I think they're higher than Sainsbury's in the pecking order now, which has definitely gone downhill in the last 20 years.
I once ventured in the Morrisons in St. Albans. Strange emporium, one had large wheeled wire contraptions that apparently one was expected to place purchases in and not a personal shopper in sight. Quite a traumatising experience for gentleman unused to the cut and thrust of the modern retail experience ....
PA now at Biden +81K .. NV at +33K and Biden edging toward a 6M vote popular win with New York state still at 82% reporting and bits and bobs elsewhere including 2% from California.
Yes, it wasn't really that 'close' at all in the end was it?
It was close because the states Trump needed to hold onto the presidency were Georgia, Wisconsin and Arizona. The Biden majority in Georgia and Arizona is about 14,000 votes and 10,000 in Wisconsin. That would have led to a 269-269 result which would almost certainly have gone in Trump's favour.
PA now at Biden +81K .. NV at +33K and Biden edging toward a 6M vote popular win with New York state still at 82% reporting and bits and bobs elsewhere including 2% from California.
If America were a functional first world democracy capable of counting all votes on the night, instead of letting the narrative be set by early counting and Florida then evolving from there over weeks, then this would have been a simple and comprehensive victory for Biden.
America isn't a first world democracy any more? blimey.
I've said all year long that with voter suppression etc that America isn't a functioning first world democracy.
That some people spent over 10 hours queueing to get to the ballot box is not something that happens in a functioning first world democracy.
If voter suppression is your yardstick I doubt America has ever been a first world democracy. Its surely as low now as its ever been.
It’s not as explicit as it used to be in the sixties and before, where it was written into law, but it seems that old habits die hard.
Alan Coren used to say the sole purpose of Sainsburys was to keep the riffraff out of Waitrose.
For me Sainsbury's is the sweet spot - neither up itself like Waitrose or M&S nor cheap looking like Tesco or Asda. I just find the German discounters disorienting, although they have good stuff at low prices. Plus you can't get everything there, and for me the ability to go to one place once a fortnight and come home with everything you need within an hour is worth forking out a bit more for.
I’m now Occado all the way.
I forget fewer items when I go in person for some reason. We tried online shopping but never really took to it.
I wonder how many people have to mentally walk around their local Saunsburys when doing the online shopping, just so as not to forget things?
What I do when I go to the shops - Waitrose usually - is I do a "control total" in my head before I set off for what I plan to buy. So for example, and it's today's real one, if I'm getting pork chops, fishcakes, chicken breasts, round beans, broccoli, apples, bananas, hula hoops, bread, and milk - that's TEN. My control total is 10. Then as I walk towards the checkout I look into my basket and count the items. Did that today and there were just 9 items there. Tells me I'm missing one thing. The bread in this case. So I flipped around, went back to the bread section and got it - Hovis Granary Original just for completeness of everyone's mental picture - then back to the till and closed the deal.
That would never work for me. I go in with a list of about 10 items and come out with about 15, not always including everything on the original list. You sound way too organised.
Which is the beauty of online - you just load up a previous shop and then tweak it for the items you only need once in a while. So much better than wandering around a supermarket gazing at shelves in the hope that I happen to remember what I need.
Alan Coren used to say the sole purpose of Sainsburys was to keep the riffraff out of Waitrose.
For me Sainsbury's is the sweet spot - neither up itself like Waitrose or M&S nor cheap looking like Tesco or Asda. I just find the German discounters disorienting, although they have good stuff at low prices. Plus you can't get everything there, and for me the ability to go to one place once a fortnight and come home with everything you need within an hour is worth forking out a bit more for.
I went off Sainsbury's when I bought some fish from the fish counter. Good price I thought. When I got home I read the label. Apparently it might have been grown in either Greece or Turkey and may be processed in a facility that may contain nuts. FFS they have no idea where it comes from. Surprised they know what species it is. Back to Waitrose for fish (and it is 20% off on Fridays). Still, Sainsbury's is the closest supermarket to the office and I'm now going in once a week so it's good for the odd top-up item.
Of course Sainsbury's is now closing all these counters.
What was revealing during the horse meat scandal, Morrisons were the only major supermarket that could track all their meat from field to store.
I think Morrisons started life as a fishmonger.
I think they're higher than Sainsbury's in the pecking order now, which has definitely gone downhill in the last 20 years.
The best thing about Morrisons was their pick n mix fresh salad counter priced by box size. Had one for my lunch almost every day, don't think I've ever eaten as healthily or as cheaply. Don't live near one anymore sadly.
PA now at Biden +81K .. NV at +33K and Biden edging toward a 6M vote popular win with New York state still at 82% reporting and bits and bobs elsewhere including 2% from California.
Far fewer people watch live ads now (unless they're watching live TV per chance) so it's a social media battle. Sainsbury's will be well aware this will be widely shared, for a variety of reasons, and that will do them very nicely.
I've already ordered my Christmas food from M&S, same as I do every year, as I've never found anywhere as good - their stuff is sublime.
We do ours with Waitrose every year and get the bird from direct from a farm. We tried M&S a couple of years ago and it wasn't as good so we switched back to Waitrose. Maybe it was a bad year.
This year we've gone for a Turkey, the farm was very glad for the business.
Apparently there is going to be a shortage of UK turkey this year because 5m (seriously!) Brits normally go abroad for Christmas and nearly all will be here instead. We are having to make special arrangements to get enough turkey pluckers in from abroad but we will probably have to import some turkeys as well.
Most years we go around on Christmas eve and buy a bronzed turkey once the price has collapsed. That might be a bit riskier this year.
Or just eat something nicer – roast rib of beef or goose. Turkey is a bit crap TBH.
If you can't get goose, take any meat and wrap it in lard.
Finished "The Crown". Enjoyable, superior soap opera, but at times drifted from "dramatic licence" into "Fake News". For example, suggesting that Thatcher was opposed to sanctions on South Africa because her son had business interests there (out by a decade, after Thatcher had left office) or that she was in favour of apartheid and Mandela against sanctions (he urged her to not lift them too quickly to maintain pressure on the regime). The most ludicrous bit was the suggestion that Thatcher asked the queen to dissolve parliament so she could hang on during the leadership challenge. The Charles and Diana bits are very soapy and Princess Margaret played for tragedy - ignoring the "good works" she did - for example with AIDS, long before Diana showed up with the cameras. It wasn't an accident that Margaret was the Royal Patron of The Lighthouse and the Terrence Higgins Trust.
Spoiler alert please!
Thatcher leaves office??
Nobody tell @justin124 - he was acting as if Thatcher was still PM and John Carlisle (RIP) was still an MP last night.
Not the point at all.Is it unreasonable to expect the current Tory leadership to condemn the likes of Carlisle and Dicks - and the failure of Thatcher and Major to have them removed from the parliamentary party?To this day very few Tories would refuse to criticise Archibald Ramsey - the Tory MP locked up for most of World War 2 on account of his clear Fascist sympathies. If Starmer is to be condemned for his action re-Corbyn, what does that say about the failure of Thatcher and Major to act against clear evil in their own ranks? The point can even be extended to Heath who failed to get rid of Tory MPs who were pro-Apartheid and supportive of the Smith regime in Rhodesia.
Well, certain Torties on PB keep bringing up the SNP MP who was arrested in WW2 - on false evidence from the Tories and promptly released on investigation, yet they don't mention Captain Ramsay. Very strange.
Donaldson was never actually an mp. He looms unnaturally large in the psyches of Unionists though.
Every day is a learning day on PB. I had honestly never heard of him before.
As for shopping why wouldn't you do it online? All the supermarkets remember what you bought so you can just add it all again to your trolley, they deliver - hoorah - and have constant offers (although none, I noted, on wine during the lockdown).
For the physical shop, it was known that Morrisons had a great fresh meat and fish counter - no idea if that is still the case. And the Waitrose in the King's Road was a great pick up joint.
That is all.
I gather you were on Marylebone High St yesterday in the middle of the afternoon. But I suppose you had a good reason.
Early evening. Very interesting it was too.
Ah early evening. Ok. That makes sense. Middle of the afternoon sounded a bit fishy.
I saw the Sainsbury's ad last night and thought it was one of the best Christmas ads I'd seen this year.
Didn't even think about skin colour or notice the fact they were black. That wasn't the relevant bit to me, for me it was a family having a 2020 Christmas talking about gravy etc - that some people see that and get offended is absolutely beyond me.
That's an interesting point - have other supermarkets/big retailers not featured black/other non-white families? I would assume they have (be a bit shocked if not) but I honestly can't remember. As you say, not really something that you notice particularly unless flagged up.
I do remember the Lloyds banking front page picture/ad being a couple of men getting engaged a few years back, but I'd seen that a few times before I twigged the significance (one of the first ads to feature an openly homosexual couple, I think).
Sainsbury’s are doing different ads featuring different races it seems. Maybe the third will be a mixture.
If they are trying to represent the countries demographic, it fails as BAME is a smallish minority, if they are trying to promote an ideal situation I think it fails too because it segregates the races. Racists would probably be pleased to have different ads for black and white families. Best not to go there, but as @Roy_G_Biv says it is almost certainly a part of the marketing strategy to provoke some fury
Have to say, coming at it cold and from outside the ad industry (and living in the US), I found the ad totally normal and would find it far more reprehensible if the series of ads did not feature at least some non-white families. Should it show mixed-race families? Maybe - but the centerpiece of the ads seems to be nostalgia and a current adult's childhood - so for me the mixed-race family would actually feel more forced and less natural.
