Leading scientists have called for an urgent change in control of the UK’s struggling test and trace system warning it will fail to prevent a third wave of infection unless it is taken over by the NHS.
Independent Sage, a group of scientists set up to scrutinise the government’s coronavirus response, said the £12bn system should be removed from the control of Dido Harding and the private companies Deloitte and Serco. They want laboratories to be taken over by the NHS and tracing to be run by local directors of public health with the money currently going into private contracts redirected.
"Independent SAGE" are never called out for the front group they are.
(Genuine question) What front group are they? I haven't paid them any attention, so I really have no idea, if they're pushing a particular agenda/fronting a particular group, what it is.
Very left-wing socialist scientists self-selected to criticise the government. Most have an interesting backstory. No neutrality or impartiality at all.
From a quick look, the only one I've heard of is David King. Given this is kind of my field I would have expected to have heard of a few more... I know of many of those on (real) SAGE.
Still, if Labour are running with real SAGE advice, what does that make Ind SAGE? A front for the Socialist Worker Party?
Kames Khunti is prof of diabetes here in Leicester, and co author of the NSF in Diabetes. Lots of interesting publications.
A sound bloke, and though I have never discussed politics with him doesn't seem to be a raving lefties.
The boring truth is that Trump will concede defeat unless it's close and there isn't a decisive winner on election night. I know people prefer to talk about the more interesting and bizarre idea that he won't give up power no matter what happens unless it's a massive landslide for Biden.
Was this really a good time for Hillary Clinton to say she was "born to be president"? Not sure it's helpful as far as the Democrat/Biden campaign is concerned.
I think the tweet was from 2016. Still crass, and taking the electorate for granted.
I don't think it was crass or taking the electorate for granted.
When you're running for President and on the home stretch you say "We're gonna do it!". You try to energize and project confidence. Everyone does this and you mix it with warnings about complacency. Which she also did. Totally bog standard candidate messaging.
Your post - and the comments from others in the same vein - illustrate the double standards that are applied by so many to Hillary Clinton.
It had something to do with her being a woman. That's not the whole answer but it explains most of it.
I'd have exactly the same reaction to any candidate who appeared to take their victory for granted.
Was this really a good time for Hillary Clinton to say she was "born to be president"? Not sure it's helpful as far as the Democrat/Biden campaign is concerned.
I think the tweet was from 2016. Still crass, and taking the electorate for granted.
Nah, it's an American thing, every Presidential campaign I've followed (and even before then) the main candidates who aren't President always get introduced as 'The Next President' by their side/themselves.
If anyone is interested Nasa have found water on the Moon. Which once again makes science fiction merely science fact that hasn't happened yet. Want a moon base to refuel deep space missions from? Build it next to the water ice.
There's supposedly plans for that within the next decade aren't there? Though I'll file that in expectations along with commercial nuclear fusion - it is the future and always will be.
A solution for dealing with the radiation on the moon seems as much an issue as the existence of water for long-term habitation.
Re fusion: Here's an article I read recently that explains in detail why there is next to no chance of commercial fusion reactors being developed in the foreseeable future. The author worked on nuclear fusion experiments for 25 years at the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab and knows what he's talking about.
If anyone is interested Nasa have found water on the Moon. Which once again makes science fiction merely science fact that hasn't happened yet. Want a moon base to refuel deep space missions from? Build it next to the water ice.
I'm enormously interested. Please share the link.
Escaping the Earth is, in my view, the single biggest and most important thing we can do. Not by any means at any cost, and part of why I feel it's important is just to get us out of the way of all the other species here.
When, I think tomorrow (after this post), I get elected PM I'll stick 10% or so of the budget into space.
The above may have an element of getting carried-away-with-oneself.
In hindsight Brexit right 38% (-1); wrong 50% (+2).
F'work 21-22.10 (ch since 6-7.10). Record lead of 'wrong' over 'right'.
Bit late now though.
I really do not understand why anyone thinks this is relevant now
It's relevant because when the chaos starts in January, you'll find that suddenly a whole bunch of people who voted Leave in 2016 will have forgotten that they did, and will be blaming the Conservative Party for the chaos rather than themselves. (A further bunch will remember that they voted Leave, and will also blame the Conservative Party for the chaos rather than themselves. And yet another bunch will remember that they voted Remain, but they already blame the Conservative Party.)
So conservative party down to 20% post new year or does covid act as cover
Covid might have been some sort of political cover if they hadn't also messed that up so badly, in the narrative at least. Even if they hadn't messed it up, electorates don't do gratitude: they forget about the things that have gone well and concentrate on the things which have gone badly.
What do you think of the NZ general election? Was that gratitude for success on Covid, or simply the rally round the flag effect not being dissipated by incompetence?
On the face of it looks like a rare example of gratitude from the electorate. A possible lesson for other politicians.
And actually, he'd have a point. (For the second time ever. What is happening to the world?)
If the government really wanted to make No Deal work, or even make it a convincing bluff, or even make a Canada deal work, they needed to be massively further on with working systems than they are. All the boring bureaucratic stuff that la Thatch (blessed be her memory) developed the Single Market to get rid of.
Unless I've missed all the form fillers already beavering away, and the form checkers installed in their booths at the ports, champing at the bit to start in about two months time.
Yes, that's true. If we really wanted to end up in WTO terms, without even the limited agreements Australia has, we could have organised for that and negotiated with the EU on that basis to get an orderly transition to WTO terms, with at least a year's notice. As it is, we're either going to get the very worst of all possible worlds, which is a highly disorderly and acrimonious crash-out with just a few weeks' notice in the middle of a hugely disrupting pandemic, or at best a less acrimonious but still quite disorderly lurch into a very thin trade deal.
Indeed. If they had wanted to "hold all the cards" this would have been how to make the EU think we really believed we did. Slight problem of having a PM who has zero attention to detail and no leadership or strategic skill. Well done Brexiters!
It is worrying when Biden makes this kind of gaffe, I doubt it will make any difference this late on, but you have to feel a bit for Americans with the choice in front of them. You can see why Biden's team are keeping him largely tucked away in the run in
I don't find it all worrying. He's 77 and entitled to make an occasional verbal slip during the intense and exhausting process of running for President. Fact, I'd be amazed if he didn't. And this one was totally understandable - a hardcode from the 08 campaign - and he corrected it straightaway.
Hillary would have been the most intelligent President since Nixon, just a shame they both had such flaws and a complete inability to connect
You what?
Nixon had no inability to connect, electorally he is up there with FDR as one of the most successful candidates of all time.
He isn't, he lost to JFK in 1960, he scraped home against Humphrey in 1968 with just 43.4% mainly because Wallace took much of the Southern Democrat vote and his only big win in 1972 was mainly because McGovern was the most leftwing candidate the Democrats have ever nominated, so it was to stop McGovern rather than endorse Nixon primarily.
2 years later Nixon had to resign after Watergate having alienated most of Congress
Speaking to my American Never Trump GOPer friend, he's convinced that if the likes of Texas, Georgia, and South Carolina go to the Dems then Trump's going to scream electoral fraud and be even harder to shift out of the Oval Office.
Yeah, but in that situation, who else within the apparatus of government is going to help him stay? He'd really be relying on the militias, and I can't see that ending well for either Trump or the militias.
After the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff went to church with Trump during the protests then refused to testify about it, I do wonder about the military.
Posted this upthread. The military are the ones we probably don't have to worry about.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/10/26/elissa-slotkin-michigan-election-day-431853 ...So, we originally tried to ask [Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Mark] Milley and [Defense Secretary Mark] Esper in a hearing in July, but we were so junior that we didn’t get turns. So we did it in questions for the record. Then, I followed up and sent one to Chad Wolf, the acting head of [the Department of] Homeland Security. And then, when the [director of National Intelligence] started to politicize election-related intelligence, I sent one to the DNI. I wasn’t thinking that their answers would turn the tide on anything, but from my congressional perch, this is what I could do to force these senior leaders into thinking through that they’re going to have to make a call based on what’s greater, their loyalty to the president or their belief in democracy. I was very happy that Milley got back to us and he had fulsome answers. Esper’s answers, I wasn’t so thrilled with; he basically handed it off to a lawyer to give the de minimis response. The DHS got back to us and said, ‘We’re going to be happy to answer your questions after the election,’ which I thought was an interesting approach. All we know about DNI is that they acknowledged receipt...
Was this really a good time for Hillary Clinton to say she was "born to be president"? Not sure it's helpful as far as the Democrat/Biden campaign is concerned.
I think the tweet was from 2016. Still crass, and taking the electorate for granted.
Nah, it's an American thing, every Presidential campaign I've followed (and even before then) the main candidates who aren't President always get introduced as 'The Next President' by their side/themselves.
Was this really a good time for Hillary Clinton to say she was "born to be president"? Not sure it's helpful as far as the Democrat/Biden campaign is concerned.
I think the tweet was from 2016. Still crass, and taking the electorate for granted.
I don't think it was crass or taking the electorate for granted.
When you're running for President and on the home stretch you say "We're gonna do it!". You try to energize and project confidence. Everyone does this and you mix it with warnings about complacency. Which she also did. Totally bog standard candidate messaging.
Your post - and the comments from others in the same vein - illustrate the double standards that are applied by so many to Hillary Clinton.
It had something to do with her being a woman. That's not the whole answer but it explains most of it.
No that's a nonsense, it was a crass and self-indulgent post.
There is a world of difference between saying "as President I will [popular policies here]" to attract votes from people who want those actions taken versus appearing self-absorbed in your own vanity which is what both Hillary and Trump do.
I haven't seen Biden congratulate himself or post anything as cringeworthy as that Tweet from Hillary and if he did it would be lambasted.
He is a good campaigner, that is why he won the biggest Tory majority since Thatcher to deliver Brexit, that was why Boris won the Tory leadership not because he was a good administrator
Leading scientists have called for an urgent change in control of the UK’s struggling test and trace system warning it will fail to prevent a third wave of infection unless it is taken over by the NHS.
Independent Sage, a group of scientists set up to scrutinise the government’s coronavirus response, said the £12bn system should be removed from the control of Dido Harding and the private companies Deloitte and Serco. They want laboratories to be taken over by the NHS and tracing to be run by local directors of public health with the money currently going into private contracts redirected.
"Independent SAGE" are never called out for the front group they are.
(Genuine question) What front group are they? I haven't paid them any attention, so I really have no idea, if they're pushing a particular agenda/fronting a particular group, what it is.
