These 'Patsies for Priti' are becoming tiresome. Its so obviously a PR offensive. They're all female and the line is that sometimes (as a woman) you have to be tough. They're all saying being tough isn't bullying.
What none of them are addressing is that she has not been accused of being tough but of bullying and they aren't the same. She only picks on juniors and the same behaviour has been exposed in three different departments.
As someone texted me this morning 'What do you expect from a hanger and flogger'.
Ah, the Alistair Campbell defence: ‘I’m robust but I’m not a bully.’
To be honest she was probably trying to compensate for having to manage civil servants who are both a lot more clever than she is and with a lifetime experience of honing their inner Sir Humphreys. Which doesn't excuse anything, of course.
That's the Home Office civil servants ?
The same Home Office which hasn't been 'fit for purpose' for over a decade ?
Odd that you are picturing the bullied to be Old White Sir Humphrys. This is extremely unlikely.Try instead picturing them as young female from an ethnic minority background who possibly care more about the treatment of refugees than their boss?
These 'Patsies for Priti' are becoming tiresome. Its so obviously a PR offensive. They're all female and the line is that sometimes (as a woman) you have to be tough. They're all saying being tough isn't bullying.
What none of them are addressing is that she has not been accused of being tough but of bullying and they aren't the same. She only picks on juniors and the same behaviour has been exposed in three different departments.
As someone texted me this morning 'What do you expect from a hanger and flogger'.
Ah, the Alistair Campbell defence: ‘I’m robust but I’m not a bully.’
To be honest she was probably trying to compensate for having to manage civil servants who are both a lot more clever than she is and with a lifetime experience of honing their inner Sir Humphreys. Which doesn't excuse anything, of course.
That's the Home Office civil servants ?
The same Home Office which hasn't been 'fit for purpose' for over a decade ?
Not just the Home Office of course. The bullying complaints have followed Patel from DfiD and the DWP.
Earlier this year the DWP made a payout to a woman who attempted suicide after allegedly being bullied by Patel when she was Employment Minister.
By seeking to water down the report - to the point where the government‘s ethics advisor has resigned - Boris demonstrates that it is effectively carte blanche now on bullying behaviour. Like a cancer, this will spread across the government.
Alanis Morissette would love the fact this has all come out on Anti-Bullying Week.
This is a rotten, rotten government.
Not carte blanche. I fear you have drawn the wrong conclusion. It is not that bullying is OK but that you are either for Boris or against him, and it is only for Team Boris that anything goes; that's the distinction.
These 'Patsies for Priti' are becoming tiresome. Its so obviously a PR offensive. They're all female and the line is that sometimes (as a woman) you have to be tough. They're all saying being tough isn't bullying.
What none of them are addressing is that she has not been accused of being tough but of bullying and they aren't the same. She only picks on juniors and the same behaviour has been exposed in three different departments.
As someone texted me this morning 'What do you expect from a hanger and flogger'.
Ah, the Alistair Campbell defence: ‘I’m robust but I’m not a bully.’
To be honest she was probably trying to compensate for having to manage civil servants who are both a lot more clever than she is and with a lifetime experience of honing their inner Sir Humphreys. Which doesn't excuse anything, of course.
That's the Home Office civil servants ?
The same Home Office which hasn't been 'fit for purpose' for over a decade ?
Odd that you are picturing the bullied to be Old White Sir Humphrys. This is extremely unlikely.Try instead picturing them as young female from an ethnic minority background who possibly care more about the treatment of refugees than their boss?
Quite. The subordinate who took an overdose after being verbally pummelled by the sawn-off dalek was a woman wasn't she?
When I was 20 I spent a month and a half travelling the US by train. 30+ states visited. East. Middle. West. North. South. America struck me as being like a zoo, where the exhibits in one place were very different to other places. I was struck by just how little travelled some people we met were - surfer dudes who had never left southern California, a bookish teacher who couldn't understand why we had coins that were worth an odd number of cents, a southern gentleman who over breakfast on the train asked if we get etiquette lessons in England as we "eat so dainty" by using a knife AND a fork at the same time.
And then the explanation from a guy about why America works - the American dream. It doesn't matter how backwards and injust America is even compared to Canada, their system tells them that they are superior when they aren't and that they are rich when they live in poverty and that the American system means that work can lift them to being self-made when most of them never will.
He predicted that at the point where most realise just how absurd this lie is the civil war would start - because the people who have been screwed hardest by the system have most of the guns. Yet in reality I think we're seeing the opposite. The GOP have worked very hard to cement the lie and have persuaded the oppressed that their "riches" and very way of life is being threatened by these other Americans. Simultaneously the people who have had the scales washed from their eyes or saw right through it can't believe the venal stupidity of the other side.
Perhaps a loosening of ties is better. Not that America should have a civil war or formally split, but operate on a more confederal basis. As was asked above, if some states vote for Gilead is it up to other states to tell them no? I support the woman's right to choose, but that includes their right to give up their rights
So you believe in rights but not inalienable rights?
*I* believe in inalienable rights. But I am also a (born-again I suppose) liberal. WWho am I to impose my values on others? I have described southern dirt poor GOP voters as "shitkickers" and I stand by that. If they don't want what the rest of us consider to be their rights and vote them away is it up to us to stop them and say they can't?
That is to assume that states are monolithic; even the reddest are not even close to that. The constitution places limits on the tyranny of the majority, so a line has to be drawn somewhere.
In any event, with a 6-3 conservative majority on the court, and no real prospect of changing that anytime soon, that line is likely to get redrawn somewhat.
These 'Patsies for Priti' are becoming tiresome. Its so obviously a PR offensive. They're all female and the line is that sometimes (as a woman) you have to be tough. They're all saying being tough isn't bullying.
What none of them are addressing is that she has not been accused of being tough but of bullying and they aren't the same. She only picks on juniors and the same behaviour has been exposed in three different departments.
As someone texted me this morning 'What do you expect from a hanger and flogger'.
Ah, the Alistair Campbell defence: ‘I’m robust but I’m not a bully.’
To be honest she was probably trying to compensate for having to manage civil servants who are both a lot more clever than she is and with a lifetime experience of honing their inner Sir Humphreys. Which doesn't excuse anything, of course.
That's the Home Office civil servants ?
The same Home Office which hasn't been 'fit for purpose' for over a decade ?
Odd that you are picturing the bullied to be Old White Sir Humphrys. This is extremely unlikely.Try instead picturing them as young female from an ethnic minority background who possibly care more about the treatment of refugees than their boss?
Except in this case it is an old white Sir Humphrey claiming to be bullied. It's one area I agree with Dom, we should be rid of the lot of them in the civil service and big business. That network of Oxbridge elitists has been holding this country back for decades with poor decision making and a culture of managed decline.
I see we are back on the popular PB pastime of conducting a post-mortem on the winning candidate. Strange behaviour, really.
Not really. The winner will be around next time (or the Democrats, if Biden doesn’t run again). The loser won’t be. So the question of why the winner won more narrowly than expected has significant betting implications for the future.
Well, analysing the election certainly is worthwhile, but I was mainly referring to the sense that people were discussing what went wrong for the Biden campaign. And when you think that Biden was up against a man who is extremely skilled in hogging attention, was the incumbent, was campaigning in a weird environment where political rallies were not just a partisan affair but a public health one, whose base turned out in huge numbers, and whose party is good at extracting the most value out of the electoral system... the fact that Biden still won 306 EC votes, an outright majority of votes, and a lead of some six million votes, is really quite something.
I was struck by the comment about "reconnecting with the base". That seemed excessively strange to me, given this has been the highest turnout election since universal suffrage. For me, the question of "what went wrong for Biden?" is just weird.
Yes. Cue the old George Best joke.
This was a great achievement by Biden. Far as I'm concerned he had one job to do (remove this piece of vermin from office by beating him in the election) and he did it. It was the most important "win" in any political contest in my lifetime simply because the consequences of failure were so unspeakably dire. And Joe stepped up at the age of 78 and delivered. Delivered the win. Delivered us from evil. There'll be time enough to talk about whether he should have won bigger. How he's either a front for the left or he's sold out to centrism and corporate interests. I look forward to that. But right now I love him and it will last for some time. I feel such gratitude and affection for the guy.
The Dems will fail to learn from Biden's success by putting up a woke hand-wringer obsessed with irrelevant bollocks in 2024 and then be totally baffled when they lose the votes of blue collar workers in the rust belt.
I see we are back on the popular PB pastime of conducting a post-mortem on the winning candidate. Strange behaviour, really.
Not really. The winner will be around next time (or the Democrats, if Biden doesn’t run again). The loser won’t be. So the question of why the winner won more narrowly than expected has significant betting implications for the future.
Well, analysing the election certainly is worthwhile, but I was mainly referring to the sense that people were discussing what went wrong for the Biden campaign. And when you think that Biden was up against a man who is extremely skilled in hogging attention, was the incumbent, was campaigning in a weird environment where political rallies were not just a partisan affair but a public health one, whose base turned out in huge numbers, and whose party is good at extracting the most value out of the electoral system... the fact that Biden still won 306 EC votes, an outright majority of votes, and a lead of some six million votes, is really quite something.
I was struck by the comment about "reconnecting with the base". That seemed excessively strange to me, given this has been the highest turnout election since universal suffrage. For me, the question of "what went wrong for Biden?" is just weird.
Yes. Cue the old George Best joke.
This was a great achievement by Biden. Far as I'm concerned he had one job to do (remove this piece of vermin from office by beating him in the election) and he did it. It was the most important "win" in any political contest in my lifetime simply because the consequences of failure were so unspeakably dire. And Joe stepped up at the age of 78 and delivered. Delivered the win. Delivered us from evil. There'll be time enough to talk about whether he should have won bigger. How he's either a front for the left or he's sold out to centrism and corporate interests. I look forward to that. But right now I love him and it will last for some time. I feel such gratitude and affection for the guy.
I’d agree with that. Reconnecting with the base is really up to Stacey Abrams’ generation. And if Florida (for example) had someone like her then the outcome in 2024 would not be in doubt.
I see we are back on the popular PB pastime of conducting a post-mortem on the winning candidate. Strange behaviour, really.
Not really. The winner will be around next time (or the Democrats, if Biden doesn’t run again). The loser won’t be. So the question of why the winner won more narrowly than expected has significant betting implications for the future.
Well, analysing the election certainly is worthwhile, but I was mainly referring to the sense that people were discussing what went wrong for the Biden campaign. And when you think that Biden was up against a man who is extremely skilled in hogging attention, was the incumbent, was campaigning in a weird environment where political rallies were not just a partisan affair but a public health one, whose base turned out in huge numbers, and whose party is good at extracting the most value out of the electoral system... the fact that Biden still won 306 EC votes, an outright majority of votes, and a lead of some six million votes, is really quite something.
I was struck by the comment about "reconnecting with the base". That seemed excessively strange to me, given this has been the highest turnout election since universal suffrage. For me, the question of "what went wrong for Biden?" is just weird.
Yes. Cue the old George Best joke.
This was a great achievement by Biden. Far as I'm concerned he had one job to do (remove this piece of vermin from office by beating him in the election) and he did it. It was the most important "win" in any political contest in my lifetime simply because the consequences of failure were so unspeakably dire. And Joe stepped up at the age of 78 and delivered. Delivered the win. Delivered us from evil. There'll be time enough to talk about whether he should have won bigger. How he's either a front for the left or he's sold out to centrism and corporate interests. I look forward to that. But right now I love him and it will last for some time. I feel such gratitude and affection for the guy.