PS and for me the black father and daughter teasing each other worked far better than the white mother and son reminiscing about the deceased father.
All adverts are subliminally just trying to get in our heads, best ignored if poss
PA now at Biden +81K .. NV at +33K and Biden edging toward a 6M vote popular win with New York state still at 82% reporting and bits and bobs elsewhere including 2% from California.
Yes, it wasn't really that 'close' at all in the end was it?
It was close because the states Trump needed to hold onto the presidency were Georgia, Wisconsin and Arizona. The Biden majority in Georgia and Arizona is about 14,000 votes and 10,000 in Wisconsin. That would have led to a 269-269 result which would almost certainly have gone in Trump's favour.
The Georgia recount is cutting Biden;s lead from 14,000 a bit I think
Far fewer people watch live ads now (unless they're watching live TV per chance) so it's a social media battle. Sainsbury's will be well aware this will be widely shared, for a variety of reasons, and that will do them very nicely.
I've already ordered my Christmas food from M&S, same as I do every year, as I've never found anywhere as good - their stuff is sublime.
We do ours with Waitrose every year and get the bird from direct from a farm. We tried M&S a couple of years ago and it wasn't as good so we switched back to Waitrose. Maybe it was a bad year.
This year we've gone for a Turkey, the farm was very glad for the business.
Apparently there is going to be a shortage of UK turkey this year because 5m (seriously!) Brits normally go abroad for Christmas and nearly all will be here instead. We are having to make special arrangements to get enough turkey pluckers in from abroad but we will probably have to import some turkeys as well.
Most years we go around on Christmas eve and buy a bronzed turkey once the price has collapsed. That might be a bit riskier this year.
Or just eat something nicer – roast rib of beef or goose. Turkey is a bit crap TBH.
If you can't get goose, take any meat and wrap it in lard.
In my experience put the meat to one side and cook the lard. Never seen anything like it. I think what was on the bony carcass that was left drowned.
Alan Coren used to say the sole purpose of Sainsburys was to keep the riffraff out of Waitrose.
For me Sainsbury's is the sweet spot - neither up itself like Waitrose or M&S nor cheap looking like Tesco or Asda. I just find the German discounters disorienting, although they have good stuff at low prices. Plus you can't get everything there, and for me the ability to go to one place once a fortnight and come home with everything you need within an hour is worth forking out a bit more for.
I won't say which supermarket I go to, but I'm clear about where I am in the pecking order: Everyone who goes to more downmarket supermarkets is scum Everyone who goes to more upmarket supermarkets is posh scum
The British class system in one sentence. You get to look downwards in all directions, even (especially) when you're looking upwards. What's not to like?
I would say it's like an Escher painting, but I once saw Escher leaving the Co-op in Hilversum, and since then I've come to regard him as essentially a degenerate.
Are you sure that you weren't actually in a pseudo non-degenerate Riemannian space? If so, he may actually have been entering Fortnum's.
He was buying wine in a klein bottle, and trying to work out how to open the damn thing.
I saw Francis Bacon in the Neros at Notting Hill Gate once. I didn't see what he was buying but hope to hell it wasn't a skinny decaf latte.
I saw Salvador Dali coming out of Morrison’s, he had a fish and was hurrying because he was flat out of time.
I saw Jean Paul-Sartre trying to order a coffee without cream in a pub once. Barmaid said, "we don't have any cream, would you like it without milk instead?"
PA now at Biden +81K .. NV at +33K and Biden edging toward a 6M vote popular win with New York state still at 82% reporting and bits and bobs elsewhere including 2% from California.
Yes, it wasn't really that 'close' at all in the end was it?
It was close because the states Trump needed to hold onto the presidency were Georgia, Wisconsin and Arizona. The Biden majority in Georgia and Arizona is about 14,000 votes and 10,000 in Wisconsin. That would have led to a 269-269 result which would almost certainly have gone in Trump's favour.
That is the nature of FPTP though. If you add up the majorities in the closest seats in our General Elections you usually only get to a few thousand votes difference between a majority and not a majority (he says without checking).
PA now at Biden +81K .. NV at +33K and Biden edging toward a 6M vote popular win with New York state still at 82% reporting and bits and bobs elsewhere including 2% from California.
Yes, it wasn't really that 'close' at all in the end was it?
It was close because the states Trump needed to hold onto the presidency were Georgia, Wisconsin and Arizona. The Biden majority in Georgia and Arizona is about 14,000 votes and 10,000 in Wisconsin. That would have led to a 269-269 result which would almost certainly have gone in Trump's favour.
20k votes in WI, 11k AZ, 14k GA. Trump needed all three to win with a 269-269 tie (As you corrrectly point out) so Biden's winning margin was 0.6% where it mattered. Current PV win is 3.8% and rising.
So the system was 3.2% bias towards Trump (And heading north)
Alan Coren used to say the sole purpose of Sainsburys was to keep the riffraff out of Waitrose.
For me Sainsbury's is the sweet spot - neither up itself like Waitrose or M&S nor cheap looking like Tesco or Asda. I just find the German discounters disorienting, although they have good stuff at low prices. Plus you can't get everything there, and for me the ability to go to one place once a fortnight and come home with everything you need within an hour is worth forking out a bit more for.
I won't say which supermarket I go to, but I'm clear about where I am in the pecking order: Everyone who goes to more downmarket supermarkets is scum Everyone who goes to more upmarket supermarkets is posh scum
The British class system in one sentence. You get to look downwards in all directions, even (especially) when you're looking upwards. What's not to like?
I would say it's like an Escher painting, but I once saw Escher leaving the Co-op in Hilversum, and since then I've come to regard him as essentially a degenerate.
Are you sure that you weren't actually in a pseudo non-degenerate Riemannian space? If so, he may actually have been entering Fortnum's.
He was buying wine in a klein bottle, and trying to work out how to open the damn thing.
I saw Francis Bacon in the Neros at Notting Hill Gate once. I didn't see what he was buying but hope to hell it wasn't a skinny decaf latte.
Double espresso with a shot of human degradation and existential despair please, and make it snappy.
My hairdresser in Dartmouth has a painting of his dog done by Bacon.....
(He also did Bowie's hair and Tina Turner's wigs, before heading down here for the quieter life....Still has somebody who flies in from Brasil to get her colour done!)
I think they're higher than Sainsbury's in the pecking order now, which has definitely gone downhill in the last 20 years.
I once ventured in the Morrisons in St. Albans. Strange emporium, one had large wheeled wire contraptions that apparently one was expected to place purchases in and not a personal shopper in sight. Quite a traumatising experience for gentleman unused to the cut and thrust of the modern retail experience ....
If they have a Morrisons, can it be any wonder St. Albans went down-market and replaced their Tory MP with a LibDem?
I saw the Sainsbury's ad last night and thought it was one of the best Christmas ads I'd seen this year.
Didn't even think about skin colour or notice the fact they were black. That wasn't the relevant bit to me, for me it was a family having a 2020 Christmas talking about gravy etc - that some people see that and get offended is absolutely beyond me.
That's an interesting point - have other supermarkets/big retailers not featured black/other non-white families? I would assume they have (be a bit shocked if not) but I honestly can't remember. As you say, not really something that you notice particularly unless flagged up.
I do remember the Lloyds banking front page picture/ad being a couple of men getting engaged a few years back, but I'd seen that a few times before I twigged the significance (one of the first ads to feature an openly homosexual couple, I think).
Sainsbury’s are doing different ads featuring different races it seems. Maybe the third will be a mixture.
If they are trying to represent the countries demographic, it fails as BAME is a smallish minority, if they are trying to promote an ideal situation I think it fails too because it segregates the races. Racists would probably be pleased to have different ads for black and white families. Best not to go there, but as @Roy_G_Biv says it is almost certainly a part of the marketing strategy to provoke some fury
Have to say, coming at it cold and from outside the ad industry (and living in the US), I found the ad totally normal and would find it far more reprehensible if the series of ads did not feature at least some non-white families. Should it show mixed-race families? Maybe - but the centerpiece of the ads seems to be nostalgia and a current adult's childhood - so for me the mixed-race family would actually feel more forced and less natural.
PS and for me the black father and daughter teasing each other worked far better than the white mother and son reminiscing about the deceased father.
All adverts are subliminally just trying to get in our heads, best ignored if poss
Good advice. You should have followed it.
Ooh you biatch! Haha
But unlucky, I never brought it up, and hadn’t seen it - someone else posted on here about the outrage over it
Alan Coren used to say the sole purpose of Sainsburys was to keep the riffraff out of Waitrose.
For me Sainsbury's is the sweet spot - neither up itself like Waitrose or M&S nor cheap looking like Tesco or Asda. I just find the German discounters disorienting, although they have good stuff at low prices. Plus you can't get everything there, and for me the ability to go to one place once a fortnight and come home with everything you need within an hour is worth forking out a bit more for.
I won't say which supermarket I go to, but I'm clear about where I am in the pecking order: Everyone who goes to more downmarket supermarkets is scum Everyone who goes to more upmarket supermarkets is posh scum
The British class system in one sentence. You get to look downwards in all directions, even (especially) when you're looking upwards. What's not to like?
