "expendible" demographic most at risk from Covid-19, a significant proportion of older registered Democrats are voting for Trump. 3. Polling companies which got it utterly wrong in 2018 will get it right in 2020, and other companies changes to their methods in the wake of 2016 count for nothing. 4. To counter what's happening in early voting, Trump will pull it out of the bag by winning a far higher proportion of the vote share on election day than happened in 2016.
Yes, it's possible. Very occasionally, an absolute outsider wins the Grand National. But personally, I think the chances of Biden winning the popular vote by >10% now exceed by some way those of Trump winning the electoral college.
Personally I am more worried about voter intimidation and fun and games with lawyers at/after the counts
I'm sorry @HYUFD I have to pick you up here. This site, and Nate Silver, deals in probability, odds. Nate Silver put the probability of Trump winning at 30% - 1 in 3. Not impossible odds. Even this time he puts it at about 1 in 6. You, however, deal in certainty. There is no such thing. Nate Silver's expertese in probability made him a a good income in online poker before starting his current career as a pundit. Your focus is currenly on bin collection in Epping Forest.
No one, literally no one, on here is saying that Trump cannot win. That's because people on here are interested in betting and gambling. If anyone on here was capable of predicting the future 100% of the time they would not be working. The odds based on the polling we have accross all pollsters, and some other data, put the odds greatly against him. If you cannot deal in odds, only in certainties, you are on the wrong site. There is slightly a greater than zero chance that the Sun will not come up tomorrow - there may be the reminants of a neutron star expolsion heading our way at the speed of light. I grew up in Canterbury - if you had told me as recently as early 2017 that Labour would win two consecutive parliamentary elections in the constituency I would have told you where to go.
Trafalgar got it right in 2016. Good for them. That's a single data point in Trump's favour. But if Trafalgar were omnicient then they would be based in Vegas and owing the world. Where are the data points then to back Trafalgar up? You are simply ignoring all the others because there are very few others in Trump's favour and you want reassurance your candidate will win. Trafalgar's picked 7 out of 9 (77%) states correctly in 2016 and overstated Trump in all 9. In Michigan they overstated him by 3% - if they do that again they get that state wrong (it's tied on their latest poll). How have they changed their methodology to correct since 2016?
You simply have to stop talking about certainties. Trump may win. I don't deny that. They most vehment Biden supporter on here doesn't deny that. But the fact that Trafalgar pinned the tail on the donkey in 2016 is not enough to persuade people who deal in probabilities. You need more than that
Well said.
Hardly. I've been arguing with "people who are wrong on the Internet" since I started posting on Slate in the 90s. I sign off with a small anecdote. I was once invited on a trip to Newbury Races with the Oxford Uni Turf Society (I knew the Secretary, the sadly departed Dan Gould of Sofabet RIP - he knew about odds). I know sod all about racing. We had a competition on all six races on the way down on the coach where you had to assign £100 in fake money over each race. I put £1 each on a horse in all but one race and the rest on one one horse in one final race. It came in and I beat all the tipsters of OUTS, including Dan, to a bottle of very nice Champagne. Never won a penny on the gee gees since. I am the Trafalgar Group of horseracing.
"It seems odd now but no one thought Johnson had a chance of becoming Tory leader when May resigned." Really? I think you've been mislead by an idealized vision of the Conservative Party.
I thought the theory was that Johnson would walk it in the membership ballot, and subsequent GE, but be a terrible leader and PM. And knowing this, MPs would move heaven and earth to keep him off the ballot.
It turns out that there were enough MPs mad/desperate/foolish enough to get him on the shortlist, but otherwise that prediction seems to be standing up pretty well.
By the time the moment came, things were so perilous under May that the MPs just wanted to win. As ever in politics, it was short term gain (for them) and long term pain (for us).
Likely long term pain for them as well. Whilst the UK government might come out of this smelling of roses, it's much more likely to come out smelling of the stuff old-fashioned gardeners put on roses. And failed MPs for Redwall North probably have fewer sinecures to fall back on than failed PMs.
In other news, I changed my first light switch yesterday. I feel like a proper adult at the grand old age of 28 years.
Cor. I've never done that and doubt if I ever will. If I do, it'll probably be the last thing I do...
I feel I'm being intrepid when I change a light bulb.
Try hard not to make it a shocking experience.
You joke though I did shock myself once changing a switch. Was living in a flat and it had multiple circuit breaker panels, turned out I'd isolated the wrong one. Touched the cables together and I jumped backwards at the shock, burnt my fingers for days afterwards.
Make damn sure you've fully isolated the power is my advice before doing something like that. Easy enough in a home with only one panel, in a flat its not always so obvious . . .
Yes. We are at least lucky we have earthed plugs and appliances, unlike the rest of the world.
I have just finished installing and wiring together four fluorescent lights and a switch in my cellar, but the electrician is coming tomorrow to cut them into the mains circuit, just to be safe.
Fluorescent?! LEDs are so much better.
I stuck a plug on the end of the cable to check they worked, and I am happy with them. They are made for potentially damp and dusty environments, and do the job of lighting the room; I am not planning to live down there.
I have LED strip lights under my kitchen cabinets and you're right that they are good; indeed this was my first thought for the job. But I saw these fluorescents down Block & Quail and they met my spec.
"It seems odd now but no one thought Johnson had a chance of becoming Tory leader when May resigned." Really? I think you've been mislead by an idealized vision of the Conservative Party.
I thought the theory was that Johnson would walk it in the membership ballot, and subsequent GE, but be a terrible leader and PM. And knowing this, MPs would move heaven and earth to keep him off the ballot.
It turns out that there were enough MPs mad/desperate/foolish enough to get him on the shortlist, but otherwise that prediction seems to be standing up pretty well.
By the time the moment came, things were so perilous under May that the MPs just wanted to win. As ever in politics, it was short term gain (for them) and long term pain (for us).
If you are at all Conservative in your thinking then you would have to accept that defeating Corbyn and Corbynism is long term gain (for us).
There are a number of parallels between UK and USA politics in recent years with the blues and reds on each side being similar.
2016/2017 on the red side Trump/Corbyn was an outsider not taken seriously even by his own party, thought bound to lose in the first election and lost the popular vote by millions - though America's electoral system made Trump the winner, ours ensured Corbyn lost.
2016/17 on the blue side Hillary/May was perceived to be a sure thing, but was not very popular in reality and underperformed expectations. Won the popular vote by millions but America's electoral system ensured Hillary lost, ours kept May in but in a minority government.
2019/20 on the blue side Biden/Boris may be perceived to be past it/a buffoon by critics but against their opponent even a buffoonish Boris/past it Biden is miles better than the alternative. After the last election's shock result it is no longer assumed the opponent can't possibly win and turnout will be up to ensure a landslide. Because of last time the betting markets are assuming the polls aren't reliable so value is on backing the blues in the market.
Thanks for the thread Robert. I agree with your conclusion.
Those clutching to the faint hope of a Trump win are pinning their hopes on all of the following: 1. Trump supporters are hiding from the pollsters. 2. Despite coming from the "expendible" demographic most at risk from Covid-19, a significant proportion of older registered Democrats are voting for Trump. 3. Polling companies which got it utterly wrong in 2018 will get it right in 2020, and other companies changes to their methods in the wake of 2016 count for nothing. 4. To counter what's happening in early voting, Trump will pull it out of the bag by winning a far higher proportion of the vote share on election day than happened in 2016.
Yes, it's possible. Very occasionally, an absolute outsider wins the Grand National. But personally, I think the chances of Biden winning the popular vote by >10% now exceed by some way those of Trump winning the electoral college.
Personally I am more worried about voter intimidation and fun and games with lawyers at/after the counts
I've been pleasantly surprised that there have been relatively few stories of voter intimidation from the early voting so far.
It was one of my main concerns. You don't have to fiddle the count if you can prevent the votes from being cast, but it looks like it's hard to keep voters away when they have several weeks in which to vote.
Its half term here on Teesside and I for one am glad that my family gets a fire break from going to school. Mrs RP and the boy are off for a week and a half, the girl for a week. With the pox running rampant through our schools a period away feels very much like a Good Thing. A week of staying in and not doing a lot beckons.
Half term round here too, and Eldest Grandson and his wife are are taking the opportunity to do somethings for themselves. However he will also be trying to round up lap-tops etc for those at the primary school where he teaches who still don't have them, and rewrite lessons so that they may be delivered to 8 year olds who are not in the classroom. His wife had a complete year group of sixth-formers off for the last couple of weeks, which has proved stressful.
Nah - it's simply human nature. They know they have been pushed from pillar to post on their response to the virus, as people see them changing policy on a daily basis and being pushed into doing whatever Scotland or whoever is doing. In their minds they decided they needed to draw a line somewhere to recover their credibility and self-respect.
Unfortunately they have chosen the very worst issue on which to make their stand.
One question I asked myself in 2019 was 'if the Tories can't win now, when can they ever win'. It's the same question I'm asking about the Democrats this election.
"It seems odd now but no one thought Johnson had a chance of becoming Tory leader when May resigned." Really? I think you've been mislead by an idealized vision of the Conservative Party.
I thought the theory was that Johnson would walk it in the membership ballot, and subsequent GE, but be a terrible leader and PM. And knowing this, MPs would move heaven and earth to keep him off the ballot.
It turns out that there were enough MPs mad/desperate/foolish enough to get him on the shortlist, but otherwise that prediction seems to be standing up pretty well.
By the time the moment came, things were so perilous under May that the MPs just wanted to win. As ever in politics, it was short term gain (for them) and long term pain (for us).
If you are at all Conservative in your thinking then you would have to accept that defeating Corbyn and Corbynism is long term gain (for us).
There are a number of parallels between UK and USA politics in recent years with the blues and reds on each side being similar.
2016/2017 on the red side Trump/Corbyn was an outsider not taken seriously even by his own party, thought bound to lose in the first election and lost the popular vote by millions - though America's electoral system made Trump the winner, ours ensured Corbyn lost.
2016/17 on the blue side Hillary/May was perceived to be a sure thing, but was not very popular in reality and underperformed expectations. Won the popular vote by millions but America's electoral system ensured Hillary lost, ours kept May in but in a minority government.
2019/20 on the blue side Biden/Boris may be perceived to be past it/a buffoon by critics but against their opponent even a buffoonish Boris/past it Biden is miles better than the alternative. After the last election's shock result it is no longer assumed the opponent can't possibly win and turnout will be up to ensure a landslide. Because of last time the betting markets are assuming the polls aren't reliable so value is on backing the blues in the market.