The Dems will fail to learn from Biden's success by putting up a woke hand-wringer obsessed with irrelevant bollocks in 2024 and then be totally baffled when they lose the votes of blue collar workers in the rust belt.
These 'Patsies for Priti' are becoming tiresome. Its so obviously a PR offensive. They're all female and the line is that sometimes (as a woman) you have to be tough. They're all saying being tough isn't bullying.
What none of them are addressing is that she has not been accused of being tough but of bullying and they aren't the same. She only picks on juniors and the same behaviour has been exposed in three different departments.
As someone texted me this morning 'What do you expect from a hanger and flogger'.
Ah, the Alistair Campbell defence: ‘I’m robust but I’m not a bully.’
To be honest she was probably trying to compensate for having to manage civil servants who are both a lot more clever than she is and with a lifetime experience of honing their inner Sir Humphreys. Which doesn't excuse anything, of course.
That's the Home Office civil servants ?
The same Home Office which hasn't been 'fit for purpose' for over a decade ?
Odd that you are picturing the bullied to be Old White Sir Humphrys. This is extremely unlikely.Try instead picturing them as young female from an ethnic minority background who possibly care more about the treatment of refugees than their boss?
Except in this case it is an old white Sir Humphrey claiming to be bullied. It's one area I agree with Dom, we should be rid of the lot of them in the civil service and big business. That network of Oxbridge elitists has been holding this country back for decades with poor decision making and a culture of managed decline.
These 'Patsies for Priti' are becoming tiresome. Its so obviously a PR offensive. They're all female and the line is that sometimes (as a woman) you have to be tough. They're all saying being tough isn't bullying.
What none of them are addressing is that she has not been accused of being tough but of bullying and they aren't the same. She only picks on juniors and the same behaviour has been exposed in three different departments.
As someone texted me this morning 'What do you expect from a hanger and flogger'.
Was that from one of your focus group taxi-drivers, Roger?
I think the government should turn Facebook off when the vaccination programmes start. Already I've had my mum spout fake news about it she saw on Facebook.
I wonder which city Piers Corbyn gets arrested in today?
Re the Priti episode and not wanting to get into all the arguments of yesterday but one action that stood out for me and which I think I will remember for sometime regarding Boris:
Boris asked the author of the report to water it down. I want to know from a Boris supporter eg @Philip_Thompson how that is ever justifiable.
And to help those supporting Boris in this action, try thinking of the consequences of the reverse. Would anyone consider it at all moral if he had asked the independent author to beef it up, with the consequences that an innocent person actually looked guilty?
As far as I understand Boris disagreed with the report and said so, which incidentally so do I. He probably shouldn't have done that, but I can understand him wanting it to be looked at again.
My understanding is the investigator refused to do so which is entirely reasonable and as far as I understand it Boris didn't compel or put any more pressure on him to do so.
What is truly astonishing, from a UK perspective, is that Trump has received 73.8m votes, far more than any candidate in history other than Joe Biden. Trump has very few supporters on this board, @MrEd is the only one that instantly comes to mind although @HYUFD dabbled, mainly, in fairness, pointing out that his chances were better than we thought. It shows the incredible gulf between American politics and mindset and ours.
Millions of Americans clearly believe that Biden is some sort of a socialist. Other than being thick I really struggle to see any evidence for that at all in a very long career. Their definition of socialism would clearly include most of the current Tory party.
I think that it is very difficult for us to predict what these millions might do. We simply do not understand their terms of reference.
Re: HYUFD It's impossible to truly know someone's mind, but the tenor of his posts made me think he would have voted Trump. Of course, he repeatedly claimed that he would vote for Biden if he had a vote, but, in short, I didn't believe him.
HYUFD is just a super-loyal Tory who goes wherever that journey takes him. He was a passionate Cameroon Remainer who became an equally passionate Johnson Leaver. He realized a Biden win would leave his new beau up shit creek so he became an obsessive Trumpster.
Think Stretford Ender
HYUFD`s recall of political factoids from history is extraordinary. I`ve been shot down before for saying that he largely just posts facts and some posters should lay off the rudeness towards him. He`s cherry-picking - of course - but still facts. Its`s up to us to raise our games to challenge him with equal precision.
His policital radar is worthy of attention. Most of us were predicting large Biden win, some landslide even. HYUFD vacillated between narrow Biden, then narrow Trump then narrow Biden again. He drew our attentions to, for example, Arizona, Florida and Wisconsin repeatedly where Trump, he said, may defy the odds. He`s worth listening too even when you don`t agree.
He`ll be back, good as ever. He`s one of the few (maybe six or seven) posters who I regard as top tier PB.com posters. I`m minor league in comparison.
Has he done something or gone somewhere, then?
I'll be more convinced about his sage like premonition when it predicts a left wing victory. While he continues to ramp Boris and Trump he could easily just have been lucky (partly so in the latter case). He's also ramped Farage, Le Pen, and JRM in the past, as well as the Tory sitting MP in the Brecon by-election, all failed predictions.
For me, only two things matter about today:
1) HYUFD starts posting again 2) Betfair settles Georgia
I see he suddenly stopped posting on the day that Cummo was sacked, having been very busy on here right up until then. Are we missing something?
Well, until he returns, the new Tory orthodoxy, whatever that might be.
These 'Patsies for Priti' are becoming tiresome. Its so obviously a PR offensive. They're all female and the line is that sometimes (as a woman) you have to be tough. They're all saying being tough isn't bullying.
What none of them are addressing is that she has not been accused of being tough but of bullying and they aren't the same. She only picks on juniors and the same behaviour has been exposed in three different departments.
As someone texted me this morning 'What do you expect from a hanger and flogger'.
Ah, the Alistair Campbell defence: ‘I’m robust but I’m not a bully.’
To be honest she was probably trying to compensate for having to manage civil servants who are both a lot more clever than she is and with a lifetime experience of honing their inner Sir Humphreys. Which doesn't excuse anything, of course.
That's the Home Office civil servants ?
The same Home Office which hasn't been 'fit for purpose' for over a decade ?
Odd that you are picturing the bullied to be Old White Sir Humphrys. This is extremely unlikely.Try instead picturing them as young female from an ethnic minority background who possibly care more about the treatment of refugees than their boss?
Except in this case it is an old white Sir Humphrey claiming to be bullied. It's one area I agree with Dom, we should be rid of the lot of them in the civil service and big business. That network of Oxbridge elitists has been holding this country back for decades with poor decision making and a culture of managed decline.
Is there not at least a possibility (seen it) that it was an OWSH trying to defend a YF from AMB. I've been reading your posts, and I see where you are coming from, and as you say, there are a lot of options.
One of the worst things Margaret Thatcher did was to create, or try to create a climate, where bright people didn't try to enter the Civil Service.
Re the Priti episode and not wanting to get into all the arguments of yesterday but one action that stood out for me and which I think I will remember for sometime regarding Boris:
Boris asked the author of the report to water it down. I want to know from a Boris supporter eg @Philip_Thompson how that is ever justifiable.
And to help those supporting Boris in this action, try thinking of the consequences of the reverse. Would anyone consider it at all moral if he had asked the independent author to beef it up, with the consequences that an innocent person actually looked guilty?
As far as I understand Boris disagreed with the report and said so, which incidentally so do I. He probably shouldn't have done that, but I can understand him wanting it to be looked at again.
My understanding is the investigator refused to do so which is entirely reasonable and as far as I understand it Boris didn't compel or put any more pressure on him to do so.
A very good response. Thought I had you over a barrel. Of course we don't know how much pressure was applied.
These 'Patsies for Priti' are becoming tiresome. Its so obviously a PR offensive. They're all female and the line is that sometimes (as a woman) you have to be tough. They're all saying being tough isn't bullying.
What none of them are addressing is that she has not been accused of being tough but of bullying and they aren't the same. She only picks on juniors and the same behaviour has been exposed in three different departments.
As someone texted me this morning 'What do you expect from a hanger and flogger'.
Ah, the Alistair Campbell defence: ‘I’m robust but I’m not a bully.’
To be honest she was probably trying to compensate for having to manage civil servants who are both a lot more clever than she is and with a lifetime experience of honing their inner Sir Humphreys. Which doesn't excuse anything, of course.
That's the Home Office civil servants ?
The same Home Office which hasn't been 'fit for purpose' for over a decade ?
Odd that you are picturing the bullied to be Old White Sir Humphrys. This is extremely unlikely.Try instead picturing them as young female from an ethnic minority background who possibly care more about the treatment of refugees than their boss?
Except in this case it is an old white Sir Humphrey claiming to be bullied. It's one area I agree with Dom, we should be rid of the lot of them in the civil service and big business. That network of Oxbridge elitists has been holding this country back for decades with poor decision making and a culture of managed decline.
When I worked in the public sector I saw a fair few senior people recruited in from private sector companies, many of whom arrived with a "bish, bosh, I'll sort all this out for you" attitude, blind to the complexity of stakeholders, the politics, media and public interest, industrial relations and the rest that you don't get working for a company that makes pallets or some such. A lot of them created havoc then left, others didn't have the patience and guile for it.
All that positive PR that his handlers have been getting for Lewis Hamilton over the past week...he is trending on twitter, never a good sign...for his failed legal action against a watch company that has been in business forever.
These 'Patsies for Priti' are becoming tiresome. Its so obviously a PR offensive. They're all female and the line is that sometimes (as a woman) you have to be tough. They're all saying being tough isn't bullying.
What none of them are addressing is that she has not been accused of being tough but of bullying and they aren't the same. She only picks on juniors and the same behaviour has been exposed in three different departments.
As someone texted me this morning 'What do you expect from a hanger and flogger'.
Ah, the Alistair Campbell defence: ‘I’m robust but I’m not a bully.’
To be honest she was probably trying to compensate for having to manage civil servants who are both a lot more clever than she is and with a lifetime experience of honing their inner Sir Humphreys. Which doesn't excuse anything, of course.
That's the Home Office civil servants ?
The same Home Office which hasn't been 'fit for purpose' for over a decade ?
Odd that you are picturing the bullied to be Old White Sir Humphrys. This is extremely unlikely.Try instead picturing them as young female from an ethnic minority background who possibly care more about the treatment of refugees than their boss?
Except in this case it is an old white Sir Humphrey claiming to be bullied. It's one area I agree with Dom, we should be rid of the lot of them in the civil service and big business. That network of Oxbridge elitists has been holding this country back for decades with poor decision making and a culture of managed decline.
Is there not at least a possibility (seen it) that it was an OWSH trying to defend a YF from AMB. I've been reading your posts, and I see where you are coming from, and as you say, there are a lot of options.
One of the worst things Margaret Thatcher did was to create, or try to create a climate, where bright people didn't try to enter the Civil Service.
We don't have the actual report, do we? I think all we've seen is the Janet and John Bit, written by the government. Who I am sure wrote a fair, balanced summary. Not.
Re the Priti episode and not wanting to get into all the arguments of yesterday but one action that stood out for me and which I think I will remember for sometime regarding Boris:
Boris asked the author of the report to water it down. I want to know from a Boris supporter eg @Philip_Thompson how that is ever justifiable.
And to help those supporting Boris in this action, try thinking of the consequences of the reverse. Would anyone consider it at all moral if he had asked the independent author to beef it up, with the consequences that an innocent person actually looked guilty?
As far as I understand Boris disagreed with the report and said so, which incidentally so do I. He probably shouldn't have done that, but I can understand him wanting it to be looked at again.