I would say it's like an Escher painting, but I once saw Escher leaving the Co-op in Hilversum, and since then I've come to regard him as essentially a degenerate.
Are you sure that you weren't actually in a pseudo non-degenerate Riemannian space? If so, he may actually have been entering Fortnum's.
He was buying wine in a klein bottle, and trying to work out how to open the damn thing.
I saw Francis Bacon in the Neros at Notting Hill Gate once. I didn't see what he was buying but hope to hell it wasn't a skinny decaf latte.
Double espresso with a shot of human degradation and existential despair please, and make it snappy.
My hairdresser in Dartmouth has a painting of his dog done by Bacon.....
(He also did Bowie's hair and Tina Turner's wigs, before heading down here for the quieter life....Still has somebody who flies in from Brasil to get her colour done!)
Dartmouth is a LONG way to go for a Brazilian!
Even Heathrow to Dartmouth is a long way to go! Probably about half the journey time.....
Alan Coren used to say the sole purpose of Sainsburys was to keep the riffraff out of Waitrose.
For me Sainsbury's is the sweet spot - neither up itself like Waitrose or M&S nor cheap looking like Tesco or Asda. I just find the German discounters disorienting, although they have good stuff at low prices. Plus you can't get everything there, and for me the ability to go to one place once a fortnight and come home with everything you need within an hour is worth forking out a bit more for.
I’m now Occado all the way.
I forget fewer items when I go in person for some reason. We tried online shopping but never really took to it.
I wonder how many people have to mentally walk around their local Saunsburys when doing the online shopping, just so as not to forget things?
What I do when I go to the shops - Waitrose usually - is I do a "control total" in my head before I set off for what I plan to buy. So for example, and it's today's real one, if I'm getting pork chops, fishcakes, chicken breasts, round beans, broccoli, apples, bananas, hula hoops, bread, and milk - that's TEN. My control total is 10. Then as I walk towards the checkout I look into my basket and count the items. Did that today and there were just 9 items there. Tells me I'm missing one thing. The bread in this case. So I flipped around, went back to the bread section and got it - Hovis Granary Original just for completeness of everyone's mental picture - then back to the till and closed the deal.
That would never work for me. I go in with a list of about 10 items and come out with about 15, not always including everything on the original list. You sound way too organised.
Which is the beauty of online - you just load up a previous shop and then tweak it for the items you only need once in a while. So much better than wandering around a supermarket gazing at shelves in the hope that I happen to remember what I need.
I would definitely end up eating less cake that way.
Alan Coren used to say the sole purpose of Sainsburys was to keep the riffraff out of Waitrose.
For me Sainsbury's is the sweet spot - neither up itself like Waitrose or M&S nor cheap looking like Tesco or Asda. I just find the German discounters disorienting, although they have good stuff at low prices. Plus you can't get everything there, and for me the ability to go to one place once a fortnight and come home with everything you need within an hour is worth forking out a bit more for.
I won't say which supermarket I go to, but I'm clear about where I am in the pecking order: Everyone who goes to more downmarket supermarkets is scum Everyone who goes to more upmarket supermarkets is posh scum
The British class system in one sentence. You get to look downwards in all directions, even (especially) when you're looking upwards. What's not to like?
I would say it's like an Escher painting, but I once saw Escher leaving the Co-op in Hilversum, and since then I've come to regard him as essentially a degenerate.
Are you sure that you weren't actually in a pseudo non-degenerate Riemannian space? If so, he may actually have been entering Fortnum's.
That went over my head.
But I still looked down on it.
People have been sharing the Monty Python sketch on my news feeds for some days for some reason.
Not Monty Python is it? From memory I thought it was Morecambe and Wise? Guest starring with John Cleese.
Ah yes. You're right. That's exactly what it is. Ronnie Corbett imo doesn't (didn't) hold a candle to the other two.
Of course Corbett! It was the Two Ronnies with Cleese not Morecambe and Wise.
Wasn't it far earlier than that -- 60s rather than 70s? Frost Report maybe? Fairly sure David Frost was involved somehow (mind you he was all over everything back in the day, even Watergate).
PA now at Biden +81K .. NV at +33K and Biden edging toward a 6M vote popular win with New York state still at 82% reporting and bits and bobs elsewhere including 2% from California.
Yes, it wasn't really that 'close' at all in the end was it?
It was close because the states Trump needed to hold onto the presidency were Georgia, Wisconsin and Arizona. The Biden majority in Georgia and Arizona is about 14,000 votes and 10,000 in Wisconsin. That would have led to a 269-269 result which would almost certainly have gone in Trump's favour.
In all three states! So two of those could have been Trumped and Biden would still have won?
PA now at Biden +81K .. NV at +33K and Biden edging toward a 6M vote popular win with New York state still at 82% reporting and bits and bobs elsewhere including 2% from California.
Yes, it wasn't really that 'close' at all in the end was it?
It was close because the states Trump needed to hold onto the presidency were Georgia, Wisconsin and Arizona. The Biden majority in Georgia and Arizona is about 14,000 votes and 10,000 in Wisconsin. That would have led to a 269-269 result which would almost certainly have gone in Trump's favour.
The Georgia recount is cutting Biden;s lead from 14,000 a bit I think
Alan Coren used to say the sole purpose of Sainsburys was to keep the riffraff out of Waitrose.
For me Sainsbury's is the sweet spot - neither up itself like Waitrose or M&S nor cheap looking like Tesco or Asda. I just find the German discounters disorienting, although they have good stuff at low prices. Plus you can't get everything there, and for me the ability to go to one place once a fortnight and come home with everything you need within an hour is worth forking out a bit more for.
I’m now Occado all the way.
I forget fewer items when I go in person for some reason. We tried online shopping but never really took to it.
I wonder how many people have to mentally walk around their local Saunsburys when doing the online shopping, just so as not to forget things?
What I do when I go to the shops - Waitrose usually - is I do a "control total" in my head before I set off for what I plan to buy. So for example, and it's today's real one, if I'm getting pork chops, fishcakes, chicken breasts, round beans, broccoli, apples, bananas, hula hoops, bread, and milk - that's TEN. My control total is 10. Then as I walk towards the checkout I look into my basket and count the items. Did that today and there were just 9 items there. Tells me I'm missing one thing. The bread in this case. So I flipped around, went back to the bread section and got it - Hovis Granary Original just for completeness of everyone's mental picture - then back to the till and closed the deal.
That would never work for me. I go in with a list of about 10 items and come out with about 15, not always including everything on the original list. You sound way too organised.
Thank you and I'll accept the compliment since it's merited. I'm very disciplined when I'm in a shop. None of this "popping in a Toblerone" business.
PA now at Biden +81K .. NV at +33K and Biden edging toward a 6M vote popular win with New York state still at 82% reporting and bits and bobs elsewhere including 2% from California.
Yes, it wasn't really that 'close' at all in the end was it?
I make Wisconsin the 2016 tipping point state, which Trump won by 0.77% This time it looks like Wisconsin again, which Biden is winning by 0.7%
So, in electoral college terms, it was as close as Trump's "landslide" win in 2016 - which I thought was very close!
OK it feels a bit different winning the electoral college by effectively 0.7 - 0.8% while losing the popular vote by 2%, compared to winning the EC by the same margin while winning the popular vote by maybe 4%. But still close, I'd say.
Georgia looks to me like it may well be the tipping point state for 2024 and I think Biden wins it. Wisconsin probably goes GOP - not sure about Arizona.
Meanwhile, the true believers over at lockdownsceptics believe that:
- False positives have spiked for some unknown reason, spreading almost like a virus - People are turning up at hospital with false positivity about ten days delayed from the spread of false positives - People are dying about twenty days after the increased spread in false positives, with the rate of dying continuing to climb and now very visible in excess deaths - People diagnosed with these false positives are dying within 28 days at a rate far, far faster than the normal rate of death (if they were dying just at the "normal" rate for someone picked at random dying within 28 days, the population of the UK would halve in a year)
And, with that amazing series of coincidences, it's actually happening around the world! Almost as if there's a pandemic of a real virus.
It's happening in Austria as well. In Belgium. In Croatia. In the Czech Republic (my God, is it happening in the Czech Republic!). In France. In Hungary. In Ireland. In Italy. In the Netherlands, except they seem to have got the false positives under control by pretending they're real and reacting as if they're real. In Poland. In Portugal. In Spain. In Slovakia (although they've brought it down by really pretending hard that it's real and testing their entire population and isolating all the false positives and for some reason this has prevented the false positives from spreading) In Sweden.
Over the the US, in Wisconsin, South Dakota, North Dakota, Georgia... all over the place.
And that's just Europe and the US. My God, how amazingly coincidental it's all been with these false positives magically happening like this?
Any idea why it is happening in the Czech Rep but not Slovakia?
Slovakia are about to enter their 3rd round of mass country wide testing and isolation.
And the positivity of the test results dropped by over a third between tests (Toby asks: "Or is it thirty-fold?"). Almost as if they were true positives rather than the false positives so many keep assuring us they all are.
Toby is clearly capable of believing as many as six impossible things before breakfast. And makes the effort regularly to practice.