Personally, I wasn't so worried about Corbyn; a lot of the stuff pointed at him was simply negative projection.
The biggest weakness had Labour won would have been the pitiful inadequacy of the team around him - which is the same key weakness that we have now under the clown. Burgon or Williamson, rinse and repeat.
To be fair to Swinson continuing to deny an election after Article 50 was extended was frankly unsustainable - and that was a great polling situation for the Lib Dems. They'd consistently upticked for about a month or so now and could have made many gains.
What made Swinson lose her own seat and net seats was the hubris that followed. Especially that magazine they published introducing "Jo Swinson, Britain's Next Prime Minister" was absurd and made her look absolutely foolish.
Swinson should have been targetting about 30+ seats and having a bigger role in the next Parliament with a second referendum as policy, not acting like Icarus pledging to become Prime Minister and reverse Brexit without a further referendum.
In other news, I changed my first light switch yesterday. I feel like a proper adult at the grand old age of 28 years.
Cor. I've never done that and doubt if I ever will. If I do, it'll probably be the last thing I do...
I feel I'm being intrepid when I change a light bulb.
Try hard not to make it a shocking experience.
You joke though I did shock myself once changing a switch. Was living in a flat and it had multiple circuit breaker panels, turned out I'd isolated the wrong one. Touched the cables together and I jumped backwards at the shock, burnt my fingers for days afterwards.
Make damn sure you've fully isolated the power is my advice before doing something like that. Easy enough in a home with only one panel, in a flat its not always so obvious . . .
My brother did similar, in the extension on his house. He told me he had tested the circuit wasn't live by flicking on a light switch and checking the light didn't come on; unfortunately he didn't do that with the actual switch he was working on but with another switch in the old part of the house, on a different circuit
Healthy adults get away with it generally, but I know a family (friend of a friend, I'd briefly met the boy in question) whose 5 year old did not, with dodgy wires into the plug of a table lamp (and an old fuse box with fuse wire providing no protection). Fitting a consumer unit with RCDs will be my (well, the sparky's) first job if I ever move into a house that doesn't have that. There's no reason not to have every wire in a house protected nowadays.
If enough cafes, local councils and other businesses come forward with offers of food then the government might say that there's no job left for them to do, isn't this a great example of what British civic society can achieve, wasn't it a good thing that the government did nothing so that people could create the big society we all want to see...
"It seems odd now but no one thought Johnson had a chance of becoming Tory leader when May resigned." Really? I think you've been mislead by an idealized vision of the Conservative Party.
I thought the theory was that Johnson would walk it in the membership ballot, and subsequent GE, but be a terrible leader and PM. And knowing this, MPs would move heaven and earth to keep him off the ballot.
It turns out that there were enough MPs mad/desperate/foolish enough to get him on the shortlist, but otherwise that prediction seems to be standing up pretty well.
By the time the moment came, things were so perilous under May that the MPs just wanted to win. As ever in politics, it was short term gain (for them) and long term pain (for us).
If you are at all Conservative in your thinking then you would have to accept that defeating Corbyn and Corbynism is long term gain (for us).
There are a number of parallels between UK and USA politics in recent years with the blues and reds on each side being similar.
2016/2017 on the red side Trump/Corbyn was an outsider not taken seriously even by his own party, thought bound to lose in the first election and lost the popular vote by millions - though America's electoral system made Trump the winner, ours ensured Corbyn lost.
2016/17 on the blue side Hillary/May was perceived to be a sure thing, but was not very popular in reality and underperformed expectations. Won the popular vote by millions but America's electoral system ensured Hillary lost, ours kept May in but in a minority government.
2019/20 on the blue side Biden/Boris may be perceived to be past it/a buffoon by critics but against their opponent even a buffoonish Boris/past it Biden is miles better than the alternative. After the last election's shock result it is no longer assumed the opponent can't possibly win and turnout will be up to ensure a landslide. Because of last time the betting markets are assuming the polls aren't reliable so value is on backing the blues in the market.
Indeed. Clinton backers who would have backed Biden this time got their fingers badly burned and so are keeping their cash in their pocket this time out.
Clinton's approval ratings were horrible - I feel a bit sorry for her because I do feel that if she had never been married to Bill then they would have been better - then again but for Bill she would probably never have got the nomination. Her approval ratings were about the same as Trump's. Biden is not great but his approval ratings beat Clinton and Trump's into a cocked hat. The difference with 2016 can be summed up in four words -relative approval and pandemic.
If the Gov't was going to u-turn then it should have done it by this point. Personally I think they'd be better off sticking right now.
Its too late to u-turn for half-term but a pre-emptive u-turn for Christmas is entirely rational. The problem is this issue won't go away and will be back with a vengeance at Christmas - is Boris really going to dig in and be the Scrooge who won't allow kids to eat at Christmas?
The u-turn for that is inevitable. They'll be trying to think a way of dressing it up with face-saving to say it isn't a u-turn, but it will be.
Nah - it's simply human nature. They know they have been pushed from pillar to post on their response to the virus, as people see them changing policy on a daily basis and being pushed into doing whatever Scotland or whoever is doing. In their minds they decided they needed to draw a line somewhere to recover their credibility and self-respect.
Unfortunately they have chosen the very worst issue on which to make their stand.
I'd have said that the very worst issue to make a stand on was the other one where they dug their heels in... you know, the non-story one. And whilst the government "won" that issue by raw power (Dom is still in Number 10), it was the sort of win where they'd have done better losing.
Going by the piece in today's Times, it looks like the government is looking for an alternative mechanism so that they can say they haven't U-turned. Unless this is a really good mechanism, this is going to add complexity to save government face.
"It seems odd now but no one thought Johnson had a chance of becoming Tory leader when May resigned." Really? I think you've been mislead by an idealized vision of the Conservative Party.
I thought the theory was that Johnson would walk it in the membership ballot, and subsequent GE, but be a terrible leader and PM. And knowing this, MPs would move heaven and earth to keep him off the ballot.
It turns out that there were enough MPs mad/desperate/foolish enough to get him on the shortlist, but otherwise that prediction seems to be standing up pretty well.
By the time the moment came, things were so perilous under May that the MPs just wanted to win. As ever in politics, it was short term gain (for them) and long term pain (for us).
If you are at all Conservative in your thinking then you would have to accept that defeating Corbyn and Corbynism is long term gain (for us).
There are a number of parallels between UK and USA politics in recent years with the blues and reds on each side being similar.
2016/2017 on the red side Trump/Corbyn was an outsider not taken seriously even by his own party, thought bound to lose in the first election and lost the popular vote by millions - though America's electoral system made Trump the winner, ours ensured Corbyn lost.
2016/17 on the blue side Hillary/May was perceived to be a sure thing, but was not very popular in reality and underperformed expectations. Won the popular vote by millions but America's electoral system ensured Hillary lost, ours kept May in but in a minority government.
2019/20 on the blue side Biden/Boris may be perceived to be past it/a buffoon by critics but against their opponent even a buffoonish Boris/past it Biden is miles better than the alternative. After the last election's shock result it is no longer assumed the opponent can't possibly win and turnout will be up to ensure a landslide. Because of last time the betting markets are assuming the polls aren't reliable so value is on backing the blues in the market.
Indeed. Clinton backers who would have backed Biden this time got their fingers badly burned and so are keeping their cash in their pocket this time out.
Clinton's approval ratings were horrible - I feel a bit sorry for her because I do feel that if she had never been married to Bill then they would have been better - then again but for Bill she would probably never have got the nomination. Her approval ratings were about the same as Trump's. Biden is not great but his approval ratings beat Clinton and Trump's into a cocked hat. The difference with 2016 can be summed up in four words -relative approval and pandemic.
In the blue/red parallel the pandemic is the Brexit issue.
Biden's "shut down the virus, not the economy" isn't quite as pithy as "Get Brexit Done" but the sentiment is similar. People have had enough and want it over with.
Thanks for the thread Robert. I agree with your conclusion.
Those clutching to the faint hope of a Trump win are pinning their hopes on all of the following: 1. Trump supporters are hiding from the pollsters. 2. Despite coming from the "expendible" demographic most at risk from Covid-19, a significant proportion of older registered Democrats are voting for Trump. 3. Polling companies which got it utterly wrong in 2018 will get it right in 2020, and other companies changes to their methods in the wake of 2016 count for nothing. 4. To counter what's happening in early voting, Trump will pull it out of the bag by winning a far higher proportion of the vote share on election day than happened in 2016.
Yes, it's possible. Very occasionally, an absolute outsider wins the Grand National. But personally, I think the chances of Biden winning the popular vote by >10% now exceed by some way those of Trump winning the electoral college.
Personally I am more worried about voter intimidation and fun and games with lawyers at/after the counts
I hadn't realised that early voting was a thing. Postal yes, but queuing up for hours several weeks before polling day to vote? Madness. So whilst I am sure that Trump-incited white power loons will "monitor" black polling stations with machine guns, will it make that much of a difference when so many have already voted?
If - as I expect - its a landslide, then Trump's options will be few and I expect the GOP - who surely would have been smashed in all the elections taking place - would tell him to go.
If on the other hand its in any way a bit tight, then off to court we go and they will have to drag him away in handcuffs. We've seen the disgusting spectacle of British lawyers being subject to violence thanks to the Home Secretary. America doesn't do things lightly especially in matters of patriotism and national survival. Someone will shoot lawyers and judges. If its close. To stop them "stealing" the election for "traitors".
In other news, I changed my first light switch yesterday. I feel like a proper adult at the grand old age of 28 years.
Cor. I've never done that and doubt if I ever will. If I do, it'll probably be the last thing I do...
I feel I'm being intrepid when I change a light bulb.
Try hard not to make it a shocking experience.
You joke though I did shock myself once changing a switch. Was living in a flat and it had multiple circuit breaker panels, turned out I'd isolated the wrong one. Touched the cables together and I jumped backwards at the shock, burnt my fingers for days afterwards.
Make damn sure you've fully isolated the power is my advice before doing something like that. Easy enough in a home with only one panel, in a flat its not always so obvious . . .
My brother did similar, in the extension on his house. He told me he had tested the circuit wasn't live by flicking on a light switch and checking the light didn't come on; unfortunately he didn't do that with the actual switch he was working on but with another switch in the old part of the house, on a different circuit
Healthy adults get away with it generally, but I know a family (friend of a friend, I'd briefly met the boy in question) whose 5 year old did not, with dodgy wires into the plug of a table lamp (and an old fuse box with fuse wire providing no protection). Fitting a consumer unit with RCDs will be my (well, the sparky's) first job if I ever move into a house that doesn't have that. There's no reason not to have every wire in a house protected nowadays.