My understanding is the investigator refused to do so which is entirely reasonable and as far as I understand it Boris didn't compel or put any more pressure on him to do so.
A very good response. Thought I had you over a barrel. Of course we don't know how much pressure was applied.
Not really convinced. If the PM calls you and asks you to do something it's pressure on a supposedly independent process, regardless of how forcefully the request is put. It is however a process issue which won't interest anyone outside the bubble.
All that positive PR that his handlers have been getting for Lewis Hamilton over the past week...he is trending on twitter, never a good sign...for his failed legal action against a watch company that has been in business forever.
What an odd thing to have even attempted - even if you win such a battle you look like a cock, and it's not like he'd be short of money anyway. Perhaps he has two sets of advisers, one of whom is doing sterling work getting positive stories about him (far beyond his career exploits), and the ones behind that action.
All that positive PR that his handlers have been getting for Lewis Hamilton over the past week...he is trending on twitter, never a good sign...for his failed legal action against a watch company that has been in business forever.
These 'Patsies for Priti' are becoming tiresome. Its so obviously a PR offensive. They're all female and the line is that sometimes (as a woman) you have to be tough. They're all saying being tough isn't bullying.
What none of them are addressing is that she has not been accused of being tough but of bullying and they aren't the same. She only picks on juniors and the same behaviour has been exposed in three different departments.
As someone texted me this morning 'What do you expect from a hanger and flogger'.
Ah, the Alistair Campbell defence: ‘I’m robust but I’m not a bully.’
To be honest she was probably trying to compensate for having to manage civil servants who are both a lot more clever than she is and with a lifetime experience of honing their inner Sir Humphreys. Which doesn't excuse anything, of course.
That's the Home Office civil servants ?
The same Home Office which hasn't been 'fit for purpose' for over a decade ?
Odd that you are picturing the bullied to be Old White Sir Humphrys. This is extremely unlikely.Try instead picturing them as young female from an ethnic minority background who possibly care more about the treatment of refugees than their boss?
Except in this case it is an old white Sir Humphrey claiming to be bullied. It's one area I agree with Dom, we should be rid of the lot of them in the civil service and big business. That network of Oxbridge elitists has been holding this country back for decades with poor decision making and a culture of managed decline.
When I worked in the public sector I saw a fair few senior people recruited in from private sector companies, many of whom arrived with a "bish, bosh, I'll sort all this out for you" attitude, blind to the complexity of stakeholders, the politics, media and public interest, industrial relations and the rest that you don't get working for a company that makes pallets or some such. A lot of them created havoc then left, others didn't have the patience and guile for it.
You need people to stir things up sometimes, to take on entrenched interests and work attitudes. The problem is that cannot be your sole and overriding motivation as though shaking things up in itself is a good thing or assuming there is no good reason for some complexities to have developed. MaxPB is very odd in these matters, its a 'the bad people must be got rid of' and 'upsets the right people' level stuff, its just childish.
All that positive PR that his handlers have been getting for Lewis Hamilton over the past week...he is trending on twitter, never a good sign...for his failed legal action against a watch company that has been in business forever.
Reminds me of when FIFA tried to prevent unauthorised use of the Portuguese word for Christmas, Natal, because Natal was one of the host cities for the 2014 World Cup.
Re the Priti episode and not wanting to get into all the arguments of yesterday but one action that stood out for me and which I think I will remember for sometime regarding Boris:
Boris asked the author of the report to water it down. I want to know from a Boris supporter eg @Philip_Thompson how that is ever justifiable.
And to help those supporting Boris in this action, try thinking of the consequences of the reverse. Would anyone consider it at all moral if he had asked the independent author to beef it up, with the consequences that an innocent person actually looked guilty?
As far as I understand Boris disagreed with the report and said so, which incidentally so do I. He probably shouldn't have done that, but I can understand him wanting it to be looked at again.
My understanding is the investigator refused to do so which is entirely reasonable and as far as I understand it Boris didn't compel or put any more pressure on him to do so.
A very good response. Thought I had you over a barrel. Of course we don't know how much pressure was applied.
Not really convinced. If the PM calls you and asks you to do something it's pressure on a supposedly independent process, regardless of how forcefully the request is put. It is however a process issue which won't interest anyone outside the bubble.
I think that is right. Just because someone might claim they are not pressuring does not mean there has been no pressuring, and levels of authority and power is relevant when someone makes what might be intended as an innocent comment, though even then they should think about how it will be perceived. But it's no smoking gun to most people.
These 'Patsies for Priti' are becoming tiresome. Its so obviously a PR offensive. They're all female and the line is that sometimes (as a woman) you have to be tough. They're all saying being tough isn't bullying.
What none of them are addressing is that she has not been accused of being tough but of bullying and they aren't the same. She only picks on juniors and the same behaviour has been exposed in three different departments.
As someone texted me this morning 'What do you expect from a hanger and flogger'.
Ah, the Alistair Campbell defence: ‘I’m robust but I’m not a bully.’
To be honest she was probably trying to compensate for having to manage civil servants who are both a lot more clever than she is and with a lifetime experience of honing their inner Sir Humphreys. Which doesn't excuse anything, of course.
That's the Home Office civil servants ?
The same Home Office which hasn't been 'fit for purpose' for over a decade ?
Odd that you are picturing the bullied to be Old White Sir Humphrys. This is extremely unlikely.Try instead picturing them as young female from an ethnic minority background who possibly care more about the treatment of refugees than their boss?
Quite. The subordinate who took an overdose after being verbally pummelled by the sawn-off dalek was a woman wasn't she?
I missed that one. What happened? I'm sure tomorrow the stories will start to flow. If whistle blowing doesn't work I believe you can make your grievance public
I really like Mackay's philosophy and style - he does a terrific job there of making a dry issue very readable. But on a rapid read he doesn't actually address the main objection to tidal, which is that it's coloissally less cost-efficient in energy generaiton than almost anything else (when I last looked at the figures the ratio was something like 20:1). He's right that it would last for ages (though maintaining underwater equipment is non-trivial) and reasonable in suggesting that if we had lots then the cost would come down as technology progressed.
I'm not saying it's wrong, and I should read Mackay's piece more carefully, but that's why when I was PPS to the then Minister of Energy (Malcolm Wicks) we didn't push it. The bargain for renewable energy by a large margin is ONshore wind, and the main problem is that some people don't like to see it in the hilly places where it's most effective. I think they should get over it in the interests of the country and the planet, but that's a controversial view.
Re the Priti episode and not wanting to get into all the arguments of yesterday but one action that stood out for me and which I think I will remember for sometime regarding Boris:
Boris asked the author of the report to water it down. I want to know from a Boris supporter eg @Philip_Thompson how that is ever justifiable.
And to help those supporting Boris in this action, try thinking of the consequences of the reverse. Would anyone consider it at all moral if he had asked the independent author to beef it up, with the consequences that an innocent person actually looked guilty?
As far as I understand Boris disagreed with the report and said so, which incidentally so do I. He probably shouldn't have done that, but I can understand him wanting it to be looked at again.
My understanding is the investigator refused to do so which is entirely reasonable and as far as I understand it Boris didn't compel or put any more pressure on him to do so.
Hi PhilIp
This is a serious question.
How can you disagree with a report compiled by somebody who investigated the matter, when they have access to the full facts* and you do not?
If you do not disagree on matters of fact, then why are you asking for its conclusions to be adjusted?
Even if Johnson was not trying to conceal facts - which according to press reports, he was - it is utterly, completely inappropriate for him to even consider asking for alterations to an independent report. The instant he does that, it ceases to be an independent process, even if his demands are rejected. This is exactly what we were getting angry with Corbyn over, and why he’s been booted out of the PLP.
If anything, this is (as Hodges said) more worrisome than the fact Patel is a bully and a liar, which we all knew already. It should be career ending for Johnson (although it won’t be) and it is totally unsurprising the person running it resigned over this.
But you really have to start wondering what anyone has to do to get sacked with this lot. Cummings and Jenrick go around spitting in the face of the law. Williamson has declared schools will not move to rotas even though some schools have 30% of children off so have rotas by default. Braverman seems to think her job is to be Giuliani in a skirt. Raab has no knowledge of basic geography.
It’s just embarrassing.
*leaving aside, for now, the allegation that the full facts were not properly investigated or established.
These 'Patsies for Priti' are becoming tiresome. Its so obviously a PR offensive. They're all female and the line is that sometimes (as a woman) you have to be tough. They're all saying being tough isn't bullying.
What none of them are addressing is that she has not been accused of being tough but of bullying and they aren't the same. She only picks on juniors and the same behaviour has been exposed in three different departments.
As someone texted me this morning 'What do you expect from a hanger and flogger'.
Ah, the Alistair Campbell defence: ‘I’m robust but I’m not a bully.’
To be honest she was probably trying to compensate for having to manage civil servants who are both a lot more clever than she is and with a lifetime experience of honing their inner Sir Humphreys. Which doesn't excuse anything, of course.
That's the Home Office civil servants ?
The same Home Office which hasn't been 'fit for purpose' for over a decade ?
Odd that you are picturing the bullied to be Old White Sir Humphrys. This is extremely unlikely.Try instead picturing them as young female from an ethnic minority background who possibly care more about the treatment of refugees than their boss?
Quite. The subordinate who took an overdose after being verbally pummelled by the sawn-off dalek was a woman wasn't she?
I missed that one. What happened? I'm sure tomorrow the stories will start to flow. If whistle blowing doesn't work I believe you can make your grievance public
These 'Patsies for Priti' are becoming tiresome. Its so obviously a PR offensive. They're all female and the line is that sometimes (as a woman) you have to be tough. They're all saying being tough isn't bullying.
What none of them are addressing is that she has not been accused of being tough but of bullying and they aren't the same. She only picks on juniors and the same behaviour has been exposed in three different departments.
As someone texted me this morning 'What do you expect from a hanger and flogger'.
Ah, the Alistair Campbell defence: ‘I’m robust but I’m not a bully.’
44IP, a firm located in Malta and established by the driver to oversee his image rights, claimed Hamilton International registered the name in “bad faith” and to prevent competition.
I am sure it is total coincidence that Malta has the lowest tax on profits of any country in the EU....
I really like Mackay's philosophy and style - he does a terrific job there of making a dry issue very readable. But on a rapid read he doesn't actually address the main objection to tidal, which is that it's coloissally less cost-efficient in energy generaiton than almost anything else (when I last looked at the figures the ratio was something like 20:1). He's right that it would last for ages (though maintaining underwater equipment is non-trivial) and reasonable in suggesting that if we had lots then the cost would come down as technology progressed.
I'm not saying it's wrong, and I should read Mackay's piece more carefully, but that's why when I was PPS to the then Minister of Energy (Malcolm Wicks) we didn't push it. The bargain for renewable energy by a large margin is ONshore wind, and the main problem is that some people don't like to see it in the hilly places where it's most effective. I think they should get over it in the interests of the country and the planet, but that's a controversial view.
Might just be me, but I think wind turbines are a rather magnificent sight.
These 'Patsies for Priti' are becoming tiresome. Its so obviously a PR offensive. They're all female and the line is that sometimes (as a woman) you have to be tough. They're all saying being tough isn't bullying.
What none of them are addressing is that she has not been accused of being tough but of bullying and they aren't the same. She only picks on juniors and the same behaviour has been exposed in three different departments.
As someone texted me this morning 'What do you expect from a hanger and flogger'.
Ah, the Alistair Campbell defence: ‘I’m robust but I’m not a bully.’
