Yesterday I paid a rare visit to the Betfair Community Forum and checked out what people were saying about the open Presidential Markets.
As you may imagine, the posts were almost uniformly critical. One of the more considered and restrained comments reflected on how Betfair had really got itself into a tangle by not sticking to its own rules. Having paid out on numerous State markets it is lingering over others and the main events for no discernible reason. If they are not paying out now, it's hard to see when they will or why they should do so at all.
They need an 'event' to get them off the hook. Obviously if Trump conceded he would give them a face-saving formula, even though concession was never part of the rules. The same would apply to certification.
The fact is they are making the rules up as they go along. They are playing a risky game. If I placed a losing bet on Trump now, I think I'd be entitled to ask for my money back later on the grounds they shouldn't have accepted a bet on an event that is over.
It's almost worth £50 just for the pleasure of reporting the matter to the Gambling Commission.
Yep. They have settled 44 states on the call but have not do so for the ones which have put Biden over the top and made him WINNER under the most obvious interpretation of their rules. They should have settled the outright market on the call of PA. Either that or they should have waited for a cert for all the states. Upshot is they are now stuck in a logic free no man's land and need an event to close it out. My best guess is they will now not settle until states worth 270+ have been certified for Biden. Lots of extra commission earned but a poor show imo.
I gather that the Gambling Commission is useless but if needed bettors should be protected by consumer law. This is quite far-reaching in the way it's on the side of the consumer (It needs to be, dealing with some businesses.)
Smarkets behaved in the opposite way, i.e. deemed that Trump had conceded and settled my bet to my disadvantage. What?? BBC R4 News said that he hadn't yet conceded. Other broadcasters say the same.
Good luck trying to persuade a court that Betfair should have paid out before the result was certified. By the time your lawyer has sent them a letter, and their lawyer has replied, they’ll have settled the market - and you’ll be out a hundred or two for your letter.
It's all about Jeremy. Don't worry about socially fair local authorities. Don't worry about social policies to help the dispossessed and homeless. It's all about Jeremy.
The so-called "jewellery designer" was actually an "importer" and he assisted in using contacts in China to "import" goods.
"Importer paid to import goods" is such a slow news day story.
That’s not quite accurate though is it. There was the company set up by a jewellery designer who agreed to provide the goods to the NHS and then another individual who was used by him to help source the goods in China. It’s the latter who was paid £21 million by the former. Whether it was out out of the £197 million paid by the NHS to the supplier or on top of, is not clear but it ultimately came from the NHS.
No idea whether a 10.65% commission charge is normal. Whether the whole contract was value for money for the NHS who knows. Why the NHS and the government were so unprepared and so lacking in secure and robust contacts with actual suppliers and manufacturers and what lessons should be learned from all this will be one for any inquiry, if we get one.
Businesses seek to make a profit shouldn't be a shocker, that is why people go into business. If the contracted supplier pays subcontractors to honour the contract, then so long as the contract is honoured then that is a supply chain working.
10.65% commission doesn't sound to me to be extortionate under the circumstances, especially if that includes shipping or handling charges. Many businesses operate using thicker margins than that and quite reasonably too - a bottle of beer at the supermarket can cost as little as 50p but that same bottle sold in a pub can be measured in pounds not pennies. Does that make every landlord or landlady in the country a rip off? Or are there costs and factors involved in operating businesses that need to be factored into considerations?
Secure and robust contracts don't exist when we're in a pandemic situation and goods are being demanded in volumes that aren't normally and formerly reliable suppliers are seeing their stockpiles requisitioned by foreign states.
But these generalities cannot and should not be rolled out to defend the indefensible.
Indeed.
But we're not talking about defending the indefensible, we're talking (again) about the government succeeeding completely in securing supplies of PPE for doctors and nurses during a pandemic.
Well done them! Great competence.
That was not the response I was looking for. The risk here - now compounded - is that you come across as someone on the Johnson payroll rather than as a fiercely independent internet blogger who calls out suspected wrongdoing without fear or favour.
The response you were looking for is for me to join in a witch hunt?
The criticism at the time, from good Doctor Foxy here and others as well as the Labour Party - was that the NHS was on the brink of running out of PPE, that the situation in Foxy's words was "desperate" and the government had the responsibility to do what needed to be done to secure PPE.
They did.
Now people whinge. Get over it. They did their job during a pandemic. Had we run out of PPE that would have been a story, so instead of saying "well done" for securing what needed to be secured instead people are trying to whinge about the way it was done.
It is pathetic.
No it isn't. We got fleeced by profiteering chums of the government. We may have been caught over a barrel, but there is every reason for the profiteers to be publicly exposed. After the event there needs to be a full accounting, and those found to be gouging middlemen to be barred from government contracts permanently.
On topic. The public are right to be losing confidence that the NHS can cope. My hospital now has significantly more covid patients than April, and dozens of fresh admissions everyday. We know from case numbers that admissions are going to continue to climb for at least another week, probably longer. From Monday we are shutting down the majority of non urgent work, and we have the pressgangs out to fill the many vacancies in the front line as staff drop like flies. It is a scary situation.
Do you think that the admissions now are of similar severity to the admissions in April? Does the age profile differ?
I am dealing with urgent non covid work, so cannot say for sure. Pretty similar I think, but we seem to have more staff getting ill, mostly caught outside work as far as we can tell.
Mrs Foxy is working in Covid intensive care, and many of the patients are younger than her, in their thirties and forties. We have a couple in paeds ICU too.
What do you think has gone wrong in Leicester? It has been in full or semi-lockdown throughout and levels have never really come down.
Is it just a lack of compliance with the rules (for whatever reason)?
In South Yorkshire we were up in the top 10 a few weeks ago but numbers are definitely falling now even though this lockdown is nothing like as well observed as the first one.
I think the waves vary a bit up and down the country. It seems to have peaked up the road in Nottingham 2 weeks back, for example.
I don't think there was much different in Leicester to other Northern and Midlands Cities, or Scotland and the Welsh Valley for that matter. Just a lot of people in overcrowded housing who have school age children and jobs that cannot be done from home.
Early on there was an attempt to blame some of our sweatshops and certainly they are cavalier with health and safety, but contact tracing never really supported that.
I really do just think it is luck of the draw. Worth noting that posh rural areas of the county such as Harborough, or Leafy suburbs like Oadby have rates higher than the national rate too.
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I don't think there was much different in Leicester to other Northern and Midlands Cities, or Scotland and the Welsh Valley for that matter. Just a lot of people in overcrowded housing who have school age children and jobs that cannot be done from home.
Early on there was an attempt to blame some of our sweatshops and certainly they are cavalier with health and safety, but contact tracing never really supported that.
I really do just think it is luck of the draw. Worth noting that posh rural areas of the county such as Harborough, or Leafy suburbs like Oadby have rates higher than the national rate too.