Very left-wing socialist scientists self-selected to criticise the government. Most have an interesting backstory. No neutrality or impartiality at all.
From a quick look, the only one I've heard of is David King. Given this is kind of my field I would have expected to have heard of a few more... I know of many of those on (real) SAGE.
Still, if Labour are running with real SAGE advice, what does that make Ind SAGE? A front for the Socialist Worker Party?
Kames Khunti is prof of diabetes here in Leicester, and co author of the NSF in Diabetes. Lots of interesting publications.
A sound bloke, and though I have never discussed politics with him doesn't seem to be a raving lefties.
Is that name pronounced as written?
Pretty much. Kamlesh is his first name, not sure why my autocorrect called him Kames!
Was this really a good time for Hillary Clinton to say she was "born to be president"? Not sure it's helpful as far as the Democrat/Biden campaign is concerned.
I think the tweet was from 2016. Still crass, and taking the electorate for granted.
I don't think it was crass or taking the electorate for granted.
When you're running for President and on the home stretch you say "We're gonna do it!". You try to energize and project confidence. Everyone does this and you mix it with warnings about complacency. Which she also did. Totally bog standard candidate messaging.
Your post - and the comments from others in the same vein - illustrate the double standards that are applied by so many to Hillary Clinton.
It had something to do with her being a woman. That's not the whole answer but it explains most of it.
Misogyny is often dressed as other things, though it could simply have been that Hillary Clinton was no Margaret Thatcher, the latter who succeeded in much more openly prejudiced times. Remember how the left always tried to make out she was actually a man? Hillary has to have been pretty crap to lose to the Orange Moron.
In hindsight Brexit right 38% (-1); wrong 50% (+2).
F'work 21-22.10 (ch since 6-7.10). Record lead of 'wrong' over 'right'.
Bit late now though.
I really do not understand why anyone thinks this is relevant now
It's relevant because when the chaos starts in January, you'll find that suddenly a whole bunch of people who voted Leave in 2016 will have forgotten that they did, and will be blaming the Conservative Party for the chaos rather than themselves. (A further bunch will remember that they voted Leave, and will also blame the Conservative Party for the chaos rather than themselves. And yet another bunch will remember that they voted Remain, but they already blame the Conservative Party.)
So conservative party down to 20% post new year or does covid act as cover
Covid might have been some sort of political cover if they hadn't also messed that up so badly, in the narrative at least. Even if they hadn't messed it up, electorates don't do gratitude: they forget about the things that have gone well and concentrate on the things which have gone badly.
What do you think of the NZ general election? Was that gratitude for success on Covid, or simply the rally round the flat effect not being dissipated by incompetence?
On the face of it looks like a rare example of gratitude from the electorate. A possible lesson for other politicians.
True, that's a good counter-example, although we in the UK were never going to be able to keep a lid on Covid-19 in the way NZ has (so far, at least..). But also the opposition helped. And perhaps it's easier when you're still in mid-crisis and can rally round the government as you say.
The big uncertainty in the UK is whether Labour are going to be able to take advantage of what I am sure is going to be the enormous unpopularity of the government. The interesting parallel here is 1992, which I remember well. In that election the government was very unpopular, but still won because voters weren't convinced by Kinnock and Labour. As soon as Labour made itself electable, voters went for it in droves, and the 1997 landslide was the consequence. Keir Starmer has a lot more to do, especially in terms of building a fully credible team around him, if he's not going to be another Kinnock.
Was this really a good time for Hillary Clinton to say she was "born to be president"? Not sure it's helpful as far as the Democrat/Biden campaign is concerned.
I think the tweet was from 2016. Still crass, and taking the electorate for granted.
I don't think it was crass or taking the electorate for granted.
When you're running for President and on the home stretch you say "We're gonna do it!". You try to energize and project confidence. Everyone does this and you mix it with warnings about complacency. Which she also did. Totally bog standard candidate messaging.
Your post - and the comments from others in the same vein - illustrate the double standards that are applied by so many to Hillary Clinton.
It had something to do with her being a woman. That's not the whole answer but it explains most of it.
Misogyny is often dressed as other things, though it could simply have been that Hillary Clinton was no Margaret Thatcher, the latter who succeeded in much more openly prejudiced times. Remember how the left always tried to make out she was actually a man? Hillary has to have been pretty crap to lose to the Orange Moron.
Hillary won the popular vote against Trump by the same margin as May did against Corbyn in 2017 and both have about the same level of campaigning skills
If anyone is interested Nasa have found water on the Moon. Which once again makes science fiction merely science fact that hasn't happened yet. Want a moon base to refuel deep space missions from? Build it next to the water ice.
There's supposedly plans for that within the next decade aren't there? Though I'll file that in expectations along with commercial nuclear fusion - it is the future and always will be.
A solution for dealing with the radiation on the moon seems as much an issue as the existence of water for long-term habitation.
- Cover with regolith - In a lava tube underground - In a crater of perpetual darkness near the Pole
He is a good campaigner, that is why he won the biggest Tory majority since Thatcher to deliver Brexit, that was why Boris won the Tory leadership not because he was a good administrator
Boris believes in delegation but that only works when those he delegate to are actually any good
It falls over with the likes of Grayling, Williamson, Hancock Jenrick and others
Leading scientists have called for an urgent change in control of the UK’s struggling test and trace system warning it will fail to prevent a third wave of infection unless it is taken over by the NHS.
Independent Sage, a group of scientists set up to scrutinise the government’s coronavirus response, said the £12bn system should be removed from the control of Dido Harding and the private companies Deloitte and Serco. They want laboratories to be taken over by the NHS and tracing to be run by local directors of public health with the money currently going into private contracts redirected.
So a failing private sector effort can be taken over by an almost certain to fail public sector organisation? Sage (made up of a lot of public sector and academia types) seems to have forgotten "The Spreadsheet"! The public sector rarely does this stuff well.
The problem can clearly be seen at the top. Dido Harding, a crony of Bozo The Clown, though in the real world someone who is treated with derision by the IT and telecom sector from whence she came for losing TalkTalk £60M and 95000 customers. They need to put a serious person in charge and make sure they get value out of what has already happened and what Deloitte and Serco are contracted to do.
Part of the problem with the testing system is that it's doing the wrong things.
We should have locally run test processing centres and local councils should have 30-40 three person groups each in full hazmat gear armed with swabs knocking on doors of contacts taking them for daily processing so those contacts get their results the next day. They should also have another 30-40 two person teams doing daily door knocks of everyone who is supposed to be isolating in their local authority and they should be working 8am-10pm shift patterns with the power to fine people up to £10k for not being present on demand and allowing the LA to keep a portion of the fines.
Camden, for example, has got around 600 active infections at the moment, it needs 20 teams working simultaneously in a two shift pattern to enable the council to knock on all of the relevant doors and check that people are isolating everyday.
The cost of running a system like this would be around £500m per month plus a lot of initial investment in training and local testing capacity but once it's in place the ongoing cost is £500m per month with our current infection rate and much less after a month or so as the infection rate drops.
The government keeping central control is the issue and having clueless chumps like Dido running things is exacerbating all of the problems.
He is a good campaigner, that is why he won the biggest Tory majority since Thatcher to deliver Brexit, that was why Boris won the Tory leadership not because he was a good administrator
He won his majority because he was not Jeremy Corbyn. He won the Tory leadership because the Tories had been taken over by the swivel eyed right and he decided to sell his soul to them in spite of not really sharing their views on anything. Initially the stars aligned for Boris Johnson. Now the gods are having their fun at his and our expense.
London and the economy in general is completely screwed.
The article in Campaign that predicted after Brexit the UK would become a Theme Park in the Atlantic was being optimistic. Looks like Bognor out of season
In hindsight Brexit right 38% (-1); wrong 50% (+2).
F'work 21-22.10 (ch since 6-7.10). Record lead of 'wrong' over 'right'.
Bit late now though.
I really do not understand why anyone thinks this is relevant now
It's relevant because when the chaos starts in January, you'll find that suddenly a whole bunch of people who voted Leave in 2016 will have forgotten that they did, and will be blaming the Conservative Party for the chaos rather than themselves. (A further bunch will remember that they voted Leave, and will also blame the Conservative Party for the chaos rather than themselves. And yet another bunch will remember that they voted Remain, but they already blame the Conservative Party.)
So conservative party down to 20% post new year or does covid act as cover
Covid might have been some sort of political cover if they hadn't also messed that up so badly, in the narrative at least. Even if they hadn't messed it up, electorates don't do gratitude: they forget about the things that have gone well and concentrate on the things which have gone badly.
What do you think of the NZ general election? Was that gratitude for success on Covid, or simply the rally round the flag effect not being dissipated by incompetence?
On the face of it looks like a rare example of gratitude from the electorate. A possible lesson for other politicians.
See also BC.
Turns out that not trying to kill off the voters is a popular policy.
Hillary would have been the most intelligent President since Nixon, just a shame they both had such flaws and a complete inability to connect
You what?
Nixon had no inability to connect, electorally he is up there with FDR as one of the most successful candidates of all time.
He isn't, he lost to JFK in 1960, he scraped home against Humphrey in 1968 with just 43.4% mainly because Wallace took much of the Southern Democrat vote and his only big win in 1972 was mainly because McGovern was the most leftwing candidate the Democrats have ever nominated, so it was to stop McGovern rather than endorse Nixon primarily.
2 years later Nixon had to resign after Watergate having alienated most of Congress
He lost very, very narrowly (and possibly fraudulently) to the very charismatic JFK.
His issue with Watergate was that he was a criminal not that he was incapable of connecting with the public
1972 wasn't the only landslide he was involved in. As running mate in 1952 and 1956 he was involved in two more landslides - and the "Checkers Speech" was an absolute political masterclass in connecting with the public.
If anyone is interested Nasa have found water on the Moon. Which once again makes science fiction merely science fact that hasn't happened yet. Want a moon base to refuel deep space missions from? Build it next to the water ice.
I'm enormously interested. Please share the link.
Escaping the Earth is, in my view, the single biggest and most important thing we can do. Not by any means at any cost, and part of why I feel it's important is just to get us out of the way of all the other species here.
When, I think tomorrow (after this post), I get elected PM I'll stick 10% or so of the budget into space.
The above may have an element of getting carried-away-with-oneself.