To be honest she was probably trying to compensate for having to manage civil servants who are both a lot more clever than she is and with a lifetime experience of honing their inner Sir Humphreys. Which doesn't excuse anything, of course.
That's the Home Office civil servants ?
The same Home Office which hasn't been 'fit for purpose' for over a decade ?
Odd that you are picturing the bullied to be Old White Sir Humphrys. This is extremely unlikely.Try instead picturing them as young female from an ethnic minority background who possibly care more about the treatment of refugees than their boss?
Quite. The subordinate who took an overdose after being verbally pummelled by the sawn-off dalek was a woman wasn't she?
I missed that one. What happened? I'm sure tomorrow the stories will start to flow. If whistle blowing doesn't work I believe you can make your grievance public
Priti Patel yelling at somebody else for being sluggish and inept would in any case be like the time my former Principal sacked somebody for being an alleged safeguarding risk.
I really like Mackay's philosophy and style - he does a terrific job there of making a dry issue very readable. But on a rapid read he doesn't actually address the main objection to tidal, which is that it's coloissally less cost-efficient in energy generaiton than almost anything else (when I last looked at the figures the ratio was something like 20:1). He's right that it would last for ages (though maintaining underwater equipment is non-trivial) and reasonable in suggesting that if we had lots then the cost would come down as technology progressed.
I'm not saying it's wrong, and I should read Mackay's piece more carefully, but that's why when I was PPS to the then Minister of Energy (Malcolm Wicks) we didn't push it. The bargain for renewable energy by a large margin is ONshore wind, and the main problem is that some people don't like to see it in the hilly places where it's most effective. I think they should get over it in the interests of the country and the planet, but that's a controversial view.
Might just be me, but I think wind turbines are a rather magnificent sight.
I really like Mackay's philosophy and style - he does a terrific job there of making a dry issue very readable. But on a rapid read he doesn't actually address the main objection to tidal, which is that it's coloissally less cost-efficient in energy generaiton than almost anything else (when I last looked at the figures the ratio was something like 20:1). He's right that it would last for ages (though maintaining underwater equipment is non-trivial) and reasonable in suggesting that if we had lots then the cost would come down as technology progressed.
I'm not saying it's wrong, and I should read Mackay's piece more carefully, but that's why when I was PPS to the then Minister of Energy (Malcolm Wicks) we didn't push it. The bargain for renewable energy by a large margin is ONshore wind, and the main problem is that some people don't like to see it in the hilly places where it's most effective. I think they should get over it in the interests of the country and the planet, but that's a controversial view.
I’m quite suspicious of cost comparisons given the way they have altered over the last decade, but it is fair to say that tidal is relatively expensive.
These 'Patsies for Priti' are becoming tiresome. Its so obviously a PR offensive. They're all female and the line is that sometimes (as a woman) you have to be tough. They're all saying being tough isn't bullying.
What none of them are addressing is that she has not been accused of being tough but of bullying and they aren't the same. She only picks on juniors and the same behaviour has been exposed in three different departments.
As someone texted me this morning 'What do you expect from a hanger and flogger'.
Ah, the Alistair Campbell defence: ‘I’m robust but I’m not a bully.’
To be honest she was probably trying to compensate for having to manage civil servants who are both a lot more clever than she is and with a lifetime experience of honing their inner Sir Humphreys. Which doesn't excuse anything, of course.
That's the Home Office civil servants ?
The same Home Office which hasn't been 'fit for purpose' for over a decade ?
Odd that you are picturing the bullied to be Old White Sir Humphrys. This is extremely unlikely.Try instead picturing them as young female from an ethnic minority background who possibly care more about the treatment of refugees than their boss?
Except in this case it is an old white Sir Humphrey claiming to be bullied. It's one area I agree with Dom, we should be rid of the lot of them in the civil service and big business. That network of Oxbridge elitists has been holding this country back for decades with poor decision making and a culture of managed decline.
When I worked in the public sector I saw a fair few senior people recruited in from private sector companies, many of whom arrived with a "bish, bosh, I'll sort all this out for you" attitude, blind to the complexity of stakeholders, the politics, media and public interest, industrial relations and the rest that you don't get working for a company that makes pallets or some such. A lot of them created havoc then left, others didn't have the patience and guile for it.
All of that stuff about stakeholders, politics etc... is the problem. That is the Sir Humphrey level that needs to be gotten rid of, all of those words you've used are just roadblocks put in place by Sir Humphrey to resist change and it's little wonder that people from the private sector get exasperated by it, especially people who aren't Oxbridge chums and get patronised day in day out by the chums at the top
The governor has taken repeated legal action to prevent any local lockdown. And this with the imminent prospect of a vaccine.
El Paso businesses reopen after court blocks shutdown order https://www.cbsnews.com/news/el-paso-businesses-reopen-after-court-blocks-shutdown-order-2020-11-14/ El Paso business began reopening Friday, less than 24 hours after a court of appeals quashed the county judge's shutdown order as the city deals with one of the worst COVID-19 outbreaks in the country. On Saturday, the city of El Paso said reported 1,512 new COVID-19 cases and 15 additional deaths.
The three-judge 8th Court of Appeals in El Paso issued rulings on Thursday and Friday that County Judge Ricardo Samaniego could not supersede Texas Governor Greg Abbott's October 7 order on reopening. On October 29, Samaniego had issued a monthlong shutdown order for nonessential businesses, but he was challenged by a group of restaurant owners and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton...
The judges and governor have blood on their hands. Owning the libs > saving lives I suppose, hope the whole of the Texas GOP higher ups get it and die tbh.
I really like Mackay's philosophy and style - he does a terrific job there of making a dry issue very readable. But on a rapid read he doesn't actually address the main objection to tidal, which is that it's coloissally less cost-efficient in energy generaiton than almost anything else (when I last looked at the figures the ratio was something like 20:1). He's right that it would last for ages (though maintaining underwater equipment is non-trivial) and reasonable in suggesting that if we had lots then the cost would come down as technology progressed.
I'm not saying it's wrong, and I should read Mackay's piece more carefully, but that's why when I was PPS to the then Minister of Energy (Malcolm Wicks) we didn't push it. The bargain for renewable energy by a large margin is ONshore wind, and the main problem is that some people don't like to see it in the hilly places where it's most effective. I think they should get over it in the interests of the country and the planet, but that's a controversial view.
Might just be me, but I think wind turbines are a rather magnificent sight.
Are you a big fan?
Not especially, but I thought I could generate some discussion.
I really like Mackay's philosophy and style - he does a terrific job there of making a dry issue very readable. But on a rapid read he doesn't actually address the main objection to tidal, which is that it's coloissally less cost-efficient in energy generaiton than almost anything else (when I last looked at the figures the ratio was something like 20:1). He's right that it would last for ages (though maintaining underwater equipment is non-trivial) and reasonable in suggesting that if we had lots then the cost would come down as technology progressed.
I'm not saying it's wrong, and I should read Mackay's piece more carefully, but that's why when I was PPS to the then Minister of Energy (Malcolm Wicks) we didn't push it. The bargain for renewable energy by a large margin is ONshore wind, and the main problem is that some people don't like to see it in the hilly places where it's most effective. I think they should get over it in the interests of the country and the planet, but that's a controversial view.
I’m quite suspicious of cost comparisons given the way they have altered over the last decade, but it is fair to say that tidal is relatively expensive.
On the other hand, so is storage. And nuclear.
Also I guess at that time they didn't know what people would want to lend the government money for nothing, basically forever. It seems weird not to do things that have huge capital costs but then run for almost nothing when your country is having an even bigger problem storing money than it is storing energy.
These 'Patsies for Priti' are becoming tiresome. Its so obviously a PR offensive. They're all female and the line is that sometimes (as a woman) you have to be tough. They're all saying being tough isn't bullying.
What none of them are addressing is that she has not been accused of being tough but of bullying and they aren't the same. She only picks on juniors and the same behaviour has been exposed in three different departments.
As someone texted me this morning 'What do you expect from a hanger and flogger'.
Ah, the Alistair Campbell defence: ‘I’m robust but I’m not a bully.’
To be honest she was probably trying to compensate for having to manage civil servants who are both a lot more clever than she is and with a lifetime experience of honing their inner Sir Humphreys. Which doesn't excuse anything, of course.
That's the Home Office civil servants ?
The same Home Office which hasn't been 'fit for purpose' for over a decade ?
Odd that you are picturing the bullied to be Old White Sir Humphrys. This is extremely unlikely.Try instead picturing them as young female from an ethnic minority background who possibly care more about the treatment of refugees than their boss?
Quite. The subordinate who took an overdose after being verbally pummelled by the sawn-off dalek was a woman wasn't she?
I missed that one. What happened? I'm sure tomorrow the stories will start to flow. If whistle blowing doesn't work I believe you can make your grievance public
Priti Patel yelling at somebody else for being sluggish and inept would in any case be like the time my former Principal sacked somebody for being an alleged safeguarding risk.
I can certainly think of a prime candidate that the Prittster could shout at for being sluggish and inept.
These 'Patsies for Priti' are becoming tiresome. Its so obviously a PR offensive. They're all female and the line is that sometimes (as a woman) you have to be tough. They're all saying being tough isn't bullying.
What none of them are addressing is that she has not been accused of being tough but of bullying and they aren't the same. She only picks on juniors and the same behaviour has been exposed in three different departments.
As someone texted me this morning 'What do you expect from a hanger and flogger'.
Ah, the Alistair Campbell defence: ‘I’m robust but I’m not a bully.’
To be honest she was probably trying to compensate for having to manage civil servants who are both a lot more clever than she is and with a lifetime experience of honing their inner Sir Humphreys. Which doesn't excuse anything, of course.
That's the Home Office civil servants ?
The same Home Office which hasn't been 'fit for purpose' for over a decade ?
Two things can be true at the same time: - the Home Office is not fit for purpose - Priti Patel has neither the intellect nor the management skills to bring about improvement
They are both likely to be true IMO.
But I'd say a third is also likely to be true:
That the Home Office is so fundamentally unfit for purpose that nobody is able to bring about improvement.
Re the Priti episode and not wanting to get into all the arguments of yesterday but one action that stood out for me and which I think I will remember for sometime regarding Boris:
Boris asked the author of the report to water it down. I want to know from a Boris supporter eg @Philip_Thompson how that is ever justifiable.
And to help those supporting Boris in this action, try thinking of the consequences of the reverse. Would anyone consider it at all moral if he had asked the independent author to beef it up, with the consequences that an innocent person actually looked guilty?
As far as I understand Boris disagreed with the report and said so, which incidentally so do I. He probably shouldn't have done that, but I can understand him wanting it to be looked at again.
My understanding is the investigator refused to do so which is entirely reasonable and as far as I understand it Boris didn't compel or put any more pressure on him to do so.
Hi PhilIp
This is a serious question.
How can you disagree with a report compiled by somebody who investigated the matter, when they have access to the full facts* and you do not?
If you do not disagree on matters of fact, then why are you asking for its conclusions to be adjusted?
Even if Johnson was not trying to conceal facts - which according to press reports, he was - it is utterly, completely inappropriate for him to even consider asking for alterations to an independent report. The instant he does that, it ceases to be an independent process, even if his demands are rejected. This is exactly what we were getting angry with Corbyn over, and why he’s been booted out of the PLP.
If anything, this is (as Hodges said) more worrisome than the fact Patel is a bully and a liar, which we all knew already. It should be career ending for Johnson (although it won’t be) and it is totally unsurprising the person running it resigned over this.