A modern breaker box, properly certified, is a must. If you don't have RCDs - get it changed *now*
The number of lives saved and fires prevented is huge....
In other news, I changed my first light switch yesterday. I feel like a proper adult at the grand old age of 28 years.
Cor. I've never done that and doubt if I ever will. If I do, it'll probably be the last thing I do...
I feel I'm being intrepid when I change a light bulb.
Try hard not to make it a shocking experience.
You joke though I did shock myself once changing a switch. Was living in a flat and it had multiple circuit breaker panels, turned out I'd isolated the wrong one. Touched the cables together and I jumped backwards at the shock, burnt my fingers for days afterwards.
Make damn sure you've fully isolated the power is my advice before doing something like that. Easy enough in a home with only one panel, in a flat its not always so obvious . . .
My brother did similar, in the extension on his house. He told me he had tested the circuit wasn't live by flicking on a light switch and checking the light didn't come on; unfortunately he didn't do that with the actual switch he was working on but with another switch in the old part of the house, on a different circuit
Healthy adults get away with it generally, but I know a family (friend of a friend, I'd briefly met the boy in question) whose 5 year old did not, with dodgy wires into the plug of a table lamp (and an old fuse box with fuse wire providing no protection). Fitting a consumer unit with RCDs will be my (well, the sparky's) first job if I ever move into a house that doesn't have that. There's no reason not to have every wire in a house protected nowadays.
A modern breaker box, properly certified, is a must. If you don't have RCDs - get it changed *now*
The number of lives saved and fires prevented is huge....
While I'm not normally a fan of regulations, this is something that probably should be a legal requirement.
To be fair to Swinson continuing to deny an election after Article 50 was extended was frankly unsustainable - and that was a great polling situation for the Lib Dems. They'd consistently upticked for about a month or so now and could have made many gains.
What made Swinson lose her own seat and net seats was the hubris that followed. Especially that magazine they published introducing "Jo Swinson, Britain's Next Prime Minister" was absurd and made her look absolutely foolish.
Swinson should have been targetting about 30+ seats and having a bigger role in the next Parliament with a second referendum as policy, not acting like Icarus pledging to become Prime Minister and reverse Brexit without a further referendum.
Calling the election was a mix of over-optimism and misjudgement, falling into the trap of the SNP, who claimed to want to get rid of the Tories but really wanted a Boris win as playing directly into their longer-term strategy, as is clearly coming to pass now.
The warts and all LibDem GE Review suggests the MPs saw an election as the best/only way to stop Brexit, and believed that otherwise it would get through after the New Year with enough Labour support. But it points out they did little research or internal consultation before making the jump in parliament.
Their biggest misjudgement was not to throw their support behind one of the soft Brexit options during the Letwin process. LibDem votes would have been sufficient to get a majority for CM/CU/SM and at least allow Parliament to have taken that process to the next stage. Whether that would have changed the dynamic in the country and/or led to a concrete outcome in parliament, who can say?
Nah - it's simply human nature. They know they have been pushed from pillar to post on their response to the virus, as people see them changing policy on a daily basis and being pushed into doing whatever Scotland or whoever is doing. In their minds they decided they needed to draw a line somewhere to recover their credibility and self-respect.
Unfortunately they have chosen the very worst issue on which to make their stand.
I'd have said that the very worst issue to make a stand on was the other one where they dug their heels in... you know, the non-story one. And whilst the government "won" that issue by raw power (Dom is still in Number 10), it was the sort of win where they'd have done better losing.
Going by the piece in today's Times, it looks like the government is looking for an alternative mechanism so that they can say they haven't U-turned. Unless this is a really good mechanism, this is going to add complexity to save government face.
True, but they had a good credit balance of political capital back then, in the honeymoon.
Like Mrs May, Bozo has frittered most of his starting capital away on fruitless side issues.
In other news, I changed my first light switch yesterday. I feel like a proper adult at the grand old age of 28 years.
Cor. I've never done that and doubt if I ever will. If I do, it'll probably be the last thing I do...
I feel I'm being intrepid when I change a light bulb.
Try hard not to make it a shocking experience.
You joke though I did shock myself once changing a switch. Was living in a flat and it had multiple circuit breaker panels, turned out I'd isolated the wrong one. Touched the cables together and I jumped backwards at the shock, burnt my fingers for days afterwards.
Make damn sure you've fully isolated the power is my advice before doing something like that. Easy enough in a home with only one panel, in a flat its not always so obvious . . .
My brother did similar, in the extension on his house. He told me he had tested the circuit wasn't live by flicking on a light switch and checking the light didn't come on; unfortunately he didn't do that with the actual switch he was working on but with another switch in the old part of the house, on a different circuit
Healthy adults get away with it generally, but I know a family (friend of a friend, I'd briefly met the boy in question) whose 5 year old did not, with dodgy wires into the plug of a table lamp (and an old fuse box with fuse wire providing no protection). Fitting a consumer unit with RCDs will be my (well, the sparky's) first job if I ever move into a house that doesn't have that. There's no reason not to have every wire in a house protected nowadays.
A modern breaker box, properly certified, is a must. If you don't have RCDs - get it changed *now*
The number of lives saved and fires prevented is huge....
While I'm not normally a fan of regulations, this is something that probably should be a legal requirement.
(This is where someone will probably say it is)
IIRC RCD is required on new work - as in if you are installing a box, it pretty much has to be.
If the Gov't was going to u-turn then it should have done it by this point. Personally I think they'd be better off sticking right now.
Its too late to u-turn for half-term but a pre-emptive u-turn for Christmas is entirely rational. The problem is this issue won't go away and will be back with a vengeance at Christmas - is Boris really going to dig in and be the Scrooge who won't allow kids to eat at Christmas?
The u-turn for that is inevitable. They'll be trying to think a way of dressing it up with face-saving to say it isn't a u-turn, but it will be.
Going off the tone from various Tory MPs I don't think the Tories think they are doing anything wrong. That they wheel out Jenrick - Mr you scratch my back - out to defend why the country can't afford this demonstrates that they simply don't care what people think.
Why should you or I feed these kids? Why should we pay our taxes only to have it handed over to degenerates smackheads and prostitutes? Its THEIR fault these kids are hungry thanks to them wasting their child benefits on booze. And if the kids are starving then social services should take them away. <- this is literally what I have read someone saying on a local MP's Twitter feed. That some people have been gaslit to believe there is no hunger that isn't caused by scum parents is why the Tories feel they can act with impunity.
Don't forget, in a culture wars environment, they *cannot* concede to Burham or Rashford. These people are *wrong*.
Um...there are rumours of news breaking this morning that could have a big impact on the election.
Do tell.
Just type the name of Joe Biden’s controversial son into Twitter and click “Latest”. Sounds like total rubbish to me though.
What ever it is it is likely to be Trump/GOP dirty tricks and I expect that outside the QAnon core that is how it will be seen by US voters.
They botched the roll-out, they've been too clever by half. They should have just dumped whatever they've got on pastebin, some of it's probably real. Instead they cooked up this story about a laptop, involving Guiliani who is known have been involved with Russian information ops, then refused to give journalists the data that would let them verify the laptop story if it was true.
Nah - it's simply human nature. They know they have been pushed from pillar to post on their response to the virus, as people see them changing policy on a daily basis and being pushed into doing whatever Scotland or whoever is doing. In their minds they decided they needed to draw a line somewhere to recover their credibility and self-respect.
Unfortunately they have chosen the very worst issue on which to make their stand.
I'd have said that the very worst issue to make a stand on was the other one where they dug their heels in... you know, the non-story one. And whilst the government "won" that issue by raw power (Dom is still in Number 10), it was the sort of win where they'd have done better losing.
Going by the piece in today's Times, it looks like the government is looking for an alternative mechanism so that they can say they haven't U-turned. Unless this is a really good mechanism, this is going to add complexity to save government face.
About the only thing that I think I have ever called correctly on this site was my prediction that it would be better for anti-Tories for Cummings to stay put. And, I believe, so it has proved. They lost a lot of moral authority that weekend.
About the only thing that I think I have ever called correctly on this site was my prediction that it would be better for anti-Tories for Cummings to stay put. And, I believe, so it has proved. They lost a lot of moral authority that weekend,
In other news, I changed my first light switch yesterday. I feel like a proper adult at the grand old age of 28 years.
Cor. I've never done that and doubt if I ever will. If I do, it'll probably be the last thing I do...
I feel I'm being intrepid when I change a light bulb.
Try hard not to make it a shocking experience.
You joke though I did shock myself once changing a switch. Was living in a flat and it had multiple circuit breaker panels, turned out I'd isolated the wrong one. Touched the cables together and I jumped backwards at the shock, burnt my fingers for days afterwards.
Make damn sure you've fully isolated the power is my advice before doing something like that. Easy enough in a home with only one panel, in a flat its not always so obvious . . .
My brother did similar, in the extension on his house. He told me he had tested the circuit wasn't live by flicking on a light switch and checking the light didn't come on; unfortunately he didn't do that with the actual switch he was working on but with another switch in the old part of the house, on a different circuit
Healthy adults get away with it generally, but I know a family (friend of a friend, I'd briefly met the boy in question) whose 5 year old did not, with dodgy wires into the plug of a table lamp (and an old fuse box with fuse wire providing no protection). Fitting a consumer unit with RCDs will be my (well, the sparky's) first job if I ever move into a house that doesn't have that. There's no reason not to have every wire in a house protected nowadays.
A modern breaker box, properly certified, is a must. If you don't have RCDs - get it changed *now*
The number of lives saved and fires prevented is huge....
We have a birdbox with a camera, so that we can watch, or our TV, the 'tenants' each spring build a nest and bring up a family. Fascinating. Personal Springwatch. Last May we were watching the TV one evening when there was a loud bang from close to the TV and it went off. Checked the fusebox and identified the problem circuit. Somewhat gingerly switch ed it back on and the only thing in the house which still didn't work was the bird box, and subsequently found that the link to the TV had developed a fault. When we got the unit out, the casing had blown off and there were burn marks on it. No other problems.
If Mitt Romney won North Carolina Trump certainly will and especially now African Americans have swung to him since 2016
Are you still maintaining the fiction that you want Biden to win because the tone of every post you write on the US election suggests otherwise?