It is worrying when Biden makes this kind of gaffe, I doubt it will make any difference this late on, but you have to feel a bit for Americans with the choice in front of them. You can see why Biden's team are keeping him largely tucked away in the run in
I don't find it all worrying. He's 77 and entitled to make an occasional verbal slip during the intense and exhausting process of running for President. Fact, I'd be amazed if he didn't. And this one was totally understandable - a hardcode from the 08 campaign - and he corrected it straightaway.
My parents are a similar age, and will make similar mistakes, often getting the names of their grandkids mixed up etc but it is obvious they are still very sharp and informed. On its own it is generally not a sign of alzheimers or mental deterioration but perfectly normal for the age group.
Hillary would have been the most intelligent President since Nixon, just a shame they both had such flaws and a complete inability to connect
You what?
Nixon had no inability to connect, electorally he is up there with FDR as one of the most successful candidates of all time.
Because, reasons. Sometimes, you just get to run at the right time. And don't forget he got to run again despite losing... though admittedly not to Trump.
Hillary would have been the most intelligent President since Nixon, just a shame they both had such flaws and a complete inability to connect
You what?
Nixon had no inability to connect, electorally he is up there with FDR as one of the most successful candidates of all time.
He isn't, he lost to JFK in 1960, he scraped home against Humphrey in 1968 with just 43.4% mainly because Wallace took much of the Southern Democrat vote and his only big win in 1972 was mainly because McGovern was the most leftwing candidate the Democrats have ever nominated, so it was to stop McGovern rather than endorse Nixon primarily.
2 years later Nixon had to resign after Watergate having alienated most of Congress
Before he won the presidential elections of 1932, 1936, 1940 and 1944, FDR won election as NY State Senator in 1910 and was re-elected in 1912. In 1920 he was defeated for Vice President, in fact the Democratic ticket got stomped in an historic landslide.
Nixon was elected to US Congress from CA in 1946, and re-elected 1948. He was elected to US Senate from CA in 1950, in 1952 was elected Vice President as Ike's running mate, and was re-elected in 1956. In 1960 he was defeated running for President, and in 1962 was defeated running for Governor of CA. Then RN was elected President in 1968 and re-elected 1972.
SO raw box scores are:
>> Roosevelt: won 6, lost 1 >> Nixon: won 7, lost 2
On balance, would have to agree more with HYUFD (on THIS question) rather than PT.
For one thing, FDR won presidency four time (and lost VP once, but not his fault) where as Nixon only won presidency twice (though he was elected VP twice, but he was NOT the decisive factor).
AND certainly Roosevelt had SIGNIFICANT political coattails, whereas Nixon not so much.
Was this really a good time for Hillary Clinton to say she was "born to be president"? Not sure it's helpful as far as the Democrat/Biden campaign is concerned.
I think the tweet was from 2016. Still crass, and taking the electorate for granted.
I don't think it was crass or taking the electorate for granted.
When you're running for President and on the home stretch you say "We're gonna do it!". You try to energize and project confidence. Everyone does this and you mix it with warnings about complacency. Which she also did. Totally bog standard candidate messaging.
Your post - and the comments from others in the same vein - illustrate the double standards that are applied by so many to Hillary Clinton.
It had something to do with her being a woman. That's not the whole answer but it explains most of it.
Misogyny is often dressed as other things, though it could simply have been that Hillary Clinton was no Margaret Thatcher, the latter who succeeded in much more openly prejudiced times. Remember how the left always tried to make out she was actually a man? Hillary has to have been pretty crap to lose to the Orange Moron.
Hillary won the popular vote against Trump by the same margin as May did against Corbyn in 2017 and both have about the same level of campaigning skills
Again, May was no Thatcher. This was apply demonstrated by the fact that Thatcher was eventually brought down by Heseltine, who was a serious politician of great stature and May was brought down by Bozo the Clown and Lord Snooty Rees Mogg.
London and the economy in general is completely screwed.
Such judgement might well be best done by a Londoner. I don't disagree with these strangers views, but they're not Londoners.
It's both better and worse than this suggests. Soho for example on a Saturday night, (sample of one night) and I walked round it, was rocking. I hugely disapprove. Places like Clerkenwell and Bloomsbury are almost ghost-towns. They'd long lacked a community anyway, but now they feel like an archeological dig - as does the Barbican. Odd small groups of youngsters there, but they look lost.
Regent's Park is just great now though. Loads of small groups just enjoying it.
That was +27 for the GOP candidate in the Congressional race in 2016 and +10 in 2018.
It is in the Dallas suburbs (not classic white working class Trump territory) and I would expect Trump to now win Texas by less than 5% having won it by 9% in 2016 which was itself smaller than the 16% Romney won Texas by in 2012.
Texas does not much like Trump in contrast to the rustbelt, however he will still likely scrape home in the Lone Star State because of the partisan GOP vote there
The partisan GOP vote that this poll suggests has very quickly evaporated?
Indeed but Trump still has a 3% average lead in Texas overall, that would be the smallest lead for the GOP candidate in Texas since 1992 but Trump would still win it nonetheless
This year Trump's vote looks remarkably efficient, he will be trounced in New York and California, will scrape home in Texas and is neck and neck in Florida and those are the 4 most populous states in the US by far, however he is also still competitive in the rustbelt swing states as well.
It is therefore possible he could lose the national popular vote by 3-4% and still scrape home in the EC
OTOH if he narrowly loses Texas and Florida the EC bias is gone and possibly flips the other way.
No that's not right.
If the Democrats win Texas and Florida while losing the popular vote (or neutral on PV) then the EC bias is gone and possibly flips the other way.
If the Democrats only narrowly take those because they're winning the popular vote by 8% then the EC bias is still there.
The issue for the Republicans though is that Texas is trending purple and within a decade it could theoretically go to the Democrats on a neutral popular vote.
But then that 8 pt win in the PV would be delivering close to 400 in the EC. So a not quite PV landslide giving an EC landslide. Bias flipped.
Remember that the Reps rack up huge PV margins in all those sparsely populated rural states. In aggregate that's a California and then some.
No I don't think you're understanding what the bias means.
Larger leads (and 8% is pretty large) can of course lead to landslides that should not be a shock but the bias represents who wins if there is no lead at all or just a small one. The bias is only flipped if a Democrat can be in the oval office despite the Republicans winning by a small margin the popular vote. If Texas tips before the popular vote does its possible, but we're not there yet.
That's the same thing but just applied to a different hypothetical. How does the PV margin translate to the EC margin? - this is the general "bias" question.
London and the economy in general is completely screwed.
Such judgement might well be best done by a Londoner. I don't disagree with these strangers views, but they're not Londoners.
It's both better and worse than this suggests. Soho for example on a Saturday night, (sample of one night) and I walked round it, was rocking. I hugely disapprove. Places like Clerkenwell and Bloomsbury are almost ghost-towns. They'd long lacked a community anyway, but now they feel like an archeological dig - as does the Barbican. Odd small groups of youngsters there, but they look lost.
Regent's Park is just great now though. Loads of small groups just enjoying it.
No idea how all this adds up.
As someone who lives in London, the idea that 3pm on a weekday is peak anything, is interesting.
Leading scientists have called for an urgent change in control of the UK’s struggling test and trace system warning it will fail to prevent a third wave of infection unless it is taken over by the NHS.
Independent Sage, a group of scientists set up to scrutinise the government’s coronavirus response, said the £12bn system should be removed from the control of Dido Harding and the private companies Deloitte and Serco. They want laboratories to be taken over by the NHS and tracing to be run by local directors of public health with the money currently going into private contracts redirected.
So a failing private sector effort can be taken over by an almost certain to fail public sector organisation? Sage (made up of a lot of public sector and academia types) seems to have forgotten "The Spreadsheet"! The public sector rarely does this stuff well.
The problem can clearly be seen at the top. Dido Harding, a crony of Bozo The Clown, though in the real world someone who is treated with derision by the IT and telecom sector from whence she came for losing TalkTalk £60M and 95000 customers. They need to put a serious person in charge and make sure they get value out of what has already happened and what Deloitte and Serco are contracted to do.
Part of the problem with the testing system is that it's doing the wrong things.
We should have locally run test processing centres and local councils should have 30-40 three person groups each in full hazmat gear armed with swabs knocking on doors of contacts taking them for daily processing so those contacts get their results the next day. They should also have another 30-40 two person teams doing daily door knocks of everyone who is supposed to be isolating in their local authority and they should be working 8am-10pm shift patterns with the power to fine people up to £10k for not being present on demand and allowing the LA to keep a portion of the fines.
Camden, for example, has got around 600 active infections at the moment, it needs 20 teams working simultaneously in a two shift pattern to enable the council to knock on all of the relevant doors and check that people are isolating everyday.
The cost of running a system like this would be around £500m per month plus a lot of initial investment in training and local testing capacity but once it's in place the ongoing cost is £500m per month with our current infection rate and much less after a month or so as the infection rate drops.
The government keeping central control is the issue and having clueless chumps like Dido running things is exacerbating all of the problems.
It might possibly work, but I am not sure I would entrust such powers to local councils.
It is worrying when Biden makes this kind of gaffe, I doubt it will make any difference this late on, but you have to feel a bit for Americans with the choice in front of them. You can see why Biden's team are keeping him largely tucked away in the run in
I don't find it all worrying. He's 77 and entitled to make an occasional verbal slip during the intense and exhausting process of running for President. Fact, I'd be amazed if he didn't. And this one was totally understandable - a hardcode from the 08 campaign - and he corrected it straightaway.
And Trump only noticed it because someone had forgotten his name...
He is a good campaigner, that is why he won the biggest Tory majority since Thatcher to deliver Brexit, that was why Boris won the Tory leadership not because he was a good administrator
Boris believes in delegation but that only works when those he delegate to are actually any good
It falls over with the likes of Grayling, Williamson, Hancock Jenrick and others
The problem is the govt is very unlikely to find candidates who are both competent and willing to offer blind allegiance to dear leader, so he has no choice but to appoint the over ambitious without talent.
London and the economy in general is completely screwed.
Such judgement might well be best done by a Londoner. I don't disagree with these strangers views, but they're not Londoners.
It's both better and worse than this suggests. Soho for example on a Saturday night, (sample of one night) and I walked round it, was rocking. I hugely disapprove. Places like Clerkenwell and Bloomsbury are almost ghost-towns. They'd long lacked a community anyway, but now they feel like an archeological dig - as does the Barbican. Odd small groups of youngsters there, but they look lost.
Regent's Park is just great now though. Loads of small groups just enjoying it.
No idea how all this adds up.