But you really have to start wondering what anyone has to do to get sacked with this lot. Cummings and Jenrick go around spitting in the face of the law. Williamson has declared schools will not move to rotas even though some schools have 30% of children off so have rotas by default. Braverman seems to think her job is to be Giuliani in a skirt. Raab has no knowledge of basic geography.
It’s just embarrassing.
*leaving aside, for now, the allegation that the full facts were not properly investigated or established.
Ah, but the people can sack the politicians; you don't think we live in a dictatorship, do you, Mr @ydoethur? Nothing could be further from the truth. We have a glorious British Democracy, that lets the voters sack bad politicians, not like those terrible Continental systems. At the appropriate time. Which will be in 2024. Until then, we're the winners, so neeenarr neeenarr.
There are government supporters around here who are pretty upfront about their attitude. On balance, I think that's preferable to weasel words.
All that positive PR that his handlers have been getting for Lewis Hamilton over the past week...he is trending on twitter, never a good sign...for his failed legal action against a watch company that has been in business forever.
Reminds me of when FIFA tried to prevent unauthorised use of the Portuguese word for Christmas, Natal, because Natal was one of the host cities for the 2014 World Cup.
The people behind Candy Crush Saga used to try and sue anyone who made a mobile game with 'Saga' in its name, no matter how different the games were. They also once tried to trademark the word 'Candy', for gaming purposes at least.
What is truly astonishing, from a UK perspective, is that Trump has received 73.8m votes, far more than any candidate in history other than Joe Biden. Trump has very few supporters on this board, @MrEd is the only one that instantly comes to mind although @HYUFD dabbled, mainly, in fairness, pointing out that his chances were better than we thought. It shows the incredible gulf between American politics and mindset and ours.
Millions of Americans clearly believe that Biden is some sort of a socialist. Other than being thick I really struggle to see any evidence for that at all in a very long career. Their definition of socialism would clearly include most of the current Tory party.
I think that it is very difficult for us to predict what these millions might do. We simply do not understand their terms of reference.
Re: HYUFD It's impossible to truly know someone's mind, but the tenor of his posts made me think he would have voted Trump. Of course, he repeatedly claimed that he would vote for Biden if he had a vote, but, in short, I didn't believe him.
He was consistent in saying he would have voted for Biden whilst supporting the GOP for Congress. I believe him - and hope he is ok.
I really like Mackay's philosophy and style - he does a terrific job there of making a dry issue very readable. But on a rapid read he doesn't actually address the main objection to tidal, which is that it's coloissally less cost-efficient in energy generaiton than almost anything else (when I last looked at the figures the ratio was something like 20:1). He's right that it would last for ages (though maintaining underwater equipment is non-trivial) and reasonable in suggesting that if we had lots then the cost would come down as technology progressed.
I'm not saying it's wrong, and I should read Mackay's piece more carefully, but that's why when I was PPS to the then Minister of Energy (Malcolm Wicks) we didn't push it. The bargain for renewable energy by a large margin is ONshore wind, and the main problem is that some people don't like to see it in the hilly places where it's most effective. I think they should get over it in the interests of the country and the planet, but that's a controversial view.
I’m quite suspicious of cost comparisons given the way they have altered over the last decade, but it is fair to say that tidal is relatively expensive.
On the other hand, so is storage. And nuclear.
Also I guess at that time they didn't know what people would want to lend the government money for nothing, basically forever. It seems weird not to do things that have huge capital costs but then run for almost nothing when your country is having an even bigger problem storing money than it is storing energy.
You have to go back 80ish years for a double digit Dem lead.
Colorado had an even bigger left shift.
Colorado’s had a population explosion in the last ten years, with a high number of Hispanics and Asiatics moving into the state. So while we should be wary of assuming they would all vote Democratic, the underlying makeup of the state has become at least more favourable for them.
I see we are back on the popular PB pastime of conducting a post-mortem on the winning candidate. Strange behaviour, really.
Not really. The winner will be around next time (or the Democrats, if Biden doesn’t run again). The loser won’t be. So the question of why the winner won more narrowly than expected has significant betting implications for the future.
Well, analysing the election certainly is worthwhile, but I was mainly referring to the sense that people were discussing what went wrong for the Biden campaign. And when you think that Biden was up against a man who is extremely skilled in hogging attention, was the incumbent, was campaigning in a weird environment where political rallies were not just a partisan affair but a public health one, whose base turned out in huge numbers, and whose party is good at extracting the most value out of the electoral system... the fact that Biden still won 306 EC votes, an outright majority of votes, and a lead of some six million votes, is really quite something.
I was struck by the comment about "reconnecting with the base". That seemed excessively strange to me, given this has been the highest turnout election since universal suffrage. For me, the question of "what went wrong for Biden?" is just weird.
Yes. Cue the old George Best joke.
This was a great achievement by Biden. Far as I'm concerned he had one job to do (remove this piece of vermin from office by beating him in the election) and he did it. It was the most important "win" in any political contest in my lifetime simply because the consequences of failure were so unspeakably dire. And Joe stepped up at the age of 78 and delivered. Delivered the win. Delivered us from evil. There'll be time enough to talk about whether he should have won bigger. How he's either a front for the left or he's sold out to centrism and corporate interests. I look forward to that. But right now I love him and it will last for some time. I feel such gratitude and affection for the guy.
The Dems will fail to learn from Biden's success by putting up a woke hand-wringer obsessed with irrelevant bollocks in 2024 and then be totally baffled when they lose the votes of blue collar workers in the rust belt.
I hope I'm wrong.
And yet Biden did terribly in the rust belt compared to Obama (or Trump did well compared to Romney and Mccain), and no better than H Clinton relative to the national margin. So I'm not seeing any Biden "success" in the rust belt, despite being a local.
I really like Mackay's philosophy and style - he does a terrific job there of making a dry issue very readable. But on a rapid read he doesn't actually address the main objection to tidal, which is that it's coloissally less cost-efficient in energy generaiton than almost anything else (when I last looked at the figures the ratio was something like 20:1). He's right that it would last for ages (though maintaining underwater equipment is non-trivial) and reasonable in suggesting that if we had lots then the cost would come down as technology progressed.
I'm not saying it's wrong, and I should read Mackay's piece more carefully, but that's why when I was PPS to the then Minister of Energy (Malcolm Wicks) we didn't push it. The bargain for renewable energy by a large margin is ONshore wind, and the main problem is that some people don't like to see it in the hilly places where it's most effective. I think they should get over it in the interests of the country and the planet, but that's a controversial view.
Good to read this from someone who was there. Btw I was a colleague of your minister when we both started our academic careers.
Hello everyone. Long time lurker, first time poster.
Currently waiting for Betfair to payout on the US election. I’d bet on a big Biden win, and woke up quite depressed on Wednesday morning. Head managed to overrule heart, and I placed a decent bet at 3.00 on a Biden win.
I don’t generally bet huge amounts, but did on this election. Have topped up a lot recently at between 1.05 to 1.10
Re the Priti episode and not wanting to get into all the arguments of yesterday but one action that stood out for me and which I think I will remember for sometime regarding Boris:
Boris asked the author of the report to water it down. I want to know from a Boris supporter eg @Philip_Thompson how that is ever justifiable.
And to help those supporting Boris in this action, try thinking of the consequences of the reverse. Would anyone consider it at all moral if he had asked the independent author to beef it up, with the consequences that an innocent person actually looked guilty?
As far as I understand Boris disagreed with the report and said so, which incidentally so do I. He probably shouldn't have done that, but I can understand him wanting it to be looked at again.
My understanding is the investigator refused to do so which is entirely reasonable and as far as I understand it Boris didn't compel or put any more pressure on him to do so.
A very good response. Thought I had you over a barrel. Of course we don't know how much pressure was applied.
Not really convinced. If the PM calls you and asks you to do something it's pressure on a supposedly independent process, regardless of how forcefully the request is put. It is however a process issue which won't interest anyone outside the bubble.
Neither am I, but I thought Philip put up a much better argument than I thought was possible and he didn't exactly back Boris up 100% (probably shouldn't have done it quote). So credit where credit is due.
I guess it is degrees as to what is acceptable. My first reaction, as per my post, is what Boris did was entirely wrong and I gave the example of the consequences of the other scenario eg what if he had asked for the report to be beefed up.
If he had specifically asked for it to be watered down that is completely unacceptable.
If he had asked for clarification on some of the facts or asked whether the summary was consistent with the contents that is another matter. He should never ask the independent investigate to change anything or apply or even appear to apply pressure in anyway.
All that positive PR that his handlers have been getting for Lewis Hamilton over the past week...he is trending on twitter, never a good sign...for his failed legal action against a watch company that has been in business forever.
Is there no limit to your eclectic taste in reading? From Guido to the Mail to the Express to Julia Hartley-Brewer on consecutive days. You must be very well informed.
I see we are back on the popular PB pastime of conducting a post-mortem on the winning candidate. Strange behaviour, really.
Not really. The winner will be around next time (or the Democrats, if Biden doesn’t run again). The loser won’t be. So the question of why the winner won more narrowly than expected has significant betting implications for the future.
Well, analysing the election certainly is worthwhile, but I was mainly referring to the sense that people were discussing what went wrong for the Biden campaign. And when you think that Biden was up against a man who is extremely skilled in hogging attention, was the incumbent, was campaigning in a weird environment where political rallies were not just a partisan affair but a public health one, whose base turned out in huge numbers, and whose party is good at extracting the most value out of the electoral system... the fact that Biden still won 306 EC votes, an outright majority of votes, and a lead of some six million votes, is really quite something.
I was struck by the comment about "reconnecting with the base". That seemed excessively strange to me, given this has been the highest turnout election since universal suffrage. For me, the question of "what went wrong for Biden?" is just weird.
Yes. Cue the old George Best joke.
This was a great achievement by Biden. Far as I'm concerned he had one job to do (remove this piece of vermin from office by beating him in the election) and he did it. It was the most important "win" in any political contest in my lifetime simply because the consequences of failure were so unspeakably dire. And Joe stepped up at the age of 78 and delivered. Delivered the win. Delivered us from evil. There'll be time enough to talk about whether he should have won bigger. How he's either a front for the left or he's sold out to centrism and corporate interests. I look forward to that. But right now I love him and it will last for some time. I feel such gratitude and affection for the guy.
The Dems will fail to learn from Biden's success by putting up a woke hand-wringer obsessed with irrelevant bollocks in 2024 and then be totally baffled when they lose the votes of blue collar workers in the rust belt.
I hope I'm wrong.
And yet Biden did terribly in the rust belt compared to Obama (or Trump did well compared to Romney and Mccain), and no better than H Clinton relative to the national margin. So I'm not seeing any Biden "success" in the rust belt, despite being a local.
Surely the "success" is that he won? Which is kind of important. I also believe - though haven't seen the stats - that he outperformed Democrats in other races on the ballot.
Hello everyone. Long time lurker, first time poster.
Currently waiting for Betfair to payout on the US election. I’d bet on a big Biden win, and woke up quite depressed on Wednesday morning. Head managed to overrule heart, and I placed a decent bet at 3.00 on a Biden win.
I don’t generally bet huge amounts, but did on this election. Have topped up a lot recently at between 1.05 to 1.10
Greetings and congratulations on the success of your betting strategy.
About @HYUFD. I do hope he's OK and just taking a break. He's one of my favourite posters. Exceptional well informed with a great political antenna, absolutely on point with Tory politics. Full of facts. Vastly controversial, bewildering stubborn, disturbingly Authoritarian, but unfailingly courteous. Terrifically entertaining when he strays into topics he isn't well informed on. Who hasn't been HYUFDsplained on their own particular field of expertise? I hope he's back soon.