I have said I would have voted for Hillary too in 2016 and did so at the time, that does not change the fact Hillary lost, in fact the last Republican I would have voted for was George W Bush in 2000.
However it seems that unlike some on here I can distinguish between who I would vote for and who I think will win which is what this site is supposed to be about and as I showed last night Trump's vote has not disappeared and very rarely does the candidate with the most energy amongst their supporters lose
To be fair to Swinson continuing to deny an election after Article 50 was extended was frankly unsustainable - and that was a great polling situation for the Lib Dems. They'd consistently upticked for about a month or so now and could have made many gains.
What made Swinson lose her own seat and net seats was the hubris that followed. Especially that magazine they published introducing "Jo Swinson, Britain's Next Prime Minister" was absurd and made her look absolutely foolish.
Swinson should have been targetting about 30+ seats and having a bigger role in the next Parliament with a second referendum as policy, not acting like Icarus pledging to become Prime Minister and reverse Brexit without a further referendum.
Calling the election was a mix of over-optimism and misjudgement, falling into the trap of the SNP, who claimed to want to get rid of the Tories but really wanted a Boris win as playing directly into their longer-term strategy, as is clearly coming to pass now.
The warts and all LibDem GE Review suggests the MPs saw an election as the best/only way to stop Brexit, and believed that otherwise it would get through after the New Year with enough Labour support. But it points out they did little research or internal consultation before making the jump in parliament.
Their biggest misjudgement was not to throw their support behind one of the soft Brexit options during the Letwin process. LibDem votes would have been sufficient to get a majority for CM/CU/SM and at least allow Parliament to have taken that process to the next stage. Whether that would have changed the dynamic in the country and/or led to a concrete outcome in parliament, who can say?
I had no problem with "stop Brexit" as a legitimate political platform. The issue of course that it was a relatively unpopular position. Compromise was needed but the dying 2017 parliament couldn't find any compromise that worked. So the election was needed because we couldn't drift along like that with parliament literally unable to move in any direction no matter how funny it was to watch.
"It seems odd now but no one thought Johnson had a chance of becoming Tory leader when May resigned." Really? I think you've been mislead by an idealized vision of the Conservative Party.
I thought the theory was that Johnson would walk it in the membership ballot, and subsequent GE, but be a terrible leader and PM. And knowing this, MPs would move heaven and earth to keep him off the ballot.
It turns out that there were enough MPs mad/desperate/foolish enough to get him on the shortlist, but otherwise that prediction seems to be standing up pretty well.
By the time the moment came, things were so perilous under May that the MPs just wanted to win. As ever in politics, it was short term gain (for them) and long term pain (for us).
If you are at all Conservative in your thinking then you would have to accept that defeating Corbyn and Corbynism is long term gain (for us).
There are a number of parallels between UK and USA politics in recent years with the blues and reds on each side being similar.
2016/2017 on the red side Trump/Corbyn was an outsider not taken seriously even by his own party, thought bound to lose in the first election and lost the popular vote by millions - though America's electoral system made Trump the winner, ours ensured Corbyn lost.
2016/17 on the blue side Hillary/May was perceived to be a sure thing, but was not very popular in reality and underperformed expectations. Won the popular vote by millions but America's electoral system ensured Hillary lost, ours kept May in but in a minority government.
2019/20 on the blue side Biden/Boris may be perceived to be past it/a buffoon by critics but against their opponent even a buffoonish Boris/past it Biden is miles better than the alternative. After the last election's shock result it is no longer assumed the opponent can't possibly win and turnout will be up to ensure a landslide. Because of last time the betting markets are assuming the polls aren't reliable so value is on backing the blues in the market.
Indeed. Clinton backers who would have backed Biden this time got their fingers badly burned and so are keeping their cash in their pocket this time out.
Clinton's approval ratings were horrible - I feel a bit sorry for her because I do feel that if she had never been married to Bill then they would have been better - then again but for Bill she would probably never have got the nomination. Her approval ratings were about the same as Trump's. Biden is not great but his approval ratings beat Clinton and Trump's into a cocked hat. The difference with 2016 can be summed up in four words -relative approval and pandemic.
In the blue/red parallel the pandemic is the Brexit issue.
Biden's "shut down the virus, not the economy" isn't quite as pithy as "Get Brexit Done" but the sentiment is similar. People have had enough and want it over with.
They may want to control Covid, they do not want further full lockdowns either
In other news, I changed my first light switch yesterday. I feel like a proper adult at the grand old age of 28 years.
Cor. I've never done that and doubt if I ever will. If I do, it'll probably be the last thing I do...
I feel I'm being intrepid when I change a light bulb.
Try hard not to make it a shocking experience.
You joke though I did shock myself once changing a switch. Was living in a flat and it had multiple circuit breaker panels, turned out I'd isolated the wrong one. Touched the cables together and I jumped backwards at the shock, burnt my fingers for days afterwards.
Make damn sure you've fully isolated the power is my advice before doing something like that. Easy enough in a home with only one panel, in a flat its not always so obvious . . .
My brother did similar, in the extension on his house. He told me he had tested the circuit wasn't live by flicking on a light switch and checking the light didn't come on; unfortunately he didn't do that with the actual switch he was working on but with another switch in the old part of the house, on a different circuit
Healthy adults get away with it generally, but I know a family (friend of a friend, I'd briefly met the boy in question) whose 5 year old did not, with dodgy wires into the plug of a table lamp (and an old fuse box with fuse wire providing no protection). Fitting a consumer unit with RCDs will be my (well, the sparky's) first job if I ever move into a house that doesn't have that. There's no reason not to have every wire in a house protected nowadays.
A modern breaker box, properly certified, is a must. If you don't have RCDs - get it changed *now*
The number of lives saved and fires prevented is huge....
While I'm not normally a fan of regulations, this is something that probably should be a legal requirement.
(This is where someone will probably say it is)
I'm a fan of sane regulations. The zone system for fittings in bathrooms, is clear, sensible and works.
Most real HSE stuff is like this.
The scumbags who go all BlockFuhrer abusing HSE as a way of creating a power trip should be blind folded, and left to wonder an unprotected construction site, until they fall in a cement mixer.
In other news, I changed my first light switch yesterday. I feel like a proper adult at the grand old age of 28 years.
Cor. I've never done that and doubt if I ever will. If I do, it'll probably be the last thing I do...
I feel I'm being intrepid when I change a light bulb.
Try hard not to make it a shocking experience.
You joke though I did shock myself once changing a switch. Was living in a flat and it had multiple circuit breaker panels, turned out I'd isolated the wrong one. Touched the cables together and I jumped backwards at the shock, burnt my fingers for days afterwards.
Make damn sure you've fully isolated the power is my advice before doing something like that. Easy enough in a home with only one panel, in a flat its not always so obvious . . .
My brother did similar, in the extension on his house. He told me he had tested the circuit wasn't live by flicking on a light switch and checking the light didn't come on; unfortunately he didn't do that with the actual switch he was working on but with another switch in the old part of the house, on a different circuit
Healthy adults get away with it generally, but I know a family (friend of a friend, I'd briefly met the boy in question) whose 5 year old did not, with dodgy wires into the plug of a table lamp (and an old fuse box with fuse wire providing no protection). Fitting a consumer unit with RCDs will be my (well, the sparky's) first job if I ever move into a house that doesn't have that. There's no reason not to have every wire in a house protected nowadays.
A modern breaker box, properly certified, is a must. If you don't have RCDs - get it changed *now*
The number of lives saved and fires prevented is huge....
We have a birdbox with a camera, so that we can watch, or our TV, the 'tenants' each spring build a nest and bring up a family. Fascinating. Personal Springwatch. Last May we were watching the TV one evening when there was a loud bang from close to the TV and it went off. Checked the fusebox and identified the problem circuit. Somewhat gingerly switch ed it back on and the only thing in the house which still didn't work was the bird box, and subsequently found that the link to the TV had developed a fault. When we got the unit out, the casing had blown off and there were burn marks on it. No other problems.
I was expecting the punch line to be the exploding bird box
In other news, I changed my first light switch yesterday. I feel like a proper adult at the grand old age of 28 years.
Cor. I've never done that and doubt if I ever will. If I do, it'll probably be the last thing I do...
I feel I'm being intrepid when I change a light bulb.
Try hard not to make it a shocking experience.
You joke though I did shock myself once changing a switch. Was living in a flat and it had multiple circuit breaker panels, turned out I'd isolated the wrong one. Touched the cables together and I jumped backwards at the shock, burnt my fingers for days afterwards.
Make damn sure you've fully isolated the power is my advice before doing something like that. Easy enough in a home with only one panel, in a flat its not always so obvious . . .
My brother did similar, in the extension on his house. He told me he had tested the circuit wasn't live by flicking on a light switch and checking the light didn't come on; unfortunately he didn't do that with the actual switch he was working on but with another switch in the old part of the house, on a different circuit
Healthy adults get away with it generally, but I know a family (friend of a friend, I'd briefly met the boy in question) whose 5 year old did not, with dodgy wires into the plug of a table lamp (and an old fuse box with fuse wire providing no protection). Fitting a consumer unit with RCDs will be my (well, the sparky's) first job if I ever move into a house that doesn't have that. There's no reason not to have every wire in a house protected nowadays.
I had a lucky escape, long before RCDs, when I was about four years old and my brother suggested in would be interesting to see what would happen if I stuck a hairpin in a socket. Escaped with a small burn and a melted wire fuse in the old fuse box.
If Mitt Romney won North Carolina Trump certainly will and especially now African Americans have swung to him since 2016
Are you still maintaining the fiction that you want Biden to win because the tone of every post you write on the US election suggests otherwise?
I have said I would have voted for Hillary too in 2016 and did so at the time, that does not change the fact Hillary lost, in fact the last Republican I would have voted for was George W Bush in 2000.
However it seems that unlike some on here I can distinguish between who I would vote for and who I think will win which is what this site is supposed to be about and as I showed last night Trump's vote has not disappeared and very rarely does the candidate with the most energy amongst their supporters lose
Except for all the examples where they do lose. A big rally with cheering supporters does not mean there are sufficient voters outside the rally to carry the win. What you are suggesting is that Michael Foot became PM in 1983 because of the huge cheering crowds at his rallies. Or Corbyn in 2017. Or that Major lost in 2017 because his (frankly brilliant) soapbox drew in crowds of hecklers.