As someone who lives in London, the idea that 3pm on a weekday is peak anything, is interesting.
Leading scientists have called for an urgent change in control of the UK’s struggling test and trace system warning it will fail to prevent a third wave of infection unless it is taken over by the NHS.
Independent Sage, a group of scientists set up to scrutinise the government’s coronavirus response, said the £12bn system should be removed from the control of Dido Harding and the private companies Deloitte and Serco. They want laboratories to be taken over by the NHS and tracing to be run by local directors of public health with the money currently going into private contracts redirected.
"Independent SAGE" are never called out for the front group they are.
(Genuine question) What front group are they? I haven't paid them any attention, so I really have no idea, if they're pushing a particular agenda/fronting a particular group, what it is.
Very left-wing socialist scientists self-selected to criticise the government. Most have an interesting backstory. No neutrality or impartiality at all.
From a quick look, the only one I've heard of is David King. Given this is kind of my field I would have expected to have heard of a few more... I know of many of those on (real) SAGE.
Still, if Labour are running with real SAGE advice, what does that make Ind SAGE? A front for the Socialist Worker Party?
Sir David King ... ah yes, the UK Government's Chief Scientific Adviser in the run-up to the Iraq War, no doubt called on to assess those famous claims of WMD -- chemical & biological weapons -- striking us all dead within 45 minutes
The run up to the Iraq War was perhaps the moment for Sir David to exercise his critical & scientific judgment to good public effect, but somehow ... he never did.
He is a good campaigner, that is why he won the biggest Tory majority since Thatcher to deliver Brexit, that was why Boris won the Tory leadership not because he was a good administrator
So voters should be grateful to Tory MPs and Tory members for completely disregarding any capability to the jobs that they were picking him for?
Leading scientists have called for an urgent change in control of the UK’s struggling test and trace system warning it will fail to prevent a third wave of infection unless it is taken over by the NHS.
Independent Sage, a group of scientists set up to scrutinise the government’s coronavirus response, said the £12bn system should be removed from the control of Dido Harding and the private companies Deloitte and Serco. They want laboratories to be taken over by the NHS and tracing to be run by local directors of public health with the money currently going into private contracts redirected.
So a failing private sector effort can be taken over by an almost certain to fail public sector organisation? Sage (made up of a lot of public sector and academia types) seems to have forgotten "The Spreadsheet"! The public sector rarely does this stuff well.
The problem can clearly be seen at the top. Dido Harding, a crony of Bozo The Clown, though in the real world someone who is treated with derision by the IT and telecom sector from whence she came for losing TalkTalk £60M and 95000 customers. They need to put a serious person in charge and make sure they get value out of what has already happened and what Deloitte and Serco are contracted to do.
Part of the problem with the testing system is that it's doing the wrong things.
We should have locally run test processing centres and local councils should have 30-40 three person groups each in full hazmat gear armed with swabs knocking on doors of contacts taking them for daily processing so those contacts get their results the next day. They should also have another 30-40 two person teams doing daily door knocks of everyone who is supposed to be isolating in their local authority and they should be working 8am-10pm shift patterns with the power to fine people up to £10k for not being present on demand and allowing the LA to keep a portion of the fines.
Camden, for example, has got around 600 active infections at the moment, it needs 20 teams working simultaneously in a two shift pattern to enable the council to knock on all of the relevant doors and check that people are isolating everyday.
The cost of running a system like this would be around £500m per month plus a lot of initial investment in training and local testing capacity but once it's in place the ongoing cost is £500m per month with our current infection rate and much less after a month or so as the infection rate drops.
The government keeping central control is the issue and having clueless chumps like Dido running things is exacerbating all of the problems.
It might possibly work, but I am not sure I would entrust such powers to local councils.
I wouldn't normally either, but building a national system of this scale would take months and we don't have months.
It is worrying when Biden makes this kind of gaffe, I doubt it will make any difference this late on, but you have to feel a bit for Americans with the choice in front of them. You can see why Biden's team are keeping him largely tucked away in the run in
I don't find it all worrying. He's 77 and entitled to make an occasional verbal slip during the intense and exhausting process of running for President. Fact, I'd be amazed if he didn't. And this one was totally understandable - a hardcode from the 08 campaign - and he corrected it straightaway.
My parents are a similar age, and will make similar mistakes, often getting the names of their grandkids mixed up etc but it is obvious they are still very sharp and informed. On its own it is generally not a sign of alzheimers or mental deterioration but perfectly normal for the age group.
London and the economy in general is completely screwed.
How much do people think insolvencies have increased this year? 15%? 50%? 100%? more?
Actually incredibly, they are down 43% August 2020 compared to August 2019!
Parts of the economy are clearly heavily impacted and need government support, which they are getting, but it is very far from true that the economy in general is completely screwed.
That seems very odd, any idea why that would be?
The only reason I can think of is that there is a large backlog of insolvencies due to COVID.
He is a good campaigner, that is why he won the biggest Tory majority since Thatcher to deliver Brexit, that was why Boris won the Tory leadership not because he was a good administrator
So voters should be grateful to Tory MPs and Tory members for completely disregarding any capability to the jobs that they were picking him for?
They, like many of the remaining Johnson apologists on here thought he had a good chance of winning an election, and of course, although it was against a very ugly opponent, they were right. The problem they overlooked is that it is all very well hoodwinking people at the interview stage, and beating the crappy alternative if you can't subsequently do the job!
Hillary would have been the most intelligent President since Nixon, just a shame they both had such flaws and a complete inability to connect
You what?
Nixon had no inability to connect, electorally he is up there with FDR as one of the most successful candidates of all time.
He isn't, he lost to JFK in 1960, he scraped home against Humphrey in 1968 with just 43.4% mainly because Wallace took much of the Southern Democrat vote and his only big win in 1972 was mainly because McGovern was the most leftwing candidate the Democrats have ever nominated, so it was to stop McGovern rather than endorse Nixon primarily.
2 years later Nixon had to resign after Watergate having alienated most of Congress
He lost very, very narrowly (and possibly fraudulently) to the very charismatic JFK.
His issue with Watergate was that he was a criminal not that he was incapable of connecting with the public
1972 wasn't the only landslide he was involved in. As running mate in 1952 and 1956 he was involved in two more landslides - and the "Checkers Speech" was an absolute political masterclass in connecting with the public.
In 1952 and 1956 voters were voting for IKE not Nixon
He is a good campaigner, that is why he won the biggest Tory majority since Thatcher to deliver Brexit, that was why Boris won the Tory leadership not because he was a good administrator
Boris believes in delegation but that only works when those he delegate to are actually any good
It falls over with the likes of Grayling, Williamson, Hancock Jenrick and others
Johnson did one thing unambiguously well, which was making a splash as editor of the Spectator. Now a lot of that was about delegating the writing to the right sort of splashy writers. But those writers weren't really in competition with the editor.
The jury is out on Johnson's mayoralty. He won re-election (though Ken was declining badly by 2012; he'd lost the sparkle and the dodgy views were left), but it's hard to point to his signature achievement in that time. The buses? He did delegate effectively there, but the people he delegated to were his people, there at his pleasure. None of them were going to be Mayor in his place.
Now he's PM. The winds of the referendum had cut a hefty swathe through the senior ranks of the Conservatives. But there were some other substantial figures around; Hunt knew what he was doing, Stewart was odd, but interesting. (And boy we should have listened to his experience at the start of the pandemic). Mordant isn't my cup of tea, but she knows her way around. For whatever reason, Johnson's cabinet is incredibly weak and it's striking how many of them are horribly compromised- like Patel and Williamson. Some of that is the B-word, but I can't shake the suspicion that Johnson is the kind of weak leader who is afraid to surround himself by strong subordinates, because they might take the crown.
That was +27 for the GOP candidate in the Congressional race in 2016 and +10 in 2018.
It is in the Dallas suburbs (not classic white working class Trump territory) and I would expect Trump to now win Texas by less than 5% having won it by 9% in 2016 which was itself smaller than the 16% Romney won Texas by in 2012.
Texas does not much like Trump in contrast to the rustbelt, however he will still likely scrape home in the Lone Star State because of the partisan GOP vote there
The partisan GOP vote that this poll suggests has very quickly evaporated?
Indeed but Trump still has a 3% average lead in Texas overall, that would be the smallest lead for the GOP candidate in Texas since 1992 but Trump would still win it nonetheless
This year Trump's vote looks remarkably efficient, he will be trounced in New York and California, will scrape home in Texas and is neck and neck in Florida and those are the 4 most populous states in the US by far, however he is also still competitive in the rustbelt swing states as well.
It is therefore possible he could lose the national popular vote by 3-4% and still scrape home in the EC
OTOH if he narrowly loses Texas and Florida the EC bias is gone and possibly flips the other way.
No that's not right.
If the Democrats win Texas and Florida while losing the popular vote (or neutral on PV) then the EC bias is gone and possibly flips the other way.
If the Democrats only narrowly take those because they're winning the popular vote by 8% then the EC bias is still there.
The issue for the Republicans though is that Texas is trending purple and within a decade it could theoretically go to the Democrats on a neutral popular vote.
But then that 8 pt win in the PV would be delivering close to 400 in the EC. So a not quite PV landslide giving an EC landslide. Bias flipped.
Remember that the Reps rack up huge PV margins in all those sparsely populated rural states. In aggregate that's a California and then some.
No I don't think you're understanding what the bias means.
Larger leads (and 8% is pretty large) can of course lead to landslides that should not be a shock but the bias represents who wins if there is no lead at all or just a small one. The bias is only flipped if a Democrat can be in the oval office despite the Republicans winning by a small margin the popular vote. If Texas tips before the popular vote does its possible, but we're not there yet.
That's the same thing but just applied to a different hypothetical. How does the PV margin translate to the EC margin? - this is the general "bias" question.
No margin is irrelevant. You are thinking in two British a thinking where size of the Parliamentary majority matters, in the USA it makes no difference if you win by 2 ECVs or 200, a win is a win is a win.
Bias is who wins the Electoral College and how does that filter through to a tipping point. If the tipping point is that the GOP wins with fewer votes than the Democrats then it is biased to the GOP. For the bias to tip then the tipping point would need to be the other side.
Was this really a good time for Hillary Clinton to say she was "born to be president"? Not sure it's helpful as far as the Democrat/Biden campaign is concerned.
I think the tweet was from 2016. Still crass, and taking the electorate for granted.
Nah, it's an American thing, every Presidential campaign I've followed (and even before then) the main candidates who aren't President always get introduced as 'The Next President' by their side/themselves.