Have we ever had such a poor choice of leaders as Johnson and Starmer. No wonder the Scots prefer Sturgeon.
After brexit, I think 'mainstream' parties will be under pressure. We will see BLM on the left and Reform/Reclaim on the right gain some ground.
I I heard an interesting comment this morning. The party that says it won;t take away your car might do quite well at the next election.
That will present a difficult choice for middle-of-the-road moderate types like you if our politics polarizes to that extent.
well I appreciate that continuing to own a car is somewhat 'niche' politically, given there are currently only 20 million or so motorists, but I reckon it will catch on..
Still, I;ve got some persuading to do, I grant you.
We've passed peak car though. No doubt about that. The habit is fading out rather than catching on. Even my beloved old Merc is having to go soon. By 21 Oct next year to be precise. The expanded London ULEZ zone will mean a fee of £12.50 every time I drive it. No exemption for residents. So, car goes or I must move to the sticks.
PA now at Biden +81K .. NV at +33K and Biden edging toward a 6M vote popular win with New York state still at 82% reporting and bits and bobs elsewhere including 2% from California.
Yes, it wasn't really that 'close' at all in the end was it?
It was close because the states Trump needed to hold onto the presidency were Georgia, Wisconsin and Arizona. The Biden majority in Georgia and Arizona is about 14,000 votes and 10,000 in Wisconsin. That would have led to a 269-269 result which would almost certainly have gone in Trump's favour.
The Georgia recount is cutting Biden;s lead from 14,000 a bit I think
PA now at Biden +81K .. NV at +33K and Biden edging toward a 6M vote popular win with New York state still at 82% reporting and bits and bobs elsewhere including 2% from California.
Yes, it wasn't really that 'close' at all in the end was it?
It was close because the states Trump needed to hold onto the presidency were Georgia, Wisconsin and Arizona. The Biden majority in Georgia and Arizona is about 14,000 votes and 10,000 in Wisconsin. That would have led to a 269-269 result which would almost certainly have gone in Trump's favour.
The Georgia recount is cutting Biden;s lead from 14,000 a bit I think
PA now at Biden +81K .. NV at +33K and Biden edging toward a 6M vote popular win with New York state still at 82% reporting and bits and bobs elsewhere including 2% from California.
Georgia looks to me like it may well be the tipping point state for 2024 and I think Biden wins it. Wisconsin probably goes GOP - not sure about Arizona.
The Biden voting state with 2 Dem Senators?
Yeah, genuinely no idea. There is a big "facade" feel about a lot of places that topline suggest are 'solidly' Dem.
I don't see how the Dems hold Wisconsin next time out.
PA now at Biden +81K .. NV at +33K and Biden edging toward a 6M vote popular win with New York state still at 82% reporting and bits and bobs elsewhere including 2% from California.
Yes, it wasn't really that 'close' at all in the end was it?
It was close because the states Trump needed to hold onto the presidency were Georgia, Wisconsin and Arizona. The Biden majority in Georgia and Arizona is about 14,000 votes and 10,000 in Wisconsin. That would have led to a 269-269 result which would almost certainly have gone in Trump's favour.
That is the nature of FPTP though. If you add up the majorities in the closest seats in our General Elections you usually only get to a few thousand votes difference between a majority and not a majority (he says without checking).
Whereas, the Conservatives would need to lose 40 seats just to lose their majority - their 40th most marginal seat I think is Stroud where their victory margin was 5.8%.
For Biden to lose his EC majority he would just need to lose the states up to Wisconsin where his margin was 0.7%.
Alan Coren used to say the sole purpose of Sainsburys was to keep the riffraff out of Waitrose.
For me Sainsbury's is the sweet spot - neither up itself like Waitrose or M&S nor cheap looking like Tesco or Asda. I just find the German discounters disorienting, although they have good stuff at low prices. Plus you can't get everything there, and for me the ability to go to one place once a fortnight and come home with everything you need within an hour is worth forking out a bit more for.
I’m now Occado all the way.
I forget fewer items when I go in person for some reason. We tried online shopping but never really took to it.
I wonder how many people have to mentally walk around their local Saunsburys when doing the online shopping, just so as not to forget things?
What I do when I go to the shops - Waitrose usually - is I do a "control total" in my head before I set off for what I plan to buy. So for example, and it's today's real one, if I'm getting pork chops, fishcakes, chicken breasts, round beans, broccoli, apples, bananas, hula hoops, bread, and milk - that's TEN. My control total is 10. Then as I walk towards the checkout I look into my basket and count the items. Did that today and there were just 9 items there. Tells me I'm missing one thing. The bread in this case. So I flipped around, went back to the bread section and got it - Hovis Granary Original just for completeness of everyone's mental picture - then back to the till and closed the deal.
That would never work for me. I go in with a list of about 10 items and come out with about 15, not always including everything on the original list. You sound way too organised.
Thank you and I'll accept the compliment since it's merited. I'm very disciplined when I'm in a shop. None of this "popping in a Toblerone" business.
so you work out what you need to buy first and remember how many things that is. do you write that down on, say, a list?
Have we ever had such a poor choice of leaders as Johnson and Starmer. No wonder the Scots prefer Sturgeon.
After brexit, I think 'mainstream' parties will be under pressure. We will see BLM on the left and Reform/Reclaim on the right gain some ground.
I I heard an interesting comment this morning. The party that says it won;t take away your car might do quite well at the next election.
That will present a difficult choice for middle-of-the-road moderate types like you if our politics polarizes to that extent.
well I appreciate that continuing to own a car is somewhat 'niche' politically, given there are currently only 20 million or so motorists, but I reckon it will catch on..
Still, I;ve got some persuading to do, I grant you.
We've passed peak car though. No doubt about that. The habit is fading out rather than catching on. Even my beloved old Merc is having to go soon. By 21 Oct next year to be precise. The expanded London ULEZ zone will mean a fee of £12.50 every time I drive it. No exemption for residents. So, car goes or I must move to the sticks.
Can't you buy a compliant car instead? That's my plan. Although now I have a bike I am planning to drive less anyway.
Have we ever had such a poor choice of leaders as Johnson and Starmer. No wonder the Scots prefer Sturgeon.
After brexit, I think 'mainstream' parties will be under pressure. We will see BLM on the left and Reform/Reclaim on the right gain some ground.
I I heard an interesting comment this morning. The party that says it won;t take away your car might do quite well at the next election.
That will present a difficult choice for middle-of-the-road moderate types like you if our politics polarizes to that extent.
well I appreciate that continuing to own a car is somewhat 'niche' politically, given there are currently only 20 million or so motorists, but I reckon it will catch on..
Still, I;ve got some persuading to do, I grant you.
We've passed peak car though. No doubt about that. The habit is fading out rather than catching on. Even my beloved old Merc is having to go soon. By 21 Oct next year to be precise. The expanded London ULEZ zone will mean a fee of £12.50 every time I drive it. No exemption for residents. So, car goes or I must move to the sticks.
You should move old chap. (Or young chap)
There is a far better quality of life out in the sticks and if you actually own a property in London then by selling up you can afford something much nicer or alternatively use the money for something else.
We are friendly types out in the sticks, even those who have married their sisters (or livestock)
Have we ever had such a poor choice of leaders as Johnson and Starmer. No wonder the Scots prefer Sturgeon.
After brexit, I think 'mainstream' parties will be under pressure. We will see BLM on the left and Reform/Reclaim on the right gain some ground.
I I heard an interesting comment this morning. The party that says it won;t take away your car might do quite well at the next election.
That will present a difficult choice for middle-of-the-road moderate types like you if our politics polarizes to that extent.
well I appreciate that continuing to own a car is somewhat 'niche' politically, given there are currently only 20 million or so motorists, but I reckon it will catch on..
Still, I;ve got some persuading to do, I grant you.
We've passed peak car though. No doubt about that. The habit is fading out rather than catching on. Even my beloved old Merc is having to go soon. By 21 Oct next year to be precise. The expanded London ULEZ zone will mean a fee of £12.50 every time I drive it. No exemption for residents. So, car goes or I must move to the sticks.
Have we ever had such a poor choice of leaders as Johnson and Starmer. No wonder the Scots prefer Sturgeon.
After brexit, I think 'mainstream' parties will be under pressure. We will see BLM on the left and Reform/Reclaim on the right gain some ground.
I I heard an interesting comment this morning. The party that says it won;t take away your car might do quite well at the next election.
That will present a difficult choice for middle-of-the-road moderate types like you if our politics polarizes to that extent.
well I appreciate that continuing to own a car is somewhat 'niche' politically, given there are currently only 20 million or so motorists, but I reckon it will catch on..
Still, I;ve got some persuading to do, I grant you.
We've passed peak car though. No doubt about that. The habit is fading out rather than catching on. Even my beloved old Merc is having to go soon. By 21 Oct next year to be precise. The expanded London ULEZ zone will mean a fee of £12.50 every time I drive it. No exemption for residents. So, car goes or I must move to the sticks.
Can't you buy a compliant car instead? That's my plan. Although now I have a bike I am planning to drive less anyway.
I've just bought a clean diesel Q7, it's Ulez compliant. Getting rid of ancient filthy vehicles is overall a good thing.
I also support Boris' ban on all ICE cars by 2030 – will flip my car to an EV in four years or so. Exciting times.