Hello everyone. Long time lurker, first time poster.
Currently waiting for Betfair to payout on the US election. I’d bet on a big Biden win, and woke up quite depressed on Wednesday morning. Head managed to overrule heart, and I placed a decent bet at 3.00 on a Biden win.
I don’t generally bet huge amounts, but did on this election. Have topped up a lot recently at between 1.05 to 1.10
Jolly good. Best bet at moment should you want to top up more is 210-239 Trump Electoral College Votes with BF at an incredible 1.08.
About @HYUFD. I do hope he's OK and just taking a break. He's one of my favourite posters. Exceptional well informed with a great political antenna, absolutely on point with Tory politics. Full of facts. Vastly controversial, bewildering stubborn, disturbingly Authoritarian, but unfailingly courteous. Terrifically entertaining when he strays into topics he isn't well informed on. Who hasn't been HYUFDsplained on their own particular field of expertise? I hope he's back soon.
He’s probably booked a vacation on the Ullapool-Inverness ferry, only to find it’s been routed via Cape Town to avoid the Strait of Hormuz.
About @HYUFD. I do hope he's OK and just taking a break. He's one of my favourite posters. Exceptional well informed with a great political antenna, absolutely on point with Tory politics. Full of facts. Vastly controversial, bewildering stubborn, disturbingly Authoritarian, but unfailingly courteous. Terrifically entertaining when he strays into topics he isn't well informed on. Who hasn't been HYUFDsplained on their own particular field of expertise? I hope he's back soon.
About @HYUFD. I do hope he's OK and just taking a break. He's one of my favourite posters. Exceptional well informed with a great political antenna, absolutely on point with Tory politics. Full of facts. Vastly controversial, bewildering stubborn, disturbingly Authoritarian, but unfailingly courteous. Terrifically entertaining when he strays into topics he isn't well informed on. Who hasn't been HYUFDsplained on their own particular field of expertise? I hope he's back soon.
Excellent description.
Would just like to add: and often spectacularly irrational.
About @HYUFD. I do hope he's OK and just taking a break. He's one of my favourite posters. Exceptional well informed with a great political antenna, absolutely on point with Tory politics. Full of facts. Vastly controversial, bewildering stubborn, disturbingly Authoritarian, but unfailingly courteous. Terrifically entertaining when he strays into topics he isn't well informed on. Who hasn't been HYUFDsplained on their own particular field of expertise? I hope he's back soon.
Good post. Yes, he manages to remain brave and courteous in the face of onslaught. He doesn`t buckle under criticism, like I tend to do.
About @HYUFD. I do hope he's OK and just taking a break. He's one of my favourite posters. Exceptional well informed with a great political antenna, absolutely on point with Tory politics. Full of facts. Vastly controversial, bewildering stubborn, disturbingly Authoritarian, but unfailingly courteous. Terrifically entertaining when he strays into topics he isn't well informed on. Who hasn't been HYUFDsplained on their own particular field of expertise? I hope he's back soon.
Good post. Yes, he manages to remain brave and courteous in the face of onslaught. He doesn`t buckle under criticism, like I tend to do.
If he would only occasionally accept he’s wrong when he’s made some ghastly mistake.
About @HYUFD. I do hope he's OK and just taking a break. He's one of my favourite posters. Exceptional well informed with a great political antenna, absolutely on point with Tory politics. Full of facts. Vastly controversial, bewildering stubborn, disturbingly Authoritarian, but unfailingly courteous. Terrifically entertaining when he strays into topics he isn't well informed on. Who hasn't been HYUFDsplained on their own particular field of expertise? I hope he's back soon.
Good post. Yes, he manages to remain brave and courteous in the face of onslaught. He doesn`t buckle under criticism, like I tend to do.
If he would only occasionally accept he’s wrong when he’s made some ghastly mistake.
About @HYUFD. I do hope he's OK and just taking a break. He's one of my favourite posters. Exceptional well informed with a great political antenna, absolutely on point with Tory politics. Full of facts. Vastly controversial, bewildering stubborn, disturbingly Authoritarian, but unfailingly courteous. Terrifically entertaining when he strays into topics he isn't well informed on. Who hasn't been HYUFDsplained on their own particular field of expertise? I hope he's back soon.
His touting of Hot Broth as a cure for Covid-19 was perhaps not his finest hour.
About @HYUFD. I do hope he's OK and just taking a break. He's one of my favourite posters. Exceptional well informed with a great political antenna, absolutely on point with Tory politics. Full of facts. Vastly controversial, bewildering stubborn, disturbingly Authoritarian, but unfailingly courteous. Terrifically entertaining when he strays into topics he isn't well informed on. Who hasn't been HYUFDsplained on their own particular field of expertise? I hope he's back soon.
His touting of Hot Broth as a cure for Covid-19 was perhaps not his finest hour.
I see we are back on the popular PB pastime of conducting a post-mortem on the winning candidate. Strange behaviour, really.
Not really. The winner will be around next time (or the Democrats, if Biden doesn’t run again). The loser won’t be. So the question of why the winner won more narrowly than expected has significant betting implications for the future.
Well, analysing the election certainly is worthwhile, but I was mainly referring to the sense that people were discussing what went wrong for the Biden campaign. And when you think that Biden was up against a man who is extremely skilled in hogging attention, was the incumbent, was campaigning in a weird environment where political rallies were not just a partisan affair but a public health one, whose base turned out in huge numbers, and whose party is good at extracting the most value out of the electoral system... the fact that Biden still won 306 EC votes, an outright majority of votes, and a lead of some six million votes, is really quite something.
I was struck by the comment about "reconnecting with the base". That seemed excessively strange to me, given this has been the highest turnout election since universal suffrage. For me, the question of "what went wrong for Biden?" is just weird.
Yes. Cue the old George Best joke.
This was a great achievement by Biden. Far as I'm concerned he had one job to do (remove this piece of vermin from office by beating him in the election) and he did it. It was the most important "win" in any political contest in my lifetime simply because the consequences of failure were so unspeakably dire. And Joe stepped up at the age of 78 and delivered. Delivered the win. Delivered us from evil. There'll be time enough to talk about whether he should have won bigger. How he's either a front for the left or he's sold out to centrism and corporate interests. I look forward to that. But right now I love him and it will last for some time. I feel such gratitude and affection for the guy.
The Dems will fail to learn from Biden's success by putting up a woke hand-wringer obsessed with irrelevant bollocks in 2024 and then be totally baffled when they lose the votes of blue collar workers in the rust belt.
I hope I'm wrong.
And yet Biden did terribly in the rust belt compared to Obama (or Trump did well compared to Romney and Mccain), and no better than H Clinton relative to the national margin. So I'm not seeing any Biden "success" in the rust belt, despite being a local.
It depends on how you dice and slice the results. The key thing is that he was appealing enough to flip the states that Hillary lost.
The boy from Trenton image had the right appeal.
There ought to be a lot of deep thinking in the Dems over the next 3 years to figure out the sort of candidate they need to put up. There's no point defaulting to Kamala if they turn off voters in the battleground states.
I see a lot of parallels in the UK. I hope that there are enough voices from north of the Watford Gap being listened to in the Leader's office so that Labour can attract the voters we need in the right places. Gaining seats in Stoke and County Durham is what we need, not swelling our majority in Canterbury.
It wasn't a landslide, and it was closer than a lot of people thought it would be a few days out. But it doesn't deserve the word "close"...
The popular vote margin looks like about 4% or maybe just a bit less. It is roughly the same as the EU referendum, which is routinely described as "close".
It is also about the same as the 2012 election result, which the BBC described as a "landslide" for Obama, iirc.
Of course this is semantics, and the popular vote doesn't matter in America anyway.
I see we are back on the popular PB pastime of conducting a post-mortem on the winning candidate. Strange behaviour, really.
Not really. The winner will be around next time (or the Democrats, if Biden doesn’t run again). The loser won’t be. So the question of why the winner won more narrowly than expected has significant betting implications for the future.
Well, analysing the election certainly is worthwhile, but I was mainly referring to the sense that people were discussing what went wrong for the Biden campaign. And when you think that Biden was up against a man who is extremely skilled in hogging attention, was the incumbent, was campaigning in a weird environment where political rallies were not just a partisan affair but a public health one, whose base turned out in huge numbers, and whose party is good at extracting the most value out of the electoral system... the fact that Biden still won 306 EC votes, an outright majority of votes, and a lead of some six million votes, is really quite something.
I was struck by the comment about "reconnecting with the base". That seemed excessively strange to me, given this has been the highest turnout election since universal suffrage. For me, the question of "what went wrong for Biden?" is just weird.
Yes. Cue the old George Best joke.
This was a great achievement by Biden. Far as I'm concerned he had one job to do (remove this piece of vermin from office by beating him in the election) and he did it. It was the most important "win" in any political contest in my lifetime simply because the consequences of failure were so unspeakably dire. And Joe stepped up at the age of 78 and delivered. Delivered the win. Delivered us from evil. There'll be time enough to talk about whether he should have won bigger. How he's either a front for the left or he's sold out to centrism and corporate interests. I look forward to that. But right now I love him and it will last for some time. I feel such gratitude and affection for the guy.
The Dems will fail to learn from Biden's success by putting up a woke hand-wringer obsessed with irrelevant bollocks in 2024 and then be totally baffled when they lose the votes of blue collar workers in the rust belt.
I hope I'm wrong.
And yet Biden did terribly in the rust belt compared to Obama (or Trump did well compared to Romney and Mccain), and no better than H Clinton relative to the national margin. So I'm not seeing any Biden "success" in the rust belt, despite being a local.
It depends on how you dice and slice the results. The key thing is that he was appealing enough to flip the states that Hillary lost.
The boy from Trenton image had the right appeal.
There ought to be a lot of deep thinking in the Dems over the next 3 years to figure out the sort of candidate they need to put up. There's no point defaulting to Kamala if they turn off voters in the battleground states.
I see a lot of parallels in the UK. I hope that there are enough voices from north of the Watford Gap being listened to in the Leader's office so that Labour can attract the voters we need in the right places. Gaining seats in Stoke and County Durham is what we need, not swelling our majority in Canterbury.
Given who SKS's chief of staff is I think he knows that he needs to recover the Red Wall seats.
About @HYUFD. I do hope he's OK and just taking a break. He's one of my favourite posters. Exceptional well informed with a great political antenna, absolutely on point with Tory politics. Full of facts. Vastly controversial, bewildering stubborn, disturbingly Authoritarian, but unfailingly courteous. Terrifically entertaining when he strays into topics he isn't well informed on. Who hasn't been HYUFDsplained on their own particular field of expertise? I hope he's back soon.
Good post. Yes, he manages to remain brave and courteous in the face of onslaught. He doesn`t buckle under criticism, like I tend to do.
If he would only occasionally accept he’s wrong when he’s made some ghastly mistake.
Then the mystique would be gone.
For me the difference, or otherwise, between a pollster or pundit was brilliant.
I’m quite suspicious of cost comparisons given the way they have altered over the last decade, but it is fair to say that tidal is relatively expensive.
On the other hand, so is storage. And nuclear.
I agree
I think Mark Shorrock eventually said somewhere that Swansea Bay would require a strike price of £150/MWh on a like-for-like basis. Hinckley is £92.50, so that means the subsidy is around three to four times as much as nuclear.