For others to introduce you as that, ok, but to do it yourself?
Want me to post links to every major Presidential candidates saying 'As the next President' or words to that effect?
"I could shoot somebody in the middle of 5th Avenue and they'd still vote for me."
Hillary would have been the most intelligent President since Nixon, just a shame they both had such flaws and a complete inability to connect
You what?
Nixon had no inability to connect, electorally he is up there with FDR as one of the most successful candidates of all time.
He isn't, he lost to JFK in 1960, he scraped home against Humphrey in 1968 with just 43.4% mainly because Wallace took much of the Southern Democrat vote and his only big win in 1972 was mainly because McGovern was the most leftwing candidate the Democrats have ever nominated, so it was to stop McGovern rather than endorse Nixon primarily.
2 years later Nixon had to resign after Watergate having alienated most of Congress
Before he won the presidential elections of 1932, 1936, 1940 and 1944, FDR won election as NY State Senator in 1910 and was re-elected in 1912. In 1920 he was defeated for Vice President, in fact the Democratic ticket got stomped in an historic landslide.
Nixon was elected to US Congress from CA in 1946, and re-elected 1948. He was elected to US Senate from CA in 1950, in 1952 was elected Vice President as Ike's running mate, and was re-elected in 1956. In 1960 he was defeated running for President, and in 1962 was defeated running for Governor of CA. Then RN was elected President in 1968 and re-elected 1972.
SO raw box scores are:
>> Roosevelt: won 6, lost 1 >> Nixon: won 7, lost 2
On balance, would have to agree more with HYUFD (on THIS question) rather than PT.
For one thing, FDR won presidency four time (and lost VP once, but not his fault) where as Nixon only won presidency twice (though he was elected VP twice, but he was NOT the decisive factor).
AND certainly Roosevelt had SIGNIFICANT political coattails, whereas Nixon not so much.
On the same basis Corbyn has won 10 elections in Islington North to only 2 general election defeats as Labour leader
London and the economy in general is completely screwed.
Such judgement might well be best done by a Londoner. I don't disagree with these strangers views, but they're not Londoners.
It's both better and worse than this suggests. Soho for example on a Saturday night, (sample of one night) and I walked round it, was rocking. I hugely disapprove. Places like Clerkenwell and Bloomsbury are almost ghost-towns. They'd long lacked a community anyway, but now they feel like an archeological dig - as does the Barbican. Odd small groups of youngsters there, but they look lost.
Regent's Park is just great now though. Loads of small groups just enjoying it.
No idea how all this adds up.
As someone who lives in London, the idea that 3pm on a weekday is peak anything, is interesting.
Peak tourist I guess.
Prime property in London has been allowed to be sold off to foreign criminalsinvestors, who barely use it or leave it empty, with London workers pushed out to the suburbs or beyond London altogether. Now that people aren’t travelling in daily to work, and there are few tourists, it is revealed how the centre of London has been hollowed out.
Leading scientists have called for an urgent change in control of the UK’s struggling test and trace system warning it will fail to prevent a third wave of infection unless it is taken over by the NHS.
Independent Sage, a group of scientists set up to scrutinise the government’s coronavirus response, said the £12bn system should be removed from the control of Dido Harding and the private companies Deloitte and Serco. They want laboratories to be taken over by the NHS and tracing to be run by local directors of public health with the money currently going into private contracts redirected.
So a failing private sector effort can be taken over by an almost certain to fail public sector organisation? Sage (made up of a lot of public sector and academia types) seems to have forgotten "The Spreadsheet"! The public sector rarely does this stuff well.
The problem can clearly be seen at the top. Dido Harding, a crony of Bozo The Clown, though in the real world someone who is treated with derision by the IT and telecom sector from whence she came for losing TalkTalk £60M and 95000 customers. They need to put a serious person in charge and make sure they get value out of what has already happened and what Deloitte and Serco are contracted to do.
Part of the problem with the testing system is that it's doing the wrong things.
We should have locally run test processing centres and local councils should have 30-40 three person groups each in full hazmat gear armed with swabs knocking on doors of contacts taking them for daily processing so those contacts get their results the next day. They should also have another 30-40 two person teams doing daily door knocks of everyone who is supposed to be isolating in their local authority and they should be working 8am-10pm shift patterns with the power to fine people up to £10k for not being present on demand and allowing the LA to keep a portion of the fines.
Camden, for example, has got around 600 active infections at the moment, it needs 20 teams working simultaneously in a two shift pattern to enable the council to knock on all of the relevant doors and check that people are isolating everyday.
The cost of running a system like this would be around £500m per month plus a lot of initial investment in training and local testing capacity but once it's in place the ongoing cost is £500m per month with our current infection rate and much less after a month or so as the infection rate drops.
The government keeping central control is the issue and having clueless chumps like Dido running things is exacerbating all of the problems.
It might possibly work, but I am not sure I would entrust such powers to local councils.
I wouldn't normally either, but building a national system of this scale would take months and we don't have months.
Absolutely. One of the advantages the Germans have is meaningful devolution to local authorities with the local knowledge, powers and wherewithal to get things done in their areas.
There was a podcast series out recently called Wind Of Change, which tried to get to the bottom of a rumour that the CIA wrote the Scorpions' song Wind Of Change as a way to bring about the collapse of the Soviet Union.
A similar sort of rumour exists about Dame Shirley Bassey. There's chatter in some spy circles that suggests that Shirley Bassey became an asset for Interpol in the early 1980s – back when she was palling about with Middle Eastern royalty and singing Happy Birthday for Saudi billionaire Adnan Khashoggi.
The story goes that, as these men would casually impart insider information to her in order to impress her, she supposedly came into a lot of extremely useful intel. One even suggests she was essential in helping pinpoint Saddam Hussein's palaces in Iraq.
It is worrying when Biden makes this kind of gaffe, I doubt it will make any difference this late on, but you have to feel a bit for Americans with the choice in front of them. You can see why Biden's team are keeping him largely tucked away in the run in
I don't find it all worrying. He's 77 and entitled to make an occasional verbal slip during the intense and exhausting process of running for President. Fact, I'd be amazed if he didn't. And this one was totally understandable - a hardcode from the 08 campaign - and he corrected it straightaway.
My parents are a similar age, and will make similar mistakes, often getting the names of their grandkids mixed up etc but it is obvious they are still very sharp and informed. On its own it is generally not a sign of alzheimers or mental deterioration but perfectly normal for the age group.
London and the economy in general is completely screwed.
How much do people think insolvencies have increased this year? 15%? 50%? 100%? more?
Actually incredibly, they are down 43% August 2020 compared to August 2019!
Parts of the economy are clearly heavily impacted and need government support, which they are getting, but it is very far from true that the economy in general is completely screwed.
That seems very odd, any idea why that would be?
The only reason I can think of is that there is a large backlog of insolvencies due to COVID.
I know courts are backlogged so probably a factor but also the government support. A struggling business would have had much of its 2020 rent and wages covered by government grants, whether it was a productive business or not. In a normal year the productive ones would take business from the unproductive who would go bust.
He is a good campaigner, that is why he won the biggest Tory majority since Thatcher to deliver Brexit, that was why Boris won the Tory leadership not because he was a good administrator
Boris believes in delegation but that only works when those he delegate to are actually any good
It falls over with the likes of Grayling, Williamson, Hancock Jenrick and others
Johnson did one thing unambiguously well, which was making a splash as editor of the Spectator. Now a lot of that was about delegating the writing to the right sort of splashy writers. But those writers weren't really in competition with the editor.
The jury is out on Johnson's mayoralty. He won re-election (though Ken was declining badly by 2012; he'd lost the sparkle and the dodgy views were left), but it's hard to point to his signature achievement in that time. The buses? He did delegate effectively there, but the people he delegated to were his people, there at his pleasure. None of them were going to be Mayor in his place.
Now he's PM. The winds of the referendum had cut a hefty swathe through the senior ranks of the Conservatives. But there were some other substantial figures around; Hunt knew what he was doing, Stewart was odd, but interesting. (And boy we should have listened to his experience at the start of the pandemic). Mordant isn't my cup of tea, but she knows her way around. For whatever reason, Johnson's cabinet is incredibly weak and it's striking how many of them are horribly compromised- like Patel and Williamson. Some of that is the B-word, but I can't shake the suspicion that Johnson is the kind of weak leader who is afraid to surround himself by strong subordinates, because they might take the crown.
He is a good campaigner, that is why he won the biggest Tory majority since Thatcher to deliver Brexit, that was why Boris won the Tory leadership not because he was a good administrator
Boris believes in delegation but that only works when those he delegate to are actually any good
It falls over with the likes of Grayling, Williamson, Hancock Jenrick and others
Johnson did one thing unambiguously well, which was making a splash as editor of the Spectator. Now a lot of that was about delegating the writing to the right sort of splashy writers. But those writers weren't really in competition with the editor.
The jury is out on Johnson's mayoralty. He won re-election (though Ken was declining badly by 2012; he'd lost the sparkle and the dodgy views were left), but it's hard to point to his signature achievement in that time. The buses? He did delegate effectively there, but the people he delegated to were his people, there at his pleasure. None of them were going to be Mayor in his place.
Now he's PM. The winds of the referendum had cut a hefty swathe through the senior ranks of the Conservatives. But there were some other substantial figures around; Hunt knew what he was doing, Stewart was odd, but interesting. (And boy we should have listened to his experience at the start of the pandemic). Mordant isn't my cup of tea, but she knows her way around. For whatever reason, Johnson's cabinet is incredibly weak and it's striking how many of them are horribly compromised- like Patel and Williamson. Some of that is the B-word, but I can't shake the suspicion that Johnson is the kind of weak leader who is afraid to surround himself by strong subordinates, because they might take the crown.
I think it has less to do with them taking the crown as I suspect now he has discovered it is hard work he might hand it to them and more a combination of the fact that he needs people to be really crap so they don't outshine him, combined with the possibility that the better, competent people (such as Hunt) don't want their brand tainted by working for such a walking disaster.
Leading scientists have called for an urgent change in control of the UK’s struggling test and trace system warning it will fail to prevent a third wave of infection unless it is taken over by the NHS.
Independent Sage, a group of scientists set up to scrutinise the government’s coronavirus response, said the £12bn system should be removed from the control of Dido Harding and the private companies Deloitte and Serco. They want laboratories to be taken over by the NHS and tracing to be run by local directors of public health with the money currently going into private contracts redirected.