Georgia looks to me like it may well be the tipping point state for 2024 and I think Biden wins it. Wisconsin probably goes GOP - not sure about Arizona.
The Biden voting state with 2 Dem Senators?
Yeah, genuinely no idea. There is a big "facade" feel about a lot of places that topline suggest are 'solidly' Dem.
I don't see how the Dems hold Wisconsin next time out.
Why is holding WI so farfetched an idea? Am I missing something?
I think they're higher than Sainsbury's in the pecking order now, which has definitely gone downhill in the last 20 years.
I once ventured in the Morrisons in St. Albans. Strange emporium, one had large wheeled wire contraptions that apparently one was expected to place purchases in and not a personal shopper in sight. Quite a traumatising experience for gentleman unused to the cut and thrust of the modern retail experience ....
If they have a Morrisons, can it be any wonder St. Albans went down-market and replaced their Tory MP with a LibDem?
There's a Co-op in Harpenden and Labour were only about 5K away in 1997 ... enough for the matrons of the area to clutch their pearls, hitch up their pleated skirts and make for the hills of rural Hertfordshire ....
Georgia looks to me like it may well be the tipping point state for 2024 and I think Biden wins it. Wisconsin probably goes GOP - not sure about Arizona.
The Biden voting state with 2 Dem Senators?
Yeah, genuinely no idea. There is a big "facade" feel about a lot of places that topline suggest are 'solidly' Dem.
I don't see how the Dems hold Wisconsin next time out.
Why is holding WI so farfetched an idea? Am I missing something?
WI is thought of as a "Blue Wall" but in reality it has leaned Republican in multiple election cycles now and the lean is getting stronger.
"Poor areas of England face 'permanent' lockdown, says public health chief Blackburn official attacks government’s ‘pointlessly punishing’ approach to Covid"
(HY will note that it considers his options unrealistic)
Interesting, though it fails to realise that the Spanish are entirely relaxed about what they would call a legal secession of Scotland, as opposed to a wildcat referendum.
I agree with Mike. I think it will go 1-1 with Jon Ossoff winning his battle against David Perdue. That's not simply because I'm on at 2-1 twice over with Betfair Sportsbook but because I think he has the best chance. David Perdue has run away scared from another mauling tv debate: https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/perdue-ossoff-runoff-debate/
In the other battle, Raphael Warnock is quite a controversial figure. He may rouse the black vote but will he put off white suburban Americans? My guess is, 'yes' and I favour Kelly Loeffler to win it.
Finished "The Crown". Enjoyable, superior soap opera, but at times drifted from "dramatic licence" into "Fake News". For example, suggesting that Thatcher was opposed to sanctions on South Africa because her son had business interests there (out by a decade, after Thatcher had left office) or that she was in favour of apartheid and Mandela against sanctions (he urged her to not lift them too quickly to maintain pressure on the regime). The most ludicrous bit was the suggestion that Thatcher asked the queen to dissolve parliament so she could hang on during the leadership challenge. The Charles and Diana bits are very soapy and Princess Margaret played for tragedy - ignoring the "good works" she did - for example with AIDS, long before Diana showed up with the cameras. It wasn't an accident that Margaret was the Royal Patron of The Lighthouse and the Terrence Higgins Trust.
Spoiler alert please!
Thatcher leaves office??
Nobody tell @justin124 - he was acting as if Thatcher was still PM and John Carlisle (RIP) was still an MP last night.
Not the point at all.Is it unreasonable to expect the current Tory leadership to condemn the likes of Carlisle and Dicks - and the failure of Thatcher and Major to have them removed from the parliamentary party?To this day very few Tories would refuse to criticise Archibald Ramsey - the Tory MP locked up for most of World War 2 on account of his clear Fascist sympathies. If Starmer is to be condemned for his action re-Corbyn, what does that say about the failure of Thatcher and Major to act against clear evil in their own ranks? The point can even be extended to Heath who failed to get rid of Tory MPs who were pro-Apartheid and supportive of the Smith regime in Rhodesia.
Well, certain Torties on PB keep bringing up the SNP MP who was arrested in WW2 - on false evidence from the Tories and promptly released on investigation, yet they don't mention Captain Ramsay. Very strange.
Donaldson was never actually an mp. He looms unnaturally large in the psyches of Unionists though.
Every day is a learning day on PB. I had honestly never heard of him before.
In that case I salute you for avoiding the more noisome corners of Unionist online discussion, something I'm endeavouring to do on the Nat side of the fence.
Have we ever had such a poor choice of leaders as Johnson and Starmer. No wonder the Scots prefer Sturgeon.
After brexit, I think 'mainstream' parties will be under pressure. We will see BLM on the left and Reform/Reclaim on the right gain some ground.
I I heard an interesting comment this morning. The party that says it won;t take away your car might do quite well at the next election.
That will present a difficult choice for middle-of-the-road moderate types like you if our politics polarizes to that extent.
well I appreciate that continuing to own a car is somewhat 'niche' politically, given there are currently only 20 million or so motorists, but I reckon it will catch on..
Still, I;ve got some persuading to do, I grant you.
We've passed peak car though. No doubt about that. The habit is fading out rather than catching on. Even my beloved old Merc is having to go soon. By 21 Oct next year to be precise. The expanded London ULEZ zone will mean a fee of £12.50 every time I drive it. No exemption for residents. So, car goes or I must move to the sticks.
Don't tell me you're planning to move to Epping?
- Not on the shortlist.
"White supremacy themepark" (Stewart Lee gig in Essex). Brave.
Have we ever had such a poor choice of leaders as Johnson and Starmer. No wonder the Scots prefer Sturgeon.
After brexit, I think 'mainstream' parties will be under pressure. We will see BLM on the left and Reform/Reclaim on the right gain some ground.
I I heard an interesting comment this morning. The party that says it won;t take away your car might do quite well at the next election.
That will present a difficult choice for middle-of-the-road moderate types like you if our politics polarizes to that extent.
well I appreciate that continuing to own a car is somewhat 'niche' politically, given there are currently only 20 million or so motorists, but I reckon it will catch on..
Still, I;ve got some persuading to do, I grant you.
We've passed peak car though. No doubt about that. The habit is fading out rather than catching on. Even my beloved old Merc is having to go soon. By 21 Oct next year to be precise. The expanded London ULEZ zone will mean a fee of £12.50 every time I drive it. No exemption for residents. So, car goes or I must move to the sticks.
Can't you buy a compliant car instead? That's my plan. Although now I have a bike I am planning to drive less anyway.
I've just bought a clean diesel Q7, it's Ulez compliant. Getting rid of ancient filthy vehicles is overall a good thing.
I also support Boris' ban on all ICE cars by 2030 – will flip my car to an EV in four years or so. Exciting times.
Yeah. I am trying to contain my yearning for a Tesla this time around, feels too early to be buying an electric car.
Alan Coren used to say the sole purpose of Sainsburys was to keep the riffraff out of Waitrose.
For me Sainsbury's is the sweet spot - neither up itself like Waitrose or M&S nor cheap looking like Tesco or Asda. I just find the German discounters disorienting, although they have good stuff at low prices. Plus you can't get everything there, and for me the ability to go to one place once a fortnight and come home with everything you need within an hour is worth forking out a bit more for.
I’m now Occado all the way.
I forget fewer items when I go in person for some reason. We tried online shopping but never really took to it.
I wonder how many people have to mentally walk around their local Saunsburys when doing the online shopping, just so as not to forget things?
What I do when I go to the shops - Waitrose usually - is I do a "control total" in my head before I set off for what I plan to buy. So for example, and it's today's real one, if I'm getting pork chops, fishcakes, chicken breasts, round beans, broccoli, apples, bananas, hula hoops, bread, and milk - that's TEN. My control total is 10. Then as I walk towards the checkout I look into my basket and count the items. Did that today and there were just 9 items there. Tells me I'm missing one thing. The bread in this case. So I flipped around, went back to the bread section and got it - Hovis Granary Original just for completeness of everyone's mental picture - then back to the till and closed the deal.
That would never work for me. I go in with a list of about 10 items and come out with about 15, not always including everything on the original list. You sound way too organised.
In my local Lidl you can go in with that list of 10 things, come out with 150 things, get change out of a 10 bob note and meet all the Waitrose crowd wearing false beards and dark glasses.
Have we ever had such a poor choice of leaders as Johnson and Starmer. No wonder the Scots prefer Sturgeon.
After brexit, I think 'mainstream' parties will be under pressure. We will see BLM on the left and Reform/Reclaim on the right gain some ground.
I I heard an interesting comment this morning. The party that says it won;t take away your car might do quite well at the next election.
That will present a difficult choice for middle-of-the-road moderate types like you if our politics polarizes to that extent.
well I appreciate that continuing to own a car is somewhat 'niche' politically, given there are currently only 20 million or so motorists, but I reckon it will catch on..
Still, I;ve got some persuading to do, I grant you.
We've passed peak car though. No doubt about that. The habit is fading out rather than catching on. Even my beloved old Merc is having to go soon. By 21 Oct next year to be precise. The expanded London ULEZ zone will mean a fee of £12.50 every time I drive it. No exemption for residents. So, car goes or I must move to the sticks.
You should move old chap. (Or young chap)
There is a far better quality of life out in the sticks and if you actually own a property in London then by selling up you can afford something much nicer or alternatively use the money for something else.