Not much learning effects / future cost reductions from tidal either, given most of the cost of Swansea is building big walls in the sea and we’ve been doing that since Napoleonic times
Hello everyone. Long time lurker, first time poster.
Currently waiting for Betfair to payout on the US election. I’d bet on a big Biden win, and woke up quite depressed on Wednesday morning. Head managed to overrule heart, and I placed a decent bet at 3.00 on a Biden win.
I don’t generally bet huge amounts, but did on this election. Have topped up a lot recently at between 1.05 to 1.10
Greetings and congratulations on the success of your betting strategy.
Thanks. Not spending anything until Betfair pay out though!
All that positive PR that his handlers have been getting for Lewis Hamilton over the past week...he is trending on twitter, never a good sign...for his failed legal action against a watch company that has been in business forever.
Reminds me of when FIFA tried to prevent unauthorised use of the Portuguese word for Christmas, Natal, because Natal was one of the host cities for the 2014 World Cup.
The people behind Candy Crush Saga used to try and sue anyone who made a mobile game with 'Saga' in its name, no matter how different the games were. They also once tried to trademark the word 'Candy', for gaming purposes at least.
Perhaps he will be suing the estate of Sir William Hamilton for inventing Hamiltonian Mechanics (200 years ago). I mean, Hamiltonian Mechanics..... it MUST have something to do with racing....
Hello everyone. Long time lurker, first time poster.
Currently waiting for Betfair to payout on the US election. I’d bet on a big Biden win, and woke up quite depressed on Wednesday morning. Head managed to overrule heart, and I placed a decent bet at 3.00 on a Biden win.
I don’t generally bet huge amounts, but did on this election. Have topped up a lot recently at between 1.05 to 1.10
Greetings and congratulations on the success of your betting strategy.
Thanks. Not spending anything until Betfair pay out though!
In that case you have my sympathy, as it looks like your spending spree might come after a vaccine.
Although that might not be the worst time for a sudden windfall.
Hello everyone. Long time lurker, first time poster.
Currently waiting for Betfair to payout on the US election. I’d bet on a big Biden win, and woke up quite depressed on Wednesday morning. Head managed to overrule heart, and I placed a decent bet at 3.00 on a Biden win.
I don’t generally bet huge amounts, but did on this election. Have topped up a lot recently at between 1.05 to 1.10
I see we are back on the popular PB pastime of conducting a post-mortem on the winning candidate. Strange behaviour, really.
Not really. The winner will be around next time (or the Democrats, if Biden doesn’t run again). The loser won’t be. So the question of why the winner won more narrowly than expected has significant betting implications for the future.
Well, analysing the election certainly is worthwhile, but I was mainly referring to the sense that people were discussing what went wrong for the Biden campaign. And when you think that Biden was up against a man who is extremely skilled in hogging attention, was the incumbent, was campaigning in a weird environment where political rallies were not just a partisan affair but a public health one, whose base turned out in huge numbers, and whose party is good at extracting the most value out of the electoral system... the fact that Biden still won 306 EC votes, an outright majority of votes, and a lead of some six million votes, is really quite something.
I was struck by the comment about "reconnecting with the base". That seemed excessively strange to me, given this has been the highest turnout election since universal suffrage. For me, the question of "what went wrong for Biden?" is just weird.
Yes. Cue the old George Best joke.
This was a great achievement by Biden. Far as I'm concerned he had one job to do (remove this piece of vermin from office by beating him in the election) and he did it. It was the most important "win" in any political contest in my lifetime simply because the consequences of failure were so unspeakably dire. And Joe stepped up at the age of 78 and delivered. Delivered the win. Delivered us from evil. There'll be time enough to talk about whether he should have won bigger. How he's either a front for the left or he's sold out to centrism and corporate interests. I look forward to that. But right now I love him and it will last for some time. I feel such gratitude and affection for the guy.
The Dems will fail to learn from Biden's success by putting up a woke hand-wringer obsessed with irrelevant bollocks in 2024 and then be totally baffled when they lose the votes of blue collar workers in the rust belt.
I hope I'm wrong.
And yet Biden did terribly in the rust belt compared to Obama (or Trump did well compared to Romney and Mccain), and no better than H Clinton relative to the national margin. So I'm not seeing any Biden "success" in the rust belt, despite being a local.
It depends on how you dice and slice the results. The key thing is that he was appealing enough to flip the states that Hillary lost.
The boy from Trenton image had the right appeal.
There ought to be a lot of deep thinking in the Dems over the next 3 years to figure out the sort of candidate they need to put up. There's no point defaulting to Kamala if they turn off voters in the battleground states.
I see a lot of parallels in the UK. I hope that there are enough voices from north of the Watford Gap being listened to in the Leader's office so that Labour can attract the voters we need in the right places. Gaining seats in Stoke and County Durham is what we need, not swelling our majority in Canterbury.
Kamala definitely seems like a bad idea but the demographic trends are almost getting to the point where a different Dem could come at it without the rustbelt. Keep GA and AZ, add NC, let PA/MI/WI go.
What is truly astonishing, from a UK perspective, is that Trump has received 73.8m votes, far more than any candidate in history other than Joe Biden. Trump has very few supporters on this board, @MrEd is the only one that instantly comes to mind although @HYUFD dabbled, mainly, in fairness, pointing out that his chances were better than we thought. It shows the incredible gulf between American politics and mindset and ours.
Millions of Americans clearly believe that Biden is some sort of a socialist. Other than being thick I really struggle to see any evidence for that at all in a very long career. Their definition of socialism would clearly include most of the current Tory party.
I think that it is very difficult for us to predict what these millions might do. We simply do not understand their terms of reference.
Re: HYUFD It's impossible to truly know someone's mind, but the tenor of his posts made me think he would have voted Trump. Of course, he repeatedly claimed that he would vote for Biden if he had a vote, but, in short, I didn't believe him.
He was consistent in saying he would have voted for Biden whilst supporting the GOP for Congress. I believe him - and hope he is ok.
Yeah, I'm not why people don't take comments like that at face value, and instead suspect some ulterior motive. Looks like he's fine, just taking a break from PB I guess.
I see we are back on the popular PB pastime of conducting a post-mortem on the winning candidate. Strange behaviour, really.
Not really. The winner will be around next time (or the Democrats, if Biden doesn’t run again). The loser won’t be. So the question of why the winner won more narrowly than expected has significant betting implications for the future.
Well, analysing the election certainly is worthwhile, but I was mainly referring to the sense that people were discussing what went wrong for the Biden campaign. And when you think that Biden was up against a man who is extremely skilled in hogging attention, was the incumbent, was campaigning in a weird environment where political rallies were not just a partisan affair but a public health one, whose base turned out in huge numbers, and whose party is good at extracting the most value out of the electoral system... the fact that Biden still won 306 EC votes, an outright majority of votes, and a lead of some six million votes, is really quite something.
I was struck by the comment about "reconnecting with the base". That seemed excessively strange to me, given this has been the highest turnout election since universal suffrage. For me, the question of "what went wrong for Biden?" is just weird.
Yes. Cue the old George Best joke.
This was a great achievement by Biden. Far as I'm concerned he had one job to do (remove this piece of vermin from office by beating him in the election) and he did it. It was the most important "win" in any political contest in my lifetime simply because the consequences of failure were so unspeakably dire. And Joe stepped up at the age of 78 and delivered. Delivered the win. Delivered us from evil. There'll be time enough to talk about whether he should have won bigger. How he's either a front for the left or he's sold out to centrism and corporate interests. I look forward to that. But right now I love him and it will last for some time. I feel such gratitude and affection for the guy.
The Dems will fail to learn from Biden's success by putting up a woke hand-wringer obsessed with irrelevant bollocks in 2024 and then be totally baffled when they lose the votes of blue collar workers in the rust belt.
I hope I'm wrong.
And yet Biden did terribly in the rust belt compared to Obama (or Trump did well compared to Romney and Mccain), and no better than H Clinton relative to the national margin. So I'm not seeing any Biden "success" in the rust belt, despite being a local.
It depends on how you dice and slice the results. The key thing is that he was appealing enough to flip the states that Hillary lost.
The boy from Trenton image had the right appeal.
There ought to be a lot of deep thinking in the Dems over the next 3 years to figure out the sort of candidate they need to put up. There's no point defaulting to Kamala if they turn off voters in the battleground states.
I see a lot of parallels in the UK. I hope that there are enough voices from north of the Watford Gap being listened to in the Leader's office so that Labour can attract the voters we need in the right places. Gaining seats in Stoke and County Durham is what we need, not swelling our majority in Canterbury.
Kamala definitely seems like a bad idea but the demographic trends are almost getting to the point where a different Dem could come at it without the rustbelt. Keep GA and AZ, add NC, let PA/MI/WI go.
I think I'd describe that as a high-risk strategy.
I see we are back on the popular PB pastime of conducting a post-mortem on the winning candidate. Strange behaviour, really.
Not really. The winner will be around next time (or the Democrats, if Biden doesn’t run again). The loser won’t be. So the question of why the winner won more narrowly than expected has significant betting implications for the future.
Well, analysing the election certainly is worthwhile, but I was mainly referring to the sense that people were discussing what went wrong for the Biden campaign. And when you think that Biden was up against a man who is extremely skilled in hogging attention, was the incumbent, was campaigning in a weird environment where political rallies were not just a partisan affair but a public health one, whose base turned out in huge numbers, and whose party is good at extracting the most value out of the electoral system... the fact that Biden still won 306 EC votes, an outright majority of votes, and a lead of some six million votes, is really quite something.
I was struck by the comment about "reconnecting with the base". That seemed excessively strange to me, given this has been the highest turnout election since universal suffrage. For me, the question of "what went wrong for Biden?" is just weird.
Yes. Cue the old George Best joke.
This was a great achievement by Biden. Far as I'm concerned he had one job to do (remove this piece of vermin from office by beating him in the election) and he did it. It was the most important "win" in any political contest in my lifetime simply because the consequences of failure were so unspeakably dire. And Joe stepped up at the age of 78 and delivered. Delivered the win. Delivered us from evil. There'll be time enough to talk about whether he should have won bigger. How he's either a front for the left or he's sold out to centrism and corporate interests. I look forward to that. But right now I love him and it will last for some time. I feel such gratitude and affection for the guy.
The Dems will fail to learn from Biden's success by putting up a woke hand-wringer obsessed with irrelevant bollocks in 2024 and then be totally baffled when they lose the votes of blue collar workers in the rust belt.
I hope I'm wrong.
And yet Biden did terribly in the rust belt compared to Obama (or Trump did well compared to Romney and Mccain), and no better than H Clinton relative to the national margin. So I'm not seeing any Biden "success" in the rust belt, despite being a local.
It depends on how you dice and slice the results. The key thing is that he was appealing enough to flip the states that Hillary lost.
The boy from Trenton image had the right appeal.
There ought to be a lot of deep thinking in the Dems over the next 3 years to figure out the sort of candidate they need to put up. There's no point defaulting to Kamala if they turn off voters in the battleground states.
I see a lot of parallels in the UK. I hope that there are enough voices from north of the Watford Gap being listened to in the Leader's office so that Labour can attract the voters we need in the right places. Gaining seats in Stoke and County Durham is what we need, not swelling our majority in Canterbury.
Kamala definitely seems like a bad idea but the demographic trends are almost getting to the point where a different Dem could come at it without the rustbelt. Keep GA and AZ, add NC, let PA/MI/WI go.
2023 and the warm-up are a long way off. Let's see what happens before writing her off. Or jumping to other conclusions. It might be likely, but it's early to be putting money anywhere.