So a failing private sector effort can be taken over by an almost certain to fail public sector organisation? Sage (made up of a lot of public sector and academia types) seems to have forgotten "The Spreadsheet"! The public sector rarely does this stuff well.
The problem can clearly be seen at the top. Dido Harding, a crony of Bozo The Clown, though in the real world someone who is treated with derision by the IT and telecom sector from whence she came for losing TalkTalk £60M and 95000 customers. They need to put a serious person in charge and make sure they get value out of what has already happened and what Deloitte and Serco are contracted to do.
Part of the problem with the testing system is that it's doing the wrong things.
We should have locally run test processing centres and local councils should have 30-40 three person groups each in full hazmat gear armed with swabs knocking on doors of contacts taking them for daily processing so those contacts get their results the next day. They should also have another 30-40 two person teams doing daily door knocks of everyone who is supposed to be isolating in their local authority and they should be working 8am-10pm shift patterns with the power to fine people up to £10k for not being present on demand and allowing the LA to keep a portion of the fines.
Camden, for example, has got around 600 active infections at the moment, it needs 20 teams working simultaneously in a two shift pattern to enable the council to knock on all of the relevant doors and check that people are isolating everyday.
The cost of running a system like this would be around £500m per month plus a lot of initial investment in training and local testing capacity but once it's in place the ongoing cost is £500m per month with our current infection rate and much less after a month or so as the infection rate drops.
The government keeping central control is the issue and having clueless chumps like Dido running things is exacerbating all of the problems.
Is there any evidence that the virus is being transmitted primarily by people who have already tested positive and not by people who had not yet been tested?
If the overwhelming majority of transmission is asymptomatic, presymptomatic or pre-test results then even perfect follow ups on those known to be positive won't have a major effect on transmission.
'George Lopez and political strategist Ana Navarro will host the event, which will include appearances by Biden and his wife, Dr. Jill Biden, along with vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, as well as actors like Armie Hammer, Helen Mirren, Billy Porter and Amy Schumer and the cast of Queer Eye.
The lineup of musical guests is: A$AP Ferg, Sara Bareilles, Aloe Blacc, the Black Eyed Peas with Jennifer Hudson, Bon Jovi, Cher, Ciara, Andra Day, Jermaine Dupri with Johntá Austin "and friends," the Foo Fighters, Macy Gray, Dave Matthews, Ben Platt and others, according to the Biden campaign.'
Was this really a good time for Hillary Clinton to say she was "born to be president"? Not sure it's helpful as far as the Democrat/Biden campaign is concerned.
I think the tweet was from 2016. Still crass, and taking the electorate for granted.
I don't think it was crass or taking the electorate for granted.
When you're running for President and on the home stretch you say "We're gonna do it!". You try to energize and project confidence. Everyone does this and you mix it with warnings about complacency. Which she also did. Totally bog standard candidate messaging.
Your post - and the comments from others in the same vein - illustrate the double standards that are applied by so many to Hillary Clinton.
It had something to do with her being a woman. That's not the whole answer but it explains most of it.
I'd have exactly the same reaction to any candidate who appeared to take their victory for granted.
I sense not - since it's what they all do.
They mix "I'm gonna win!" with "This is NOT in the bag".
Hillary would have been the most intelligent President since Nixon, just a shame they both had such flaws and a complete inability to connect
You what?
Nixon had no inability to connect, electorally he is up there with FDR as one of the most successful candidates of all time.
He isn't, he lost to JFK in 1960, he scraped home against Humphrey in 1968 with just 43.4% mainly because Wallace took much of the Southern Democrat vote and his only big win in 1972 was mainly because McGovern was the most leftwing candidate the Democrats have ever nominated, so it was to stop McGovern rather than endorse Nixon primarily.
2 years later Nixon had to resign after Watergate having alienated most of Congress
Before he won the presidential elections of 1932, 1936, 1940 and 1944, FDR won election as NY State Senator in 1910 and was re-elected in 1912. In 1920 he was defeated for Vice President, in fact the Democratic ticket got stomped in an historic landslide.
Nixon was elected to US Congress from CA in 1946, and re-elected 1948. He was elected to US Senate from CA in 1950, in 1952 was elected Vice President as Ike's running mate, and was re-elected in 1956. In 1960 he was defeated running for President, and in 1962 was defeated running for Governor of CA. Then RN was elected President in 1968 and re-elected 1972.
SO raw box scores are:
>> Roosevelt: won 6, lost 1 >> Nixon: won 7, lost 2
On balance, would have to agree more with HYUFD (on THIS question) rather than PT.
For one thing, FDR won presidency four time (and lost VP once, but not his fault) where as Nixon only won presidency twice (though he was elected VP twice, but he was NOT the decisive factor).
AND certainly Roosevelt had SIGNIFICANT political coattails, whereas Nixon not so much.
On the same basis Corbyn has won 10 elections in Islington North to only 2 general election defeats as Labour leader
Feck fecking Jeremy Fecking Corbyn.
As you no doubt realize, there's a GREAT deal of difference between winning a safe parliamentary constituency as opposed to a swing district.
Both Roosevelt and Nixon began their political careers by winning in districts that were WAY more competitive than the Yard Gnome's.
Leading scientists have called for an urgent change in control of the UK’s struggling test and trace system warning it will fail to prevent a third wave of infection unless it is taken over by the NHS.
Independent Sage, a group of scientists set up to scrutinise the government’s coronavirus response, said the £12bn system should be removed from the control of Dido Harding and the private companies Deloitte and Serco. They want laboratories to be taken over by the NHS and tracing to be run by local directors of public health with the money currently going into private contracts redirected.
So a failing private sector effort can be taken over by an almost certain to fail public sector organisation? Sage (made up of a lot of public sector and academia types) seems to have forgotten "The Spreadsheet"! The public sector rarely does this stuff well.
The problem can clearly be seen at the top. Dido Harding, a crony of Bozo The Clown, though in the real world someone who is treated with derision by the IT and telecom sector from whence she came for losing TalkTalk £60M and 95000 customers. They need to put a serious person in charge and make sure they get value out of what has already happened and what Deloitte and Serco are contracted to do.
Part of the problem with the testing system is that it's doing the wrong things.
We should have locally run test processing centres and local councils should have 30-40 three person groups each in full hazmat gear armed with swabs knocking on doors of contacts taking them for daily processing so those contacts get their results the next day. They should also have another 30-40 two person teams doing daily door knocks of everyone who is supposed to be isolating in their local authority and they should be working 8am-10pm shift patterns with the power to fine people up to £10k for not being present on demand and allowing the LA to keep a portion of the fines.
Camden, for example, has got around 600 active infections at the moment, it needs 20 teams working simultaneously in a two shift pattern to enable the council to knock on all of the relevant doors and check that people are isolating everyday.
The cost of running a system like this would be around £500m per month plus a lot of initial investment in training and local testing capacity but once it's in place the ongoing cost is £500m per month with our current infection rate and much less after a month or so as the infection rate drops.
The government keeping central control is the issue and having clueless chumps like Dido running things is exacerbating all of the problems.
Is there any evidence that the virus is being transmitted primarily by people who have already tested positive and not by people who had not yet been tested?
If the overwhelming majority of transmission is asymptomatic, presymptomatic or pre-test results then even perfect follow ups on those known to be positive won't have a major effect on transmission.
I think that recent medical journal (BMJ?) review which someone poined out here stressed the role of presymptomatic and mainly symptomatic transmission, in numerical terms.
Edit: this oine, I think - but of course asymptomatic transmission is more of a worry in the sort of situation the t&t system is supposed to detect. Still, obeying quarantine if a family member is ill is obviously important as well.
London and the economy in general is completely screwed.
How much do people think insolvencies have increased this year? 15%? 50%? 100%? more?
Actually incredibly, they are down 43% August 2020 compared to August 2019!
Parts of the economy are clearly heavily impacted and need government support, which they are getting, but it is very far from true that the economy in general is completely screwed.
That seems very odd, any idea why that would be?
The only reason I can think of is that there is a large backlog of insolvencies due to COVID.
I know courts are backlogged so probably a factor but also the government support. A struggling business would have had much of its 2020 rent and wages covered by government grants, whether it was a productive business or not. In a normal year the productive ones would take business from the unproductive who would go bust.
Hmmm I'm not sure propping up unviable businesses in trouble because of COVID is a good idea, let alone ones that would have gone bust anyway.
If anyone is interested Nasa have found water on the Moon. Which once again makes science fiction merely science fact that hasn't happened yet. Want a moon base to refuel deep space missions from? Build it next to the water ice.
I'm enormously interested. Please share the link.
Escaping the Earth is, in my view, the single biggest and most important thing we can do. Not by any means at any cost, and part of why I feel it's important is just to get us out of the way of all the other species here.
When, I think tomorrow (after this post), I get elected PM I'll stick 10% or so of the budget into space.
The above may have an element of getting carried-away-with-oneself.
Escape where to? So far we have boldly gone 1.3 light seconds, 20 light hours if you count unmanned. We know for certain that there is nowhere in the solar system which is not hundreds of times less habitable than the least habitable place on earth, and it is a high probability that there is nowhere within the surrounding 100 light years. And I accept your "other species" principle, but the population of Western Europe did not drop sharply because we "discovered" the New World, Australia etc.
Was this really a good time for Hillary Clinton to say she was "born to be president"? Not sure it's helpful as far as the Democrat/Biden campaign is concerned.
I think the tweet was from 2016. Still crass, and taking the electorate for granted.
I don't think it was crass or taking the electorate for granted.
When you're running for President and on the home stretch you say "We're gonna do it!". You try to energize and project confidence. Everyone does this and you mix it with warnings about complacency. Which she also did. Totally bog standard candidate messaging.
Your post - and the comments from others in the same vein - illustrate the double standards that are applied by so many to Hillary Clinton.
It had something to do with her being a woman. That's not the whole answer but it explains most of it.
No that's a nonsense, it was a crass and self-indulgent post.
There is a world of difference between saying "as President I will [popular policies here]" to attract votes from people who want those actions taken versus appearing self-absorbed in your own vanity which is what both Hillary and Trump do.
I haven't seen Biden congratulate himself or post anything as cringeworthy as that Tweet from Hillary and if he did it would be lambasted.
It was doing 2 things -
(i) The bog standard thing of projecting confidence. This, mixed with a No Complacency message, is the template in the home straight in US elections.