We are friendly types out in the sticks, even those who have married their sisters (or livestock)
We'll see. It's possible. On a variation of TOLTOL, I've always felt that the time to move out of London is when you no longer want anything in your life to change. When you're (i) not a player anymore on any front, and (ii) you accept and don't mind that. When you've "gone over" in other words. And that's me now. Or very close anyway. I'm going over and have nearly completed the journey. My wife is a bit younger, though, but she loves nature and stuff so, yes, it could be time for the sticks. See you there maybe.
Alan Coren used to say the sole purpose of Sainsburys was to keep the riffraff out of Waitrose.
For me Sainsbury's is the sweet spot - neither up itself like Waitrose or M&S nor cheap looking like Tesco or Asda. I just find the German discounters disorienting, although they have good stuff at low prices. Plus you can't get everything there, and for me the ability to go to one place once a fortnight and come home with everything you need within an hour is worth forking out a bit more for.
I’m now Occado all the way.
I forget fewer items when I go in person for some reason. We tried online shopping but never really took to it.
I wonder how many people have to mentally walk around their local Saunsburys when doing the online shopping, just so as not to forget things?
What I do when I go to the shops - Waitrose usually - is I do a "control total" in my head before I set off for what I plan to buy. So for example, and it's today's real one, if I'm getting pork chops, fishcakes, chicken breasts, round beans, broccoli, apples, bananas, hula hoops, bread, and milk - that's TEN. My control total is 10. Then as I walk towards the checkout I look into my basket and count the items. Did that today and there were just 9 items there. Tells me I'm missing one thing. The bread in this case. So I flipped around, went back to the bread section and got it - Hovis Granary Original just for completeness of everyone's mental picture - then back to the till and closed the deal.
That would never work for me. I go in with a list of about 10 items and come out with about 15, not always including everything on the original list. You sound way too organised.
In my local Lidl you can go in with that list of 10 things, come out with 150 things, get change out of a 10 bob note and meet all the Waitrose crowd wearing false beards and dark glasses.
There is nothing wrong with either of the German delicatessens.
Just got back from several hours out to find that Corbyn has not has the Labour whip restored, as predicted yesterday by a couple of us.
Excellent move, with a strong accompanying statement.
The fact that the Tories on PB are no longer posting about it seems to confirm that he's once again made the right call in dealing with another test of leadership.
Finished "The Crown". Enjoyable, superior soap opera, but at times drifted from "dramatic licence" into "Fake News". For example, suggesting that Thatcher was opposed to sanctions on South Africa because her son had business interests there (out by a decade, after Thatcher had left office) or that she was in favour of apartheid and Mandela against sanctions (he urged her to not lift them too quickly to maintain pressure on the regime). The most ludicrous bit was the suggestion that Thatcher asked the queen to dissolve parliament so she could hang on during the leadership challenge. The Charles and Diana bits are very soapy and Princess Margaret played for tragedy - ignoring the "good works" she did - for example with AIDS, long before Diana showed up with the cameras. It wasn't an accident that Margaret was the Royal Patron of The Lighthouse and the Terrence Higgins Trust.
Spoiler alert please!
Thatcher leaves office??
Nobody tell @justin124 - he was acting as if Thatcher was still PM and John Carlisle (RIP) was still an MP last night.
Not the point at all.Is it unreasonable to expect the current Tory leadership to condemn the likes of Carlisle and Dicks - and the failure of Thatcher and Major to have them removed from the parliamentary party?To this day very few Tories would refuse to criticise Archibald Ramsey - the Tory MP locked up for most of World War 2 on account of his clear Fascist sympathies. If Starmer is to be condemned for his action re-Corbyn, what does that say about the failure of Thatcher and Major to act against clear evil in their own ranks? The point can even be extended to Heath who failed to get rid of Tory MPs who were pro-Apartheid and supportive of the Smith regime in Rhodesia.
Well, certain Torties on PB keep bringing up the SNP MP who was arrested in WW2 - on false evidence from the Tories and promptly released on investigation, yet they don't mention Captain Ramsay. Very strange.
Donaldson was never actually an mp. He looms unnaturally large in the psyches of Unionists though.
Every day is a learning day on PB. I had honestly never heard of him before.
The unionists have always been happy to throw innocent people in jail to meet their crooked goals.
For those who were posting on PB last night about Wayne County Republicans refusing to certify the count, here is an update for you (below)
The Apocalypse did not commence, nor was there rioting....
"In an abrupt about-face, Michigan’s largest county on Tuesday night unanimously certified election results showing Democrat Joe Biden defeating President Donald Trump, hours after Republicans first blocked formal approval of voters’ intentions."
Its Corbyn whose intransigence meant there was not closure or unity on the issue. What they want is for Corbyn to be able to criticise the leadership, which is what his statement contradicting Starmer did, without consequence.
I'm the most inefficient supermarket shopper the world has ever know, and do my very best to avoid visiting them at all, either in physical form or – even worse – on the web. I am great at Laithwaites Wine and am known to be better than competent at the Ginger Pig butchers.
Just got back from several hours out to find that Corbyn has not has the Labour whip restored, as predicted yesterday by a couple of us.
Excellent move, with a strong accompanying statement.
The fact that the Tories on PB are no longer posting about it seems to confirm that he's once again made the right call in dealing with another test of leadership.
They have moved on. Starmer is now a terrible leader because he can't hold a candle to Johnson at PMQs.
Have we ever had such a poor choice of leaders as Johnson and Starmer. No wonder the Scots prefer Sturgeon.
After brexit, I think 'mainstream' parties will be under pressure. We will see BLM on the left and Reform/Reclaim on the right gain some ground.
I I heard an interesting comment this morning. The party that says it won;t take away your car might do quite well at the next election.
That will present a difficult choice for middle-of-the-road moderate types like you if our politics polarizes to that extent.
well I appreciate that continuing to own a car is somewhat 'niche' politically, given there are currently only 20 million or so motorists, but I reckon it will catch on..
Still, I;ve got some persuading to do, I grant you.
We've passed peak car though. No doubt about that. The habit is fading out rather than catching on. Even my beloved old Merc is having to go soon. By 21 Oct next year to be precise. The expanded London ULEZ zone will mean a fee of £12.50 every time I drive it. No exemption for residents. So, car goes or I must move to the sticks.
Can't you buy a compliant car instead? That's my plan. Although now I have a bike I am planning to drive less anyway.
Yes. And if I do I'll probably go the whole hog and get an electric. But the thing is, I've had my Merc for 25 years - it's my oldest possession apart from my chess set - and I'm attached to it. Has zero resale so I'd have to sell it for scrap and I'd find that so hard given it still looks good and runs perfectly. MOT in Jan and in a perverse way I'm kind of hoping it fails with lots of expensive mandatories. Would make the decision.
Have we ever had such a poor choice of leaders as Johnson and Starmer. No wonder the Scots prefer Sturgeon.
After brexit, I think 'mainstream' parties will be under pressure. We will see BLM on the left and Reform/Reclaim on the right gain some ground.
I I heard an interesting comment this morning. The party that says it won;t take away your car might do quite well at the next election.
That will present a difficult choice for middle-of-the-road moderate types like you if our politics polarizes to that extent.
well I appreciate that continuing to own a car is somewhat 'niche' politically, given there are currently only 20 million or so motorists, but I reckon it will catch on..
Still, I;ve got some persuading to do, I grant you.
We've passed peak car though. No doubt about that. The habit is fading out rather than catching on. Even my beloved old Merc is having to go soon. By 21 Oct next year to be precise. The expanded London ULEZ zone will mean a fee of £12.50 every time I drive it. No exemption for residents. So, car goes or I must move to the sticks.
Can't you buy a compliant car instead? That's my plan. Although now I have a bike I am planning to drive less anyway.
I've just bought a clean diesel Q7, it's Ulez compliant. Getting rid of ancient filthy vehicles is overall a good thing.
I also support Boris' ban on all ICE cars by 2030 – will flip my car to an EV in four years or so. Exciting times.
Yeah. I am trying to contain my yearning for a Tesla this time around, feels too early to be buying an electric car.
I no longer care about car policy - I got rid of mine. These days, I hire one if I need one, or catch a cab.
We have to ask our colonial masters if we are allowed to cancel flights. Shows what a shitshow the supposed union is , as we all know it is no union of any sort , just colonial oppression.
The Guardian is always so sure about its virtuous moral ground about everything. Has anyone any idea where it plans to stand in the Jezza v SKS (ie social democrat v marxist/loony) war that looks about to break out? Can it stand anywhere without offending almost exactly half its readers? Appearances suggest that there is no middle ground.
For those who were posting on PB last night about Wayne County Republicans refusing to certify the count, here is an update for you (below)
The Apocalypse did not commence, nor was there rioting....
"In an abrupt about-face, Michigan’s largest county on Tuesday night unanimously certified election results showing Democrat Joe Biden defeating President Donald Trump, hours after Republicans first blocked formal approval of voters’ intentions."
Have we ever had such a poor choice of leaders as Johnson and Starmer. No wonder the Scots prefer Sturgeon.
After brexit, I think 'mainstream' parties will be under pressure. We will see BLM on the left and Reform/Reclaim on the right gain some ground.