"You can currently get close to Evens on the Democrats winning North Carolina. Take it." I have a great deal of confidence in Robert Smithson's judgement of American Politics, all the more so since he moved Stateside. Therefore when he unconditionally suggests that I take a particular bet, as is the case here, I tend to do so, backing the Democrats to win North Carolina at 1.90 with Smarkets. What I do find slightly puzzling however is why forecasters generally hold so much store, considered in isolation, in the marked increase in the number of early voters. Surely this is wholly unsurprising and results predominantly as a result of the electors attempting to reduce the risk of becoming infected by Covid-19 not only by avoiding entering a polling booth and touching surfaces probably hundreds of others have touched before but also not by having to stand for hours on end in a slow-moving queue, breathing the same air as other possibly infected individuals have also breathed. I have long been a postal voter in the U.K., but it seems inconceivable to me that I would vote by any other means at this most dreadful and dangerous of times. Yet still the queues continue .... WHY, OH WHY?
Thanks for the thread Robert. I agree with your conclusion.
Those clutching to the faint hope of a Trump win are pinning their hopes on all of the following: 1. Trump supporters are hiding from the pollsters. 2. Despite coming from the "expendible" demographic most at risk from Covid-19, a significant proportion of older registered Democrats are voting for Trump. 3. Polling companies which got it utterly wrong in 2018 will get it right in 2020, and other companies changes to their methods in the wake of 2016 count for nothing. 4. To counter what's happening in early voting, Trump will pull it out of the bag by winning a far higher proportion of the vote share on election day than happened in 2016.
Yes, it's possible. Very occasionally, an absolute outsider wins the Grand National. But personally, I think the chances of Biden winning the popular vote by >10% now exceed by some way those of Trump winning the electoral college.
If Biden was winning the popular vote by over 10% there should be significant switching from 2016 Trump voters to Biden, that is not happening, most polls show over 90% of Trump 2016 voters are still voting for Trump and over 90% of Hillary voters are voting for Biden.
Where Biden is doing better is he is picking up about 50% of the Other candidate vote in 2016 but then Trump is also picking up about 20% of the Other vote from 2016 so both Biden and Trump could see higher voteshares than 2016 and a result something like Biden 50% and Trump 47% in the national popular vote is certainly possible and that would be a less than 1% swing from 2016 and thus Trump could still scrape home in the EC.
Plus we know from 2016 there was a shy Trump vote otherwise Trump would not have won as the polls were showing Hillary not only winning the popular vote but the EC too, there was no shy GOP vote in 2018 or 2014 and no shy Romney vote in 2012 either however, only a shy vote when Trump is on the ballot
To be fair to Swinson continuing to deny an election after Article 50 was extended was frankly unsustainable - and that was a great polling situation for the Lib Dems. They'd consistently upticked for about a month or so now and could have made many gains.
What made Swinson lose her own seat and net seats was the hubris that followed. Especially that magazine they published introducing "Jo Swinson, Britain's Next Prime Minister" was absurd and made her look absolutely foolish.
Swinson should have been targetting about 30+ seats and having a bigger role in the next Parliament with a second referendum as policy, not acting like Icarus pledging to become Prime Minister and reverse Brexit without a further referendum.
Calling the election was a mix of over-optimism and misjudgement, falling into the trap of the SNP, who claimed to want to get rid of the Tories but really wanted a Boris win as playing directly into their longer-term strategy, as is clearly coming to pass now.
The warts and all LibDem GE Review suggests the MPs saw an election as the best/only way to stop Brexit, and believed that otherwise it would get through after the New Year with enough Labour support. But it points out they did little research or internal consultation before making the jump in parliament.
Their biggest misjudgement was not to throw their support behind one of the soft Brexit options during the Letwin process. LibDem votes would have been sufficient to get a majority for CM/CU/SM and at least allow Parliament to have taken that process to the next stage. Whether that would have changed the dynamic in the country and/or led to a concrete outcome in parliament, who can say?
I had no problem with "stop Brexit" as a legitimate political platform. The issue of course that it was a relatively unpopular position. Compromise was needed but the dying 2017 parliament couldn't find any compromise that worked. So the election was needed because we couldn't drift along like that with parliament literally unable to move in any direction no matter how funny it was to watch.
Yes. That night when every single one of Letwin's options got voted down sealed the fate of a compromise path. Despite the second go to make something of the process, its credibility was shot the moment news that the MPs had voted against everything hit the media.
Mrs May should have spent her political capital on it from the beginning.
In other news, I changed my first light switch yesterday. I feel like a proper adult at the grand old age of 28 years.
Funnily enough I changed my first dimmer switch yesterday. Watched YouTube and learned about COM, L1 and L2, and managed to change the switch without electrocuting myself at the grand old age of 77. Never too late to learn.
There is a sort of non debate going on between Rashford and co and government and co which goes like this:
Rashford: A small sum from government directed as I am requiring will solve the problem of small children going hungry.
Government: We have spent and continue to spend a squillion trillion pounds per second on exactly this problem, sums hugely in excess of what Rashford is asking, and loads more than budget and continuing to increase.
With no-one interested in trying to mediate or make sense of the non debate.
He confused Donald Trump for Abraham Lincoln in the prsidential debate last week. He does show very early signs of cognitive decline. This is a Trump vs Harris election.
I listened to the Lincoln thing a couple of time. “Abraham Lincoln over here” sounded like deliberate sarcasm to me.
Of course it was. It was a reference to Trump's claim to have done more for blacks than any President ever, with the possible exception of Abraham Lincoln.
A bad parallel, because Abraham Lincoln was actually very racist. He wanted slavery abolished but he would have been perfectly happy with Jim Crow (and said publicly that was what he was aiming for, although not by that name). Truman, Eisenhower and Johnson all did far more for African Americans than he did.
A bit unfair to Lincoln I feel: after all, abolishing slavery is a pretty big step. The US civil war, like all wars, has multiple reasons given for its cause by multiple people, but Lincoln’s election was the spark that set it off due to his attitude towards slavery.
I remember reading several volumes of Page Smith's History of the US. He made the good point that it would be very comforting to think that right-thinking people all lined up on one side of the argument, throughout history, and wrong-thinking people lined up on the other, but it's never like that. He pointed out that some abolitionists had really horrible opinions about the lower classes, or American Indians. That doesn't make them wrong about abolition, however.
And, we're no better today.
How many of us are confident that generations from now people will look back on us today and think we smelt wholly of roses?
Also of note - Trumps approval rating has leveled off at the 42/43 percent range. Earlier in the month i think Mike picked up that it was heading North, but there's since been very little movement.
Hopefully Nate Silver disqualifies Trafalgar now after those very sketchy crosstabs (which have now since been deleted hilariously). Broken clocks are right twice a day.
That would be the same Nate Silver who forecast Hillary would win over 300 EC votes on eve of poll 2016 while Trafalgar forecast Trump would win Michigan and Pennsylvania and the EC?
You keep peddling this line that people who got it wrong last time can be ignored the next time.
Brave of you, really.
It has to be said that HYUFD's record is very good. He got Johnson right from a very early date and suffered similar ridicule. He was a lone voice and got it spot on. He was a shoo-in for predictor of the year. It would be a shame if he blew it on Trump 2020*
*Though a great relief for humanity obviously
No he didn't. Pretty much everyone, barring a few ardent Corbynistas, believed that Johnson could and would beat Corbyn.
It was the leadership of the Tory Party when Mrs May quit.
His speciality is narcissistic shits
But it wasn't really rocket science that the Tory membership would plump for the most Brexity candidate on offer and that's where Johnson positioned himself.
If the Gov't was going to u-turn then it should have done it by this point. Personally I think they'd be better off sticking right now.
Its too late to u-turn for half-term but a pre-emptive u-turn for Christmas is entirely rational. The problem is this issue won't go away and will be back with a vengeance at Christmas - is Boris really going to dig in and be the Scrooge who won't allow kids to eat at Christmas?
The u-turn for that is inevitable. They'll be trying to think a way of dressing it up with face-saving to say it isn't a u-turn, but it will be.
Going off the tone from various Tory MPs I don't think the Tories think they are doing anything wrong. That they wheel out Jenrick - Mr you scratch my back - out to defend why the country can't afford this demonstrates that they simply don't care what people think.
Why should you or I feed these kids? Why should we pay our taxes only to have it handed over to degenerates smackheads and prostitutes? Its THEIR fault these kids are hungry thanks to them wasting their child benefits on booze. And if the kids are starving then social services should take them away. <- this is literally what I have read someone saying on a local MP's Twitter feed. That some people have been gaslit to believe there is no hunger that isn't caused by scum parents is why the Tories feel they can act with impunity.
Don't forget, in a culture wars environment, they *cannot* concede to Burham or Rashford. These people are *wrong*.</p>
They have a point.
There is no justification for not feeding kids in this country. People already get Child Benefit, Child Tax Credits or a Child element of Universal Credit (which has had an uplift this year) etc, etc - what are they meant to go towards if not feeding kids?
That some people take the money they get from the government in Child Benefits and buy booze and fags is undeniable. What can be done about that is a very difficult question to answer though.
But this is burning the Tories badly. A u-turn of some form before Christmas is inevitable, mark my words. There is simply no possible way they will want this as a live issue at Christmas time.
Dismantling the set for the Edinburgh Military Tattoo, Northern Light had a run a cable through part of it. The light at the end of the cable was off, so we chopped it.
Bright flash, loud bang.
The light was a secondary (emergency) fitting, so light off means power on...
If the Gov't was going to u-turn then it should have done it by this point. Personally I think they'd be better off sticking right now.
Its too late to u-turn for half-term but a pre-emptive u-turn for Christmas is entirely rational. The problem is this issue won't go away and will be back with a vengeance at Christmas - is Boris really going to dig in and be the Scrooge who won't allow kids to eat at Christmas?
The u-turn for that is inevitable. They'll be trying to think a way of dressing it up with face-saving to say it isn't a u-turn, but it will be.
Going off the tone from various Tory MPs I don't think the Tories think they are doing anything wrong. That they wheel out Jenrick - Mr you scratch my back - out to defend why the country can't afford this demonstrates that they simply don't care what people think.
Why should you or I feed these kids? Why should we pay our taxes only to have it handed over to degenerates smackheads and prostitutes? Its THEIR fault these kids are hungry thanks to them wasting their child benefits on booze. And if the kids are starving then social services should take them away. <- this is literally what I have read someone saying on a local MP's Twitter feed. That some people have been gaslit to believe there is no hunger that isn't caused by scum parents is why the Tories feel they can act with impunity.
Don't forget, in a culture wars environment, they *cannot* concede to Burham or Rashford. These people are *wrong*.</p>
They have a point.