(ii) She was running to break the glass ceiling. First female President. Thus the photo of herself as a young girl, daring to dream.
'George Lopez and political strategist Ana Navarro will host the event, which will include appearances by Biden and his wife, Dr. Jill Biden, along with vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, as well as actors like Armie Hammer, Helen Mirren, Billy Porter and Amy Schumer and the cast of Queer Eye.
The lineup of musical guests is: A$AP Ferg, Sara Bareilles, Aloe Blacc, the Black Eyed Peas with Jennifer Hudson, Bon Jovi, Cher, Ciara, Andra Day, Jermaine Dupri with Johntá Austin "and friends," the Foo Fighters, Macy Gray, Dave Matthews, Ben Platt and others, according to the Biden campaign.'
Of course, Mr Biden may just possibly have some regard for the life and health of his supporters.
London and the economy in general is completely screwed.
How much do people think insolvencies have increased this year? 15%? 50%? 100%? more?
Actually incredibly, they are down 43% August 2020 compared to August 2019!
Parts of the economy are clearly heavily impacted and need government support, which they are getting, but it is very far from true that the economy in general is completely screwed.
That seems very odd, any idea why that would be?
The only reason I can think of is that there is a large backlog of insolvencies due to COVID.
Another reason is that Sunak's handouts have been transforming (for the better) to many quite small businesses. I know several that have moved from dangling near insolvency to greater safety by his grants, and to getting rid of oppressive interest payments by his interest-free loan. In a relatively stable industry with small operators (like local food retail) , that adds up to a lot of near-insolvencies turned around.
It is worrying when Biden makes this kind of gaffe, I doubt it will make any difference this late on, but you have to feel a bit for Americans with the choice in front of them. You can see why Biden's team are keeping him largely tucked away in the run in
I don't find it all worrying. He's 77 and entitled to make an occasional verbal slip during the intense and exhausting process of running for President. Fact, I'd be amazed if he didn't. And this one was totally understandable - a hardcode from the 08 campaign - and he corrected it straightaway.
My parents are a similar age, and will make similar mistakes, often getting the names of their grandkids mixed up etc but it is obvious they are still very sharp and informed. On its own it is generally not a sign of alzheimers or mental deterioration but perfectly normal for the age group.
Trumpsky hooting at this is yet another one of his ways of alienating even more geezers than he's done by fecking up US COVID response.
Along with his hissy fit on "60 Minutes" which is must-see TV for many seniors.
Keep up the good work!
Interesting, I hadnt thought of it like that, just as an attack that wouldnt carry much weight despite the headlines, but yes I can imagine that for those that also jumble names, it could be counter productive and come across as an attack on them too.
London and the economy in general is completely screwed.
How much do people think insolvencies have increased this year? 15%? 50%? 100%? more?
Actually incredibly, they are down 43% August 2020 compared to August 2019!
Parts of the economy are clearly heavily impacted and need government support, which they are getting, but it is very far from true that the economy in general is completely screwed.
That seems very odd, any idea why that would be?
The only reason I can think of is that there is a large backlog of insolvencies due to COVID.
I know courts are backlogged so probably a factor but also the government support. A struggling business would have had much of its 2020 rent and wages covered by government grants, whether it was a productive business or not. In a normal year the productive ones would take business from the unproductive who would go bust.
Hmmm I'm not sure propping up unviable businesses in trouble because of COVID is a good idea, let alone ones that would have gone bust anyway.
The bill is going to be enormous.
Assuming covid is going to be 1-2 year thing in terms of major disruption then the massive govt support is probably cheaper than the alternative. If covid disruption is much longer than that then you would probably be right.
'George Lopez and political strategist Ana Navarro will host the event, which will include appearances by Biden and his wife, Dr. Jill Biden, along with vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, as well as actors like Armie Hammer, Helen Mirren, Billy Porter and Amy Schumer and the cast of Queer Eye.
The lineup of musical guests is: A$AP Ferg, Sara Bareilles, Aloe Blacc, the Black Eyed Peas with Jennifer Hudson, Bon Jovi, Cher, Ciara, Andra Day, Jermaine Dupri with Johntá Austin "and friends," the Foo Fighters, Macy Gray, Dave Matthews, Ben Platt and others, according to the Biden campaign.'
Of course, Mr Biden may just possibly have some regard for the life and health of his supporters.
Leading scientists have called for an urgent change in control of the UK’s struggling test and trace system warning it will fail to prevent a third wave of infection unless it is taken over by the NHS.
Independent Sage, a group of scientists set up to scrutinise the government’s coronavirus response, said the £12bn system should be removed from the control of Dido Harding and the private companies Deloitte and Serco. They want laboratories to be taken over by the NHS and tracing to be run by local directors of public health with the money currently going into private contracts redirected.
So a failing private sector effort can be taken over by an almost certain to fail public sector organisation? Sage (made up of a lot of public sector and academia types) seems to have forgotten "The Spreadsheet"! The public sector rarely does this stuff well.
The problem can clearly be seen at the top. Dido Harding, a crony of Bozo The Clown, though in the real world someone who is treated with derision by the IT and telecom sector from whence she came for losing TalkTalk £60M and 95000 customers. They need to put a serious person in charge and make sure they get value out of what has already happened and what Deloitte and Serco are contracted to do.
Part of the problem with the testing system is that it's doing the wrong things.
We should have locally run test processing centres and local councils should have 30-40 three person groups each in full hazmat gear armed with swabs knocking on doors of contacts taking them for daily processing so those contacts get their results the next day. They should also have another 30-40 two person teams doing daily door knocks of everyone who is supposed to be isolating in their local authority and they should be working 8am-10pm shift patterns with the power to fine people up to £10k for not being present on demand and allowing the LA to keep a portion of the fines.
Camden, for example, has got around 600 active infections at the moment, it needs 20 teams working simultaneously in a two shift pattern to enable the council to knock on all of the relevant doors and check that people are isolating everyday.
The cost of running a system like this would be around £500m per month plus a lot of initial investment in training and local testing capacity but once it's in place the ongoing cost is £500m per month with our current infection rate and much less after a month or so as the infection rate drops.
The government keeping central control is the issue and having clueless chumps like Dido running things is exacerbating all of the problems.
Is there any evidence that the virus is being transmitted primarily by people who have already tested positive and not by people who had not yet been tested?
If the overwhelming majority of transmission is asymptomatic, presymptomatic or pre-test results then even perfect follow ups on those known to be positive won't have a major effect on transmission.
At the moment you would indeed expect the majority of transmission to be asymptomatic or presymptomatic, especially as we're testing mainly those who are already symptomatic. And we know that viral shedding peaks in the early days of infection for most individuals.
Unless we start large scale population testing regardless of symptoms, that is not going to change.
Was this really a good time for Hillary Clinton to say she was "born to be president"? Not sure it's helpful as far as the Democrat/Biden campaign is concerned.
I think the tweet was from 2016. Still crass, and taking the electorate for granted.
I don't think it was crass or taking the electorate for granted.
When you're running for President and on the home stretch you say "We're gonna do it!". You try to energize and project confidence. Everyone does this and you mix it with warnings about complacency. Which she also did. Totally bog standard candidate messaging.
Your post - and the comments from others in the same vein - illustrate the double standards that are applied by so many to Hillary Clinton.
It had something to do with her being a woman. That's not the whole answer but it explains most of it.
Misogyny is often dressed as other things, though it could simply have been that Hillary Clinton was no Margaret Thatcher, the latter who succeeded in much more openly prejudiced times. Remember how the left always tried to make out she was actually a man? Hillary has to have been pretty crap to lose to the Orange Moron.
Yes, Thatcher overcame massive sexism. No argument from me about that. And HRC was indeed a poor candidate. But it's undeniable - unless one cannot recognize sexism - that sexism played a big part in her defeat.
He is a good campaigner, that is why he won the biggest Tory majority since Thatcher to deliver Brexit, that was why Boris won the Tory leadership not because he was a good administrator
Boris believes in delegation but that only works when those he delegate to are actually any good
It falls over with the likes of Grayling, Williamson, Hancock Jenrick and others
Actually, I think you have it wrong.
Bozo is happy to delegate to competent, intelligent officials, who owe their position to his appointing them and don’t have any independent power base of their own.
What Boris, given his inadequacy and lack of self confidence, will not risk is appointing competent fellow politicians who might one day become his rivals and topple him. Not least because he has spent his life working to undermine those above him, and knows how destructive it can be.
If you made UKIP into a film people would accuse you of lazy writing. Mike Hookem gets into a punch-up. Richard Braine gets the top job after it collapses.
It is worrying when Biden makes this kind of gaffe, I doubt it will make any difference this late on, but you have to feel a bit for Americans with the choice in front of them. You can see why Biden's team are keeping him largely tucked away in the run in
I don't find it all worrying. He's 77 and entitled to make an occasional verbal slip during the intense and exhausting process of running for President. Fact, I'd be amazed if he didn't. And this one was totally understandable - a hardcode from the 08 campaign - and he corrected it straightaway.
My parents are a similar age, and will make similar mistakes, often getting the names of their grandkids mixed up etc but it is obvious they are still very sharp and informed. On its own it is generally not a sign of alzheimers or mental deterioration but perfectly normal for the age group.
A magnificent distortion of data, achieved by splitting off those who think they are about right from those who think they are too high - with which groups the plurality belongs. Well done.
Except for the massive difference in the national polling, of course.
And covid health and economic crisis. And the Democrats not having an unpopular candidate. And Trump having to run on a track record rather than vague ideas and promises.
Was this really a good time for Hillary Clinton to say she was "born to be president"? Not sure it's helpful as far as the Democrat/Biden campaign is concerned.
I think the tweet was from 2016. Still crass, and taking the electorate for granted.
I don't think it was crass or taking the electorate for granted.
When you're running for President and on the home stretch you say "We're gonna do it!". You try to energize and project confidence. Everyone does this and you mix it with warnings about complacency. Which she also did. Totally bog standard candidate messaging.
Your post - and the comments from others in the same vein - illustrate the double standards that are applied by so many to Hillary Clinton.
It had something to do with her being a woman. That's not the whole answer but it explains most of it.
Misogyny is often dressed as other things, though it could simply have been that Hillary Clinton was no Margaret Thatcher, the latter who succeeded in much more openly prejudiced times. Remember how the left always tried to make out she was actually a man? Hillary has to have been pretty crap to lose to the Orange Moron.