I I heard an interesting comment this morning. The party that says it won;t take away your car might do quite well at the next election.
That will present a difficult choice for middle-of-the-road moderate types like you if our politics polarizes to that extent.
well I appreciate that continuing to own a car is somewhat 'niche' politically, given there are currently only 20 million or so motorists, but I reckon it will catch on..
Still, I;ve got some persuading to do, I grant you.
We've passed peak car though. No doubt about that. The habit is fading out rather than catching on. Even my beloved old Merc is having to go soon. By 21 Oct next year to be precise. The expanded London ULEZ zone will mean a fee of £12.50 every time I drive it. No exemption for residents. So, car goes or I must move to the sticks.
Can't you buy a compliant car instead? That's my plan. Although now I have a bike I am planning to drive less anyway.
I've just bought a clean diesel Q7, it's Ulez compliant. Getting rid of ancient filthy vehicles is overall a good thing.
I also support Boris' ban on all ICE cars by 2030 – will flip my car to an EV in four years or so. Exciting times.
Yeah. I am trying to contain my yearning for a Tesla this time around, feels too early to be buying an electric car.
A mate's in the market for a Model S – and would have one already were it not for the fact that his company's fleet manager was a dullard. Once companies become alive to the tax savings, there will be no way back for ICEs IMO.
Alan Coren used to say the sole purpose of Sainsburys was to keep the riffraff out of Waitrose.
For me Sainsbury's is the sweet spot - neither up itself like Waitrose or M&S nor cheap looking like Tesco or Asda. I just find the German discounters disorienting, although they have good stuff at low prices. Plus you can't get everything there, and for me the ability to go to one place once a fortnight and come home with everything you need within an hour is worth forking out a bit more for.
I’m now Occado all the way.
I forget fewer items when I go in person for some reason. We tried online shopping but never really took to it.
I wonder how many people have to mentally walk around their local Saunsburys when doing the online shopping, just so as not to forget things?
What I do when I go to the shops - Waitrose usually - is I do a "control total" in my head before I set off for what I plan to buy. So for example, and it's today's real one, if I'm getting pork chops, fishcakes, chicken breasts, round beans, broccoli, apples, bananas, hula hoops, bread, and milk - that's TEN. My control total is 10. Then as I walk towards the checkout I look into my basket and count the items. Did that today and there were just 9 items there. Tells me I'm missing one thing. The bread in this case. So I flipped around, went back to the bread section and got it - Hovis Granary Original just for completeness of everyone's mental picture - then back to the till and closed the deal.
That would never work for me. I go in with a list of about 10 items and come out with about 15, not always including everything on the original list. You sound way too organised.
Thank you and I'll accept the compliment since it's merited. I'm very disciplined when I'm in a shop. None of this "popping in a Toblerone" business.
so you work out what you need to buy first and remember how many things that is. do you write that down on, say, a list?
No. No list. It's good mental exercise to hold it in your head. But as posted earlier I do a Control Total of the number of items I plan to get. Then I don't go to the checkout until the number of items in my basket exactly equals the CT. My record is 23.
Have we ever had such a poor choice of leaders as Johnson and Starmer. No wonder the Scots prefer Sturgeon.
After brexit, I think 'mainstream' parties will be under pressure. We will see BLM on the left and Reform/Reclaim on the right gain some ground.
I I heard an interesting comment this morning. The party that says it won;t take away your car might do quite well at the next election.
That will present a difficult choice for middle-of-the-road moderate types like you if our politics polarizes to that extent.
well I appreciate that continuing to own a car is somewhat 'niche' politically, given there are currently only 20 million or so motorists, but I reckon it will catch on..
Still, I;ve got some persuading to do, I grant you.
We've passed peak car though. No doubt about that. The habit is fading out rather than catching on. Even my beloved old Merc is having to go soon. By 21 Oct next year to be precise. The expanded London ULEZ zone will mean a fee of £12.50 every time I drive it. No exemption for residents. So, car goes or I must move to the sticks.
Don't tell me you're planning to move to Epping?
- Not on the shortlist.
"White supremacy themepark" (Stewart Lee gig in Essex). Brave.
Stewart Lee loves to insult the audience, it's part of the experience. He had some harsh words for the citizens of Dartford when I saw him there. To bring the thread full circle, YouGov has a facility where you tell them one thing you like and it predicts everything about you. It correctly predicted everything about me, including shopping at Sainsbury's as well as what make of car we have, based on my liking Stewart Lee. Sad how we are so predictable, when we each like to think we are so unique.
We have to ask our colonial masters if we are allowed to cancel flights. Shows what a shitshow the supposed union is , as we all know it is no union of any sort , just colonial oppression.
It's obviously our fault if we do X and the London regime won't do the necessarily and complementary Y even when it is sensible. But it's certainly been interesting to see what happened when they tried that on the Northerners [sic] over furlough payments. The Graun had a piece yesterday on the reaction to Mr Johnson's considered comments on the benefits of the devolution settlements, and they actually included the North of England as one constituency of reaction to the comments - i.e. not just us, Wales and NI.
We have to ask our colonial masters if we are allowed to cancel flights. Shows what a shitshow the supposed union is , as we all know it is no union of any sort , just colonial oppression.
You seem to think in a union there would be no restrictions on individual parts at all. That will probably surprise members of other unions who do have union wide rules on things, to a greater or lesser degree.
Cheapest electric car is about 22k new. The fairly high cost is regularly defended by advocates explaining that they are cheap to run because of low energy costs and it balances out. But the ban on petrol cars might unduly affect older people who need a car but only do a few miles pottering to shops etc. The cost per mile will work out to be a lot.
Have we ever had such a poor choice of leaders as Johnson and Starmer. No wonder the Scots prefer Sturgeon.
After brexit, I think 'mainstream' parties will be under pressure. We will see BLM on the left and Reform/Reclaim on the right gain some ground.
I I heard an interesting comment this morning. The party that says it won;t take away your car might do quite well at the next election.
That will present a difficult choice for middle-of-the-road moderate types like you if our politics polarizes to that extent.
well I appreciate that continuing to own a car is somewhat 'niche' politically, given there are currently only 20 million or so motorists, but I reckon it will catch on..
Still, I;ve got some persuading to do, I grant you.
We've passed peak car though. No doubt about that. The habit is fading out rather than catching on. Even my beloved old Merc is having to go soon. By 21 Oct next year to be precise. The expanded London ULEZ zone will mean a fee of £12.50 every time I drive it. No exemption for residents. So, car goes or I must move to the sticks.
Can't you buy a compliant car instead? That's my plan. Although now I have a bike I am planning to drive less anyway.
I've just bought a clean diesel Q7, it's Ulez compliant. Getting rid of ancient filthy vehicles is overall a good thing.
I also support Boris' ban on all ICE cars by 2030 – will flip my car to an EV in four years or so. Exciting times.
Yeah. I am trying to contain my yearning for a Tesla this time around, feels too early to be buying an electric car.
A mate's in the market for a Model S – and would have one already were it not for the fact that his company's fleet manager was a dullard. Once companies become alive to the tax savings, there will be no way back for ICEs IMO.
Apart from the suspension, the Model 3 is arguably a better car in many ways.
Have we ever had such a poor choice of leaders as Johnson and Starmer. No wonder the Scots prefer Sturgeon.
After brexit, I think 'mainstream' parties will be under pressure. We will see BLM on the left and Reform/Reclaim on the right gain some ground.
I I heard an interesting comment this morning. The party that says it won;t take away your car might do quite well at the next election.
That will present a difficult choice for middle-of-the-road moderate types like you if our politics polarizes to that extent.
well I appreciate that continuing to own a car is somewhat 'niche' politically, given there are currently only 20 million or so motorists, but I reckon it will catch on..
Still, I;ve got some persuading to do, I grant you.
Over 80% of all new cars are personal contract hire. It stunned me when I heard it. So yes people have stopped owning a car. We own 2 that sit on our drive most of the time, but I can't bring myself to get rid of them even though it makes no sense to carry on owning them.
PA now at Biden +81K .. NV at +33K and Biden edging toward a 6M vote popular win with New York state still at 82% reporting and bits and bobs elsewhere including 2% from California.
Yes, it wasn't really that 'close' at all in the end was it?
It was close because the states Trump needed to hold onto the presidency were Georgia, Wisconsin and Arizona. The Biden majority in Georgia and Arizona is about 14,000 votes and 10,000 in Wisconsin. That would have led to a 269-269 result which would almost certainly have gone in Trump's favour.
In all three states! So two of those could have been Trumped and Biden would still have won?
As I say, not that close.
It looks like the PV margin is going to round out at about 6m, or 4%.
We punters were pretty sure it was close to impossible for Trump to win if he were that far behind Nationally, but looking at how close Trump got I'd have to say that was a bit of miscalculation.
It just shows you how distorting the effect of the ECV can be.
Have we ever had such a poor choice of leaders as Johnson and Starmer. No wonder the Scots prefer Sturgeon.
After brexit, I think 'mainstream' parties will be under pressure. We will see BLM on the left and Reform/Reclaim on the right gain some ground.
I I heard an interesting comment this morning. The party that says it won;t take away your car might do quite well at the next election.