What is truly astonishing, from a UK perspective, is that Trump has received 73.8m votes, far more than any candidate in history other than Joe Biden. Trump has very few supporters on this board, @MrEd is the only one that instantly comes to mind although @HYUFD dabbled, mainly, in fairness, pointing out that his chances were better than we thought. It shows the incredible gulf between American politics and mindset and ours.
Millions of Americans clearly believe that Biden is some sort of a socialist. Other than being thick I really struggle to see any evidence for that at all in a very long career. Their definition of socialism would clearly include most of the current Tory party.
I think that it is very difficult for us to predict what these millions might do. We simply do not understand their terms of reference.
Re: HYUFD It's impossible to truly know someone's mind, but the tenor of his posts made me think he would have voted Trump. Of course, he repeatedly claimed that he would vote for Biden if he had a vote, but, in short, I didn't believe him.
I find @HYUFD to be completely honest. He will stubbornly stand by his argument no matter how irrational it may get, but many are guilty of that. Conversely he will be flexible as the Conservative party amends its position, but he is consistent in that as well even if others like me find it bizarre. Again he is not alone in doing this and is doing it honestly even though it appears contradictory.
My recommendation would be to drill into the "facts" he posts. He often posts things that seem dubious to me, and sometimes, when you find the actual data, he's spot on. But other times you find that he's distorting the truth to just about fit it so some other narrative. And when you go back to the post, you'll see his wording is so very careful as to avoid an outright lie. To me, that shows a level of dishonest presentation that clever lawyers and journalists are so skilled at. And I would argue that nobody is really capable of that level wordsmithery without also knowing that they are offering misleading impressions of the data. But, hey, don't take my word for it. Try it some time, if he's even coming back. You'll see for yourselves.
The PB equivalent of "blink" by Malcolm Gladwell - only been here a month and made a full scale psychological profile of someone who's posted for years!
All that positive PR that his handlers have been getting for Lewis Hamilton over the past week...he is trending on twitter, never a good sign...for his failed legal action against a watch company that has been in business forever.
Is there no limit to your eclectic taste in reading? From Guido to the Mail to the Express to Julia Hartley-Brewer on consecutive days. You must be very well informed.
Fortunately far more than your ignorant self.
Linking once to a Daily Express, when they actually had correct exclusive about COVID Phase II trial.....disgraceful isn't it. I suppose I should stick to the BBC, who have been consistently piss poor in their reporting of facts about COVID.
All that positive PR that his handlers have been getting for Lewis Hamilton over the past week...he is trending on twitter, never a good sign...for his failed legal action against a watch company that has been in business forever.
Is there no limit to your eclectic taste in reading? From Guido to the Mail to the Express to Julia Hartley-Brewer on consecutive days. You must be very well informed.
The best policy is to read as much as possible I'd have thought.
These 'Patsies for Priti' are becoming tiresome. Its so obviously a PR offensive. They're all female and the line is that sometimes (as a woman) you have to be tough. They're all saying being tough isn't bullying.
What none of them are addressing is that she has not been accused of being tough but of bullying and they aren't the same. She only picks on juniors and the same behaviour has been exposed in three different departments.
As someone texted me this morning 'What do you expect from a hanger and flogger'.
Ah, the Alistair Campbell defence: ‘I’m robust but I’m not a bully.’
To be honest she was probably trying to compensate for having to manage civil servants who are both a lot more clever than she is and with a lifetime experience of honing their inner Sir Humphreys. Which doesn't excuse anything, of course.
That's the Home Office civil servants ?
The same Home Office which hasn't been 'fit for purpose' for over a decade ?
Being masters at thwarting their minister isn't incompatible with being unfit for purpose.
But Roger offers a credible alternative (or supplementary) hypothesis, too.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of Priti Patel are I suspect that most people would become exasperated with trying to control the Home Office.
I also suspect that if they didn't have their nice safe jobs the Home Office Sir Humphreys might find that ability at thwarting their bosses and their inability at being fit for purpose would rapidly see them lose their jobs in most other places.
We often see this trotted out, as if Yes Minister was a documentary, and ignoring the fact that Jim Hacker often succeeded.
What policies of Patel's or her predecesors of the last decade have been frustrated by the Civil Service, rather than for example the Rule of Law?
I clicked on this tweet by the ex-Change UK candidate and ex-BBC News man Gavin Esler, a supposed moderate who has been driven mad by Brexit, expecting people to be outraged by his drawing a parallel between workplace shouting and swearing, & rape and paedophilia - but no! The majority seem to be agreeing with him and happy to accept the comparison
I clicked on this tweet by the ex-Change UK candidate and ex-BBC News man Gavin Esler, a supposed moderate who has been driven mad by Brexit, expecting people to be outraged by his drawing a parallel between workplace shouting and swearing, & rape and paedophilia - but no! The majority seem to be agreeing with him and happy to accept the comparison
Comments
Odd that you are picturing the bullied to be Old White Sir Humphrys. This is extremely unlikely.Try instead picturing them as young female from an ethnic minority background who possibly care more about the treatment of refugees than their boss?
The constitution places limits on the tyranny of the majority, so a line has to be drawn somewhere.
In any event, with a 6-3 conservative majority on the court, and no real prospect of changing that anytime soon, that line is likely to get redrawn somewhat.
Every seat that the Dems flipped in 2018 and lost in 2020 was lost to a female or ethnic minority Rep candidate.
I hope I'm wrong.
Reconnecting with the base is really up to Stacey Abrams’ generation. And if Florida (for example) had someone like her then the outcome in 2024 would not be in doubt.
...oh, bugger.
My understanding is the investigator refused to do so which is entirely reasonable and as far as I understand it Boris didn't compel or put any more pressure on him to do so.
* http://www.inference.eng.cam.ac.uk/sustainable/book/tex/sewtha.pdf
BBC News - Covid-19: Hong Kong-Singapore travel corridor postponed
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-55027305
Do Hong Kong like being referred to as a Chinese City?
I've been reading your posts, and I see where you are coming from, and as you say, there are a lot of options.
One of the worst things Margaret Thatcher did was to create, or try to create a climate, where bright people didn't try to enter the Civil Service.
Not a fan of JHB, but I did chuckle at this.
https://twitter.com/JuliaHB1/status/1329911777921011713?s=19
I think all we've seen is the Janet and John Bit, written by the government.
Who I am sure wrote a fair, balanced summary.
Not.
https://www.midweekherald.co.uk/news/newcott-chef-the-story-behind-the-story-1-215959
I'm not saying it's wrong, and I should read Mackay's piece more carefully, but that's why when I was PPS to the then Minister of Energy (Malcolm Wicks) we didn't push it. The bargain for renewable energy by a large margin is ONshore wind, and the main problem is that some people don't like to see it in the hilly places where it's most effective. I think they should get over it in the interests of the country and the planet, but that's a controversial view.
This is a serious question.
How can you disagree with a report compiled by somebody who investigated the matter, when they have access to the full facts* and you do not?
If you do not disagree on matters of fact, then why are you asking for its conclusions to be adjusted?
Even if Johnson was not trying to conceal facts - which according to press reports, he was - it is utterly, completely inappropriate for him to even consider asking for alterations to an independent report. The instant he does that, it ceases to be an independent process, even if his demands are rejected. This is exactly what we were getting angry with Corbyn over, and why he’s been booted out of the PLP.
If anything, this is (as Hodges said) more worrisome than the fact Patel is a bully and a liar, which we all knew already. It should be career ending for Johnson (although it won’t be) and it is totally unsurprising the person running it resigned over this.
But you really have to start wondering what anyone has to do to get sacked with this lot. Cummings and Jenrick go around spitting in the face of the law. Williamson has declared schools will not move to rotas even though some schools have 30% of children off so have rotas by default. Braverman seems to think her job is to be Giuliani in a skirt. Raab has no knowledge of basic geography.
It’s just embarrassing.
*leaving aside, for now, the allegation that the full facts were not properly investigated or established.
44IP, a firm located in Malta and established by the driver to oversee his image rights, claimed Hamilton International registered the name in “bad faith” and to prevent competition.
I am sure it is total coincidence that Malta has the lowest tax on profits of any country in the EU....
The Covid lie might be forgiven, but serving it with pineapple...
On the other hand, so is storage. And nuclear.
https://twitter.com/Redistrict/status/1329933694254133250?s=19
You have to go back 80ish years for a double digit Dem lead.
But I'd say a third is also likely to be true:
That the Home Office is so fundamentally unfit for purpose that nobody is able to bring about improvement.
At the appropriate time.
Which will be in 2024.
Until then, we're the winners, so neeenarr neeenarr.
There are government supporters around here who are pretty upfront about their attitude. On balance, I think that's preferable to weasel words.
https://www.westword.com/news/how-colorados-population-changed-from-2010-to-2018-11541502
I don’t know why this is so because I know virtually nothing about Colorado.
Virginia meanwhile is just the gentrification as people spill over from D.C.
Currently waiting for Betfair to payout on the US election. I’d bet on a big Biden win, and woke up quite depressed on Wednesday morning. Head managed to overrule heart, and I placed a decent bet at 3.00 on a Biden win.
I don’t generally bet huge amounts, but did on this election. Have topped up a lot recently at between 1.05 to 1.10
I guess it is degrees as to what is acceptable. My first reaction, as per my post, is what Boris did was entirely wrong and I gave the example of the consequences of the other scenario eg what if he had asked for the report to be beefed up.
If he had specifically asked for it to be watered down that is completely unacceptable.
If he had asked for clarification on some of the facts or asked whether the summary was consistent with the contents that is another matter. He should never ask the independent investigate to change anything or apply or even appear to apply pressure in anyway.
Vastly controversial, bewildering stubborn, disturbingly Authoritarian, but unfailingly courteous.
Terrifically entertaining when he strays into topics he isn't well informed on. Who hasn't been HYUFDsplained on their own particular field of expertise?
I hope he's back soon.
Would just like to add: and often spectacularly irrational.
The boy from Trenton image had the right appeal.
There ought to be a lot of deep thinking in the Dems over the next 3 years to figure out the sort of candidate they need to put up. There's no point defaulting to Kamala if they turn off voters in the battleground states.
I see a lot of parallels in the UK. I hope that there are enough voices from north of the Watford Gap being listened to in the Leader's office so that Labour can attract the voters we need in the right places. Gaining seats in Stoke and County Durham is what we need, not swelling our majority in Canterbury.
It is also about the same as the 2012 election result, which the BBC described as a "landslide" for Obama, iirc.
Of course this is semantics, and the popular vote doesn't matter in America anyway.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/livebirths/bulletins/babynamesenglandandwales/2019#top-100-baby-names
For me the difference, or otherwise, between a pollster or pundit was brilliant.
I think Mark Shorrock eventually said somewhere that Swansea Bay would require a strike price of £150/MWh on a like-for-like basis. Hinckley is £92.50, so that means the subsidy is around three to four times as much as nuclear.
Not much learning effects / future cost reductions from tidal either, given most of the cost of Swansea is building big walls in the sea and we’ve been doing that since Napoleonic times
Although that might not be the worst time for a sudden windfall.
Linking once to a Daily Express, when they actually had correct exclusive about COVID Phase II trial.....disgraceful isn't it. I suppose I should stick to the BBC, who have been consistently piss poor in their reporting of facts about COVID.
What policies of Patel's or her predecesors of the last decade have been frustrated by the Civil Service, rather than for example the Rule of Law?
https://twitter.com/gavinesler/status/1329908960766414848?s=20