Yes, Thatcher overcame massive sexism. No argument from me about that. And HRC was indeed a poor candidate. But it's undeniable - unless one cannot recognize sexism - that sexism played a big part in her defeat.
Hmm, not so sure about that. Sexism, of the 'wouldn't it be great to have the first woman president at last?' type, also helped her. Not obvious at all whether the net effect was positive or negative.
I go for the simpler explanation that she was a really awful candidate. She might have been quite a good president, though (and of course a zillion times better than the one they got).
It is worrying when Biden makes this kind of gaffe, I doubt it will make any difference this late on, but you have to feel a bit for Americans with the choice in front of them. You can see why Biden's team are keeping him largely tucked away in the run in
I don't find it all worrying. He's 77 and entitled to make an occasional verbal slip during the intense and exhausting process of running for President. Fact, I'd be amazed if he didn't. And this one was totally understandable - a hardcode from the 08 campaign - and he corrected it straightaway.
And Trump only noticed it because someone had forgotten his name...
lol - yes, that thought did strike me. In which case, great trolling there by Joe.
Comments
#Ruth4FM
#Jackson4FM
#Ross4FM
#?4FM
https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2019/05/12/fusion-confusion/
Do keep on taking those reports of working fusion reactors within a year or two with a very large handful of salt!
2 years later Nixon had to resign after Watergate having alienated most of Congress
The military are the ones we probably don't have to worry about.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/10/26/elissa-slotkin-michigan-election-day-431853
...So, we originally tried to ask [Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Mark] Milley and [Defense Secretary Mark] Esper in a hearing in July, but we were so junior that we didn’t get turns. So we did it in questions for the record. Then, I followed up and sent one to Chad Wolf, the acting head of [the Department of] Homeland Security. And then, when the [director of National Intelligence] started to politicize election-related intelligence, I sent one to the DNI. I wasn’t thinking that their answers would turn the tide on anything, but from my congressional perch, this is what I could do to force these senior leaders into thinking through that they’re going to have to make a call based on what’s greater, their loyalty to the president or their belief in democracy. I was very happy that Milley got back to us and he had fulsome answers. Esper’s answers, I wasn’t so thrilled with; he basically handed it off to a lawyer to give the de minimis response. The DHS got back to us and said, ‘We’re going to be happy to answer your questions after the election,’ which I thought was an interesting approach. All we know about DNI is that they acknowledged receipt...
But she's an uppity woman.
There is a world of difference between saying "as President I will [popular policies here]" to attract votes from people who want those actions taken versus appearing self-absorbed in your own vanity which is what both Hillary and Trump do.
I haven't seen Biden congratulate himself or post anything as cringeworthy as that Tweet from Hillary and if he did it would be lambasted.
https://le.ac.uk/research/coronavirus/professor-kamlesh-khunti
The big uncertainty in the UK is whether Labour are going to be able to take advantage of what I am sure is going to be the enormous unpopularity of the government. The interesting parallel here is 1992, which I remember well. In that election the government was very unpopular, but still won because voters weren't convinced by Kinnock and Labour. As soon as Labour made itself electable, voters went for it in droves, and the 1997 landslide was the consequence. Keir Starmer has a lot more to do, especially in terms of building a fully credible team around him, if he's not going to be another Kinnock.
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-seeks-big-ideas-from-universities-to-solve-a-messy-problem/
It falls over with the likes of Grayling, Williamson, Hancock Jenrick and others
We should have locally run test processing centres and local councils should have 30-40 three person groups each in full hazmat gear armed with swabs knocking on doors of contacts taking them for daily processing so those contacts get their results the next day. They should also have another 30-40 two person teams doing daily door knocks of everyone who is supposed to be isolating in their local authority and they should be working 8am-10pm shift patterns with the power to fine people up to £10k for not being present on demand and allowing the LA to keep a portion of the fines.
Camden, for example, has got around 600 active infections at the moment, it needs 20 teams working simultaneously in a two shift pattern to enable the council to knock on all of the relevant doors and check that people are isolating everyday.
The cost of running a system like this would be around £500m per month plus a lot of initial investment in training and local testing capacity but once it's in place the ongoing cost is £500m per month with our current infection rate and much less after a month or so as the infection rate drops.
The government keeping central control is the issue and having clueless chumps like Dido running things is exacerbating all of the problems.
Turns out that not trying to kill off the voters is a popular policy.
His issue with Watergate was that he was a criminal not that he was incapable of connecting with the public
1972 wasn't the only landslide he was involved in. As running mate in 1952 and 1956 he was involved in two more landslides - and the "Checkers Speech" was an absolute political masterclass in connecting with the public.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3594971/Do-mix-people-s-names-Don-t-worry-not-going-senile-merely-filing-error-brain.html
Sometimes, you just get to run at the right time. And don't forget he got to run again despite losing... though admittedly not to Trump.
Nixon was elected to US Congress from CA in 1946, and re-elected 1948. He was elected to US Senate from CA in 1950, in 1952 was elected Vice President as Ike's running mate, and was re-elected in 1956. In 1960 he was defeated running for President, and in 1962 was defeated running for Governor of CA. Then RN was elected President in 1968 and re-elected 1972.
SO raw box scores are:
>> Roosevelt: won 6, lost 1
>> Nixon: won 7, lost 2
On balance, would have to agree more with HYUFD (on THIS question) rather than PT.
For one thing, FDR won presidency four time (and lost VP once, but not his fault) where as Nixon only won presidency twice (though he was elected VP twice, but he was NOT the decisive factor).
AND certainly Roosevelt had SIGNIFICANT political coattails, whereas Nixon not so much.
It's both better and worse than this suggests. Soho for example on a Saturday night, (sample of one night) and I walked round it, was rocking. I hugely disapprove. Places like Clerkenwell and Bloomsbury are almost ghost-towns. They'd long lacked a community anyway, but now they feel like an archeological dig - as does the Barbican. Odd small groups of youngsters there, but they look lost.
Regent's Park is just great now though. Loads of small groups just enjoying it.
No idea how all this adds up.
50% by cop tomorrow??
The run up to the Iraq War was perhaps the moment for Sir David to exercise his critical & scientific judgment to good public effect, but somehow ... he never did.
https://twitter.com/mattpike421/status/1320744944504590337?s=20
Along with his hissy fit on "60 Minutes" which is must-see TV for many seniors.
Keep up the good work!
The only reason I can think of is that there is a large backlog of insolvencies due to COVID.
The jury is out on Johnson's mayoralty. He won re-election (though Ken was declining badly by 2012; he'd lost the sparkle and the dodgy views were left), but it's hard to point to his signature achievement in that time. The buses? He did delegate effectively there, but the people he delegated to were his people, there at his pleasure. None of them were going to be Mayor in his place.
Now he's PM. The winds of the referendum had cut a hefty swathe through the senior ranks of the Conservatives. But there were some other substantial figures around; Hunt knew what he was doing, Stewart was odd, but interesting. (And boy we should have listened to his experience at the start of the pandemic). Mordant isn't my cup of tea, but she knows her way around. For whatever reason, Johnson's cabinet is incredibly weak and it's striking how many of them are horribly compromised- like Patel and Williamson. Some of that is the B-word, but I can't shake the suspicion that Johnson is the kind of weak leader who is afraid to surround himself by strong subordinates, because they might take the crown.
Bias is who wins the Electoral College and how does that filter through to a tipping point. If the tipping point is that the GOP wins with fewer votes than the Democrats then it is biased to the GOP. For the bias to tip then the tipping point would need to be the other side.
Another day of terrible coverage nearly gone.
There was a podcast series out recently called Wind Of Change, which tried to get to the bottom of a rumour that the CIA wrote the Scorpions' song Wind Of Change as a way to bring about the collapse of the Soviet Union.
A similar sort of rumour exists about Dame Shirley Bassey. There's chatter in some spy circles that suggests that Shirley Bassey became an asset for Interpol in the early 1980s – back when she was palling about with Middle Eastern royalty and singing Happy Birthday for Saudi billionaire Adnan Khashoggi.
The story goes that, as these men would casually impart insider information to her in order to impress her, she supposedly came into a lot of extremely useful intel. One even suggests she was essential in helping pinpoint Saddam Hussein's palaces in Iraq.
https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4077
https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1320776727128363008
If the overwhelming majority of transmission is asymptomatic, presymptomatic or pre-test results then even perfect follow ups on those known to be positive won't have a major effect on transmission.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1320770458527158272?s=20
https://twitter.com/Variety/status/1320779083765211137?s=20
https://twitter.com/people/status/1319328809003503618?s=20
'George Lopez and political strategist Ana Navarro will host the event, which will include appearances by Biden and his wife, Dr. Jill Biden, along with vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, as well as actors like Armie Hammer, Helen Mirren, Billy Porter and Amy Schumer and the cast of Queer Eye.
The lineup of musical guests is: A$AP Ferg, Sara Bareilles, Aloe Blacc, the Black Eyed Peas with Jennifer Hudson, Bon Jovi, Cher, Ciara, Andra Day, Jermaine Dupri with Johntá Austin "and friends," the Foo Fighters, Macy Gray, Dave Matthews, Ben Platt and others, according to the Biden campaign.'
They mix "I'm gonna win!" with "This is NOT in the bag".
As you no doubt realize, there's a GREAT deal of difference between winning a safe parliamentary constituency as opposed to a swing district.
Both Roosevelt and Nixon began their political careers by winning in districts that were WAY more competitive than the Yard Gnome's.
Edit: this oine, I think - but of course asymptomatic transmission is more of a worry in the sort of situation the t&t system is supposed to detect. Still, obeying quarantine if a family member is ill is obviously important as well.
https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m3862
The bill is going to be enormous.
(i) The bog standard thing of projecting confidence. This, mixed with a No Complacency message, is the template in the home straight in US elections.
(ii) She was running to break the glass ceiling. First female President. Thus the photo of herself as a young girl, daring to dream.
Your reaction is a "tell" on you not on her.
And we know that viral shedding peaks in the early days of infection for most individuals.
Unless we start large scale population testing regardless of symptoms, that is not going to change.
Bozo is happy to delegate to competent, intelligent officials, who owe their position to his appointing them and don’t have any independent power base of their own.
What Boris, given his inadequacy and lack of self confidence, will not risk is appointing competent fellow politicians who might one day become his rivals and topple him. Not least because he has spent his life working to undermine those above him, and knows how destructive it can be.
Otherwise very similar.
I go for the simpler explanation that she was a really awful candidate. She might have been quite a good president, though (and of course a zillion times better than the one they got).