There is no justification for not feeding kids in this country. People already get Child Benefit, Child Tax Credits or a Child element of Universal Credit (which has had an uplift this year) etc, etc - what are they meant to go towards if not feeding kids?
That some people take the money they get from the government in Child Benefits and buy booze and fags is undeniable. What can be done about that is a very difficult question to answer though.
But this is burning the Tories badly. A u-turn of some form before Christmas is inevitable, mark my words. There is simply no possible way they will want this as a live issue at Christmas time.
Christmas?
They will u-turn within the next 48 hours.
I guess they will try some enormous rotting dead cat first though, so I expect that this lunchtime.
Thanks for the thread Robert. I agree with your conclusion.
Those clutching to the faint hope of a Trump win are pinning their hopes on all of the following: 1. Trump supporters are hiding from the pollsters. 2. Despite coming from the "expendible" demographic most at risk from Covid-19, a significant proportion of older registered Democrats are voting for Trump. 3. Polling companies which got it utterly wrong in 2018 will get it right in 2020, and other companies changes to their methods in the wake of 2016 count for nothing. 4. To counter what's happening in early voting, Trump will pull it out of the bag by winning a far higher proportion of the vote share on election day than happened in 2016.
Yes, it's possible. Very occasionally, an absolute outsider wins the Grand National. But personally, I think the chances of Biden winning the popular vote by >10% now exceed by some way those of Trump winning the electoral college.
If Biden was winning the popular vote by over 10% there should be significant switching from 2016 Trump voters to Biden, that is not happening, most polls show over 90% of Trump 2016 voters are still voting for Trump and over 90% of Hillary voters are voting for Biden.
Where Biden is doing better is he is picking up about 50% of the Other candidate vote in 2016 but then Trump is also picking up about 20% of the Other vote from 2016 so both Biden and Trump could see higher voteshares than 2016 and a result something like Biden 50% and Trump 47% in the national popular vote is certainly possible and that would be a less than 1% swing from 2016 and thus Trump could still scrape home in the EC.
Plus we know from 2016 there was a shy Trump vote otherwise Trump would not have won as the polls were showing Hillary not only winning the popular vote but the EC too, there was no shy GOP vote in 2018 or 2014 and no shy Romney vote in 2012 either however, only a shy vote when Trump is on the ballot
I agree that "Trump could still scrape home in the EC" and I put that in terms of probability at around 15%.
You also agree, as you say, "Trump could still scrape home in the EC" - yet you put that in terms of probability at slightly over 50%.
If Mitt Romney won North Carolina Trump certainly will and especially now African Americans have swung to him since 2016
Are you still maintaining the fiction that you want Biden to win because the tone of every post you write on the US election suggests otherwise?
I have said I would have voted for Hillary too in 2016 and did so at the time, that does not change the fact Hillary lost, in fact the last Republican I would have voted for was George W Bush in 2000.
However it seems that unlike some on here I can distinguish between who I would vote for and who I think will win which is what this site is supposed to be about and as I showed last night Trump's vote has not disappeared and very rarely does the candidate with the most energy amongst their supporters lose
To be fair to Swinson continuing to deny an election after Article 50 was extended was frankly unsustainable - and that was a great polling situation for the Lib Dems. They'd consistently upticked for about a month or so now and could have made many gains.
What made Swinson lose her own seat and net seats was the hubris that followed. Especially that magazine they published introducing "Jo Swinson, Britain's Next Prime Minister" was absurd and made her look absolutely foolish.
Swinson should have been targetting about 30+ seats and having a bigger role in the next Parliament with a second referendum as policy, not acting like Icarus pledging to become Prime Minister and reverse Brexit without a further referendum.
Calling the election was a mix of over-optimism and misjudgement, falling into the trap of the SNP, who claimed to want to get rid of the Tories but really wanted a Boris win as playing directly into their longer-term strategy, as is clearly coming to pass now.
The warts and all LibDem GE Review suggests the MPs saw an election as the best/only way to stop Brexit, and believed that otherwise it would get through after the New Year with enough Labour support. But it points out they did little research or internal consultation before making the jump in parliament.
Their biggest misjudgement was not to throw their support behind one of the soft Brexit options during the Letwin process. LibDem votes would have been sufficient to get a majority for CM/CU/SM and at least allow Parliament to have taken that process to the next stage. Whether that would have changed the dynamic in the country and/or led to a concrete outcome in parliament, who can say?
I had no problem with "stop Brexit" as a legitimate political platform. The issue of course that it was a relatively unpopular position. Compromise was needed but the dying 2017 parliament couldn't find any compromise that worked. So the election was needed because we couldn't drift along like that with parliament literally unable to move in any direction no matter how funny it was to watch.
Yes. That night when every single one of Letwin's options got voted down sealed the fate of a compromise path. Despite the second go to make something of the process, its credibility was shot the moment news that the MPs had voted against everything hit the media.
Mrs May should have spent her political capital on it from the beginning.
If you play double or quits, then it might not be you who gets to double - and you will then be forced to quit.
"You can currently get close to Evens on the Democrats winning North Carolina. Take it." I have a great deal of confidence in Robert Smithson's judgement of American Politics, all the more so since he moved Stateside. Therefore when he unconditionally suggests that I take a particular bet, as is the case here, I tend to do so, backing the Democrats to win North Carolina at 1.90 with Smarkets. What I do find slightly puzzling however is why forecasters generally hold so much store, considered in isolation, in the marked increase in the number of early voters. Surely this is wholly unsurprising and results predominantly as a result of the electors attempting to reduce the risk of becoming infected by Covid-19 not only by avoiding entering a polling booth and touching surfaces probably hundreds of others have touched before but also not by having to stand for hours on end in a slow-moving queue, breathing the same air as other possibly infected individuals have also breathed. I have long been a postal voter in the U.K., but it seems inconceivable to me that I would vote by any other means at this most dreadful and dangerous of times. Yet still the queues continue .... WHY, OH WHY?
The publicity given to the shenanigans with the Post Office, in the US and Trumps garbage about postal ballots has put many off postal voting.
There is a massive expectation of queues on the day. The other scandal in the US is the steady reduction in polling places. Which is generally politically (and racially) motivated.
Which leaves early voting.
People complain about various parts of UK election practises - but we generally have enough election places, the boundary commission is pretty impartial and the counting is fair and sensible.
If the Gov't was going to u-turn then it should have done it by this point. Personally I think they'd be better off sticking right now.
Its too late to u-turn for half-term but a pre-emptive u-turn for Christmas is entirely rational. The problem is this issue won't go away and will be back with a vengeance at Christmas - is Boris really going to dig in and be the Scrooge who won't allow kids to eat at Christmas?
The u-turn for that is inevitable. They'll be trying to think a way of dressing it up with face-saving to say it isn't a u-turn, but it will be.
Going off the tone from various Tory MPs I don't think the Tories think they are doing anything wrong. That they wheel out Jenrick - Mr you scratch my back - out to defend why the country can't afford this demonstrates that they simply don't care what people think.
Why should you or I feed these kids? Why should we pay our taxes only to have it handed over to degenerates smackheads and prostitutes? Its THEIR fault these kids are hungry thanks to them wasting their child benefits on booze. And if the kids are starving then social services should take them away. <- this is literally what I have read someone saying on a local MP's Twitter feed. That some people have been gaslit to believe there is no hunger that isn't caused by scum parents is why the Tories feel they can act with impunity.
Don't forget, in a culture wars environment, they *cannot* concede to Burham or Rashford. These people are *wrong*.</p>
They have a point.
There is no justification for not feeding kids in this country. People already get Child Benefit, Child Tax Credits or a Child element of Universal Credit (which has had an uplift this year) etc, etc - what are they meant to go towards if not feeding kids?
That some people take the money they get from the government in Child Benefits and buy booze and fags is undeniable. What can be done about that is a very difficult question to answer though.
But this is burning the Tories badly. A u-turn of some form before Christmas is inevitable, mark my words. There is simply no possible way they will want this as a live issue at Christmas time.
Where does not enough money go? Having seen people close to me drown in debt once you slip under the water its almost impossible to resurface. As previously discussed UC / Minimum Wage isn't enough money to survive on. All you need is an unexpected bill and you're sunk. So I'm confident that a lot of the hungry kids come from families who are not scum and are mortified by the position they are in. But all the focus goes to the minority who just don't care.
I agree that it is burning the Tories. Their challenge is how to u-turn without having been seen to u-turn and without admitting that minimum wage / UC is insufficient. As there is literally no way to kill this issue by Christmas - I guarantee you that some kids will be hungry regardless of what they do - the alternative is power through and try to reframe the debate back onto the feckless workshy scum.
If Biden was winning the popular vote by over 10% there should be significant switching from 2016 Trump voters to Biden, that is not happening, most polls show over 90% of Trump 2016 voters are still voting for Trump and over 90% of Hillary voters are voting for Biden.
Where Biden is doing better is he is picking up about 50% of the Other candidate vote in 2016 but then Trump is also picking up about 20% of the Other vote from 2016 so both Biden and Trump could see higher voteshares than 2016 and a result something like Biden 50% and Trump 47% in the national popular vote is certainly possible and that would be a less than 1% swing from 2016 and thus Trump could still scrape home in the EC.
Plus we know from 2016 there was a shy Trump vote otherwise Trump would not have won as the polls were showing Hillary not only winning the popular vote but the EC too, there was no shy GOP vote in 2018 or 2014 and no shy Romney vote in 2012 either however, only a shy vote when Trump is on the ballot
Completely wrong. As I keep saying, there was no shy Trump vote in 2016. People who reported as being undecided before the election post election reported going for Trump 6 to 1. Further whites without college degrees were significantly underrepresented. This time there are far fewer undecideds and pollsters weight far more for education. Even then the RCP acerage was, at worst, 3.5% out (in Michigan). For Trump to win the pollsters have to do worse than last time.
What the MSM have failed to do is to actually produce figures for what being on UC means and how much someone actually gets. What Pagan2 showed yesterday is that for a family living in rented accommodation UC is actually extremely generous and there are certain situations where someone on UC would have more dispoable income than a family on an average salary with average housing costs who are not entitled to anything other than child benefit.
If Biden was winning the popular vote by over 10% there should be significant switching from 2016 Trump voters to Biden, that is not happening, most polls show over 90% of Trump 2016 voters are still voting for Trump and over 90% of Hillary voters are voting for Biden.