That will present a difficult choice for middle-of-the-road moderate types like you if our politics polarizes to that extent.
well I appreciate that continuing to own a car is somewhat 'niche' politically, given there are currently only 20 million or so motorists, but I reckon it will catch on..
Still, I;ve got some persuading to do, I grant you.
We've passed peak car though. No doubt about that. The habit is fading out rather than catching on. Even my beloved old Merc is having to go soon. By 21 Oct next year to be precise. The expanded London ULEZ zone will mean a fee of £12.50 every time I drive it. No exemption for residents. So, car goes or I must move to the sticks.
Can't you buy a compliant car instead? That's my plan. Although now I have a bike I am planning to drive less anyway.
I've just bought a clean diesel Q7, it's Ulez compliant. Getting rid of ancient filthy vehicles is overall a good thing.
I also support Boris' ban on all ICE cars by 2030 – will flip my car to an EV in four years or so. Exciting times.
Yeah. I am trying to contain my yearning for a Tesla this time around, feels too early to be buying an electric car.
A mate's in the market for a Model S – and would have one already were it not for the fact that his company's fleet manager was a dullard. Once companies become alive to the tax savings, there will be no way back for ICEs IMO.
Electric company cars are already a no-brainer, the benefit in kind of 0%, 1%, 2% over the next few years sees to that. Pretty soon (next year?) the price of new electric cars will crossover with ICE cars. By the time 2030 rolls around it will only be hobbyists buying fossil fuel cars.
Alan Coren used to say the sole purpose of Sainsburys was to keep the riffraff out of Waitrose.
For me Sainsbury's is the sweet spot - neither up itself like Waitrose or M&S nor cheap looking like Tesco or Asda. I just find the German discounters disorienting, although they have good stuff at low prices. Plus you can't get everything there, and for me the ability to go to one place once a fortnight and come home with everything you need within an hour is worth forking out a bit more for.
I’m now Occado all the way.
I forget fewer items when I go in person for some reason. We tried online shopping but never really took to it.
I wonder how many people have to mentally walk around their local Saunsburys when doing the online shopping, just so as not to forget things?
What I do when I go to the shops - Waitrose usually - is I do a "control total" in my head before I set off for what I plan to buy. So for example, and it's today's real one, if I'm getting pork chops, fishcakes, chicken breasts, round beans, broccoli, apples, bananas, hula hoops, bread, and milk - that's TEN. My control total is 10. Then as I walk towards the checkout I look into my basket and count the items. Did that today and there were just 9 items there. Tells me I'm missing one thing. The bread in this case. So I flipped around, went back to the bread section and got it - Hovis Granary Original just for completeness of everyone's mental picture - then back to the till and closed the deal.
That would never work for me. I go in with a list of about 10 items and come out with about 15, not always including everything on the original list. You sound way too organised.
Thank you and I'll accept the compliment since it's merited. I'm very disciplined when I'm in a shop. None of this "popping in a Toblerone" business.
so you work out what you need to buy first and remember how many things that is. do you write that down on, say, a list?
No. No list. It's good mental exercise to hold it in your head. But as posted earlier I do a Control Total of the number of items I plan to get. Then I don't go to the checkout until the number of items in my basket exactly equals the CT. My record is 23.
impressive. i'm sure i could always get the right number. but almost certainly not the right things.
i get told off for not remembering things that werent on the list that should have been. and i'd have realised if I walked round the shop in the right order.
Meanwhile, the true believers over at lockdownsceptics believe that:
- False positives have spiked for some unknown reason, spreading almost like a virus - People are turning up at hospital with false positivity about ten days delayed from the spread of false positives - People are dying about twenty days after the increased spread in false positives, with the rate of dying continuing to climb and now very visible in excess deaths - People diagnosed with these false positives are dying within 28 days at a rate far, far faster than the normal rate of death (if they were dying just at the "normal" rate for someone picked at random dying within 28 days, the population of the UK would halve in a year)
And, with that amazing series of coincidences, it's actually happening around the world! Almost as if there's a pandemic of a real virus.
It's happening in Austria as well. In Belgium. In Croatia. In the Czech Republic (my God, is it happening in the Czech Republic!). In France. In Hungary. In Ireland. In Italy. In the Netherlands, except they seem to have got the false positives under control by pretending they're real and reacting as if they're real. In Poland. In Portugal. In Spain. In Slovakia (although they've brought it down by really pretending hard that it's real and testing their entire population and isolating all the false positives and for some reason this has prevented the false positives from spreading) In Sweden.
Over the the US, in Wisconsin, South Dakota, North Dakota, Georgia... all over the place.
And that's just Europe and the US. My God, how amazingly coincidental it's all been with these false positives magically happening like this?
Any idea why it is happening in the Czech Rep but not Slovakia?
Slovakia are about to enter their 3rd round of mass country wide testing and isolation.
And the positivity of the test results dropped by over a third between tests (Toby asks: "Or is it thirty-fold?"). Almost as if they were true positives rather than the false positives so many keep assuring us they all are.
Toby is clearly capable of believing as many as six impossible things before breakfast. And makes the effort regularly to practice.
Though I believe that we have been assured that mass testing of that sort is unethical, unwanted, unneeded etc.
Cheapest electric car is about 22k new. The fairly high cost is regularly defended by advocates explaining that they are cheap to run because of low energy costs and it balances out. But the ban on petrol cars might unduly affect older people who need a car but only do a few miles pottering to shops etc. The cost per mile will work out to be a lot.
At some stage, the world has to move on. There are people driving around ancient diesels with no particulate filter and no AdBlue, and paying around third of the VED that I pay on a very clean car. At what stage do you say, 'enough already let's get these filthy beasts off the road'?
Comments
It’s not as explicit as it used to be in the sixties and before, where it was written into law, but it seems that old habits die hard.
So the system was 3.2% bias towards Trump (And heading north)
But unlucky, I never brought it up, and hadn’t seen it - someone else posted on here about the outrage over it
So that's a non starter.
As I say, not that close.
This time it looks like Wisconsin again, which Biden is winning by 0.7%
So, in electoral college terms, it was as close as Trump's "landslide" win in 2016 - which I thought was very close!
OK it feels a bit different winning the electoral college by effectively 0.7 - 0.8% while losing the popular vote by 2%, compared to winning the EC by the same margin while winning the popular vote by maybe 4%. But still close, I'd say.
And makes the effort regularly to practice.
Very late 90s.
But, if she encountered someone 5 days ago who has only tested positive yesterday, that's not only legit, it's not necessarily even a failure.
Yeah, genuinely no idea. There is a big "facade" feel about a lot of places that topline suggest are 'solidly' Dem.
I don't see how the Dems hold Wisconsin next time out.
For Biden to lose his EC majority he would just need to lose the states up to Wisconsin where his margin was 0.7%.
So way way closer.
There is a far better quality of life out in the sticks and if you actually own a property in London then by selling up you can afford something much nicer or alternatively use the money for something else.
We are friendly types out in the sticks, even those who have married their sisters (or livestock)
I also support Boris' ban on all ICE cars by 2030 – will flip my car to an EV in four years or so. Exciting times.
Ducey 55%, Garcia 40%
Final Result
Ducey 56%, Garcia 41.8%
American Polling is brilliant.
Blackburn official attacks government’s ‘pointlessly punishing’ approach to Covid"
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/18/poor-areas-of-england-face-permanent-lockdown-says-blackburn-public-health-chief
In the other battle, Raphael Warnock is quite a controversial figure. He may rouse the black vote but will he put off white suburban Americans? My guess is, 'yes' and I favour Kelly Loeffler to win it.
The Democrats have a long, poor, history in runoffs: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/16/democrats-hopeful-senate-georgia-runoff-436727
The unknown factor here is the way the GOP are ripping into themselves, thanks to Trump's incendiary and volatile nature.
It's also worth bearing in mind that Stacey Adams is a formidable ground operator and the Democrats have momentum in the state.
"White supremacy themepark" (Stewart Lee gig in Essex). Brave.
Excellent move, with a strong accompanying statement.
The fact that the Tories on PB are no longer posting about it seems to confirm that he's once again made the right call in dealing with another test of leadership.
The Apocalypse did not commence, nor was there rioting....
"In an abrupt about-face, Michigan’s largest county on Tuesday night unanimously certified election results showing Democrat Joe Biden defeating President Donald Trump, hours after Republicans first blocked formal approval of voters’ intentions."
- https://apnews.com/article/election-2020-joe-biden-donald-trump-local-elections-michigan-64c18e12e0d409d9629871cda3c07293
He can do it, and face consequences.
To bring the thread full circle, YouGov has a facility where you tell them one thing you like and it predicts everything about you. It correctly predicted everything about me, including shopping at Sainsbury's as well as what make of car we have, based on my liking Stewart Lee. Sad how we are so predictable, when we each like to think we are so unique.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/nov/17/a-disaster-boris-johnson-adds-devolution-problems
We punters were pretty sure it was close to impossible for Trump to win if he were that far behind Nationally, but looking at how close Trump got I'd have to say that was a bit of miscalculation.
It just shows you how distorting the effect of the ECV can be.
Pretty soon (next year?) the price of new electric cars will crossover with ICE cars. By the time 2030 rolls around it will only be hobbyists buying fossil fuel cars.
i get told off for not remembering things that werent on the list that should have been. and i'd have realised if I walked round the shop in the right order.