Where Biden is doing better is he is picking up about 50% of the Other candidate vote in 2016 but then Trump is also picking up about 20% of the Other vote from 2016 so both Biden and Trump could see higher voteshares than 2016 and a result something like Biden 50% and Trump 47% in the national popular vote is certainly possible and that would be a less than 1% swing from 2016 and thus Trump could still scrape home in the EC.
Plus we know from 2016 there was a shy Trump vote otherwise Trump would not have won as the polls were showing Hillary not only winning the popular vote but the EC too, there was no shy GOP vote in 2018 or 2014 and no shy Romney vote in 2012 either however, only a shy vote when Trump is on the ballot
Completely wrong. As I keep saying, there was no shy Trump vote in 2016. People who reported as being undecided before the election post election reported going for Trump 6 to 1. Further whites without college degrees were significantly underrepresented. This time there are far fewer undecideds and pollsters weight far more for education. Even then the RCP acerage was, at worst, 3.5% out (in Michigan). For Trump to win the pollsters have to do worse than last time.
There are still about 3 or 4% who are not saying who they are voting for, if they again all go mainly to Trump they are again shy Trumps as they were in 2016.
Trump is also the first Republican candidate since Reagan with real strong support amongst white working class Democrats, they are often in rural and small town areas and still difficult to poll all of them without the mass polling Trafalgar does
If the Gov't was going to u-turn then it should have done it by this point. Personally I think they'd be better off sticking right now.
Its too late to u-turn for half-term but a pre-emptive u-turn for Christmas is entirely rational. The problem is this issue won't go away and will be back with a vengeance at Christmas - is Boris really going to dig in and be the Scrooge who won't allow kids to eat at Christmas?
The u-turn for that is inevitable. They'll be trying to think a way of dressing it up with face-saving to say it isn't a u-turn, but it will be.
Going off the tone from various Tory MPs I don't think the Tories think they are doing anything wrong. That they wheel out Jenrick - Mr you scratch my back - out to defend why the country can't afford this demonstrates that they simply don't care what people think.
Why should you or I feed these kids? Why should we pay our taxes only to have it handed over to degenerates smackheads and prostitutes? Its THEIR fault these kids are hungry thanks to them wasting their child benefits on booze. And if the kids are starving then social services should take them away. <- this is literally what I have read someone saying on a local MP's Twitter feed. That some people have been gaslit to believe there is no hunger that isn't caused by scum parents is why the Tories feel they can act with impunity.
Don't forget, in a culture wars environment, they *cannot* concede to Burham or Rashford. These people are *wrong*.</p>
They have a point.
There is no justification for not feeding kids in this country. People already get Child Benefit, Child Tax Credits or a Child element of Universal Credit (which has had an uplift this year) etc, etc - what are they meant to go towards if not feeding kids?
That some people take the money they get from the government in Child Benefits and buy booze and fags is undeniable. What can be done about that is a very difficult question to answer though.
But this is burning the Tories badly. A u-turn of some form before Christmas is inevitable, mark my words. There is simply no possible way they will want this as a live issue at Christmas time.
Christmas?
They will u-turn within the next 48 hours.
I guess they will try some enormous rotting dead cat first though, so I expect that this lunchtime.
To me Boris has to reverse this idiotic tin ear policy now
The optics are dreadful and I expect Boris will be defeated by his own mps voting with labour
5 did on the last vote plus 22 abstained and with the increased awareness of the damage I expect Boris to get a hiding if he carries on
As I said at the time of the last vote I would have joined the 5 conservatives voting with labour and I just hope the momentum with the party is just to do the right thing
To be fair to Swinson continuing to deny an election after Article 50 was extended was frankly unsustainable - and that was a great polling situation for the Lib Dems. They'd consistently upticked for about a month or so now and could have made many gains.
What made Swinson lose her own seat and net seats was the hubris that followed. Especially that magazine they published introducing "Jo Swinson, Britain's Next Prime Minister" was absurd and made her look absolutely foolish.
Swinson should have been targetting about 30+ seats and having a bigger role in the next Parliament with a second referendum as policy, not acting like Icarus pledging to become Prime Minister and reverse Brexit without a further referendum.
Calling the election was a mix of over-optimism and misjudgement, falling into the trap of the SNP, who claimed to want to get rid of the Tories but really wanted a Boris win as playing directly into their longer-term strategy, as is clearly coming to pass now.
The warts and all LibDem GE Review suggests the MPs saw an election as the best/only way to stop Brexit, and believed that otherwise it would get through after the New Year with enough Labour support. But it points out they did little research or internal consultation before making the jump in parliament.
Their biggest misjudgement was not to throw their support behind one of the soft Brexit options during the Letwin process. LibDem votes would have been sufficient to get a majority for CM/CU/SM and at least allow Parliament to have taken that process to the next stage. Whether that would have changed the dynamic in the country and/or led to a concrete outcome in parliament, who can say?
I had no problem with "stop Brexit" as a legitimate political platform. The issue of course that it was a relatively unpopular position. Compromise was needed but the dying 2017 parliament couldn't find any compromise that worked. So the election was needed because we couldn't drift along like that with parliament literally unable to move in any direction no matter how funny it was to watch.
Yes. That night when every single one of Letwin's options got voted down sealed the fate of a compromise path. Despite the second go to make something of the process, its credibility was shot the moment news that the MPs had voted against everything hit the media.
Mrs May should have spent her political capital on it from the beginning.
Frankly it was the Lib Dems and People's Vote gang who gave us hard Brexit.
If they'd backed Clarke's motion C or Nick Boles' motion D - it would all look very different now.
In other news, I changed my first light switch yesterday. I feel like a proper adult at the grand old age of 28 years.
Cor. I've never done that and doubt if I ever will. If I do, it'll probably be the last thing I do...
I feel I'm being intrepid when I change a light bulb.
Try hard not to make it a shocking experience.
You joke though I did shock myself once changing a switch. Was living in a flat and it had multiple circuit breaker panels, turned out I'd isolated the wrong one. Touched the cables together and I jumped backwards at the shock, burnt my fingers for days afterwards.
Make damn sure you've fully isolated the power is my advice before doing something like that. Easy enough in a home with only one panel, in a flat its not always so obvious . . .
My brother did similar, in the extension on his house. He told me he had tested the circuit wasn't live by flicking on a light switch and checking the light didn't come on; unfortunately he didn't do that with the actual switch he was working on but with another switch in the old part of the house, on a different circuit
Healthy adults get away with it generally, but I know a family (friend of a friend, I'd briefly met the boy in question) whose 5 year old did not, with dodgy wires into the plug of a table lamp (and an old fuse box with fuse wire providing no protection). Fitting a consumer unit with RCDs will be my (well, the sparky's) first job if I ever move into a house that doesn't have that. There's no reason not to have every wire in a house protected nowadays.
A modern breaker box, properly certified, is a must. If you don't have RCDs - get it changed *now*
The number of lives saved and fires prevented is huge....
We have a birdbox with a camera, so that we can watch, or our TV, the 'tenants' each spring build a nest and bring up a family. Fascinating. Personal Springwatch. Last May we were watching the TV one evening when there was a loud bang from close to the TV and it went off. Checked the fusebox and identified the problem circuit. Somewhat gingerly switch ed it back on and the only thing in the house which still didn't work was the bird box, and subsequently found that the link to the TV had developed a fault. When we got the unit out, the casing had blown off and there were burn marks on it. No other problems.
I was expecting the punch line to be the exploding bird box
In other news, I changed my first light switch yesterday. I feel like a proper adult at the grand old age of 28 years.
Cor. I've never done that and doubt if I ever will. If I do, it'll probably be the last thing I do...
I feel I'm being intrepid when I change a light bulb.
Try hard not to make it a shocking experience.
You joke though I did shock myself once changing a switch. Was living in a flat and it had multiple circuit breaker panels, turned out I'd isolated the wrong one. Touched the cables together and I jumped backwards at the shock, burnt my fingers for days afterwards.
Make damn sure you've fully isolated the power is my advice before doing something like that. Easy enough in a home with only one panel, in a flat its not always so obvious . . .
My brother did similar, in the extension on his house. He told me he had tested the circuit wasn't live by flicking on a light switch and checking the light didn't come on; unfortunately he didn't do that with the actual switch he was working on but with another switch in the old part of the house, on a different circuit
Healthy adults get away with it generally, but I know a family (friend of a friend, I'd briefly met the boy in question) whose 5 year old did not, with dodgy wires into the plug of a table lamp (and an old fuse box with fuse wire providing no protection). Fitting a consumer unit with RCDs will be my (well, the sparky's) first job if I ever move into a house that doesn't have that. There's no reason not to have every wire in a house protected nowadays.
I had a lucky escape, long before RCDs, when I was about four years old and my brother suggested in would be interesting to see what would happen if I stuck a hairpin in a socket. Escaped with a small burn and a melted wire fuse in the old fuse box.
You will be amazed when is board is changed to one with RCD protection the number of domestic appliances that will no longer work as all they do is trip the RCD.
It is with fear and trepidation I am about to get in the car and go for my prescription wondering if the neighbours will report me the Stasi Welsh government for having the temerity to go out
Comments
Which would make him, given Lincoln’s publicly admitted views, er, a racist.
Which I thought was deliciously ironic and shows just how dumb Trump is.
It turns out that there were enough MPs mad/desperate/foolish enough to get him on the shortlist, but otherwise that prediction seems to be standing up pretty well.
The Americans don't always have the best sense of irony but that one was an open goal.
By my count 613,417 people have voted in 2020 who did not vote in 2016 as of 2 days ago.
I'll double check that figure and give a breakdown by party registration in a bit.
Trump was absurd, not dumb there.
Those clutching to the faint hope of a Trump win are pinning their hopes on all of the following:
1. Trump supporters are hiding from the pollsters.
2. Despite coming from the "expendible" demographic most at risk from Covid-19, a significant proportion of older registered Democrats are voting for Trump.
3. Polling companies which got it utterly wrong in 2018 will get it right in 2020, and other companies changes to their methods in the wake of 2016 count for nothing.
4. To counter what's happening in early voting, Trump will pull it out of the bag by winning a far higher proportion of the vote share on election day than happened in 2016.
Yes, it's possible. Very occasionally, an absolute outsider wins the Grand National. But personally, I think the chances of Biden winning the popular vote by >10% now exceed by some way those of Trump winning the electoral college.
I have LED strip lights under my kitchen cabinets and you're right that they are good; indeed this was my first thought for the job. But I saw these fluorescents down Block & Quail and they met my spec.
...because Rasputin wont agree to the u-turn.
There are a number of parallels between UK and USA politics in recent years with the blues and reds on each side being similar.
2016/2017 on the red side Trump/Corbyn was an outsider not taken seriously even by his own party, thought bound to lose in the first election and lost the popular vote by millions - though America's electoral system made Trump the winner, ours ensured Corbyn lost.
2016/17 on the blue side Hillary/May was perceived to be a sure thing, but was not very popular in reality and underperformed expectations. Won the popular vote by millions but America's electoral system ensured Hillary lost, ours kept May in but in a minority government.
2019/20 on the blue side Biden/Boris may be perceived to be past it/a buffoon by critics but against their opponent even a buffoonish Boris/past it Biden is miles better than the alternative. After the last election's shock result it is no longer assumed the opponent can't possibly win and turnout will be up to ensure a landslide. Because of last time the betting markets are assuming the polls aren't reliable so value is on backing the blues in the market.
It was one of my main concerns. You don't have to fiddle the count if you can prevent the votes from being cast, but it looks like it's hard to keep voters away when they have several weeks in which to vote.
https://twitter.com/JohnRentoul/status/1320651628974931971
Unfortunately they have chosen the very worst issue on which to make their stand.
https://twitter.com/RhonddaBryant/status/1320657044551143424
The biggest weakness had Labour won would have been the pitiful inadequacy of the team around him - which is the same key weakness that we have now under the clown. Burgon or Williamson, rinse and repeat.
Irksome to have rain when I want to post a parcel...
F1: account not yet updated with the Hamilton wins bet. Mildly surprised. Will give it a few days then send an enquiry if need be.
What made Swinson lose her own seat and net seats was the hubris that followed. Especially that magazine they published introducing "Jo Swinson, Britain's Next Prime Minister" was absurd and made her look absolutely foolish.
Swinson should have been targetting about 30+ seats and having a bigger role in the next Parliament with a second referendum as policy, not acting like Icarus pledging to become Prime Minister and reverse Brexit without a further referendum.
Healthy adults get away with it generally, but I know a family (friend of a friend, I'd briefly met the boy in question) whose 5 year old did not, with dodgy wires into the plug of a table lamp (and an old fuse box with fuse wire providing no protection). Fitting a consumer unit with RCDs will be my (well, the sparky's) first job if I ever move into a house that doesn't have that. There's no reason not to have every wire in a house protected nowadays.
If enough cafes, local councils and other businesses come forward with offers of food then the government might say that there's no job left for them to do, isn't this a great example of what British civic society can achieve, wasn't it a good thing that the government did nothing so that people could create the big society we all want to see...
Clinton's approval ratings were horrible - I feel a bit sorry for her because I do feel that if she had never been married to Bill then they would have been better - then again but for Bill she would probably never have got the nomination. Her approval ratings were about the same as Trump's. Biden is not great but his approval ratings beat Clinton and Trump's into a cocked hat. The difference with 2016 can be summed up in four words -relative approval and pandemic.
The u-turn for that is inevitable. They'll be trying to think a way of dressing it up with face-saving to say it isn't a u-turn, but it will be.
Going by the piece in today's Times, it looks like the government is looking for an alternative mechanism so that they can say they haven't U-turned. Unless this is a really good mechanism, this is going to add complexity to save government face.
Biden's "shut down the virus, not the economy" isn't quite as pithy as "Get Brexit Done" but the sentiment is similar. People have had enough and want it over with.
If - as I expect - its a landslide, then Trump's options will be few and I expect the GOP - who surely would have been smashed in all the elections taking place - would tell him to go.
If on the other hand its in any way a bit tight, then off to court we go and they will have to drag him away in handcuffs. We've seen the disgusting spectacle of British lawyers being subject to violence thanks to the Home Secretary. America doesn't do things lightly especially in matters of patriotism and national survival. Someone will shoot lawyers and judges. If its close. To stop them "stealing" the election for "traitors".
The number of lives saved and fires prevented is huge....
https://twitter.com/MarcusRashford/status/1320648634480922626
(This is where someone will probably say it is)
The warts and all LibDem GE Review suggests the MPs saw an election as the best/only way to stop Brexit, and believed that otherwise it would get through after the New Year with enough Labour support. But it points out they did little research or internal consultation before making the jump in parliament.
Their biggest misjudgement was not to throw their support behind one of the soft Brexit options during the Letwin process. LibDem votes would have been sufficient to get a majority for CM/CU/SM and at least allow Parliament to have taken that process to the next stage. Whether that would have changed the dynamic in the country and/or led to a concrete outcome in parliament, who can say?
Like Mrs May, Bozo has frittered most of his starting capital away on fruitless side issues.
Why should you or I feed these kids? Why should we pay our taxes only to have it handed over to degenerates smackheads and prostitutes? Its THEIR fault these kids are hungry thanks to them wasting their child benefits on booze. And if the kids are starving then social services should take them away. <- this is literally what I have read someone saying on a local MP's Twitter feed. That some people have been gaslit to believe there is no hunger that isn't caused by scum parents is why the Tories feel they can act with impunity.
Don't forget, in a culture wars environment, they *cannot* concede to Burham or Rashford. These people are *wrong*.
Last May we were watching the TV one evening when there was a loud bang from close to the TV and it went off. Checked the fusebox and identified the problem circuit. Somewhat gingerly switch ed it back on and the only thing in the house which still didn't work was the bird box, and subsequently found that the link to the TV had developed a fault.
When we got the unit out, the casing had blown off and there were burn marks on it. No other problems.
However it seems that unlike some on here I can distinguish between who I would vote for and who I think will win which is what this site is supposed to be about and as I showed last night Trump's vote has not disappeared and very rarely does the candidate with the most energy amongst their supporters lose
https://twitter.com/EricTrump/status/1320455251175112705?s=20
https://twitter.com/Mike_Pence/status/1320510989813637121?s=20
Most real HSE stuff is like this.
The scumbags who go all BlockFuhrer abusing HSE as a way of creating a power trip should be blind folded, and left to wonder an unprotected construction site, until they fall in a cement mixer.
Again, insight from Tissue Price would be invaluable right now
Escaped with a small burn and a melted wire fuse in the old fuse box.
I have a great deal of confidence in Robert Smithson's judgement of American Politics, all the more so since he moved Stateside. Therefore when he unconditionally suggests that I take a particular bet, as is the case here, I tend to do so, backing the Democrats to win North Carolina at 1.90 with Smarkets.
What I do find slightly puzzling however is why forecasters generally hold so much store, considered in isolation, in the marked increase in the number of early voters.
Surely this is wholly unsurprising and results predominantly as a result of the electors attempting to reduce the risk of becoming infected by Covid-19 not only by avoiding entering a polling booth and touching surfaces probably hundreds of others have touched before but also not by having to stand for hours on end in a slow-moving queue, breathing the same air as other possibly infected individuals have also breathed.
I have long been a postal voter in the U.K., but it seems inconceivable to me that I would vote by any other means at this most dreadful and dangerous of times. Yet still the queues continue .... WHY, OH WHY?
Where Biden is doing better is he is picking up about 50% of the Other candidate vote in 2016 but then Trump is also picking up about 20% of the Other vote from 2016 so both Biden and Trump could see higher voteshares than 2016 and a result something like Biden 50% and Trump 47% in the national popular vote is certainly possible and that would be a less than 1% swing from 2016 and thus Trump could still scrape home in the EC.
Plus we know from 2016 there was a shy Trump vote otherwise Trump would not have won as the polls were showing Hillary not only winning the popular vote but the EC too, there was no shy GOP vote in 2018 or 2014 and no shy Romney vote in 2012 either however, only a shy vote when Trump is on the ballot
https://twitter.com/LadPolitics/status/1320656202263601153?s=19
Mrs May should have spent her political capital on it from the beginning.
Rashford: A small sum from government directed as I am requiring will solve the problem of small children going hungry.
Government: We have spent and continue to spend a squillion trillion pounds per second on exactly this problem, sums hugely in excess of what Rashford is asking, and loads more than budget and continuing to increase.
With no-one interested in trying to mediate or make sense of the non debate.
Why?
How many of us are confident that generations from now people will look back on us today and think we smelt wholly of roses?
There is no justification for not feeding kids in this country. People already get Child Benefit, Child Tax Credits or a Child element of Universal Credit (which has had an uplift this year) etc, etc - what are they meant to go towards if not feeding kids?
That some people take the money they get from the government in Child Benefits and buy booze and fags is undeniable. What can be done about that is a very difficult question to answer though.
But this is burning the Tories badly. A u-turn of some form before Christmas is inevitable, mark my words. There is simply no possible way they will want this as a live issue at Christmas time.
Dumb naughty schoolboys tell outrageous lies.
Clever naughty schoolboys say things that aren't totally untrue, but are just as mendacious. Just more subtly.
Give my dumb naughty schoolboys to deal with every time.
Dismantling the set for the Edinburgh Military Tattoo, Northern Light had a run a cable through part of it. The light at the end of the cable was off, so we chopped it.
Bright flash, loud bang.
The light was a secondary (emergency) fitting, so light off means power on...
They will u-turn within the next 48 hours.
I guess they will try some enormous rotting dead cat first though, so I expect that this lunchtime.
You also agree, as you say, "Trump could still scrape home in the EC" - yet you put that in terms of probability at slightly over 50%.
Have I got that right?
It may be ill advised...
There is a massive expectation of queues on the day. The other scandal in the US is the steady reduction in polling places. Which is generally politically (and racially) motivated.
Which leaves early voting.
People complain about various parts of UK election practises - but we generally have enough election places, the boundary commission is pretty impartial and the counting is fair and sensible.
https://twitter.com/tconnellyRTE/status/1320634383955415041
I agree that it is burning the Tories. Their challenge is how to u-turn without having been seen to u-turn and without admitting that minimum wage / UC is insufficient. As there is literally no way to kill this issue by Christmas - I guarantee you that some kids will be hungry regardless of what they do - the alternative is power through and try to reframe the debate back onto the feckless workshy scum.
Trump is also the first Republican candidate since Reagan with real strong support amongst white working class Democrats, they are often in rural and small town areas and still difficult to poll all of them without the mass polling Trafalgar does
The optics are dreadful and I expect Boris will be defeated by his own mps voting with labour
5 did on the last vote plus 22 abstained and with the increased awareness of the damage I expect Boris to get a hiding if he carries on
As I said at the time of the last vote I would have joined the 5 conservatives voting with labour and I just hope the momentum with the party is just to do the right thing
If they'd backed Clarke's motion C or Nick Boles' motion D - it would all look very different now.